We had a very celebratory past week. On Saturday, ZZ went to his first easter egg hunt with us. It was a community egg hunt at our local Riverside Park. Before we got to the park, we told him was was going to happen there. When we opened his car door to take him out of his car seat, he looked at all the eggs on the grass, bounced up and down in his seat and said, “I so excited! Woo Hoo!” At the hunt, he crawled around, picked up some eggs, and put them in his basket. When we arrived home, he was intrigued by the hard boiled eggs and proceeded to eat three of them during the next 45 minutes. He really loved unpeeling the eggs. He would take an egg and say, “tap tap tap” as he banged it on the table. The “tap tap tap” is from the book, “Hurry Hurry,” which is the sound the baby chicken makes as she tries to break out of the egg.
The next morning, we put together an Easter egg hunt for ZZ in our living room. We his plastic eggs filled with jelly beans. We also hid a basket. The hunt was slow going because ZZ quickly realized that the plastic eggs had candy in them. So instead of gathering up all the eggs and then eating the jelly beans, he wanted to eat all the jeely beans out of each egg before looking for the next. I think he was a bit overwhelmed by all the jelly beans, because he would shove all the beans from an egg into his mouth at once. He had so many jelly beans in his mouth at one point that he was unable to swallow them. He spit them out, and Molly got to enjoy them instead,
Later that day, we went to our friends’ house for another Easter celebration. ZZ enjoyed playing with their sons’ toys. Before dinner, ZZ participated in yet another egg hunt. He definitely had the hang of things by this point, LOL. At dinner, ZZ sat at the kids table with the two boys (ages 2 and 5). He did great eating without us! However, the brothers were a bit hyped up and kept throwing food at each other, which seemed to confuse ZZ. He just sat there eating quietly, watching what they were doing, unsure of what he should do.
Monday was a very special day–the first anniversary of our time together as a family! Yes, it has been a year since we first met ZZ. During the day, we spent some time showing him some of his clothes and toys from China, and Paul took some cute photos of ZZ trying to put on the bug hat that he wore on the day that we met him. The hat was too small for him, but he tried anyway. That night, we went to Lucky Liu’s Chinese restaurant for dinner. ZZ was little hyper during dinner, but we had a nice time. Paul ordered a Tsing Tao beer in ZZ’s honor, as the beer is manufactured in Qingdao.
Today, I finally finished up his first year photo album. Hopefully it turned out okay. I’m hoping to send it to the orphanage by Mid May, along with some toys and candy for the children and nannies. I’m also happy to have it done because now I can turn my attention to starting ZZ’s life book.
Happy Family Day ZZ, we love you very much, and we can’t express in words just how happy we are to be your parents.
And now for some photos:
