Looking out for siblings

My children just met on Monday morning. Oh sure, they've both seen pictures of each other for a while ~ Kylie's seen Caleb's face for months now and it is obvious that Caleb was shown the photo album we sent him last month ~ but in person they only met Monday! Yet it would appear to the casual observer ~and if I'm going to be honest, even to me ~ that they've been together much longer.

The casual observer would see them running together, tag-teaming mommy and daddy at restaurants, holding hands, taking toys from one another, and seriously competing for the prized spot in mommy's arms. All evidence of normal sibling behavior (at least from what I've observed with many of my friends' kids).

Yet there is more...

I have witnessed a few things that seem to take their relationship a bit farther. Take for instance a conversation I had with Kylie yesterday morning before breakfast.
"Mommy, where we goin' today?"
"Well sweetie, after we go eat breakfast, we are going to visit where Caleb used to live."
"I don't wanto!"
"Honey, we want to meet the lady that took care of Caleb for us until we could get here."
"No, I don't wanto!" (insert troubled voice and expression here)
"Why not honey?"
"Because I want Caleb to stay with us!" (almost tears at this point)
"Oh sweetie, we aren't going to leave Caleb there, he will come home with us! We are just going to visit!"
"Ooohhh! You will never leave him?" (light bulb went off in the brain face)
"No baby, just like you, we will never leave Caleb either. He is part of our family now!"
"Okay, let's go!" (big smile)
So even though he is hogging mommy's arms right now, she still wants him around ~ PRICELESS!

And then at breakfast yesterday Caleb was continuing his quest to single-handedly close the buffet down by cleaning it out himself (we learned yesterday that his first two words were "eat" and "drink" ~ that should be telling of this kid's appetite!) and Ian was going to come back to the room to get our day bags so we could meet Zoey on time in the lobby. Plan was that I'd stay with Caleb to let him finish eating and then Kylie decided she wanted to go with Daddy. As soon as Kylie disappeared Caleb began searching for her (his little head was whipping from side to side and he was turning around in his chair as far as he could) and when he couldn't find her he began to wail. Not wanting to ruin our reputation at the hotel buffet, I quickly scooped him out of his seat and headed to the elevator. He kept crying in my arms, but immediately stopped and then smiled when he saw his big sister.
So she tackles him to give him "big hugs," takes away his toys that came with him from the SWI, and constantly says "LuTao booyow" (Mandarin for no ~ pretty sad that we think she must think it is his middle name ~ we're using that word a lot right now because he is into EVERYTHING!) but he still wants her ~ PRICELESS!

Sitting (for the most part) peacefully together watching Ni Hao Kai-Lan with Kylie on the watch to tell Caleb not to press any of the buttons...
Gotta love them!

**The post on our visit yesterday is under construction. Both kids were sound asleep by 9:10 last night and I was going to work on it more, but until I got some of the packing done to be ready to go on to Guangzhou tonight I was pretty tired. Then around 11:30 Caleb had what must have been a night terror. If you haven't experienced these, they call them terrors because that's what the parents feel! We were concerned that something medically was going on and then just as suddenly as it started (following some prayer) it stopped and he went back to peacefully sleeping. That had me rattled and I opted to skip out on computer time.

New prayer request for today ~ we need Caleb's Chinese passport before we leave this province and our flight is at 8pm tonight. (Remember that we are 12 hours ahead of EST). Our schedule is pretty tight in Guangzhou with the medical exam tomorrow morning and then our consulate appointment on Monday and there isn't really room for us to be delayed getting there. Zoey got a call yesterday afternoon that his passport won't be ready this morning as scheduled and that it SHOULD (yikes) be ready in the afternoon... Thanks for praying!