A typical day at daycare

A typical day at daycare is from 8:30am to 5:30pm. All I know about Sophia's day is from her daily exchange sheet, teacher's mouth and her art work.
Today, when I got daycare, she was in the baby room. Since she haven't been there for a while, she looked all toys as new toys. I asked her to put on her coat and go home, she refused and still wanted to play more with the "new" toys. This is not typical, she usually runs to me and can't wait to go home.
Today, I also got her art work, cloud and apple. She might make them a few days ago. They look cute to me.
And a birthday treat from her friend, ice cream play dough. She loves that playdough and was holding it on the way back home, saying "i .. cre..". Yes, this how she calls ice cream.

Sophia says "5"

Sophia has tons of, seas of toys. She used to abuse them, but now she starts to enjoy most of them. She has been playing her little people dollhouse for two days. She calls one figure "mama" and the other one "dada". Those little people truely occupy her for a while. When I observed it, I was thinking of pulling out the full size dollhouse we bought for her a while ago. But wait, what about the wooden bike? When should I give her that? I have to decide which for Christmas and which for birthday.
Besides dollhouse play, we also had some educational play last night. My first leappad is one of Sophia's favorite educational toys. She knows how to make it sing the alphabet song, she likes all the music related pages, especially guitar, she knows that she should put the pen into the designed slot when she's done. And she knows more than that... I was reading the counting page with her, the leappad said "1", Sophia said "2", not a surprise, she said that before, the leappad said "2, 3, 4" Sophia said "5" !!!! She said "5"!!! I was quite surprised. I think it won't take long for her to start to count "1, 2, 3,...10".

The tree is up, the lights are on!

We've been working for two days, Thursday and Friday, to make the house look holiday inside and out. It's the first time we decorate for Christmas. It was fun and exiting.
Sophia likes the lights and ornerments on the tree, but she listens when I tell her not to touch. Her favorite part is the Christmas village. She asks me to hold her up to look, because I set it up on the bookshelf. She also likes to watch the outside lights when it's dark.
I still have some odds and ends to put up, some gifts to wrap, some cards to send. I'm not much into cooking this year. But thinking about the new cast molds I just got, I should make some cakes with it.

What a peaceful night!

I have been very frustrated putting Sophia to bed every night.
Last night was the easist ever. I think it must be because she didn't have nap yesterday. We were watching TV after dinner. Sophia was playing her little people doll house on Sofa. At 7:10pm she felt asleep all by herself on Sofa. I moved her to her bed upstairs. She opened her eyes once but was too tired to get up. She slept until this morning 7:30am. I hope every night is like this so that I can have more things done. I cleaned the kitchen. I made a Christmas frame which I've planned a long time. However I felt a little bit lost for a night without Sophia. I'm too used to running around with her every night.

Helping hands

Sophia is always ready to help mommy and daddy with housework. She feels very pround when we say good job for her accomplishments.
Sophia loves to put garbage into trash can. She puts her dirty diapers into diaper pail after being changed. She puts tissure paper into trash can after wiping her nose. At the beginning she couldn't tell what is disposable. She put wash cloth into trash as if she was using tissure paper. Now she can tell, she put the dirty wash cloth, dirty flatware in drawers where she gets it from. Anyway she's just trying to help.
In spring Sophia helped daddy planting in the garden, in summer she helps picking, now in fall, she helps daddy cleaning up the garden. Yesterday, it was warm and nice. Sophia helped daddy holding garbage bag while daddy trimming branches.
After all the work, Sophia spent some time outside playing, riding bike,strolling her little baby.

Basement progress

We're getting there, most of the carpentry work is done. But still need some pait and floor. Now some pictures.

Give thanks

We had a wonderful thanksgiving night at Brian and Hoda's house, a wonderful dinner, too. We spent alost 6 hours. Angela and Sophia played. Oh, with their new addition, kitty body, he's such a nice kitty. Sohpia was a little afraid of the little kitty, but she got used to him at last and waved bye to him when we were leaving.
Now, time to think about shopping tomorrow morning. We don't plan to get up early. We'll get up when we wake up, and buy whatever left and we need. We plan to go to Costco, Lowes and staples. Maybe mall.

Get organized

I spent a couple hours and some bucks on our pantry. What a makeover! It looks much more organized than before. Hope we can keep it this way forever.

