too much political campaign

We went grocery shopping over the weekend,and kaitlyn made some interesting comments.

At the bakery section, there are different kinds of bread to taste for free. She picked one, and I picked one. Kaitlyn sticked her bread in front of me and said "I'm John McCain, and you're Obama!" I looked at her confused, why?

She said "look at your bread." I looked at our bread, she was holding a piece of white bread, and I was holding a wheat bread with nuts/seeds.

I can't help laughing hard - has this presidential campaign coverage been too overwhelmed?! I swear we didn't discuss any racial difference between the two candidates, so she has to overhear it from TV, or figure out herself based on her own observation. What a drama of this presidential campaign!

Anyway, Kaitlyn had fun in the backyard this weekend. She went to a friend's house for playday on Saturday.

On Sunday, daddy set up a tent in backyard. They stayed outside watching stars at night. It's so much fun!

Mommy, tent is ready! I have everything I need for tonight!

Oh oh, we have a visitor!

Mommy, am I going to smash the froggy if he goes under my tent?

What should I do?

She is afraid of frogs after she saw a smashed frog on the street last year.

Ohh, one more fun thing I have never tried before - making bread!

Start from scratch, add flour, then milk...

Then egg, and sugar...

Then raisins and cinnamons...

Umm, so yummy - I waited all night already...

Things grandma told me this week...

Grandma told Kaitlyn she's leaving next week, asked if she'll miss her. Kaitlyn said yes. "why?" asked grandma. "because grandma cooks so well!" She loves the homemade dumplings mom makes for her.

She is so spoiled these three week - grandma try to make different things for breakfast and dinner. She eats two small portion dinners after school. Her favorite ones are dumplings grandma made from scratch. There are different fillings each time with different vegetables and meats.

Grandma asked her if she wants a little brother or sister. She said "absolutely NO". Why - "there are two reasons." she explained seriously. "First, is because he (or she) will smash her stuff on the floor all the time. Second, diapers are so stinky!"

I know she had "bad" influence from schoolmates. She has two good friends (both boys sitting at the same table), one has 2 siblings and another one has 3. They share stories together. She even told grandma secretly, that those boys giggle at school class playing with underwear (brought from home secretly). Ohh, my gosh!

To give you an idea how she thinks touching parents' "taboo" is funny when I was doing laundry...
Something daddy wants to add - this girl likes watching war movies since a baby. She watched TV series, like "band of brothers" with daddy and grandpa twice. She would crying when her "hero" died or hurt, she would be scared(sometime excited) with gunfire, and cheer when win the battle. Well, I'm glad at least there are some parental control here, that daddy skips bloody and explicited scenes if any.

Busy weekend

After gymnastic class in the morning. A girl from the neighbor came to play. It's so strange, these two girls haven't click at all until recently. Kaitlyn even push her out of our house once (so embarrassing!) All of sudden recently, they want to play with each other all the time - thanks to Hurricane Ike, we get to know each other better.

They had a crazy afternoon. They played ponies, barbies and princess toys, drew pictures, and played dressing up. What a mess!

We went to visited my friend's home after lunch Sunday. I know she wants to stay and play with her two girls. But she ends up stayed there till 6pm. Next time, I need to set the ground rule before leaving the house, or we'll not go. I was tired...

Grandma is here,and...

Grandma (my mom) came to visit us for three weeks. She got here on the 21st. You would think I would have more free time, and would load blog with pictures and new contents. But my schedule seems even busier :-) Guess too busy entertaining everyone, haha...

Grandma had a long trip, a one day trip turned out to be two days. But the time she was finally here last Sunday evening, we were all tired. It's funny that since Kaitlyn always sees grandma and grandpa on msn together, she assumes they're always together and are coming here together as well. And asked why only grandma is here? What happen to grandpa?

She didn't feel distance at all even though she hasn't met grandma face to face for more than 3 years. I'm so happy to see that. Since she occupied the guest room downstairs, we told her she need to either get back to her own room upstairs with grandma next door, or share the bed with grandma downstairs. Tough call; she quickly came up a solution - she'll sleep by herself downstairs from Monday through Thursday, then sleep with grandma upstairs (there are two twin beds in grandma's room) from Friday to Sunday! What a sneaky idea - basically she doesn't want to give up her room downstairs but doesn't want grandma feel bad. I seriously doubt she will do that...

