A year at home...

Nyah Kate Jinpei has now been in our family, here in the US, for one complete year. We arrived home on September 12, 2008. It has been a wonderful year and while we have questioned our parenting skills plenty of times over these 12 months, we would certainly not change a thing. Nyah is so much more mischievous and wild than our other kids. She has not only tested our childproofing skills, but she has also done some redecorating for us... just yesterday she decided our dining room chairs would look much better fluorescent orange ~ thankfully she finished only one before we got to express our opinion on her choice. But with all the frustration has come a new level of joy and we have been truly blessed to have Nyah become part of the S family.

Nyah continues to want to be a big girl... she insists on doing everything herself from putting shoes on, to getting dressed, to getting in her crib, to putting the mail in the mailbox, to buckling her car seat. She also has quite a stubborn streak and will throw a tantrum, and a huge one at that, at any given moment that has not gone according to her plan. We have never had a child really be a "terrible two" and I think a lot of it is Nyah's lack of language. She understands everything but still has a limited speaking vocabulary and in just the past few weeks starting saying two word phrases. Our others were more challenging at three... we are keeping our fingers crossed that she is just topping out early. I don't have a picture of a tantrum in progress though we do see this pouty face a lot, though usually not with smiling eyes and always with the sound of "Nooooo" in the air...

It is a good thing she is so stinkin' cute because she can be quite rotton at times! :)

Nyah is very into routines, especially when it comes to cleaning up and putting things in the right place. She has an incredible memory. She is giggly and silly. She loves Dora the Explorer the best, though Mickey and Minnie Mouse are pretty cool too. She continues to love music ~ both singing songs and dancing. She started gymnastics class this week and music class last week and she LOVED them! I think she will end up being a good gymnast. She has amazing arm strength and is flexible and I don't see her fearful of swinging around the parallel bars. Here she is ready for gymnastics class... hair by Nyah.

From here on out, I will post updates about Nyah to our family blog. I plan on leaving this blog up for a few more weeks and then making it into a book for Nyah. Thank you to everyone who prayed for us and followed along on this amazing journey!