Talking about holiday inspirations

I fell in love with Anthropologie. It's all due to their beautiful holiday catalog I received in mail a couple days ago. The catalog is a small oragne book. Think orange Christmas. How neat! It's so one of a kind.
What an inspiration! I have to go to the store and get something. In the meanwhile, I also want to make a book for Sophia's fashion stuff. Don't laugh at me! A 22 months old fashion is cute. Here is a favorite buy, from Gymboree of course. It's a hot pink cord coat, very very cute. I love it, so does Sophia.

Holiday is coming!

Wzg was so tired this weekend after doing a lot of work in basement. But he still helped me put up the Christmas tree, so nice of him! I did take out a couple of "C" boxes from basement. I put up a couple red candles, snowman decor, the very cute santa tissure box. That's about it. I will continue in the next week. Hopefully I can put up everything by the end of this week.
By the way, the tree is huge, I mean huge, it takes up almost the whole room, from bottom to top. This is the first year we have put up a tree. I'm very exiting and can't wait to decorate it.

吴克群 tonight

Since 吴克群 just released his new record, there are many shows about him recently. I saw him tonight on TV tonight. I like him more after listening more of his songs.
I especially like his song " 吴克群 ". It's very interesting.

22 months old Sophia

Sophia turned 22 months today. She has changed a lot or say, she grew up so much in the last couple months.

Sophia has her pal, Snoopy. She loves him, she hugs him, she talks to him, she shares good things with him. She even cooks for him, feeds him.

I got her class picutre last Friday. It has all her classmates and teachers. Today she asked to see it. When we looked at the picture, she showed me her teachers, Ms. Ina and Ms. Amber, and her friends, she can call at least 50% of the names. I was amazed. She also told me there were trees behind them. When I pointed Sophia in the picture, she said "Me!". Wow, she can recoganize herself in such a blurry picture.

We went to Children's museum on Saturday morning. It was 10 times more crowded than weekday.I only picked a few activities for Sophia, so that she can focus. We played piano, she enjoyed a lot. Sophia was very much into driving this time. She drove the mini cooper in the garage while making "beep, beep" sounds. What made me emberrassing was that she refuesed to get off the car when there were a long line waiting her to be done. I hauled her out and made her cry. I don't regret. I should let her know what is right and what is wrong.

Good news. Sophia starts to like vegetables now. She eats all kinds, as long as they're fully cooked. She enjoys cucumber, celery, cabbage, aspparagus, green beans, almost everything. I'm happily dancing now!

Her new favorite food: Pirouette Rolled Wafers, chocalate flavor. I can't tell the reason because I'm also in love with it.

Her diaper size is still 4 (Yes, still in diaper. But I think it won't last too long. Because she tells me whenever she needs a change). But I can feel that she gained a lot of weight recently.

肚肚 is a little bit lower than belly

Sophia doesn't express herself very clear with language now. Thinking she's almost 22 months old, it's a bit slow. However I find she has ability to swich between English and Chinese.
She knows most of her body parts, some of them she understand, some of them she can say it in Chinese (as I know of). The first one she knew was nose, in Chinese, 鼻鼻.
Today, her teacher showed me that she knows where her belly is. I imediately asked her that in Chinese: 肚肚在哪里? She pointed somewhere lower than where she pointed her belly. I repeated a couple times, she did the same. It looks like she allocate her 肚肚 a little bit lower than her belly.
To test more, I asked her all other body parts in Chinese and English, she pointed them all right no matter what language I spoke.
Amazing!

I can't wait! I can't wait! I can't wait! I can't wait!!!!!!

Thanksgiving is one week away, Christmas is only 5 weeks away, New Year is only 6 weeks away. I can't believe, this year of 2006 seems faster than ever before. It's because happy days fly.
I start to like this time of the year, not only because we get most of our holiday at this time, also I get to haul out all of our Christmas decorations. They're my toys. I just can't wait!

