Week In Review

Here I go again- a recap of the past week. I kind of annoy myself with posts like this, but that never seems to stop me from writing them. So... here it goes:

Qiang arrived last Thursday, and we had fun having him here. He was pretty busy with conferences and visiting other friends, but any free time he had was spent playing with Keaton. Keaton enjoyed having him around, too, and seemed disappointed when he looked for Qiang on Sunday morning but he wasn't here anymore. He especially liked carrying Qiang's cell phone around the house while it played music. We couldn't pry it out of his little hands.

While Qiang was here, we had some delicious food, went shopping in downtown Chicago, and visited our friends Dongxia & Qingbo, and their daughter Vivian. Keaton really loved playing with Vivian, who is five years old. They played in the park together, and he watched her ride her tricycle... he really seems to wish he was an older kid. All in good time, little man. I feel like he's growing up too fast as it is. This week's favorite words have been "Bang!" and probably his all-time favorite, "Go!". He also said something that sounded a lot like "Baked Bean" during dinner this week (while we were eating baked beans). Check out the funny video HERE. I should add that Qiang thinks Keaton speaks Chinese. No wonder I can't understand him!

Casey and I celebrated our EIGHT YEAR wedding anniversary on Tuesday night. We had a great date night, and my former co-worker Michelle babysat Keaton and successfully put him to bed! That was the first time anyone has put him in bed besides us, so I am very glad it worked out. Check one more anxiety-inducing milestone off the list. :) The next one to tackle is having someone watch him overnight... I think I will only trust our family with that one. No offense to Michelle- I just know I will be a bit more high-strung if I don't see Mr. K for 10 or more hours... and probably the only other people that can tolerate that level of anxiety from me are people I'm related to.

Anyway, our date was excellent! We went to The Melting Pot, which is only a few blocks away from our house. Every single time I go there, I eat way too much food, but it is worth it. We had a four-course meal, a flight of various wines, and a glass of champagne at the end. Needless to say, we were both a bit tipsy, but it was fun kicking back and relaxing together, enjoying some delicious food. Oh yeah, and the dessert was kind of amazing, too... I won't even go into detail because if I list it off I am going to get too hungry, and it's already almost lunchtime...

Hmmm... what else. Oh!! We got a phone call last Friday from a woman at Boxer Rebound. They got our application and I basically did a phone interview with her, which seemed to go pretty well. We couldn't go meet any dogs last weekend because Qiang was still in town, so we have an appointment at 1:00 p.m. this Saturday. There are no on-the-spot adoptions, so we will spend at least an hour there, meeting dogs that the staff think would be a good fit for us. If we really like one (and the staff feels like we would be a good fit for them) then we will make another appointment to go back soon. Hopefully that will not be complicated by the fact that we are flying back home on June 2nd to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary! I am super excited to go home in one week... I don't know if it can come fast enough, but I know the time there will go way too fast. It always does. We are going back again for the 4th of July, though, so at least I won't have to wait so long in between visits. How the heck is it already almost June!?!?!

I think that's really about all for now. I will try to blog again sooner than later. Keaton's nap schedule has been pretty wacko recently so I either nap when he does, or I run around like a chicken. Today my nice big cup of caffeine is going to help motivate me to do... something instead of sleep. Too bad the cold, rainy weather isn't helping me, though.

Enough from me. It's almost the weekend!! Woohoooo!!!

-Ash