Bridging the species gap

Cooper does his very best to communicate. Even though he can't yet form sentences, he still points, says 'peez,' and cries to get his basic points across. He is now at the stage when, quite often, he will mimic what we do as he tries to master our (at times lacking) communication skills. Cute as it is, he is also carrying this technique to try and communicate with other . . . um, species. For the past couple of weeks, whenever he hears one of our cats, he will invariably try to 'meow' in reply. One of our cats hides under the sofa for 15 of the 16 hours of the day; and when Cooper hears her, he gets on his belly, looks under the sofa, and meows at the cat for the next minute or so. I don't get the sense that the cats are as enthusiastic about the mimicking thing as we are, though.

What a treasure

Sarah and I have just discovered a little treasure we didn't know we had. The day Cooper was declared officially ours by the Hong Kong courts we also moved house from South Horizons to Discovery Bay. At the courtroom, our social worker gave us some mementos that he couldn't give us until everything was final, and since we were moving we just shoved them in a box and never considered what was inside. Well, just last week we stumbled upon the contents of what our social worker gave us, and lo and behold it contained photos. The 'orphanage' had kept a photographic record of his life before we got him. We were overjoyed to have a visual record of that time period. We rushed out and got them printed right away for a special scrap book. Anyway, those photos have now been posted online. The link is here. We hope you enjoy these special pictures as much as we do.

With Cooper you cannot sneak out

Today we needed to leave church a little early. We thought, 'well, we're sitting near the back, so it should be easy to sneak out without disturbing the meeting.' We got ourselves together, and when the moment was right we stood up to duck out quickly. Only one problem. As soon as Cooper understood what was happening, he did what he usually does in that situation. He put his right hand into the air, flapped it back and forth, and said as loudly as he could, 'bye, bye. bye, bye,' and was blowing kisses to everyone he could see. Ah, what a cute little boy, and what embarassed parents! I looked up and, sure enough, several people were waving back at Cooper as we made our exit. Note to self, sneaking out is no longer easy to do.

Cooper the virtuoso

Quick chuckle time. The other night Cooper woke up in the middle of the night, hummed a little tune of his own making for a few minutes, and fell back asleep. Now, every once in awhile he will wake up and cry (if his teeth are hurting him), or play, or just kick the wall with his feet. Never, though, has he woken up to serenade the night. That's our funny little boy!