Lunch box

Sophia started school last week, and started after school care this Monday. She will have to bring lunch to after school care.
It's always a tough job to prepare nutritional yet tasty lunch box for kids. I will try to write down what she brings and what she eats and see how lunch goes here.

Monday (8/30/2010)
Main: BBQ beef off bamboo skewers
Side: Potato salad
Fruit: green grapes
Snack: strawberry yogurt
drink: water (my kids love water, it's always the best drink for lunch)

Wednesday (9/1/2010)
Main: Pulled pork sandwich
Side: NA
Fruit: NA
Snack: vanilla yogurt
drink: Organic Mango punch

Friday (9/3/2010)
Main: Italian bread and Canadian bacon sandwich
Side: chocolate waffle snack
Fruit: NA
Snack: strawberry yogurt
drink: Organic Mellon punch

Friday (9/10/2010)
Main: Pork dumplings
Side: string cheese
Fruit: grapes
Snack: chocolate gram gold fish
drink: water

Monday (9/13/2010)
Main: Turkey sandwich with honey mustard sauce
Side: string cheese
Fruit: apples
Snack: Goldfish crackers, raisins
drink: water

Monday (9/15/2010)
Main: Chicken wings with white rice
Side: homemade cake roll
Fruit: mandarin oranges
Snack: Yogurt covered raisins
drink: water

First day of school & 13 years to go

Yesterday was the first day of school for Sophia. It was a big day for her, for me, for all of us. Because she is starting Kindergarten, which makes this truly the first day of 13 years of school.
Everything went very well because we were all prepared. Sophia attended student orientation last week, she spent half day at her school with her classmates and her teacher. She got to know the principal, test drove the classroom and even had quite a long ride on the school bus. As parents we had parent night two days before school. We get to meet her teacher (she is great, been teaching for 37 years), other parents and know more about school rules, curriculum.
Yesterday morning, Sophia got up early, dressed herself, had a good breakfast, and then walked to the bus stop, rode the bus with her favorite doll (previously named Cody, now named Victoria). The first day was a shortened day, a little over an hour. When I pulled up at the pick up spot after school, she was standing in line with other kids, with her name tag hang around her neck, holding her doll, carrying her brand new pink backpack, super cute. Yes, every parent thinks their own children are the cutest of the bunch.

This is no long preschool, this is real school, it goes on everyday. So she went up to the bus this morning, too. I can imagine myself seeing her off everyday at the bus stop in the next 13 years, and then she will fly away. I will try my very best to enjoy Sophia to be around me in the next 13 years.
It's a whole new journey for me as a parent because Sophia is our first child. When Olivia and Lucas start school things will be much easier.

Ready for school?

We went to Target today to get gift cards for our neighbor girls for their high school graduation party. There were lots of people doing back to school shopping. Sophia is going to kindergarten this fall. I can't wait to see her in school, she grows so fast, I still remember the days that she was a little baby in my arms.

上了中文学校以后

宁宁给她最心爱的娃娃起了中文名字“星星”，她的小马中文名字叫“右手”。
她经常自言自语练中文。“我今年四岁 ，妹妹一岁，爸爸五岁，妈妈十岁，爷爷七岁，奶奶五岁"

Mini Summer Vacation

There are lots of kid's picture books talking about summer vacation. It always something good, something not so good but always with a happy ending.
Our mini summer vacation last weekend was all like the stories in kid's picture books.
Something good? The beach and food, beach at Baltimore wasn't very good for adults, very crowded but good enough for kids. Food was fantastic, great restaurants, seafood, ribs, and authentic Chinese food at Rockville.
Something fun? Fishing crabs, nothing is better than eating fresh blue crabs.
Happy ending? I had a haircut, very short one. Kids loved peach picking and eating at the end of the trip.

Biking

I was amazed that Sophia was able to hop on and play the bike without any practice. It looks like the training wheels are very very helpful. Thinking about how we learned biking years ago without training wheels.

Dance recital

Sophia's 8 week dance class was finished wonderfully. Our whole family went to her dance recital. The show was consisted of three parts, Jazz, ballet and tap. It was a very cute show.

Pigtails vs Ponytail

Sophia wore pigtails to school and got lots of compliments. She was really happy until she told me about her friend at school has ponytail. "I want ponytail", Sophia said. I told her she has to wait until her hair is longer. Sophia can't wait, she pulled off one of her pigtails and claimed, "mom, I have ponytail now!"

