Happy Birthday Emma Mei Yi Shan Fisher!

I can't believe my girl is turning four. To be fair, we weren't with her the first 20 months of her life, but it does seem in a way that she has always been in our family. She makes me smile or laugh at her antics and sayings every single day. The joy we share together is inexplicable.

Emma had her annual physical and she is 34 1/2 lbs. and 39 1/2 inches--right in the 50th percentile. She has grown a lot this summer and is starting to look more like a little girl and less like a toddler. Isn't it sad when they lose their baby cheeks?

Mei Mei is still very much an empathetic person. If someone is sad or mad, she will get sad or mad for them. If Katelyn is in trouble or crying, she joins right in with her, which doesn't always make for a pleasant situation! She is enthralled with when she was a baby and we have started opening the dialog about adoption more and more. She wants to re-enact being a baby often, which is fine with me! We have a lot of books that are about adoption from China for kids, and she most often picks those as her favorites to read. Now she is starting to connect the similarities in the stories to her story. I am planning to make a simple photo-book online to read to her with her pictures and the story of her coming to our family to hopefully help her understand what is her actual story versus what she imagines from reading the books. Not that the books are that much different, but I think it is better for her to see her own self in the pictures and know how it happened for her. She even asked for her crib back the other day, and is not to thrilled to hear that we don't have it anymore. So, I showed her a picture of it in her room and that seemed to satisfy her.

She definitely has a bit of a stubbornness in that cute little body, but it is usually easily rectified with a time-out. Those are torture for her, and even the thought of it will sometimes correct her behavior. She also knows how to use her cuteness to get away with things. I can't tell you how many times I have to turn my head to laugh before I correct her. Stinker! :-)

I am going to post some of the things she says, but I know I cannot remember them all. She must say something new and funny almost every day.

• When going to drink a sippy cup, she will check with me, and say, "Is this yummy or yucky?" to make sure it is not an old one.
• The other day she was mad because Katelyn was having a bit of a end of the day meltdown, and she said, "I'm going to sqweeze these people (little toy people) if you don't do . . .(whatever it was that Katelyn wanted.)" Needless to say we cracked up laughing, which didn't go over very well.
• She is very sensitive to smells, and she will often be very vocal about that in public. This can lead to some awkward situations. "Oooo, Mommy, what is that smell?", or "Jack-jack, smell dat man, smell dat man, what does he smell wike?"
• Every day she asks if Katelyn is at school and if she is having a good time.
• "Can I cuddle wif you, Mommy?" I especially love this one.
• "Can we read a story?"
• When we put her to bed, and she is tired, she will just turn over and say "Goodnite." and expect you to get on your way.
• Before going to sleep, she will ask if she can have a certain food the next day. For instance, "Can we have noodles tomorrow for bweakfast?" or "Can we have sketti (spaghetti) tomorrow?"
• When I told her we had to go to the doctor for her physical, she was scared we were going to the allergy doctor (another post for another time). She said, "Are there no awwegy doctor? Do they not have duckies (inhaler accessory), or neti pots, or tvs?" I assured her they were just checking to see how big she had gotten. She was okay with that, but said, "Can we go to Target and get a toy after da doctoh?" I guess she wanted the benefits that she got after the long, hard allergy appt. Well, a sticker and a sucker worked instead!
• She loves to sing the Johnny Appleseed song before dinner for our prayer and yell, "Amen!" really loudly at the end.
• She will often go up to people and ask them if they have any babies. If so, she wants to know what they named them. It is funny when she asks old men this question!
• She likes to compliment women on their hair. "I wike your hair", she says or "Your hair is so pwetty!"
• Instead of saying, "What did you say?", she will say "What did I say?" I finally am learning to interpret this one correctly. Or, if she says something funny, and we laugh, she will say, "What did I say?" while laughing at herself.
• "Can I have candy if I do my inhaawer?" (dragging out the a sound)
• "I don't wike that movie, it scary." This could pertain to anything, even non-scary movies.
• "Come on, come on---we're famiwy (family)!", while motioning for everyone to get in a group hug and kiss and hug each other. Even when she uses this line when she is supposed to be in bed, I cannot resist it. How could I? She will not rest until all of us are in the group.
• I ask her to do something and she says, "I'm too busy!", and she is usually not doing anything.
• She says "Esqueeze me." instead of excuse me. If she says this to Grandpa, she usually gets squeezed for real. That makes her giggle!
• When she needs help, she says, "A wittle help, please!"
• One day she told my aunt Kim, "It's too wate (late)." When Kim asked her what is is too late for, she broke out into the song from our American Idol Wii game. . . "It's too wate to 'powogize. . ." ("Too Late to Apologize") while running around the house and jumping up and down.

That is all the cute stuff I can think of for now. If I get some more, I will add them.

I hope you have a wonderful day, Mei Mei! I am so thankful that you are in our family and that I get to be your Mommy!!