Trey found his tongue (over a month ago)...

Sometime during the month of August, a 4 month old baby found his tongue.


Sometime during the month of September, a tired mother finally got around to taking a picture.

kiddie rides and giving...

The other day, while we were exploring our neighborhood, we passed a convenience store with 2 of those kiddie rides out front. You know what I'm talking about, right? Those large rides shaped like cartoon characters that will jerkily move your child back and forth while playing a poorly recorded kids song, all for the bargain price of less than a quarter. Well, Cosi just loves those rides and begs Daddy for a coin whenever she sees one. And she wants to ride them again and again until Daddy runs out of either coins or patience.
So the other day, when she ran over to the rides and asked for a coin, it was no surprise. While she was riding, a local 2 year old boy came over and climbed onto the ride next to Cosi. Neither he nor his grandmother had any coins on them, but no problem- most kids here are content to just sit on the ride, even if it doesn't move.
Cosi, on the other hand, started asking for another coin before her ride ended. It seemed like she was making a preemptive request to keep her ride going. But much to our surprise, Cosi took the second coin and reached over to the boy on the other ride, giving it to him to use for his ride. We were awestruck- where did she learn that? We were so proud of our little girl and her kind heart.
In the interest of full disclosure, we should mention that in that same week, we bought some fruit to give to local beggars on the street, and Cosi refused to surrender her bag of fruit once we got to the beggars. She had to be "helped" to share that time. I guess that's just a picture of us all- growing in grace, but still inconsistent. Don't judge us by our worst moments, but neither should you judge us by our best. In the end, though, the beggars got fruit, the boy got a coin, and Cosi (we hope) grew a little bit more into a generous, caring young lady

Some Videos About Cosi and Food

As many of you know, our return to East Asia is upon us- we're in the midst of our packing frenzy (which includes last-minute trips to Target and Costco) and are trying to convince Cosi that she is really excited to ride on an airplane for 15 hours.

For those of you in East Asia who haven't seen Cosi since we left in July. here's a little video showing off Cosi's improvement in speaking English- she really has grown a lot this summer! Be ready for a chatty little girl who still wants everyone to hold her. And for those of you who have heard rumors and legends about some of Rob's eating habits in college, this video is proof that Cosi may be taking after her daddy in that respect.



And since we're on the topic of food, here is a funny moment from this weekend, after Cosi had helped April mix the batter for some cupcakes. Once the cupcakes were ready, Cosi wanted to know what happened to the eggs...



And one last anecdote for which we don't have a video- last week we visited a farm, which was terribly exciting for Cosi, who got to sit on a horse's back, touch some pigs, look at cows and llamas, and (most exciting of all) finally pet a cat. Ever since her visit to the petting zoo, Cosi has been a little cow-obsessed, and the night after the visit to the farm, we just so happened to be having steak for dinner. Cosi, filling her belly with green beans, wanted nothing to do with the steak. Then one clever parent asked, "Cosi, do you want to bite a cow?" Her eyes lit up with excitement. "Bite cow?!" she squealed. Yes, of course she wanted to bite a cow! The next 10 forkfuls of steak disappeared as quickly as she could chew them. Now if only we could figure out a way to explain tofu...

Remembering...

We took the kids to the grave site for the first time. I'm sure it'll be the first of many times. This was a quick visit, but in the future we hope to be able to tell our kids all about their grandpa Bob and grandma Patty. Oh, how excited Bob & Patty would have been to meet their grandchildren! We're pretty sure they would have loved seeing Cosi run around to the different graves and try to pull up the flowers...

They would have loved Cosi's vibrant personality and how she shares the same skin color as her grandma. They would have been thrilled to welcome Trey and see him carry on the Edenfield name. Cosi was asking if she could cook today- we're sure Patty would have loved to teach her some Lebanese dishes. And we can only hope that Bob's fix-it ability (which seemed to run strong in the Edenfield line until it got to Rob) has skipped only one generation and will show up in Trey, so he can help his Mom and Dad around the house.

We could have told them about how Trey found his tongue this week. It makes us laugh so much. Or maybe we would have told them about how Cosi keeps saying "umm....ummm..." just like mommy and daddy unknowingly say it multiple times a day. It's really hard not to have them around. Rob wishes he could ask them for advice as he's learning to be a parent. I wish they were here to love our kids. It still feels like there's a void in our lives. I imagine it will always feel that way.

JMU August 2011

This was our first trip back to the JMU campus with our kids! So (of course) we wanted a picture on the Quad. Would we like our kids to attend & graduate from JMU someday? yes yes!!!! Here's a few more pics for your viewing enjoyment :)


Daddy's arms, daddy's ears & baby Trey.

People still walk their dogs on the Quad - Cosi was excited to touch a dog and so was our friend Spencer!


Here's Trey with Cosi's shirt laying on top of him. Too bad his parents are cheap and wouldn't buy him his own shirt! They just expect him to grow into Cosi's old shirt ;)

This picture is of Cosi & daddy at the music building. Daddy spent many long hours at this building. Maybe Cosi will be a music major someday...
And one more picture of Trey b/c he's too young to run away or have a choice in picture taking!

***Most surprising change at JMU = the new stadium!! Oh my!! It's amazing and gigantic. We would have taken a picture, but we were driving by it in a car and the kids were fussy.