Jenn is at Target getting new shoes for Penelope. This weekend we noticed they were tight. I checked her toes and they were right at the tip. Hard to believe it was only two months ago that I was at Wal-Mart in Zhengzhou trying to pick out shoes, guessing at the size, attempting to approximate what would fit our daughter best. I hit it out of the park with the shoes. We’ve gotten our $36 RMB (or $6 dollars) worth. I didn’t have as much success with socks. That would take another week to get partly right.
Saturday we had dinner with Kim and Nathan at Doc Chey’s. Penelope was a ham, putting on her most expressive face when she said “pease”. On Sunday we went to Aunt Stephanie’s. Penelope played with Charlie, painting and blowing bubbles, enjoying a delicious breakfast, and enjoying life as a two year old should.
Making funny faces at Kim and Nathan.
“Pease!”
She has enjoyed watching some of the Olympic events, adding to our curiosity about Penelope’s future. She was far more intrigued by watching the synchronized diving than say, Word Girl, Sesame Street, or Rocky & Bullwinkle. Unfortunately I think the worst when I consider her having a strong athletic interest. Probably because I have none and I think of all the possible injuries and punishing schedule.
She is adding more words to her vocabulary. We are teaching her to say “please” when asking for things. She scrunches her face up, smiles, and says “pease”. Just one more thing she does that makes my heart nearly burst from my chest in love and amazement. Repeating “mushoom” and “wuv oo” still gets me every time.
As we had hoped, Penelope is no longer scared of the pets. She has a respect for Diogenes. If he is blocking her path she stands behind him and waits for one of us to ask him to get up. She will gently pet Topeka and say “peeka”. The cats don’t bother her a bit. She is trying to say “Little Man” and can say “Tima” and “Lila”. “Lily” doesn’t come out quite right but that makes it more adorable.
We had a scare on Monday night. Penelope took one bite of her enchilada and swallowed instead of chewing. We immediately went over to her and got the offending morsel out of her mouth, stressing the importance of chewing. It must have tasted delicious because she was not deterred by choking. She went for the next piece and put it in her mouth. We had to tell her “yige”, or “one” to indicate one piece at a time. After that she would open her mouth after every other bite, cock her head toward Jennifer and open her mouth wide as though to say “See! Just one piece mama!” Last night she was even more cute about showing us how good she was about only eating one piece.
The Many Dinner Faces of Penelope
