It's been a while!

Well, I've been back at work for about 6 weeks now, and is life ever busy! It's hard to find the time to add postings, but I've at least added some pictures.

The big news: Net started walking 2 weeks ago and now she doesn't want to do anything else. We took her for a walk in the neighborhood this weekend and she was so excited to walk down the sidewalk! Of course, all plant materials must be tasted and she really wanted to chow down on the neighbor's ornamental shrubs so we had to distract her. She's also really drawn to walking in the street instead of the sidewalk so I see a baby harness in our future. She holds her hands up in a "jazz hands" posture and toddles fast from place to place. It's fun to see and it saves our backs, too, since this little bear is getting heavy!

Netsanet is also eating adult food now, and especially enjoys cheddar cheese. Every time she sees cheese, she grins and exclaims, "cheeessseee!!!" We have to save it for last so she'll actually eat some other food too. She enjoys beans, salmon, mashed potatoes, pasta, and vegetables of all sorts. She'll finally eat some apple now but still doesn't like most fruit.

Daycare has worked out really well; better than we hoped! It's a small home daycare nearby and Net thoroughly enjoys playing with all the other kids. She loves the daycare providers, and they love her. She loves it so much that I think she misses them on the weekend. She'll sit for a minute and look distant and then say, "Dee Dee!" or "Up!" which is the daycare provider's name, and 'up' is what we say when we're getting ready to leave for daycare in the morning (I carry her there in the Ergo pack). I think she really enjoys playing with the other kids and finds Mom and Dad a bit boring ;-)

She has a lot of words now, about 15 total. She says Mama, Dada, dog, duck, cheese, eat, up, down, poop, uh-oh, and several others. It's surprising how fast she's learning to talk, especially since she didn't even hear English until she was 7 months old.

For Halloween, she dressed up as a sunflower, but we didn't take her out trick or treating. She had a bad cold and it was a cold and rainy night, so we decided to skip it. She's too young to eat the candy and wouldn't know what was going on anyway. I took her to say hi to her daycare provider and we went to the grocery store in her costume, so she got to wear it for a little while. The sunflower head made her hot, though, so she was happy to get out of it. Next year she'll probably be more into it :)

Next week we have her court date for refinalization of the adoption here in the States. The US requires this, since we didn't both see her prior to the adoption in Ethiopia. This step is next, then we can apply for her US citizenship and eventually her Canadian citizenship as well. She'll have 3 passports before she hits elementary school ;-)

Life is certainly busy lately. It's so much harder when both parents work - there is no time to cook or do any tasks on the weeknights, so we do everything on the weekend (cooking, bills, laundry, grocery shopping, etc). It doesn't leave much time for fun, that's for sure. It's the most exhausting thing I've ever done, but it's still great to see that hilarious little grin!