For those of you counting the days until summer ends and school starts, we’ve got an update:

Jocelyn is now – officially – a First Grader.

She has previously denied the promotion, insisting she was still a kindergartner until half-way through the summer. Whether or not you agree with her calendarical proclamation, the interesting part is that she remembered the date (July 21), and declared herself a First-Grader without prodding or reminder. School officially starts on Wednesday, August 24.

Actually, she only sort of remembered the date. For some time, she’s been referring to the milestone date as “July Twenty-Oneth.” Who wants to correct her?

Karen cleared customs at SFO at about 10:00 today, and we were almost there to greet her. Hugs were passed around a few minutes later, and we are all glad to have our Mommy back! Felicia still remembers her Mommy, and Jocelyn was very happy, too.

We managed to avoid a major international incident, when Jocelyn remembered she had left her backpack in the terminal (we’d brought toys in case we had to wait). I ran back to claim it before the bomb squad. Fortunately, no one had yet identified the pink book bag as a threat.

The Daytime Trio is now the “24/7/11 Trio” until July 27. That’s eleven days without Mommy, who is traveling to China and Japan to train new employees and subsidiaries for Crossbow. We drove her to the International Terminal at SFO today.

Got any activity ideas for us? Let us know! The following posts represent our journal of life without Mommy.

I saw the Beijing sun for the first time today (on my last day here). The rain of yesterday cleared out the skies and so it was a great day for a visit to the Summer Palace. This is a huge park like setting with trails through beautiful gardens, a palace on a hill, and a very large lake with boats transporting people back and forth to various sections of the park. We got there early to beat the crowds and that was a good plan. By the time we left at noon some of the walkways required shoulder to shoulder walking. After the Summer Palace, Alva and Zhu took me to a restaurant which specializes in one of the minority foods from Southern China. I really enjoyed the pickled cucumbers, the pineapple rice, and the rice wine. Finally, we wandered through the PanJuYuan market, a flea market style place with hundreds of vendors selling just about everything, including fake antiques and inexpensive jewelry. At this point I left Alva and Zhu and met up with Min and his family. We enjoyed a treat at Tasty Taste (a cake shop, and my first chocolate on the trip) while discussing my life experience as a buyer. Min?s wife is the editor for a popular magazine in China and she is doing an article on buying and wanted my input. We enjoyed great conversation while watching their 2 beautiful girls, aged 4 and 6, play.

I think it’s official. The search for an official transitional item has ended, and Taggie is the winner. Her attachment has grown stronger in the last few weeks, possibly heightened by Mommy’s absence.

The Proof: Today, we inadvertantly left the house on an errand without Taggie. We had the pacifier, which was just barely enough to get us through. We were gone for about an hour, and Felicia alternated between complaining, whining, and cuddling. When we returned, she marched straight into her bedroom, and wanted into her crib. She spent a minute or two in the crib, and then wanted out. But she wasn’t going anywhere without Taggie.

Further Proof: A few minutes later, she put Taggie down on the floor and went to play with another toy. I thought this was my chance to remove the fleece blanket and return it to her bed. Thirty seconds after I scooped up the blanket, Felicia returned to the place she’d left it, and freaked out! She started screaming, and took off running in a big circle. She flailed around the kids table and ran smack into the wall behind the couch, which prompted more screaming. She relaxed when I helped her find Taggie again, but I think I learned my lesson.

On Friday evening, Mei took me to the famous Lao She Tea House for the Bejing Opera. We enjoyed several treats while watching a type of variety show including fance, traditional music, humor, and magic. We had perfect seats right up front in the center.

On Saturday Mei and Wesley took me to the Great Wall. We set out via taxi just after 8am. The weather, unfortunately, was a bit challenging. The rain really never let up, and was quite fierce at times. I don’t think I’ve been that wet for that long in at least 15 years. I wore tennis shoes, capris, and a t-shirt and had an umbrella. The umbrella was turned inside out several times, and the shoes and clthes were soaked through. But, we saw the Great Wall nonetheless. Due to the weather we chose to take a cable car up to the top and then walk along several sections instead of climbing the whole way. After the Great Wall we also visited the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. It was so wonderful of Mei and Wesley to share these two amazing pieces of Beijing history with me.

On Thursday Zhong Lei took me shopping and then we joined Maria, Min, Hada, and Xia for dinner at Back Sea. Back Sea is a small man-made lake in the middle of old Beijing (we walked around it on Monday). The restaurant was unique-our table was a small boat. We floated about and when we wanted more food it was delivered by a server in a paddle boat. We had some very unique foods including duck tongues. OK, I didn’t try them, but the variety was quite fun.