Checking in on Chloe

It's been a big week for Chloe! Since she doesn't talk as much as Clara Anne, and is smaller and sleeps more than the rest of us, it can be easy to neglect her news in the family blog. However, she covered a few milestones this week and wants everyone to know.

First and most exciting, Chloe decided to join the ranks of the upright humans by finally standing by herself, and taking a few toddling steps! "Walking" would be overstating the case, but Wednesday night we (Grandma Great, Grandma, Grandpa, Clara Anne, and John and I) were all sitting around in the living room when she took her first steps. She was in quest of her beloved stuffed puppy, which I was holding. Amazing what bribery can do! She's so funny; instead of pulling up on the furniture and then toddling to the next piece of furniture, she stands up alone in the middle of the floor and then decides where she wants to go. Already in the past two days we've seen her get more confidence, and I have no doubt it will be only a matter of time until she is running around. Chloe is probably motivated by the fact that Clara Anne snatches her toys sometimes, and so she needs to chase after her! Fun and crazy times lie ahead with two mobile little girls!

This past week also saw the entrance of tooth #8, breaking its way through her gums. Now we've got an even 4 on the top and 4 on the bottom, making it that much easier for her to eat Pizza Ranch pizza by herself. The other day we had "pigs in the blanket" (hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls) for lunch and she rejected the bits I had cut up for her, preferring instead to hold a whole one herself and chomp on it. One thing about Chloe hasn't changed--her excellent appetite! She eats more than Clara Anne these days.

The other semi-traumatic event in Chloe's life this past week was having to go to the doctor for more immunizations. Since she has passed her first birthday, it was time for her to have the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine and the Rabies vaccine. Both of those are necessary for where we live in Asia, but are not given in the States except to travelers. So we ended up at the travel clinic in Sioux Falls, SD, to get these shots. The doctor was initially hesitant to give them, questioning me as to why we needed them, etc etc, but when I explained and apparently seemed quite confident, he agreed they were necessary, though he said they had never given JE to one this young. He did order the shots and then asked me to wait around for 30 minutes to observe her (JE can cause an allergic reaction in some people). She made it through just fine, and thanks to short-term memory, she had forgotten all about it by the time the doctor came back to check on her. I was so impressed with this doctor, though; the next day his office called twice to check on her and make sure she was all right. The morning after the first shot she woke up crying, having thrown up in her bed, but that was the only incident and other than that was fine all week. Yesterday was the second round of the shot and we have one more to complete later in August.

A final highlight of the week: we got some family photos professionally done! Unfortunately they are not available for me to post online, like I would do in Asia, but many of you will be seeing them in the coming weeks. Chloe was an absolute angel and smiled really well the whole time. This was a happy contrast to last week, when we were trying to get a professional photo of my two girls and their 4 cousins. That photo session began with Clara Anne refusing to cooperate and instead pouting and crying, her getting "talked to" in another room and returned to try again, then her crabby spirit infecting Chloe. The latter part of the pictures, when Clara Anne was attempting to smile (under pain of punishment and with promise of reward), was when Chloe decided she had had enough and wailed. I'm sorry to say that the photo session also ended in tears--Chloe's, and mine for feeling like my children spoiled it for everyone else! But, thanks to modern technology, they were able to swap some faces so that the pictures of all six of them together look good, amazingly enough! I'm thankful that our family photo session went much better and we got some great pics. I'll have to check and see if I can share them somehow online!

On another note, today is a packing day again. We leave Rock Valley in the morning for John's mom's home and a family reunion, then a week at my brother Mark's home (including a night where they are going to keep our kids so we can go to a Bed and Breakfast!), then a weekend in the Twin Cities at the State Fair and visiting some friends there. I don't know what our email access will be like, or if I'll be able to blog. But this is our LAST road trip; we return to Rock Valley on the 26th of August and then return to Asia in September, about the 12th. Wow, PTL for His faithfulness in sustaining us safely for 9,000 miles of road trip so far--we pray this trip will be uneventful as well.

I wanted to end this post with some recent pictures of Chloe, but blogger is not cooperating. Oh well . . . until next time!