American girl dolls

Sophia and Olivia got American girl bitty twin dolls for Christmas. Sophia named her doll Pear, Olivia's Chris.
Olivia is still too young to tell difference between the $10 doll and American girl doll, she loves them all the same.
However Sophia loves Pear very very much, especially loves her beautiful hair. She likes to have her hair down instead of in pigtails. She takes her to many places, to Florida for Christmas vacation, to restaurants, to Lowes to make wood crafts with her.
Sophia likes to dress Pear up, she said Pear still need Tinkerbell costume. We'll see if American girl will make one in the future.
Sophia loves to dress like her doll, likes to take pictures with her doll Pear, she even made matching bracelet with her doll.
But her favorite thing to do with Pear is having tea party.

Schleich Animals

I never liked plastic animals until I found this adorable farm lunch bag. It will hold all of our Schleich Animals, girls love them very much.

A very nice weekend

This weekend was so warm that I brought all of our summer clothing. I can't wait for the summer to come. Sophia and Olivia spent a long time outside playing sand together.

Rainy day

What do you do on a rainy day? Sophia plays running puddles, with her Dora rain coat and strawberry rain boots. Even though she already grew out of Dora, but she was still so exited to wear that rain coat.

Egg Hunt

This year, it's not too cold, not too hot, just perfect on egg hunt day. Sophia did great, got lots of eggs and two prizes, two chocolate bunnies.

Spring is right around the corner

So, we can do more activities outside.

She asked...

I thought it was going to be a tough night tonight because of the time change. Things turned out better than I expected. Now kids are all in bed and I'm relaxed.



During the bedtime story Sophia asked quite a lot,
She asked me to read the book "The rain came down" by David Shannon, she thought David Shannon is very smart because lots of her favorite books were done by him, "Duck on bike", "Pirates don't change diapers", "Too many toys", "Alice the fairy", and "The rain came down". I know that lots of people think David Shannon's illustration scary, but Sophia truly loves his artwork, so do I.
She asked me to buy her playmobil toys when she saw the catalog in her book piles, I recommended her to ask Santa when Christmas comes.
She asked me to bring her to the library to borrow some Charlie and Lola story books tomorrow. She asks me to buy her toys and food but never asks me to buy books, because she thinks library has better books. That is where we should go when we need books.
She asked me to make a calendar for her to check when she brushes her teeth everyday, and asked me turn it in to her teacher on Tuesday. No problem, I'd love to do that to help her brushing.
She asked me to bring her goggles when we go swimming next week. I always forgot, I will remember next time.

With all the above requests, discussion, we read four books together tonight. It took us more than an hour in bed. That's quite normal length of Sophia's bedtime story. I can't imagine when Olivia is older how long I can make both girls to bed.

Favorites at this time

Sophia's favorites could be different every minute, but there are it's always interesting to write them down.
Favorite color: hard to say now, she likes many colors, maybe rainbow is her favorite
Favorite sports: running, swimming (just started to like being in water)
Favorite food: flounder fish fillet soup, she can eat more than a pound a time (ETA, pork tongue, she just ate a ton of it the other night)
Favorite song: the one she made up
Favorite game: she will say Elmo game, but I try to limit her computer time, she likes to play diu shoujuan with the whole family, we played Monopoly tonight
Favorite book: Richard Scarry's big word book, David Shannon's books
Favorite outfit: dress+ tigthts+ boots
Favorite toy: she loves dolls and have tea parties with them
Favorite thing to do on a rainy day: arts and crafts

(eta, she's into American girl now, especially dressed the same as her American girl doll, Pair and Chris)

She's 4

Sophia is very into birthday party at this stage. So we threw a big party at Children's museum, we all love it.

Birthday girl



Cupcakes for friends


Treat bags for friends



Self Portrait

New favorite

Our new favorite bedtime book is Olivia. Not only Sophia but also me love it to death. The character is superb cute, the story is fun. My favorite part is bedtime kisses, we have to kiss each other when we get to that page. Sophia's favorite part is counting books, she can "read" that page now.
Actually it's Olivia's baby present. It turned out my favorite baby present so far. I'm sure Olivia will enjoy it when she's older.
Now I need to get more copies of Olivia series.
I also bought the Olivia calender and will rip it apart and frame some pages to decorate Olivia's nursery with that. It's gonna to look cute.

A new bedtime favorite

The best part of this book is that it reminds kids to go potty before go to bed, love this part.

Our backyard

Sophia and me drew this masterpiece of our backyard the other day. Sophia drew the red sun, black bird and green leaves. She's still not very good at holding pens, but she now knows what she's drawing and what she wants to draw.