Another cold front came through, so we had to bust out the heater again and huddle up to stay warm (they just don't insulate here like in the US). It was a wet dreary day, but we managed to get out of the house for a few hours to meet up with some friends and their 10-month old over lunch. And luckily the sun decided to break through for just an hour or so, which made for a nice photo op.

Mia was thrilled by trying to grab the ice cold glass of lemonade from Caro- even though the lemons proved to be quite tart for her taste when she finally did get one! She was in a very relaxed mood, and just smiled while Caro sang a few tunes to her in Mandarin.

Had a great annual dinner with the office tonight. It was a traditional Chinese banquet with plenty of Mah Jong, shark fin soup, abalone and fat choy. Mom got lucky picking a nice lai see envelope in our lucky draw. Mia got to see plenty of fish in aquariums, although these ones were all destined for the wok! Ssshhh, don't tell her.

Let's play find Mia... she's not wearing a Waldo outfit but she is in red and white.

Mia is 8 moths old today, and wants to send her Grandpa a big happy birthday hug on his birthday today as well. :)

Today is baby Yanyan's last day as a 7-month old, so as usual we've updated her monthly slideshow with a few more pics taken over the last month.

Here she is all dressed up for a relaxing Sunday eating dimsum with her foster mom. She is growing up so fast!

With all the recent headlines regarding product safety, Mia came to the office and decided to help us out a bit with some of our testing. So here we are with the stability test.

Mia's been crawling now for about 3 weeks and keeps getting faster and faster at moving around the apartment (funny I seem to slow down with each year). She can push open doors if they aren't fully latched, and for all intents and purposes, she has free reign over any part of the flat she wants.

Now I know a lot of you have your own interpretations on these childhood developmental phases, but after reviewing her earlier videos we're pretty sure we've exactly defined the various stages in learning to crawl and captured it all on video for your perusal here.

So starting with our first day out with Mia...

Mommy had to share her roses with Mia this year. Thankfully they were both good sports about it! (Actually Mia was a bit more interested in the plastic wrapping than the flowers.)

No idea why this made her laugh- we were just talking about her favorite fruits and for some reason she found some of them quite amusing. Or maybe Dad just has a funny looking face. Of course at the first sound of her giggle it meant Dad had to repeat it over and over again for the next hour until she was ready to move onto something else and he decided he had talked enough about raspberries for the next three years. ;)

A quick vid with some of the entertainment during Chinese New Year.

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Kung Hei Fat Choi! The year of the rat is upon us! We've been prepping Mia over the past few days with her latest book, My First Chinese New Year by Karen Katz. And she was very careful to follow all the proper customs: cleaning up the house, (being careful not to sweep out any good luck), buying flowers and a tangerine tree at the market, putting on a nice new red dress, savoring lai see packets, and watching a festive lion dance.

We even bought a branch of the "Five Generations" fruit. In Chinese the blessing of this fruit signifies "five generations in one household". Between Grandpa and Mia we've got 4 now so I guess we've still got a few years (at least 30!) to go on that prophecy. :)

Yanyan's sporting her new sweater from Abuelita in this pic and few others in this set. The past few days we've all been trying to keep warm in the abnormally cold HK weather. Unfortunately there is no end in sight. All transportation systems in China have ground to a halt, but luckily we're planning for a cozy stay at home over the upcoming Chinese New Year.