Bouncing Back

I feel like I've been officially initiated into this motherhood thing. I took care of our child when I was sick with a flu-like virus that Michella and I came down with last week. I had seven days of fever, Michella five. Interesting how the same virus can affect mother and child so differently. Her? Other than the high fever and a slight increase in neediness, she appeared fine. Me? My entire body hurt, I was nauseated, I lost my appetite and I felt completely weak. Suddenly my 11 kg daughter felt like she suddenly gained weight. I felt so bad I thought we had Dengue fever. Thankfully that wasn't the case. And Thank God my in-laws were here to help! Especially since Andrey has been in the US for the past 10 days and had to leave a few days after we fell ill. We've been well now for most of this week. Oh to feel normal again. Good health is such a blessing!

Andrey's parents are still here and will be till just before Christmas. Their visit is going GREAT! We all had low expectations of how their time would go with Michella. Once again, our daughter has blown us away with her progress. It didn't take long before she went for walks with Grandma and called out for Grandpa, "Pa! Pa!" She hugs them both before bed each night and is super excited when they come out of their bedroom in the morning.

Michella has lots of new tricks these days. I'll try to list some of them just so I can keep a record.

• Toasting - She must have seen us do this once and now she is toasting us (continually) at the dinner table
• Singing twinkle twinkle little star - It's not super clear but you know what she's singing. She will take a star ornament from our Christmas tree and initiate the song, to which we all chime in on numerous times a day
• More new words, including "light!" and "bee!" (when we're traveling and passing a Jollibee)
• Reaching for the sky - she loves doing this on walks with Grandma
• Good sharing - we had a play date the other day and Michella is especially good at sharing with younger children
• We got a car seat!! I can drive again!!! We started putting her in the seat with a lap belt just a few days ago to see if I could drive and it worked! With Grandma next to her she enjoyed the short experimental ride so we pulled out a booster seat a friend gave me and put it in the back seat. Michella did great with this too! We just got our car seat yesterday and so far on two trips, she's used it, and seems to really enjoy being in it. She even fell asleep in it twice today.
• Using a stroller - I rented one at the mall the other day and it went relatively well. I wanted to see how it would go since Andrey is bringing home a stroller we bought in the States. I am especially excited about this as it will make shopping so much easier. I am currently still needing to carry her most of the time anytime we're out. It's okay for now while I have the in-laws to help me carry everything else but that won't last forever.
• More interested in books
• Loves to help clear the table after dinner, sweep, wipe the table, etc...
• Hails taxi - she's quite good at this and does it without any encouragement from me, even when we aren't waiting for a taxi, we just happen to be near the street. Hilarious.

Andrey is coming home tonight. Yay!! We really missed him!

Well that's enough for now. Here are a few photos and a video just for fun...

Seeing a photo of herself with her Daddy on Grandpa's desktop...