A mothering journey with my two beautiful girls
Brownie turned three today. We didn’t have time to make a doggie cake or take a trip for her, but we did went out and buy ice cream for her birthday.
She has always been a good doggie to us, and now she’s proven again to be the perfect pet for the Chen family… tolerating Maddy’s grabbing and the attention Maddy has stolen away from her. She is more than a pet to us.
Happy 3rd Birthday, Brownie Love Chen!!
Birthday_pic
We got Maddy’s first school pictures back.
Unfortunately, Maddy has this “what-do-you-want-from-me” look on her individual pictures and the “I-am-tired-of-all-the-posing” on her class picture.
1. Classmates
2. School_pic
I was delighted to find the mailing alias for Cisco RTP parents yesterday. After I sent out an email requesting for daycare information, I got lots of inputs from different parents.
Our first choice for Maddy’s daycare is still Primrose. It sits in the perfect location between Cisco and ‘hopefully’ our new home. It’s less than one mile from work and less than one mile from home, a highly recommended 5-star daycare with a waitlist of at least 6 months.
Other than Bright Horizons (which was my second choice before), quite a few parents recommended Knowledge Beginnings. I didn’t consider it before because I didn’t know anyone who goes there. It is now my second choice. It’s a bit far (about 5 miles away), but I think it’s worth it as our first alternatives, plus they have webcam as well.
Their websites:
Primrose_web
Knowledge_Beginnings
Maddy ate her dinner all by herself last night.
She had overcooked steamed egg (kind of like the scrambbled egg texture that she can pick them up), carrots, peas, corns, string beans, and some pasta and cherrios.
Mommy and daddy were too busy watching American Idol, so we thought it’s time for her to practice eating on her own. She definitly likes the carrots and pasta over other things because we noticed that there were only the green stuff left on the table.
Anyway, she ate everything on the table top, then moved to her treasure box (leftover in her bib). She was mad again when I took off her bib because there was still food in it.
Maybe we’ll start teaching her to use the spoon soon so she can eat stuff like congee by herself.
Maddy learned to wave “Hi”. It is still inconsistent and most likely she won’t do it on demand, but she does it when we’re alone.
The first time she did it, she waved to herself. It’s so cute watching her studying her own fingers and figured out how to stretch and close her palm. I think she was surprised to find her new ability.
Maddy did great on her first road trip. The ride from the Bay area to LA is about 6 1/2 hours.
Except the 10 minutes wails on the way down, she was happy and content most of the time. Nally kept her company on the way down. I was worried in the beginning about how tough it might be to have two younsters in a car for a long road trip, but both of them are great troopers!
We went down to LA with friends this past weekend and also met up with some ex-Dallas folks there. Maddy met Stephanie, who just turned two. I can’t get over what a sweet ‘girly’ girl Stephanie is. Everyone got hugs and kisses from her, except Joe. Stephanie gave him a hug and declined to kiss himpolitely.
Auntie Jeanette was graciously enough to be our personal tour guide in the Disneyland. Of all things, Maddy loves Eeyore. She cracks up just looking at Eeyore. We made an exception and Maddy got to stay up late to watch the fireworks, ride the “It’s a small world”, and we watched people doing the swing dance for a while.
It reminded us of our Disney World honeymoon: how we went on rides one after another for 5 days straight, and were all rides out at the end. We would have never thought that 5 years later, we have a daughter who is like both mommy and daddy in her own little ways.
On the way back, Maddy and mommy caught daddy eyeing other people’s funnel cake. Daddy was embarrassed and insisted that he was looking at their ‘boobs’, but we knew better. He was looking at all the whip cream, strawberries, and powder sugar on top of the funnel cake and kicking himself in the butt that he only got a big cookie which he didn’t share with anyone five minutes earlier.
All the babies in Maddy’s homebase were out at their beach area playing in the sandbox when I went to pick up Maddy. Usually she flaps her arms and starts to act like a drama queen when she sees me, but she didn’t even give me a second of her time yesterday.
Maddy saw me, look at me for 2 seconds, and went back to play sand. I went to her room to gather her stuff, thinking maybe she didn’t see me. Later I walked up to her and called her name, but she didn’t even look up. She saw me and heard me all right. Kendall’s mom came to pick Kendall up, and she didn’t get much better treatment from Kendall either. Kendall actually crawled away from her and pretended like she was busy. Then we moms had to console each other because our babies were having too much fun and didn’t care for us at that moment.
It already started…my baby purposely ignored me. It’s cute, but how rude!
Because of our open house and people being in-and-out to see the condo, Brownie has been staying at her ‘boarding school’ since last Sat. I found myself having so much ‘free’ time without her, but we miss her dearly.
I watch her from the daycare webcam, and it makes me so proud that she looks like a ‘pro’ now, being in the center of the dog pack and running around like there is no tomorrow. When she first started, she used to whine so much that the caretaker had to hold her literally the entire time.
Some friends asked me why I didn’t just leave Brownie with them. It’s not that I don’t trust them, and I know that Brownie will get lots of ‘private’ love and care from them.
But something about her understanding that the world doesn’t revolve around her and learning to be social is more appealing to me.
Perhaps that is also why I chose a daycare over a nanny or a homecare for Maddy. Maybe it reflects my personality (my lack of personality). I’m an introvert.. shy and afraid of crowd. Sometimes I wish I am more outgoing, like Joe or my sister. Maybe that’s why I am happy when my girls are social and independent.
We went to the Tech Museum this afternoon during the open house hours of our condo.
I thought we could finish everything in a short time, then I realized that Joe was more excited than all the kids there and had decided to stop by EVERY exhibit.
We got the combo tix so took Maddy with us to see the IMAX show “Top Speed”.
It was louder than I would liked for Maddy, so we used the blanket to cover her ears. She was scared at first: grabbing on to my shirt tightly, but still turned her head to see the big screen. After a few minutes, she’s like a pro; watching the movie with us like she does it all the time.
After the movie, daddy made us go downstairs to see the Segway. We got a good video of him trying out the fancy ’skate board’. Maddy was very very tired after the geeky adventure.
I wonder if Maddy will grow up complaining to us that she didn’t have a chance to be a Califonia girl.
To give un-biased and unpersonal reason, here is an article forwarded to me by a co-worker:
http://money.cnn.com/2003/12/08/pf/bplive03_east/index.htm
America’s hottest towns: East
These two towns topped our ranking of the most desirable places to live in the eastern U.S. January 2, 2004: 11:40 AM EST
NEW YORK (Money Magazine) - These two places, Cary, N.C. and Surgarland Run, Va., topped our rankings of the most desirable places to live in the eastern United States. For the complete list of top-ranked places to live click here.
Cary, N.C
? Population: 104,210
? Pop. increase from: 1990: 118%
? Median household income: $77,091
? Median home price: $207,000
Shade trees are everywhere, the mayor answers his own phone, neighbors know each other by name. But for all its folksy calm, Cary is deceptively high-powered. Mayor Glen Lang is also the millionaire CEO of a wireless broadband company.
The town has the highest median income ($77,091) in North Carolina and claims the highest percentage of Ph.D.s in the country for towns with more than 75,000 people. Something in the water? More likely it’s the 14 major universities within an hour’s drive and North Carolina’s famed Research Triangle Park, whose tenants include Cisco, Ericsson, IBM and Nortel.
With Curtis moved on to the toddler class next room and Patricia leaving the center (her mom is no longer with Cisco), it’s been quite nice in Maddy’s homeroom because there are usually only 5 babies with two and a half caretakers there.
Two month old baby Tyler joined the homebase. The ‘big’ babies like to surround him and check him out while he lays on the boppy. Tyler has a good temper, and he is alert with his environment. Ryan finally has another boy buddy to play with in the homebase.
