Daycare!

Today Gianna went to "school" for the first time. I'm sitting on the couch with Bruno sipping hot tea, eating pumpkin pie, celebrating success! Last night she would not go to sleep. Did she know she was starting school today and was stressing about it? Probably not. Her clogged ear or emerging molars were more than likely the culprit. Dan tried over and over to get her to sleep. By midnight, I took a crack at it so Dan could get some rest, rocking her, giving her the kiddy ibuprofen for her teeth, and eventually laid down in her bed with her to fall asleep. The next thing I knew, Dan was opening the door telling me it was time to get up. I put her to sleep by myself! What an accomplishment! This bodes well for next week when Dan is in Germany and its all me.

So of course she was tired when I got her up at 6am to get ready for school. But, she pooped on the potty, ate breakfast, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and was dressed for school by 6:50. We pulled into the school around 7am and I said "here we are, we're at school, time to go play with the other kids". She was ecstatic. We went inside and put all her supplies away, hopefully in the right place. Everything has to be labeled, and I know there were things I forgot to label. There weren't many kids there at 7am, but Gianna tore right into the toys, counting loudly in Vietnamese "một, hai, ba, bốn, năm!". Soon she roped a friend into playing with her, and by 7:45, I told her mẹ was going bye-bye and would be back for her after lunch. She waved bye-bye to her friend as if saying "OK, it was fun, but now we're leaving". I rectified the miscommunication, "no, you're staying here to play, I'm going bye-bye". Then she turned around and resumed her work with the wooden people she had out as I gracefully slipped into the night without a wailing of "mẹ!" to be heard. Surely if Dan were there, it would have been a different story. They would have listened to a "bố loi!" tantrum for at least 15 minutes. She is very clingly and needy with him. Honestly, I have never seen her as outgoing with strangers than this morning. Its a strange psychology. I mean, I like Dan too, he's a great guy, but...I don't wail for him when he goes to the bathroom, hahaha. So she'll go part-time this week, then full-time next week as I go back to work.

On more thing to mention in this long post, we had a great weekend visiting friends and family. On Saturday we had lunch with Grace in Chinatown, Philadelphia. She even got to baby-sit Gianna for about 30 seconds when both Dan and I were going to/coming from the bathroom. Yesterday, we drove to central PA to visit Dan's family. In Ephrata we saw his Grandma, aunt Kathy, and cousin Elianna. As you may recall, Elianna is 4 years old, adopted from an orphanage in China. She and Gianna got along very well. I just wish we lived closer so they could hang out more often. In Harrisburg, we visited Dan's aunt Cindy and her family Paul, Ben, Andrea, and Josiah. Unfortunately Cindy is very ill with cancer, but was in good spirits when we were there. Gianna was playing with cars, laughing, and talking a bit of Vietnamese. She put a smile on everyone's faces :)

Classic, one kid goofing around, the other crying to get off the couch.