July 4th Week With Grandma Zhong and Uncle QI

It was a busy week. Grandma Zhong and uncle Qi came to visit for about a week following the 4th weekend. Uncle Brad, auntie Karin, and cousin Kaia also came the same week (Joe can speak to the fun outings on their side).

We went to the Pacific Science Center on Saturday, and then Portland for 4th and 5th. Andy loved the Rose Garden and Oregon zoo.

The next week Andy got to skip school a lot and spend a lot of time with relatives. The next Saturday (7/10) we went to the Seward Park in Seattle in the morning and then both XiaoXong (Cedric) and XiaoShi (Andy) got a hair cut in the afternoon.

Seward Park

Posing with the new hair cuts, saying bye to Uncle Qi (back to CA)

XiaoXong and XiaoShi have been spending a lot of time together on weekends.

This is the first time the two held hands (on a Friday (7/3) evening stroll back from the Kirkland marina), and then they became hardly apart on weekends. Xiaoshi often asks about XiaoXong out of blue now.

2010 Olympics in Vancouver

Andy and I went on a 2.5 hour car trip to Vancouver for the last day of Olympics. He was good most the way through the ride before becoming cranky. But the promise of Chinatown food kept him going for the last hour.

We parked at Riverside in Richmond and took the air train to the city (Andy liked that a lot). The torch was beautiful. We spent a long time around it (too long, should not have got into the way-too-long line for seeing it close up). Andy fell asleep during the loudest street celebration of the hockey final of CAN v.s. U.S., such lively patriotic crowd! Andy woke up shortly on the train back. We stopped by Richmond again and we were content with the food again :)

More pictures:

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Slug at Daycare 6/7/2010

Another interesting daily summary from teacher Andrea at the daycare:

Andy had a great day! Today we painted paper grocery bags blue. We'll turn them into police men vests once they dry :) On the playground we found a slug in the garden. Andy was very cute and asked me if he oculd touch it. I said only with one finger and very softly. After he touched it he told me it was "slimy". Andy became very protective of the slug. When other children went to touch it, he'd tell htem what I told him and then he'd also tell them they could only touch it once :) It was really cute.

I can totally see him doing that, it seems to be in his nature to be caring, protective and rule abiding.

He started using the toilet at daycare lately. Hope he'll get potty trained soon.

Andy Talks in Daycare

Tuesday 4/27 is the day.
Today's report is a bit unusual:
- In the Deposition circle where Andy usually gets "happy, curious, friendly, busy", he also gets "chatty" marked.
- The hand written note started with "Andy had a fantastic day!" instead of "a good/great day", and was double in length that it went on to the back of paper.
It goes like this:
Andy had a fantastic day! Today on the playground he was speaking to us in full sentences! He found a lot ladybugs and was telling Vanya all about them then when I (Andria) got outside he came over to me, grabbed my hand and pulled me over to show and tell me. He kept saying "Look, I found a ladybug", "Oh, there's another one." Then we started talking about the plants in teh garden. I showed him where the strawberries were growing and he then told me "It going to grow big, big, big". It was really cute and made us all so happy :=)

Then he kept his mouth tight again the next couple days. On Friday he talked again when he found ants. Andria wrote "I guess I need to get into bugs because today on the playground Andy found some ants and talked to me about it :=) I love hearing his voice!"

Julie (was his teacher, left daycare recently) came to visit the daycare that Friday afternoon. Joe said Andy was talking to Julie when he picked up. At night, when we usually talk about what he did today, instead of the usual answer of "see daddy", Andy kept repeating "I talked to Julie". He must have been pretty excited seeing his favorite teacher coming back to visit him.

Lily 3 year Birthday

Went to Brian and Qiaolan's for a fun birthday party on Sunday 3/28.
Pictures here:

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Grandparents Ravets visit

Andy had a good week catching up with grandpa and grandma Ravets when they came to Seattle 4/9-4/15. They visited lots of fun and pretty places like the Skygit Tulip festival, Children's Museum, Aquarium.

More pictures here

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2.5 Year Observations

Language
- He strings lots of sentences together that sometimes surprises us of what he understands, things like it's raining hard, mom wearing light blue, abstract things like emotions.
- Andy speaks English primarily. When I ask him something in Chinese, he usually reply in English (unless it's something he only knows in Chinese). He understands the concept of 2 different languages, if I specifically ask him to reply in Chinese, he does it if he remembers the words. He has no trouble understanding Chinese, but has a hard time speaking it. I guess he thinks in his first language English.

Misc
- Andy has become very independent. His new favorite words is "Andy do it".
- His favorite food that he asks for the first thing every morning: bao zi and shao mai. And he know who makes them: "nai nai (grandma) makes bao zi, mama make shao mai".
- He is selective about what he wants, which outfit he wants to wear.
- You can't force him into doing anything now. You have to talk in a way that he agrees and says yes, and then he will do it (or stop doing it), otherwise it just ends up to be huge crying game drama (fortunately this only happens rarely).
- Toilet training: developed the ritual sitting of sitting on the toilet every evening and morning, but so far nothing comes out. Sometimes he says "that's too hard", but most the time he sings to the traditional Chinese tune of getting kids to pee.

Daycare
A few weeks ago, one of his favorite daycare teachers left the daycare, and a few days later while asking about his day, he popped out "Julie not there" out of blue. We all miss Julie. At daycare, Andy is famous for not saying a word (even though he talks no-stop at home). It's like he knows the teachers are trying to get him to talk so he purposely not doing so. One day a teacher told excitingly that he said two words: "no" and "snack". A couple of days later Julie informed us this: Andy only talked to Jordana (a girl in his class) and they were all giggly at nap time, and he said "I love you" today. When Julie asked if Andy said that, Andy just giggled. But that was weeks ago, the other night he said he talked to Maya (in his class).
Andy has been going to the daycare full time since February (his dad was watching him 3 days a week before), and he seemed to adjust much quicker than I expected. He still loves to go to his dad's home all the time (whenever asked what did you do today, the answer was always "see daddy"), but he is compliant with going to daycare every weekday morning. When asked about which day of the week it is, he usually says Saturday or Sunday :)