First Tears

It finally happened.  On the way home from the park.  We were walking down the sidewalk and noticed something was about to fall out of her pocket.  When we brought her attention to it, we discovered a card she had picked up at one of our outings today was missing from her pocket.  We had no idea where it might be.  It was getting late.  It was getting cold.

But none of that made any difference to her.  She wanted that card.

Once we got her back into the hotel room she spent the next half hour or so in the bathroom alone.  Oh, there were so many tears.  We'd go back and forth, giving her the space she seemed to want but then checking on her trying to make sure she was OK.  Don't know if it was all about the card.  Or all about what has happened over the past few days.  Or both.  Or something completely different.  All we knew was that she was very upset.

After a while she came back into the room and played on her own for a while.  We canceled dinner plans and ordered in.  Not too long after dinner she turned to me and made the motion for bath.  Then she said, "Ca-lo-line?"  meaning she wanted her bubble bath buddy to join her.  Now the sadness, for the most part, seems to be a thing of the past as everyone is huddled on the bed getting Mandarin lessons from our in house instructor.

And the dance goes on....

Earlier today we went to a local jade shop.  (Not the wholesale market that I had thought we were going to).  And although the jade was GORGEOUS...we decided that being able to buy groceries when we returned was probably a bit more practical.  So we passed on the good stuff but we did get the girls some really cute bracelets and necklaces.

And while there, an artist was using only his hand and watered down ink to make some pretty impressive landscape scenes.  He invited Lily to take a turn and showed her how to do tree trunks: