Good Gracious Its Been A Long Time!

I am SO angry with myself for letting life get so busy that I have ceased to document all the amazing things that are going on with our Hsin-Hua.
She is becoming the most amazing, funny, loving, sweet child I think I have ever met in my life.  I know she is mine, so of course I think she is the best...but I swear, there is something really and truly special about Hsin-Hua that goes beyond just parental love.  Paul and I joke that the world would be a happier place if everyone could have a Hsin-Hua.
Here is some of the things that our little love is up tothese days.
-Hsin's imaginary friend "Buddy" is a constant in our lives lately.  Everything Hsin does she says "and Buddy too".  I dress him, diaper him, bathe him, buckle him into the car, take him to school and hug and kiss him.  All we really know about Buddy is that he is smaller than Hsin and sometimes she holds him in her hands.  She makes him hold her hand in the parking lot.  What can I say...the kid likes rules :-)
-Hsin is really into puzzles lately.  We have a bunch of jigsaw puzzles, and Hsin likes to ask us "wheres it goes" for each piece.
-Hsin is also saying "maybe, maybe" a lot.  Sometime for no reason at all (really funny) but sometimes it goes "maybe, maybe, its a dinasaur bone".  Who knows :-)
-Poor baby had to have dental surgery to repair and crown 4 front teeth.  It was torture and one of the crowns fell off right when we got home.  The return trip to repair that was done with Hsin awake, and screaming in my lap.  Worst moment as a parent yet.  Afterwards we told Hsin she could do something special and she asked to go to Target.  That's my girl.  Once there, she wanted to get cake mix to make pink cupcakes with pink icing and pink sprinkles.  She told her friends at school the next day that she baked "cukcapes" with her Mommy because she was "brave at the dentist and Mommy was so proud of me".  She then told me "I want no more dentist Mommy".
-We have been doing flashcards of letters with Hsin and it is the highlight of her day.  As soon as it is time to head upstairs for our nighttime routine she yells "I want to do letters".  Hsin can recognize about 15 written letters, and about 20 letters in sign language.  She also can identfy a word that goes with the letter like "M is for Mommy" for most of the letters.  We are so proud that she is learning this so quickly and even more proud that she LOVES learning it so much.
-Hsin has the most sweet and gentle heart.  If she hears one of so "ouch" or "uh oh" she rushes over to ask "are you OK Mommy".  If you have a boo boo she wants to make sure its OK, hlep clean it up, and kiss it.  She will ask for days after if your boo boo still hurts.  Hsin is still so concerned with Lily, our older and sick cat.  Lily cries a lot and Hsin follows her around saying "your ok, your ok" and giving her hugs.  She also gets very protective if the other cats bother Lily.  She tells them "leave my Lily alone".
-Hsin LOVES helping.  As soon as we get home from school she wants to help feed the cats.  She has  a little step stool that she carries all over the kitchen so she can reach the counter and help.  She knows that Lily gets medicine in her food and has to eat in the bathroom, Mr. Peepers has to eat in the pantry so the other cats don't bother him, and Pei Ling eats near the back door.  She waits patiently for them to finish and then she takes their plates and puts them in the sink. 
-Hsin also loves to cook and bake and anytime we are cooking in the kitchen she grabs her little stool and says "I want to help".  We have baked cookies, cupcakes, pies, cakes, breads and much more and Hsin is super at dumping ingredients in the bowl and stirring.  She is also great at stealing bites of things like half the apples for the apple pie :)
-Hsin's favorite movie is Beauty and the Beast.  She sings the song "Beaty and the Beast" all the time.  She gets so excited at the part where Belle comes out of her room in the yellow dress at the end.  She says "oh Mommy...she is wearing her beautiful yellow dress".  She is starting to really get into princesses.
-Hsin is SUCH a girly girl.  She wants her nails done, loves doing my hair, wants to wear perfume and jewelry and dressing up as a princess.  She also walks around in the store pointing to things and saying "oh, that is so cute".  She never asks for anything at the store, which is sweet, but she loves to tell you how cute things are.
-Hsin has decided she wants to be Mulan for Halloween.  We have not seen the movie, but she has a Barbie like doll of Mulan and she loves that "she is a Chinese princess, like me".  Funny thing is that we never told her that.  We did tell her that Mulan is Chinese, but that was it.
-Hsin is beginning to have "best friends" at school.  Certain kids are her best friend and she will tell us that she loves them.
-We started to let Hsin pick a little prize (dollar stuff from Target) from a basket when she pee pee's in the potty.  She wants to give us a prize when we go, she even gave Paul a princess wand.  Whatever her prize is before bed when she goes, she wants to sleep with it.  She slept with Elmo socks last night :)
-Hsin's favorite TV show is Olivia the pig.  She has memorized certain lines from the show and busts them out the the most random ways.  She holds a princess wand and says "I am queen of the fairies, we will dance and all be merry.  Will you be merry?" This is from an episode about a play Olivia does.  Hsin also asked me this morning as we were getting dressed "where are my lucky tights?"  This is from an episode where Olivia loses her lucky pair of red and white tights.  I told Hsin that what she was wearing today was her lucky sweatpants :)
That is all I can think of and time for right now...I am really going  to try to be more on top of this blog again.  I know I will forget all these little things someday, and I will really regret not capturing them somewhere.
Now...some more recent pics of Hsin from a race Daddy ran a few weekends ago.

 Hsin playing with her babies while Daddy ran.

 Cheesy grin, wating watermelon at Daddy's race.

 Hsin's friend Sebastian who is at a lot of races with his family too brought that little Minnie Mouse for Hsin when he heard she was coming that day.  How adorable.  Hsin loved it and added to her stack of stuffed pals in her bed!

 Sebastian's little brother Florian.  Hsin and those boys play so well together even though they are YEARS apart in age.

Look at how dirty that childs hair is!  It was 50 degrees and sprinkle raining all day.  After 10 hours in that, you are bound to look like a soggy mess.  She is a CUTE soggy mess though.