Smiley, happy

It was a good day to be QQ. Full of social activity. Our social worker came over this afternoon for the first of three visits prior to writing up our 6-month post-adoption report. Our social worker is very nice, and QQ plainly adored her from the get-go. She was in her very most shiny, happy mood all afternoon, grinning and dancing and flirting her way through the interview. I think if she could have done a little tap dance, she would have!

Daddy and QQ also took a jaunt to the grocery store to shop for a little dinner we were throwing for friends. At the store, QQ fell in love with a balloon, which she and daddy brought home. It's the biggest, happiest balloon we've had yet, and QQ was appropriately in awe.

Have you seen this? Yup, it's mine. My daddy bought it for me!
For dinner, Daddy made his newest specialty, the authentic Kung Pao (sic) or Gong Bao chicken that we tasted for the first time in Beijing, complete with the illicit and very authentic Sichuan "tongue-numbing" peppercorns that our Beijing guide found for us in a local hutong market.

QQ was doubly gratified to discover that we had yet more visitors coming after the social worker, which gave her a chance to grin, chuckle and dance her way through yet another social occasion. She is quite the social butterfly and loved every minute.

Needless to say, it took some doing on both Mommy and Daddy's parts to bring QQ down from the high that she'd been riding on all day, and get her calm enough for a 9pm bedtime.

I'm not sure if tickling-by-Daddy makes things better or worse.

Whatever. She eats it up!

It certainly didn't help that she has just learned to stand up in her crib (much to our chagrin). So once put to bed (in a crib that's three inches lower than it was last night), there was an extended period of banging, babbling, giggling, staggering and hauling herself around the perimeters of the crib like a drunken sailor and, inevitably, wailing, before she finally saw fit to go down for the night.

But really, how can you resist this face. There's really no frowning on her. Even when she pees on you in the middle of a diaper change, and then giggles her little head off at the comedy of it all.

She is just plain irresistible.