Happy Fu Year, take two

Natalie, Sydney, Maya and Zanna cheesing it up!

January 3rd marks our 2-year anniversary of becoming a family! We celebrated by getting together for brunch at Zanna's with the other three Fu families in the Portland area. For those of you not familiar with Fu, it is the last name given to all the girls from the orphanage in Fuzhou, Jianxi province. So Sydney and her Fu sisters (and all the mamas and babas) got to see each other after almost nine months, to compare, contrast, and revel in our girls. We were happy to see that Sydney is a lot like the others in some respects (potty-training successes and challenges, sharing issues) even though she doesn't go to a day care with other children. She is bigger than Natalie, who turned three in October and who is a little peanut with a bouncy personality. Sydney is shorter and heavier than Maya, the tallest one who is a few weeks younger but weighs about the same as her newly adopted 13-month-old Taiwanese sister, Anya. Zanna outweighs Sydney by a few pounds and has a bigger vocabulary, but also found it a bit rough to share all her toys and things. I can't imagine what Sydney would do if we ever host this annual event!

Fu sisters sit briefly for brunch...

And then quickly move on to fun and games. Sydney can barely stand the tension during Duck Duck Goose.

Zanna ducking Maya.

Now we're cookin'! Jumping off the couch onto the cushions was a huge hit.

Ready for action.

Zanna gets some serious air!

Time out for a good book or three.

We are once again amazed and astounded at how the girls have grown. We miss Janet and JoLi, the fifth member of our Fu family of sisters, and hope to one day see them again, perhaps in Illinois. We viewed our Gotcha Day video and can still hardly believe that our girls were once those babies in their puffy snowsuits, almost as scared as us! Life is good.

Just glimpse a few seconds of pure joy.