Really Rachel!

Rachel has embraced the camera. She merely hears the whir of the camera lens and she's all smiles with eyebrows raised. In fact, she's sometimes too fast to account for the camera delay. Might have to change it to the action setting permanently!

We traveled to small town east Texas for a week and just returned home yesterday. Rachel did GREAT! She must be a country girl at heart. After all, her home town of Enping is a small farm town of only 400,000. Right, that's a farm town for China. We had lots of fun at Papatoe and Nana's house. Aunt Carrie and cousins Karissa and Jedidiah drove all the way from St. Louis to meet Rachel and play with Noah, Simon, and Elizabeth. We went to church, played Rummicube and Life, walked the country roads, had group-Gameboy challenges, and even had a blackout one night. One of our trip highlights was picking fresh blueberries and blackberries at a local berry farm. Every one of the kids enjoyed it as much as us! In fact, altogether we picked over 30 pounds of berries. So if anyone comes knocking, I bet we'll have some fresh cobbler waiting. We also spent our Fourth of July at the farm. Uncle Bobby, Aunt Lori, and cousin Ryan drove out to have our favorite Nana lasagna di...

One of Rachel's favorite things to do is help load the dryer of all things. She loves to pull out Bounce dryer sheets and throw them in! Maybe it's the fresh linen scent. Ha ha. She likes laundry time which is good... so maybe that will motivate me to do it more often! Anyway, couldn't resist taking that picture.

Rachel is so at home, it's adorable. Babies are truly amazing in their natural ability to adapt. She's on a great schedule and sleeping great. We have the normal baby issues that can rock the sleep or get the occasional grumpies, but this child is pure delight! The best thing is that after two years of studying bonding disorders and behavioral adjustments she is seriously attached. If anything, she has separation anxiety. Thankfully, she now knows that if we disappear around the corner, we have NOT left the country. We're still here. This month has been a great first month of true firsts. She started walking on Friday, June 6. She has 4 new teeth and cutting 2 more molars. She is saying "Da Da", "Ma Ma", "frog", "diaper", "Noah", "tickle", etc. She insists on feeding herself now and is trying anything we give her. Don't get me wrong, she can spit it out as quick as we give it. I've relearned t...