吴克群

在我的记忆中，崇拜或喜欢某个歌星，被他／她的歌声打动，已经是十年前的事情了。
我曾经喜欢过张学友的歌，喜欢张雨生的歌，喜欢半生缘里的黎明和吴倩莲。曾经喜欢孟庭苇的歌，喜欢林忆莲的歌。现在我还一样喜欢他们。
可是对于新人，无论他们多红我也喜欢不起来。不理解周杰伦为什么红。
可是上个周末，看了快乐大本营以后，我开始喜欢吴克群了。

个人档案
英文名: Wu, Ke Qun
生 日: 1979-10-18
身 高: 176cm 体 重: 60kg
血 型: O 星 座: 天秤座
专长：唱歌、表演
宠物：O型腿的狗
嗜好：运动（特别是篮球）、音乐、唱歌、看表演
才艺：吉他、国乐曲笛、唢吶
最爱吃：甜食、红豆
最爱穿：黑色、蓝色、白色系衣服
最喜欢：看天空、表演、胡思乱想
最难过：一个人悲情过中秋
最大梦想：成为伟大的表演工作者

十大热门单曲
# 吴克群
# 大舌头
# 对不起
# 我有罪
# 泛泛之辈
# 不屑纪念
# 周星星
# 镜子
# 学不会
# 蛤

A rainy weekend

Saturday I wanted to go to Rose Tea Cafe to celebrate Wzg's birthday. But he was too lazy to drive that far for a meal. At last we settled at the buffet around Ross Park Mall. This didn't look like the usual wzg style.
Sophia had quite a bunch of timeouts over the weekend. I feel like the terrible two is coming. She poured water, milk, at least 3 times on the floor. She threw her spoon numerous of times while eating. She didn't go to bed until 11:30pm on Saturday. All of these made me frustrating. It seems like we need another round of sleep training. I didn't let her nap on Sunday which made her go to bed at 8:30pm. I hope she can keep this schedule everyday. I know, that sounds impossible. But I'll try.
Amazingly, I have a whole lot of things done over this slow and rainy weekend. I cleaned the house, did laundry, cooked enough for Monday. I had wzg's birthday album done in less than 2 hours, quickest project ever. I also started a paperbag album of our baltimore trip in September. Four or five pages are done, results aren't so cool as I expected, but I'll see when the whole thing is done. The Christmas memories in a box turned out very neat, I did it last night, 90% finished.

Timeout

Last night I was really mad at Sophia. She poured half cup of milk on the carpet. It didn't look like an accident because she looked at me and laughed when she was pouring. I gave her first timeout. It seems she understand what "timeout" is. She stayed in the corner of the dinning room without arguing anymore. She didn't moved out of that spot until daddy told her she could. It made me think that she must have had timeout at daycare. Who knows.

One stone three birds

Today is wzg's birthday, I made a birthday card / mini album for him. This is inspired by Erin's mini album of the month and Ali's stamp challenge. I used four stamps, one star stamp, one birthday hat stamp, Happy birthday saying stamp and date stamp.

Where go?

Does Sophia know Chinese or English better? I can't tell.
Last night, when we were having dinner, Sophia dropped her spoon. She looked down and said, "where go?" I knew she was trying to make us believe she didn't do it on purperse.
After dinner we decided to go shopping. After being put into the car, Sophia said, "where go?"
It looks like she knows the meaning of those words really well.

Great minds think alike

I'm all into Ali now. I like her simple elegant style, she inspires me always. While reading her AZine this week, I found out that her new holiday idea is exactly the same as a frame art that I was planning to do two months ago. "Exactly" means we picked the same size, same brand of paper for the same layout. Now I feel much more confident in Scrapbooking. I don't want to be a memory maker idol but sure like to do something good for my family and make my daughter proud of her mom when she's in school.
Now all I need to do is find some time to accomplish my plans. This one is hard!

Project list

Christmas is coming soon. It's always the best time of the year in States. Because I get to go shopping. Besides shopping I plan to do a couple projects for this year.

1. Make a Christmas paper bag album for Children's hospital Christmas raffle
2. Decorate house, put up Christmas tree and take pictures of course
3. Alter two canvas frames
4. Make quilted frame art
5. Send out Christmas cards, wrap gifts, if there's still time, make a couple more Christmas paper bag albums to give to friends
6. Make one page a day in December album, this was inspired by people on creating keepsakes message board
7. Mini photo calendar for family
8. decorate basement and organize scrap stuff, if wzg can finish the basement before Christmas
9. family tree layout
10. PJs layout
11. All About me album
12. Sophia's first year baby album
13. 2006 Fall album
14. 2005 Christamas layout or mini album
15. ... still thinking, but already listed too many.

The more aggressive the plan, the less will be finished. Hopefully I can finish most of the projects during Thanksgiving break.