One of the first thing grandma wants to do is try to feed her. She said the girl looks so skinny. I know, especially after this summer, she swims a lot, and plays outside a lot at school no putting any sunscreen. She is skinny and dark. The weekend before grandma got here, I weighted her at HEB when grocery shopping, she was only 28.9lbs, I can't believe it! Her last checkup was 34lbs in August (still way below average, like bottom 10%). Did she lose 5lbs because of the sickness right before the Hurricane? I feel so guilty... but she just won't put on any weight no matter how much she eats.

Amazingly, one week after grandma is here, I took her weight at HEB again this weekend, she is 35lbs! How could this happen, maybe the scale was broken last week (I hope so)! But I know grandma tried hard to bring her appetite back.

This is what grandma told me how much she eats for breakfast half of the time this week, Such a big breakfast eater - one whole boil egg, a cup of juice or milk, one Texas sized toast (or two small muffins), and small bowl of fruits. She eats slowly and quietly as grandma described...funny girl, is she really inspired by Michael Phelps?! When she gets home from school, grandma prepares special food every day, she loves the baby handmade dumplings grandma made. She eats 15-20 pieces each time. After finishing her homework and playing outside, she will eat dinner with us again around 7pm. Maybe she didn’t eat much lunch after her big breakfast, but was hungry when she gets home.

Another funny thing grandma noted is she is very particular about picking her clothes to school everyday. She stands in front her drawer for quite some time, picks the one (mainly by color) that best fit her mood, then matches socks and shoes, and hair band. I normally let her do this the night before to avoid time rush in the morning, but she changes her mind every so often. She has her own opinion of how to match, sometimes she listens your suggestion, sometimes she doesn't. As long as she doesn't go to school naked or wear something not allowed by school, we don't bother too much change her mind (such a nasty battle :-).

What else grandma noticed? Ohh, another big thing - she can't speak Chinese anymore! We know she speaks less and less Chinese at home, but she totally understands our conversions, just responds in English. So my mom pretends she doesn't understand English, try to get her speak more Chinese. She told me one big difference between two grandmas (daddy's mom and my mom) is Nainai speaks much better English! I also noticed when she speaks Chinese now; she pretty much lost the sense of four tones. I know we kind of let it go after her starts school, hoping she could catch up with her schoolmates faster. Now apparently she fits in new environment way faster than we expected, and forgets the other one already! See if we can get her back on track again.

So many interesting things grandma notice, I'll try to write down as it goes.

More waiting...

It has been three days after Hurricane Ike touched down on Saturday. People have done a lot to improve the situation. Lucky the weather is nice enough to keep recovery effort going on. The constant news on news doesn't make me feel any better - food/ice shortage, gas shortage...

Kaitlyn is so happy to be off school, but... getting bored. I took her to the park yesterday morning, we had a good time. This is one good thing from hurricane disaster - I could spend more time with her, I have no complains at all.

On our way back from playground, I found pieces of shingles laying on our front yard. I wondered where they came from. I looked up our roof, ohh great! It's ours! I guess they were blown loose during hurricane, with winds picked up today, they finally fell off. Doesn't look that bad, at least I didn't notice any leaking roof inside the house. Well, I got some work to do tomorrow, calling people to estimate and repair...

Yesteday evening, I asked Kaitlyn to play with neighborhood kids on the street while I was cooking. Things didn't work very well. She is so shy to play with them, mainly because she doesn't feel comfortable playing with kids she doesn't know. I walked her there, talked to one mom I know better from the church. (She ended up talking to her most of the time!) That neighbor had a lot of guests over from Houston and Pearland to stay over, there were at least 1o kids running around crazy with toy cars, scooters, bicycles, etc. at one point.

I don't blame her not mingle with them. Most of those kids know each other because the five moms around the corner don't work, so the kids all play together in the afternoon everyday. By the time she/we get home, they're mostly ready to get back to the houses or back home for dinner already, she doesn't have much chance playing with them. I feel bad for her. There are pros and cons for working parents, it's our choices and we believe we're making the right decision. This is truly a constant battle for working moms all the time.

As boring as she is at home all day yesterday, I dropped her off at Christian's house today. She was so excited. "Finally! Yeah finally!" That's what she said. Even kids at this young age feel the joyfulness of friendship - even though they both started making news friends at their new schools, they still miss each other a lot! Hope she would have some good friends growing up together for the rest of her life.

Well, got to go pick her up and cook for dinner.

Just got a message from her school, they will be closed for the rest of the week - ohh my gosh, we'll need to help each other on babysitting or just need to bring her to work...

surviving Ike

One day after hurricane Ike strike Houston/Galveston area, things start coming back to normal in our neighborhood; at least we got electricity and water since last night. Luckily we didn't notice any major damage to our home, and what a great feeling with A/C on in such a hot, humid nasty day!
Since we got off work Thursday afternoon, daddy checked house and yard, we felt much better after making sure trees were tight, fences were strong, stocked with enough supplies, etc. Still when we noted some neighbors boarded up windows, we were wondering if we did enough. But it was too late to buy anything anyway. All I can tell myself is I’m prepared for the worst, but pray for the best.

