Go fish

I was so pleased to finally be able to have Makena reconnect with one of her China "cousins". Lien was also raised in Qianjiang and was adopted on the same day as Makena. We hadn't seen her or her mother since our return to the States last August.

We decided to meet at the Long Beach Aquarium because we thought that looking at fish and getting to run around there would be safe and somewhat quiet. WRONG. I think that every student from L.A. County showed up for a field trip that day, at that very exact time. It was like being back in China -- except that the girls would not sit or stand still. So keeping track of them in the darkened exhibit rooms as they wove in and out of schools of children, was mind-blowingly stressful -- to say the least. I couldn't coral Mak with the stroller because there was no room to manoeuvre it!When we finally got to lunch, it took a super-human effort for me not to buy the mini-bottle of Chardonnay that was staring me in the face. I gave the LB Aquarium a golf-clap for appreciating the stress people are under when they take children to their establishment and offering "said" refreshments. Boy did that look good. I opted for a tall, cold, bottle of water. It wasn't until we finally sat the girls down to lunch that Linda and I had a chance to catch up.I'm hosting our adoption group reunion in August and I wanted to get her input on food options for the fifteen or so families who are going to come party at our house. FYI: We decided on pizza & salads for lunch and a taco and quesadilla bar for dinner -- with Subway sandwiches for the picnic, the following day. I'll blog about this event later.

Lien and Mak are practically the same size and have the same non-stop energy level. They both babble, love to laugh and run around and climb. Except that Lien was way more well behaved at the dinner table than Mak. Mak, in her best Helen Keller impersonation, refused to sit down, had to either eat standing or diving under the table, snatching food off Lien's side of the table and, as a final blow, attempted to stab a little boy at an adjacent booth, with her fork (thank god for plastic).

After lunch, we took them back to see the fish and the girls ran around up and down this ramp, following each other. It was pretty darn cute.They finally allowed us to strap them into their strollers when we were leaving, so I managed to snap a couple of pictures of them to have a souvenir of this great day.

I drove home in bumper to bumper traffic thinking about the glass of Chardonnay that was waiting for me at the end of this fish trip...

Is - tired