Six years ago my brother pasted away while serving our country. I think about him often as Mia gets older and changes so much. I wish I could call him up and talk to him about everything.
I miss you Tom.

福 妍 美 Happy Beautiful Beautiful

Forever Family Day

"About two years ago there was a baby girl in China who needed a family. And here in America there was a Mama and Papa who needed a baby.
Do you know who that baby was?"
"Me!"
"Yep! And who was the Mama and Papa?"
"You and Papa!"
"Your right! So we wrote to the people in China and asked them if we could be your Mama and Papa and you could be our baby. They said Yes! So we got on a plane and flew for a long long time. We finally got to Nanchang and met you! We loved you from the first moment we saw you. You didn't know who we were and were very sad at first, but soon you started to like us and were happy.
I remember the first funny thing in China you did was look at me and blow a raspberry and then laugh and laugh.
Then we flew back to our home in Juneau. You met the dogs and you loved them, they loved you too! People came to see you and were very happy that we were a family. We will always always be a family!
Do you know you were born in the year of the mouse? And that your Chinese name is Fu Yan Mei? Fu means you were found in Fuzhou City, but it can also mean happy.
Yan means beautiful and Mei means beautiful too!
So you are our Happy Beautiful Beautiful Mia Mei mouse!
And we will love you forever and ever!
The End"

She's working on her street cred

Today Mia and I went and watched our friend's two little girls. They are about a year and a half younger than Mia. In the past Mia has acted like they don't exist and she isn't very careful around them. And it's so hard because they really want to play with her. But the last few times she's interacted with them she's done so much better, and today she did great. The girls were lovely and wanted to play with her the whole time and Mia played with them and was kind and patient. On the way to the car I told her that she was a very good girl and this was our conversation:
"No, I not good girl Mama."
"You weren't?"
"No"
"Okay, then you were a horribly rotten girl."
"No I not!"
"What were you then?"
"I dangerous, Mama"

Solstice

This is my favorite time of year, not because the days are so long, but because now they are going to become shorter!! Every summer I complain how all the daylight drives me crazy! That's a big reason I like Juneau, it's farther south so it's not 24 hours of sun (but it's never really dark either) and it's rainy a lot so that helps cut down on all the light.
Fairbanks drove me insane!! It would be 2:00 in the morning and the sun would be shining in my window!
But now we start losing daylight and start slipping into winter. I'm good with that :)

We have a new swimming pool in Juneau and it's in the valley! It's Olympic sized and is an "aquatic park", it has two big slides, an easy entrance pool. It has fountains and a lazy river and a bunch of other cool stuff. I have been putting off taking Mia because I knew the minute she saw what it was, well, there was no putting that genie back in the bottle. So now all I hear is "I wanna go swimming mama. Can I go swimming? Papa take me swimming mama? I go sleep and wake up and go swimming? I sleep in my swimming suit mama?" To make it even more exciting she is just barely potty trained so we are always ready to make a run for the bathrooms. I ordered a new suit from LLBean that should be here next week, then I'll get to go in the pool with her and Graham.
That's about it for exciting life in Juneau right now. I'll take it :)

Oy Vey

I got my mom an iPad so that she can Facebook with Mia Mei. She misses her so much and her health isn't good enough to travel to Alaska. So I figured I'd get her an iPad and her and Mia can see each other and talk all the time. Oh my gosh, I'm surprised I have any hair left. Have you ever tried to explain how to use an iPad over the phone? She has no idea how to swipe to get to the next page and she's amazing she can just tap on "one of those boxes" and have it do something. I e-mailed my cousin to see if her or her husband would go help her. They are glad to do it. Now I just have to get her Internet and she'll be all set to Facebook her granddaughter. She'll be the coolest grandma in the senior home!

Had Mia's 3 year check up with the doctor today. She is 39 inches tall and weighs 33 pounds. This is apparently very big for a three year old, but the doctor was very happy with her health. She did say she had big tonsils and asked if she snores. YES! She's so loud she often wakes me up. Then she asked if she sometimes stops breathing for 10-15 seconds at night. Yes again, in fact it scares me sometimes. She said it's sleep apnea and we might want to talk to someone about taking her tonsils out. Yikes, I don't know. I hate the idea of surgery. We'll think on it for awhile. Right now we are enjoying our great big giant (potty trained) Chinese baby!!