人性本善／恶？

这是个老话题了。之所以想起这个话题,是因为宁宁最近开始极强的占有欲。开始是抢妈妈的东西，占为己有。后来，家里来小朋友作客，不让人家玩她的玩具，时 刻看着。昨天到人家玩，竟然跟人家大孩子抢玩具。我知道宁宁不会做假，她做的就是心里想的, 是人与生俱来的私自占有的欲望。等她大了就会懂如何权衡短期利益与长期利益了。等待她长大。

Stucked

I planned many projects last week but haven't finished a single one on weekend because I was stucked.
I wanted to do a layout of some pictures of Sophia that were taken in September. Sophia has a pink rideon toy I got for free. It's pretty old and shabby, so I bought her a new one when I saw a little people tractor shaped rideon on sale. Everyone thinks she is spoiled when sees her having two rideon toys. She just loves them the same and wants to drive both at the same time. I captured the moment that she was working very hard to manouver both cars at once. The pictures turned out terrific.
I picked my favorite Basic Grey paper, Sophie collection and some dark brown cardstock. Everything looked perfect at the beginning but when I was half way done, I started to hate that layout and couldn't proceed anymore. All I did was sitting at the desk and looking that layout, wasting time. Should I throw it away and start a new one? should I finish it up even I don't like it? Should I leave it as it is now, proceed to the next project? I'm stucked.

This is a layout I did two weeks ago. I used exactly the same paper. I like the result very much. Pictures were taken when I bought Sophia her first seat last Christmas. She still loves the seat. I love the happiness on her face.

Haircut

I had a haircut today. Now I feel much better than before.

Addicted

Sophia is officially addicted to TV. No matter what's on TV, Sophia is always happy.

Trick or Treat

A lot of people around me say they don't celebrate Halloween or they're not much into Halloween. But Halloween was so much fun for us this year. Angela came to join our Halloween parade on Sunday. Ali came all the way from NYC to trick or treat and this was his first long trip ever.

Saturday I spent the whole day cleaning the house. It was well worth it even I was very tired at night. We need a motivation to do deep cleaning once a while. The longer we relax the more work accumlated at the end. Having a guest is always the best reason for us, lazy people to do cleaning, don't look at it as cleaning, look at it as excising. Anyway I was very happy to see a clean house. Last deep cleaning was in Janurary right before we went back to China. Time flies!

After a little last-minute shopping on Sunday moning, we welcomed Christine and Ali at Pittsburgh International Airport. It sure is a huge airport, we spent some time to find each other. Christine still looked the same, but Ali was totally different than last time I saw him. Las time I saw him he was in mommy's belly and now he is a 27 lbs big boy. We then had lunch at RoseTea Cafe. I got my favorite pudding milk tea, Sophia and Ali both had great appetite.
Brian, Hoda and Angela met us at the Blueberry Hill Park Halloween costume parade. We were a little bit late after changing Sophia and Ali. Angela wore mommy made angel costume, very pretty. Ali was a bear, yes, he's a bear, even without a costume. Sophia was a duck. I got her a duck costume because she makes "Quack, quack..." sounds all the time. But the size was a bit small. All three children got their numbers for the costume contest, Sohpia's number was "518", a lucky number, but didn't help her to win. None of them won. But each of them got a treat bag. Angela was very happy with all the candies in the bag and couldn't stop eating. Ali loves digging everything, bags, pumpkins. Sophia was all into sorting, she moved all the stuff from Ali's bag to hers, smart! The activities at the park were more for older kids and very crowded, too. The only thing that we had fun was horse riding, not really horse riding, it was wagon. It was the first time for Sophia, for me, too. We were all very exited. We also found out that Hoda is expecting their second! Congratulations!
After the parade, we went back to our house. Three children sure made our house full. Everyone was busy. Wzg and Brian was talking, I didn't listen, so don't know what they were talking about. All my attention was taken by the three little ones. They were moving around the toys to everywhere from family room. Hoda was cleaning up behind Angela, Christine was busy taking pictures, I was watching to make sure everyone stay in the safe area. You can imagine the whole scene. To make everyone relax, I decided to turn one TV and pop in the little people DVD. Sophia ran to her TV seat when she heard the music. To my surprise, not every child is Sophia, loves watching TV. Angela didn't care, she was still digging the toy box to make sure she checked out everything in there. Ali was still wandering around to look for cans, bottles. I felt so lucky that I found something that can grab Sophia's attention when I'm busy, but also worried about she got too much TV. Worry is always parent's job, never the end.
As usual, we went to the buffet for dinner, children had fun playing with turtles and running up and down the bridge. At the end of the first day, we had loads of fun but already tired.

