01.29.09
The little hope
The little girl has started to poop in the toilet. In fact, she actually pooped in the toilet more than she did in the pull-up this whole week.
I am finally hopeful to becoming a pullup-free mom!!
01.21.09
Little reader
The big girl has been struggling with reading since the beginning of kindergarten. She knows all the phonics and can sound out everything, but has trouble putting the sounds together. Language is not her strongest strength, but I didn’t want to push her other than our daily reading practices. It still stresses out the internal “Chinese” part of me whenever I volunteer in her class and see that other kiddos sound out words like “children”, “subtraction” with ease.
Something finally clicked for her around Christmas timeframe. We went through two or three stories of Bob Books set 1 each night, and she was able to read most of them. Although the words are short and the sentences repeatitive, I was delighted that things are clicking for her finally.
Last night all the Chen girls gathered on Livy’s new big girl bed for bed time stories. Just when I was ready to take the “When You Give a Pig a Pancake” book she had picked out, the girl proceeded to read the story all on her own. Honestly I was taken by surprise, totally floored by her initiation and the confidence in her tone (probably also because she was reading to Livy).
And just like that, she read through the whole story. I couldn’t be more proud of her accomplishment!
01.05.09
A few milestones of the drama princess
Somewhere around Xmas time, the little girl learned to color within the lines. No more scribbles and meaningless slashes. She is very focused to a ridiculous level during coloring time:
She’s finally learned to use the mouse as well. For the longest time, she just watched Maddy and preferred to point to what she wanted to see despite my effort to get her to use the mouse herself. I have to give credits to ah-goon for this one. One day (also around Xmas break), they bonded over computer time and he got the little girl use the mouse herself.
The only problem now is that there seems to be more conflicts between the sisters since she surfs the web (Kidzui, of course..) on her own and no longer complies with her older sister.
On the potty training front, she has moved from just us putting her on the potty to actually telling us when she needs to go. Her mother (me) had a grand plan of putting her in underwear at all waking hours to ‘make’ her learn the beauty of going to toilet for #2 during the holidays. Unfortunately, the child out-witted me. She now ONLY poops in her sleep when she has a pull-up on.
We should probably just go cold turkey on her and do away with pull-ups, but I couldn’t even bare the thought of having to clean up all the “poopness” at 3:00 am.
01.01.09
Goodbye 2008
2008 had been an incredible year of experiencing God’s provision in our household. From us (well, mostly me) frankly searching/reseaching/deciding the type of school we want Maddy to be in, to building a new townhome which got delayed twice by the builder (and resulted in this exact timing of when we actually needed the place PLUS top of the line frig, washer and dryer the builder gave us for free.. oh, and they finished the garage last minute too), to my parents selling their 20 yr old house in a small town of TN in two weeks (It might seem nothing if the house is in CA and the year is 1998, but this house was in TN in the year of 2008), to ah-ma getting a job offer within a week of moving to NC.
When everything just lined up in such an amazing order, we know that God has His hands on them. We are definitely not THAT lucky. We closed the year of 2008 with thankfulness, and pray that God will in return use us for blessings to others in 2009.
Happy New Year!!