Juliana's American Adventures

We're back in the States! Actually, we got back a week and a half ago, but my great blogging plans have fallen to nothing. The trip went smoothly. We thought we'd miss our flight to CA, but after running through the BJ airport, we arrived before the flight even boarded. Juliana slept about 7 hours of the 12 hour flight and spent the rest of the time watching Shawn the Sheep cartoons and saying, “Airplane? Airplane? Airplane!” at least 500 times.

Since arriving at Kevin's parents, we have been busy visiting friends, reading library books, preparing to talk about China, helping Juliana play with all her new toys, buying out the 99 Cent Store... Our time in California is flying by, and we are working hard to arrange all the activities we still want to do like camping, visiting a children's museum, seeing lots of relatives and friends.

With Kevin's Opa on 4th of July - I'm in my blue Thai shirt, Kevin's in his red Cambodia shirt, and Juliana's red, white, and blue outfit was a gift from our Chinese tutors!  Very patriotic.

It's interesting to see the US through Juliana's eyes. After we got to California we took a walk down the country dirt road outside of Kevin's parents' house. When Juliana started getting tired she said, “Taxi? Taxi!”

Juliana has been having a great time just walking around in a big house. Nana bought her a little dolly stroller, and she has spent hours just walking her dolly around and around the house. She also loves walking right the door to get outside – no bother with six flights of stairs. She is used walking outside and seeing tons of people, though. She finds the birdy and doggy sounds interesting, but I think she wonders where all the people are. She does not appreciate car-seats, however, since her only experiences with them have been a few months in the States. She keeps saying, “All done? Stuck! Stuck!” It's hard to explain that being “stuck” is the whole point.

Mid-splash

In general, Juliana is having lots of fun with her Gramps and Nana. She has lots of new toys to play with and a whole new house to explore. She also has new friends. When we spent a day with our friends who have three young daughters, I've never seen so little of Juliana! She was so busy playing and being entertained by the older girls she hardly had time to notice I was there.

She is not really enjoying her new sleep arrangements, though. She is still afraid of falling asleep in a strange place, so we're back to holding her until she falls asleep and the sneakily slipping her into the crib. Jetlag was not kind to her – the first few night she was up for 4 hours in the middle of the night. The past few nights she has slept through the night again (yay!), or woken up briefly, but she is still resisting falling asleep at night.

Juliana stares down a hippo

Our most exciting outing was to the San Diego Zoo. It was a long day – 9 hours walking around the zoo and 5 hours in the car, but the zoo was great. Juliana was excited to see all the animals she's seen in books, and she learned how to say “panda” and “polar bear.” She was mesmerized by the polar bear and hippos playing in the water just inches away.

I have plans to blog more as the summer progresses, but I guess we'll see what happens...