Love Internationale

First, a video of Sophie opening up her Baby Alive doll and playing with it. You can find it here. (I can’t embed it in this blog).

12-23-08 — Bagel for breakfast

12-24-08 — Christmas Eve.

12-25 -08 — My mom, Aunt C and Sophie

Sophie and Papa in front of the tree

Great grand nana and Sophie

Sophie loving on a stuffed dog she received.

From the morning. Sophie opened the toys and Papa had the onerous job of removing all the (&(^(*&^*&6! packaging.

12-26-08 — Sophie this morning in one of the new princess dresses and her arms filled with all the toy shoes she can carry.  LOOOT!!!

Like an idiot, I forgot my camera, but I took these when we returned just so I could get a couple shots of Sophie in her pretty dress.

There were many families there, lots of kids. Most of them were under ten. I’m sure that once the kids reach puberty they probably stop wanting to attend stuff like this. All the kids were dressed in their finest. For Chinese New Year you’re supposed to wear new clothes in bright colors. James and I tried to honor that. He wore this red shirt and I wore a dress in bright colors. Sophie wore this outfit we bought in China for her.

There were arts and crafts and games. Sophie liked the trampoline and the small jungle gym the best. We had a nice dinner catered by a local Chinese restaurant and there were little dance classes (and some professional performances) by a Chinese dance teacher who teaches in a city not far from us. That was info tucked away by me, since Sophie LOVED the dance classes. She waved her arms, danced and twirled with all the other little girls and had a wonderful time.

But the highlight was the dragon parade. All the little girls took bits of red party streamer and followed behind a man dressed in a huge yellow and red dragon head. Sophie loves dragons with the passion of a thousand flaming suns and she positioned herself right behind him and marched along happily, smiling, laughing and waving her streamer, and yelling “MAMA, PAPA! DRAGGIE! DRAGGIE!” and pointing at the man in front of her.

It was a very nice night. Sophie didn’t want to leave, but, alas, then it was time to go.

Sophie is going to daycare on Fridays and today was her first day. When I left her, she looked uncertain, shy and sad (although minutes before in the car she’d been excited to go ‘play with the babies’). I know that by now she’s probably having a great time with the other kids. This is good for her. She needs to play with other children.

She’ll be fine, right?

Millions of beeelions of parents drop their kids at daycare every morning and all those kids are fine, so Sophie will be fine too. *chews thumbnail* Maybe I should I call.

No. Too early. I’ll call in a couple hours.

SIGH.