Falling in love

I trooped off with my parents yesterday to see the brother who had just returned from China with my newest niece (2 years-old). She is so adorable. Her older sister (now 4) was also adopted from China. My mum and I had to job of entertaining my older niece which gave my sister-in-law a chance to bond with the new one. Not that it was much of a job - my niece is a lot of fun. And endless energy. I had to play endless rounds of 'store' with her.

It was a store which sold nothing but ball gowns and purses as I discovered when everything I asked to buy was met with, "No, we don't sell that here". Then every dress I tried on was apparently too small. Hard to tell what it fit like as I had to try and follow my niece's imagination. I got the hang of it when I emerged with the new dress on and said, "Perfect! I'll take it" and was told, "No. Pretend it's too small for you." My niece has not yet learned how to feed her aunt's ego. I will have to train her to say, "Oh but that is swimming on you. Try a smaller size." Like I said though, I learned to say "I'll go try this on. And what colour is this one?", followed by, "Do you think this fits or is it too tight?"

Thanks to a good friend of mine I also learned how to make congee. This is just not a food from my Scottish/Italian/Canadian background. Congee-making was my other task yesterday. My new niece was very happy to have a familiar food. She is tiny but with the amount of congee and pita she was eating yesterday, no doubt she'll grow quickly. I didn't try to hold my new niece as she is still shy around people and overwhelmed from all the changes in her life from the past two weeks, but her eyes followed me everywhere. I think she was calmer around me as opposed to my mum (who is my older niece's idol) simply because my mother is blonde and I have dark hair - which in its current dye job my SIL told me is the same colour as that of one of the woman from the orphanage.

I'm back to work tomorrow and dreading it.