My main concerns were wind damage (due to empty space behind us) and power outage (based on prior experience), which happened to be the biggest problems after fact. I was so concerned when I saw forecast saying the eye center will pass just west of Katy - that means we'll the in the worst spot of this whole thing.

We decided to stay home ride out the storm, because we don't want to stuck on road with others who absolutely needed be evacuated, I hate to get on more tiresome trip while Kaitlyn just recovered from sickness, home is home. In case anything happen, we're here to fix first hand.

I really appreciate daddy's effort to prepare for the hurricane so early this time. He said this one is coming this way more than a week ago (of course not expecting an exact hit on Houston) while Ike was still in Atlantic, so he tighten up trees a week ago already, we both kept gas tank full all week.
Friday daytime was a relative easy ride for us. Instead of watching news forecasting scary outcomes that drive me crazy, we went to Target in the mooring before rainfall started. There were a lot people buying all kinds of thing you can imaging. When cell phone services still worked, many friends called in checking on us, we were so touched and thankful.

Friday night was a long night. Way before wind started picking up; power started showing signs of outage. We hurried up showered, clean up dishes, and double check flashlight, etc. We moved an extra mattress to our master bath closet in case of tornado. I asked Kaitlyn to prepare extra sets of clothes in a sealed bag in case we water gets into house or broken roof and she remembered about her snacks too:-)

Just when we're ready, electricity flashed several times and finally went out before 9pm. I believe Center Point cut our power instead of wait for power going out itself. It was peach dark in the house, the nervousness feeling started spreading in the house. Kaitlyn has a whistle, she blew the whistle every time lights went out so we could locate where she was.

See what she prepared before lay down on our bed. Beside whistle and flashlight, she built a nest for her three favorite toys. She wouldn't even let me leave it on nightstand. Unfortunately, daddy left the camera in his office, we couldn't take any pictures for the whole thing, hope the camera is still there by the time he goes back to work :-) Well, found these two pictures taken by my cell phone,haha.

While I tried to stay up with daddy listening to the radio all night, I can't hold it anymore before 11pm, thinking we will be fine at least till Ike landed around 2-3am. I still wake up constantly hearing wind blowing our windows. My leg started hurt bad during slept, I had to take Advil to be able to walk around, which put me to sleep for a while. Every time I woke checking daddy, he is at a different spot reading book and listening radio.

No need to describe how terrible the wind groaned in the courtyard, trees in backyard all bent at least 45degrees back and forth. All I prayed for was my windows and roof at the time :-)

By 6'ish Saturday morning, daddy finally laid down to rest, my mom checked on us see if we're alright. By noon, we finally were able to step outside. I see kids running around enjoy the fresh air. It was horrible without AC all night with windows closed tight. Still some neighbors’ trees went down, roof got partial ripped off, fence felt down, and those are all good as long as everyone is safe! I thank god's mercy the eye didn't pass right through us, but I know there are so many people suffer badly with all kinds of damages to their homes. Amazing what Mother Nature did to these many people within a day, within a second!

Saturday's life without power was horrible - not only because the unbreathble humid air, but the panic when I heard possible water contamination. Later on I heard from neighbor that we're on a different water treatment system. My husband talked about driving to Austin, but I didn't agree because of the condition of both of us, we could easily fell asleep while driving... We decided to go to a friend's house (a minute away) to at least cook food left in the fridge, hopefully by then power will be back.
That was the sweetest thing Kaitlyn could ask for - she immediately offered to sleepover there (because she loves to play with their two girls). She went to pack her clothes, her sleeping bag, flashlight, and toys. Ohh man, dream comes true for her - sleepover. Isn't that a little early? Will she wake in the middle of night crying? Well, specially situation, I may have to let her do that just in case.

The happiest persons out of a disaster are always the children - she doesn't know what's happening, the chaos means no school, but more freedom to play and taking adventures. I remember that from my childhood as well, ha-ha!

P.S. Power just went out again, I had to cut short. What an experience for us, hope for the best for everyone.

Guess who we ran into last night?!

We went to Lifetime yesterday evening swimming. We were all tired to cook dinner. Kaitlyn voted Danny's, we both say "no". But what other choices do we have around here at 8:30pm?

