Zee Burfday Boy

Another picture filled Birthday post of my precious third born because I just can't get enough of his blonde head, chubby fingers, and left-cheek dimple.



As it turns out, we discovered something about our 1 year old we didn't know yet. He's not crazy about crowds, specifically when they are all staring at him and singing Happy Birthday...


But when distracted by a flame, he's less concerned about the crowd.


His big sister loves him.


He wasn't convinced that a sugar rush for a one year old was a great idea...


But quickly warmed up to the idea.


And finally decided that chocolate is indeed, the best.thing.ever.


Several friends were so very thankful for Caleb's first birthday!


And his mommy is thankful that somehow, miraculously, he managed to not get even one spot of chocolate icing on his special birthday shirt.

My Baby Love

Brandon and I are setting things right for all the 3rd Child people around the globe.
Having never done the studio photography thing before with either of Caleb's older siblings, we weren't sure what we were getting into.
Turns out, Big Chicken photography studios are the way to go! With no sitting fee and just 8 rmb ($1.25) per photo on cd, the "Baby Studio" (as it was so aptly named) didn't let us down!

Though 8 kuai a pic is great, choosing all 274 pictures taken was not an option. We narrowed it down to 27. Feast your eyes upon them all here.

These are a few several of our faves.

My baby boy is ONE

Caleb Turner turned ONE today. Yes, I'll go ahead and say it. I can't believe it. One whole year with this little precious man. It's gone so fast.
There will be pictures to come, because with a lapse of judgment, Brandon and I did something today that we've never done before. We took a one year old to a photography studio and had "professional" pictures done. We've yet to see the finished product, so we don't yet know if all that trouble was worth it. But I feel like we've passed a parenting milestone...and it took us our third child turning ONE to surpass it.
His official cake smashing event is tomorrow, so a precious face covered in chocolate icing will be featured here soon as well.

In other news, my middle child is taking medicine for worms and parasites. When we looked up the correct way for administering the medicine, the instructions were clearly laid out for us on multiple websites. Websites featuring orphans in the middle of Africa, not little boys who live in sanitary conditions and have potable water. I'm rethinking how effective our vegetable wash is!

In more other news, we've been here almost a year and a half and we're still studying language full time. And I'm barely keeping my head above water. I'm very near to drowning in Big Chickenese over here and doing all I can to keep myself sane, which is the main reason this blog has been flatline for awhile. In order to not turn this post into a rant and pity party, I'll end this paragraph now.

And YueEn's (Eden's) brain is literally spilling over with so much Big Chickenese lately that she's astounding us. Yesterday at dinner she taught us how to say Moses and Israelites with the correct tones. I'm continually upstaged by my 4 year old, but enjoying every second of it. She's done so incredible with the language.

When our world slows down and I get a second to breathe, I'll work on getting some life back into the blog!