PORTRAITS

I don’t think I’d be very good at taking portraits of the kids if they weren’t a Simpson Family requirement. Christian’s mother likes to have an updated picture of each of her grandchildren on a huge wall in their house. Here are the pictures I just took of the kids that will be making the wall. Sidenote: There are 30 grandchildren in the family. That makes for one HUGE wall.

ALANA THE ANGEL

Alana has changed SO much. She have always been beautiful, but also a challenge in the very beginning. She got really sick when we first brought her home because we were all getting over a REALLY BAD stomach bug. Sadly, she got it too and that kind of set the tone for the first 3 months of her life. Super fussiness. However, she has done a total 180 and is the sweetest easiest baby now. She really only fusses when she’s sleepy now. THAT I can handle.

*Alana smiles at everything. All of the time.

* She no longer screams the minute we put her in the car seat. She may not like it, but she’ll fall asleep in the car, which is a HUGE success

*Alana has learned to scoot when on her tummy around the bed. She is strictly a crib napper now.

*She has learned to LOVE her daddy. He’s learned to love her right back.

*She only wakes up once a night for a feeding. Now we’re just working on her sleeping straight through the night.

*She follows her brother and sisters with her eyes all of the time taking in all of what they do.

*She’s a bit of a night-owl… which is nice since we can spend time with her one on one.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

We’ve had other play dates too. One rainy day I decided to brave 2 young children, terrible weather and trek it out to Wake Forest to visit my good friend Lisa and her little ones. On a side note, Lisa had a baby 5 weeks after me. Both of our babies have not been angels. Both love to fuss and be held. Alana’s calmed down a lot since, but this particular trip was a rough one on her. She screamed the whole 45 minutes there. It was a JOY! But once we got there it was just like being back at home. It felt weird to drive into Raleigh. It’s like I expected it to stand still while we’ve been gone. But, alas, it’s still trucking along like always. It’s kind of weird though because now I feel like a visitor when I go back. I got some good pictures of Landen and Katy together. They just LOVE each other and ask to play together all the time. It’s sad that they live so far apart now. Alana and Ally got to meet outside of the womb too! I mean, it was more of a reunion though… you know… since the knew each other in Heaven.

{It was meant-to-be. Look as these two cheesin’}

 

{My Personal Favorite - down below}

{These two don’t know it yet… but they’re BEST FRIENDS}

ASIANS

Christian likes to laugh that I haven’t made any friends except for the 85% of the Asians that live in Baity Hill. It’s true… they’re everywhere. The 1/8 of my genes feels right at home.

Mia’s made a friend named “Vanessa” (this is her name, but her American name). She is cute as can be and has a grandma who is just as cute. She laughs a lot, nervously. She flips her hair like a teenager (The Grandma, not Vanessa). She is all around sweet. When Mia goes over to play she has a great time. The other day Vanessa’s Grandma was walking Mia back from their apartment and brought food with her. Let me back up, so apparently after the first play date it is tradition to give a gift to the child. This is just a guess, but it has happened twice now with the kids when they have a play date at an Asian home. Anyways, I felt kind of bad so I sent cookies with Mia one day. I think this confused the grandma because the next week she brought over chive pancakes and “mystery meat”. We have NO idea what kind of meat it was. It LOOKED like sausage but for all we knew it could have been a domestic animal… you know where I’m going with this. (I can be stereotypical because of that 1/8th in me). Anyways, Christian and I were feeling daring one day so we fried it all up. It was actually pretty good… I’m not going to lie… I was surprised. And because of the weirdness of this event I snapped pictures for documentation purposes.

Ok, Now since the packaging was in Chinese I had to wing it.

Here is the finished pancake and the mystery meat.

AAAANNNNDD HERE WE GO!

ME LIKEY!