So we went to Danny's. Just when we walked into the restaurant, guess who did daddy saw?! - Christian's family! We haven't seen each other since school started. Kaitlyn and Christian goes to different elementary schools, they sure miss each other. She asked for play date several times, but I always prevaricated it.

It meant for her to meet Christian here, she insist coming here, haha! When she saw him, both of their eyes light up. We sat next to their table, but both of them were a little shy at the beginning. We invited Christian to our table, but he is shy, then Kaitlyn offered to sit on their table! My husband said in Chinese (so they don't hear), that daughter is going away already, we need to have another boy (to bring back to us a daughter), haha! Poor daddy, he is jealous already his little girl is growing up, leaving us! Imaging when she starts dating... that guy is going to have trouble with future father-in-law.

So, we end up ate dinner by ourselves, watching our daughter eating dinner with "imaginary in-laws" next table. What a funny weird feeling... Now I can feel how my parents felt about my first dating, my marriage. What a life!

Sick girl?

Two weeks into the new semester, Kaitlyn got sick. I know something wasn't right on Thursday, she said she felt cold at school, her voice sounds rough. That night, she walked to our bed in the middle of night asked for water and lost her voice already.

I was hoping it will go away the next day, so daddy took her to school, I packed medicine for her school nurse. When we picked her up Friday afternoon, she can barely talk, and started having fever at night. So this weekend, we stayed home the whole time.

Saturday morning when I washed Feizai outside, I sure feel fall breeze is here! I love that feeling, so freshen, so cool! The sun is still very bright, but not the kind of burning hot on my back. The air smells so different now, not like steaming dry/or humid anymore, I can smell the peaceful and calming of autumn! I love it! This is so strange, weather changed overnight just like that!

In the evening, we sat in backyard, enjoyed the flowers daddy just planted. At this moment, she doesn't look like sick at all:-) I was joking she pretends being sick to get our attention and get things she wants, haha...

By dinner time, she is out again, felt horrible. Hopefully she is good enough to go to school on Monday :-)

More homework

It's Kaitlyn's third day at school, she is having good time so far. She likes cafeteria food (junk food the best), at least save me time to think about what to pack lunch for her :-) She made friends in class and on school-bus already:-) That's always good to hear. She likes PE class, that she asked for pillow before dinner already. Last night, she went down before 9pm - a big bonus for us!

I finally sat down checking her backpack after dinner, wow, more folders - full of homework for me again! Kaitlyn laughed at me, "yeah, no homework for me, for mommy and daddy again!" Sure, there are more documents for us to read and sign off, and of course, to make sure we get the message to sign up for volunteer or/and contributions. Haha, is this the beginning I need to sell cookie dough or help with school projects? I'd love to, but will see how much time I have...

Based on my observations, kindergarten is much more structured than pre-school, even though her pre-school teacher is very good at organizing the class activities and parents are more involved. At pre-school, if kids don't follow rules or don't want to participate, not a big deal. If parents don't agree, feel free to say so. Now, not only Kaitlyn told me about various rules teachers taught her, I have seen guidelines posted in her classroom, and have read/sign off several documents sent from school. Real school time!

Thank goddness Olympics is over, and...

the school starts tomorrow... She's going have tough time adjusting to the new schedule!

I'm really surprised how much she enjoyed watching the games and how much she absorbed from watching them!

Not only she finds her idol - Michael Phelps, she pretends melt down or crashed every time she hears/sees Michael on TV, she puts down whenever she's doing when she hears Michael's voice, she screams for him when he speaks or performs. OMG, I can totally see how she will be a drama queen in a couple years :-)

She picks up rules for gymnastics, diving, and beach volleyball, etc. It's so interesting to see that she judged one diver had less water splash than the other before commentator talked about it. She predicted which one will be out because of underperformance and which one should have the metal. She sighed when Misty May and Kerri Walsh missed any points and cheered for any good shots.

She gazed the screen when Nastia Liukin performed. Then, of course, she requests to join gymnastics class again and again…

Now she recognizes more national flags than I do, all the way from USA to China, to Jamaica, to Nigeria, to Germany, to Britain, to Australia... At one point when we watch swimming competitions, she can tell nationality by different colors/styles of swimming suits athletes wears!

It's funny, sometimes she confused between countries and states. She asked where is Maine or California? I guess because she overheard we talked about where the US athletes come from, she thought that's equivalent to a country, haha...

Here we're watching the closing ceremony, and she got so excited with the music from tv, and started dancing crazy, wearing three deflated balloons as a bicycle helmet! I think she got that idea from the performers on tv, thanks goddess, she's not imitating those climbing the tower!