When Will She Start to Babysit?

The girls are really great hanging out together - Lucia makes Magdalena laugh all the time now. She routinely helps me "watch" her little sister at various points in the day.

Our days usually start after Daddy goes to work (leaves the house at 6 am). Usually by this time, Magdalena has woken up for her first feeding of the day (since she goes down around 6:30 pm, I can't complain about her waking up around 5:30 am for her feeding). I nurse her in bed and we doze for about another hour. Then Lucia is usually awake (she goes to bed at 7:30 pm) - and when I walk into her room to get a diaper for M, she proudly announces "I'm awake!"

That is when we both go back to Alex and my room and Lucia looks after Magdalena while I take a shower. We have a king sized bed, and though M can roll, she doesn't crawl yet, and usually stays contentedly on her back as Lucia shows her toys, books, and plays "peek-a-boo!" with her. This morning, after Lucia peered through the shower curtain at me to ask if I wanted a toy (ha!), I could hear her saying "Peek-a-boo, Magdalena, I see you!" and both of them giggling like mad. It was super cute.

Then we get up and have breakfast, usually taking some time to Skype with Ama and Apa during or after eating, and get ready to go out. I don't have a ton of set plans, except for my Wednesday mommy's group, but we generally find something to do every morning - like this morning, we attended an info session for Kindermusik that is going to start soon in Kaifaqu, then went to a friend's house to play for a while. Whenever we are about to get out of our Buick minivan (aka "Expat-mobile" - everyone has one, either silver or navy - ours is navy) - Lucia, whose carseat is in the middle back seat, stops at Magdalena's carseat, behind the passenger's seat, to say "Hiiiiii little baby Magdawena" and give her mei mei (little sister) kisses. Lucia likes to tell us that she is the jie-jie (pron jyeh).

There are many other examples of Lucia entertaining Magdalena, and Magdalena just loving to see her big sister - grabbing at her hair, giving her slobbery "kisses" and laughing at her always - but I'm going to stop for now. I have tons of blogs to catch up on - including our fun weekend at Haibin Road and Ocean World (and videos!), as well as wishing all a Happy Mother's Day - but they will have to wait for later.

Until then, here are some video/pics that we hadn't posted yet from our trip to Dandong over May 1-2 weekend.
Here they are just sitting in the high chairs together (M's first time in one!)

From Blog All

Lucia and Magdalena having fun in their high chairs:


Lucia running around the model spa village that was being advertised in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza - the salesman knew her by name by the time we left (I think):