Red 
Yellow 
Green 
Blue 
Maroon 
The girl has come a long way and she’s growing up fast… one minute she is 3 months old and the next minute she’s in Kindergarten learning her letters, numbers, words… reading! These are the first steps of something wonderful and we’re sooooo proud of her! Enjoy the video and a HUGE thank you to her amazingly, fabulous, wonderful teacher Mrs. Howitt.
PS: One of my favorite parts is at the end… she is a kid afterall! 
WOW!!!! I wish I was blogging back then! Thank you to Gregory Todd for saving this email and forwarding it 
to me… it means so much!
A letter from Maddie on November 14, 2003: if she could write, I’m pretty sure this is what she would have said…
——————–
Dear Aunt Sissy,
Thank you for writing a letter to me. I’m putting it in the baby book you got for me when I was born! You made mom cry, but that’s okay – I forgive you.
I’m doing very well. I was very excited yesterday because mom finally had a day off of work and we were able to play together all day long. I played with rattles and things but most of all I just wanted to be near mom. She makes me giggle when she puts foot rattle socks on me. Those black and white lines on them sure do move a lot!
Mom and I take a ...
Maddie has come a long way in a year! I love these 100 day celebrations at school because they are milestones where I can compare her from year to year…. is her hair still curly? does she speak differntly? has her voice changed? I don’t see these changes as much because I see her everyday. As a result, I forget the details because they are always replaced by other details. That is why I have this blog!
For this 100 Days of School celebration, Maddie wanted to print off 100 blog posts 
and put them on a poster. This, of course, took twice as long as it should’ve because Maddie had re-lived all 100 posts we cut out and pasted onto the poster. Example: In this post about her losing her took, I saw the picture of the video and said, “Maddie! This is where you lost your toot...
Daddy is gone recruiting… just when I think Maddie is okay with it, she sneeks into my room at 5:30am, 
wakes me up and tells me that she misses daddy. We were laying in bed and we both heard my computer downstairs. It started ringing…. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her move so fast! I told her to run (carefully) down the stairs and press the green button.
“I know that already mommy! I know…..”
I grabbed Amelia and by the time we got downstairs, there was Maddie staring at daddy on the computer screen… smitten as a kitten.
Understanding the concept of time now has its pros and its cons. Maddie and Amelia get that daddy will be home in six sleeps.
But it’s still six sleeps….
There will be a day that we don’t live in China anymore… really, honest. Do you think we’ll still recognize and celebrate CNY even if we’re not in Asia. Here’s the thing: even though Maddie and Amelia are American, they have Chinese heritage. They know the culture – they speak the 
language – it’s a part of them. I am indeed curious about this and will wait to see if it hangs on when we leave Shanghai. I suspect that it will…
Amelia headed to school this year to watch her sister up on stage… you should have seen the complete adoration AND jealousy in her eyes!
Happy Year of the Ox to you all!