Wzg was so kind to take a day off and drive us to the Simmons Farm on Monday. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. I've heard many good words about Simmons Farm from coworkers and friends, so we drove all the way for pumpkin patch instead of going to the farm close to our house. But I was a little dissapointed that it wasn't good as I expected. The hay ride to the pumpkin patch was fairly long. I didn't care much because the view was fantastic, plus the driver looked like "Mike" in "Desperate Housewife". Probably because it was early on Monday moning, there were not much people at the farm when we got there. Neither Sophia nor Ali wanted to explore the maze or fire truck slide. All they liked was driving the tractor. Pumpkin field looked ugly and was pretty picked over. We managed to get some pictures and headed back. Sophia and Ali started to have some interests to play after we were done with the ride. They played a long time at the farmer's market. Sophia sorted again, she sorted the big and small pumpkins, while Ali digging the apple baskets.

After having some fresh apples as snack we brought Sophia and Ali to the petting zoo. There were quite a lot of animals, goats, pigs, chicks, ducks. Goats are most aggressive, little black pigs are very cute. Sophia was "Ga, ga, ga..." all the time and she fed goats with daddy, too.
At the end of the day we went to the most popular place in Pittsburgh, Point state park and Mount washington. Sure Sophia and Ali weren't interested in the view, but the cable car looked fun to them.
The big day came, October 31st! We planned to go to Children's museum bright in the morning, go shopping at outlet after lunch, carve pumpkin before dinner, set off trick or treat at 6pm. The result? We didn't made any of them as planned, but we had as much fun.
As we have two little ones, we could never make on time. We arrived Children's museum at 10:30am, a little later than we planned but still good. Sophia still loved everything in the museum, especially the garage. This time Sophia "drove" the mini cooper for a long time. A new thing that I found out was that she likes to hug people. She tried to hug a boy in the nusery, she tried to hug Ali sometimes without me asking. This must be learned from daycare. She looks so sweet when hugging people.
After a short lunch we headed to the outlet.

When we were about half way to the outlet, it started to rain. Nothing
would be more difficult than handling two toddlers and shopping in the
rain. So we made a U turn and headed back to Ross Park Mall. I felt
much easier to do indoor activities. As always we bought the tasty
pretzels in the mall to help Sophia and Ali stay still in the stroller.  Can
you belive we ate four of them, they are tastier when buy one get  one
free. At the end we even had some time to spend in the playgound,  both
Ali and Sophia had a lot fun sliding.
When we got home it wasn't too late for trick or treating, but no way
we had time to carve the pumpkins, we gave up. Wzg was home early to
cook for us. But the weather wasn't coorperating. It rained all night.
But Halloween is once a year, we couldn't miss that due to rain. We
still dressed up Ali and Sophia and went out to trick or treat. They  are
both too youny to say the words "trick or treat". Sophia understood
that she got good things to put in HER basket though. She walked two
houses mostly by herself, but refused to walk anymore. I don't blame  her,
it was dark and wet. I carried her for another 6 or 7 houses and  was
totally exausted. We were back with a basket of goodies. Sophia  went
though everything, looked like she was counting, who knows if she  had
any idea of numbers, but at least she knew the more the better. Wzg  took
over and brought her out with stroller for more treats. When they  were
back, Sophia held her basket really tight and happy, not
even  willing to share with mommy. Because they were all hers.
Sophia started to understand the word of "mine". She acted like a
little cop, watching all of her toys and belongings. Whenever she saw
Ali got close or touched her toys, she moved really fast, yelling  "mine,
mine, mine", until she got hold of the toy. She even robbed a  piece of
sausage from Ali. Now she will say "mine" whenever she wants  sthing
from me. What a sign of growth!

Pajamas are clothes

As I said earilier, I got an inspiration from the blog of a scrapbooker. I've been taking pictures of Sophia in pajamas every morning. She has cute pajamas, which are all from baby Gap. I wish I have a way to show them off, looking forward to the movie day in her daycare. Her sleeping positions are interesting, too. I tried to find which one is her favorite, but didn't have any luck. Can you tell? Anyway I'll make these pictures into a page later.
Today I got another inspiration from a "Eye see" album idea on Creating Keepsakes message board. I'm planning to make an album of our life in December, everyday will be one page.