When you wish upon a star...

Livie was overtired at night when we were at the hotel in Big Island, Hawaii.   She started crying when we told her that she couldn’t take the stuffed dolphin left in the room by the hotel.  Daddy tried every way to distract her from being upset.

Daddy: Livie, let's make a wish upon the stars.  What would you like to wish for?

Olivia: I wish I can have a stuffed dolphin.

Daddy: I wish my kids will stay with me forever, even when they grow up.

Olivia rolled her eyes, gave daddy a look and said, "You will!  So make another one!"

That made daddy's day.

Awww...

Adrian twisted his ankle over the weekend. We kept him at home so he wouldn’t hurt it again when he runs around at school. Today is also the TV commercial audition day. When daddy took Adrian to the audition, I picked up Livie from school and went out for dinner. We don’t usually have girls only time when Adrian is around. It’s a nice time to have some girls talk. Yet, Livie loves her bro so much that most of our conversation was around him.

Olivia: Mommy, I’m sad today.
Me: Why?
Olivia: Because Adrian hurt his ankle. I don’t want Adrian to get hurt ever again.
Me: Aww... Me neither. I want both of you to be healthy and well always too. But he’s getting better today.  Mommy rubbed his ankle with some Chinese herbal stuff. He should be able to walk properly soon.
Olivia: We prayed for him in class today.
Me: That’s very nice, did you tell your teacher about his ankle?
Olivia: Yes. And after we prayed for him, I prayed for myself too.
Me: Why did you have to pray for yourself?
Olivia: Because Adrian kicked me on my face the other day, so I had to pray for my face.
Me: Does it hurt still?
Olivia: No, it didn’t hurt even when he kicked me, because his foot didn’t really touch me.

Afterwards, daddy and Adrian join us for dinner. I told Adrian what Livie said and he should give Livie a BIG hug. And he did, with a big smile too.

Livie's Comment

Ho is very conscious on his look.  Every now and then he likes to change his look by growing his hair long or having a moustache or goatee, side burn, whatever you call it.  Recently he's growing the beard again.  I got so used to the ever changing look that I took it for granted.  Today at dinner time, Livie asked daddy a question...

Olivia: Daddy, when are you going to shave?
Ho: Why?  Some people may say it's cool.
Olivia: Some people may say it's itchy.


Of course we all know that Livie is the only one who would complain about the itchiness.  Ho loves his little girl so much that he shaved it all off his face the next day.

Big Girl

Both Ho and I love music.  He plays a little piano but I don't.  Hence we both want our kids to take piano lessons.  After taking Adrian to Yamaha Music School group class for 2 years, he just could not sit still.  He liked the teacher a lot though.  Unfortunately it's not enough to keep him interested in keyboard lessons.  As we were waiting for Livie to be old enough to take piano lessons, she actually asked if she could learn violin instead.  We are glad that she has such a clear idea of what she wants to do, so she had her first violin class yesterday.  Even though she didn't even touch the violin in this first lesson, she sounded very excited.  We are excited for her too.

Tonight, Livie's lower front tooth fell out after dinner.  She told me, "I'm a big girl now."  Yes, she is.

Home Sweet Home

Livie loves drawing.  Unlike many other kids, she actually enjoys drawing more than TV.  I was cleaning her treasure box with her over the weekend and found a few great pictures she had drawn recently.  You can tell that she's a happy girl who loves her family a lot from the composition in these pictures - they are colourful and everyone has a smiley face.

I love this one above in particular.  Our whole family are in it and there are loving hearts above us.  The one on the left is me, in glasses with long hair and a dress.  Next to me is daddy, also with glasses in a shirt and highlights in his hair.  Then it's Livie herself with long hair wearing a dress.  Finally Adrian by her side with spiky hair.  All of us look so happy together.

I wonder if Livie will be an interior designer someday.  Even though she's only 5 years old, she has already drawn a house of her own.  Now I know she really wants a cat, but unfortunately mommy is allergic to furry animals so they never asked me if they could keep one.  In her house, the kitchen is on the main floor (you can see the tap and the range hood).  Her walk-in closet is on the same floor.  She has her hand on the door knob getting ready to get in.  Second floor is the computer room with a fire place.  Her bedroom is on the third floor.  Behind the house is her school.  Very convenient location!

This one is Livie's version of Little Mermaid, so cute.    She used similar colours of the original mermaid but applied them on different hairstyle and outfit (no bra top yet, whew!)

There was one I couldn't find but stayed in my mind.  It was a get well soon card she drew for me when I was sick in bed.  She brought it to my bed, speaking softly to me when I was half awake, "This is for you, mommy".  My heart instantly melted.

Adrian is very sweet too.  I was checking Adrian's homework when I read this in his comprehension workbook:

Question: Would you like to visit another planet?  Explain why.

His answer was:

No, because I would miss home.

Chef Adrian

Kids pick up whatever the adults do quickly.  My kids know not to touch the food when mommy takes the camera out. Today we had pancakes for breakfast. I let them served themselves with as many pancakes as they wanted. Suddenly Adrian said, “Look at my breakfast creation.” I had to take a picture of it. He asked me, “Can you name it Le Adrian Breakfast?” I said, it should be “le crêpe de Adrian”, he said, “No, le crêpe de Adrianne”. I don’t even know if that name exist, but if he wants it that way, Adrianne it is then.

Of course Livie wanted a picture of her breakfast too. Ok, here’s Livie spooning syrup over her pancakes.

Nightwaking

We were awakened by Livie’s screaming cry at 5am this morning. Both Ho and I ran to her room to see what happened. We found out that she just woke up and wanted to turn off her CD player but mistakenly switched on the radio really loud. I gave her a hug and wiped her tears while Ho took his pillow getting ready to stay in her room with her. After a short while without waking daddy up, she came to my room to tell me that she couldn’t sleep. I took her to my bed, hoping she could fall asleep soon. It didn’t work however. I tried holding her, massaging her, taking her to the washroom, holding her hands, nothing worked. She had been waking me up every 15 mins to tell me that she still couldn’t sleep. At 6am, I said, “Sweetie, do you want to try lying down? You may fall asleep easier that way. Mommy has 2 meetings in the morning and my boss will not be happy if I’m late.” She finally lied down, held my hand and tossed a little. When I woke up again at 7am, she was sound asleep like an angel.

I could feel her love to me by just looking at her. When I left for work, I just couldn’t resist giving her a big kiss.

Livie’s Birthday Cake

Livie doesn’t like my cakes.  She’s just not a cake person.  Luckily she’s a fan of my bread.  However, I can’t bake her a loaf of bread for her birthday!?  Somehow chocolate cake and cheesecake are the 2 of her “better than so so” preference.  I decided to make a Hong Kong style Blackforest, i.e. with jello in the filling instead of cherries.  Since Ho did a good job in decorating Adrian’s cake, I let him do Livie’s too.  I think he did even better for this cake.  Now we can be a team!



Ho wowed me when he emailed this picture to me after finishing the decoration...



Can you see the jello in betwen the layers?

Cooperation

Tonight I was alone with the kids after dining with their grandparents.  There were some tree branches left in the front yard from Sunday.  After I had set up the shower for Adrian, I told Livie to stay with him for a minute so I could go out to pick the branches up.  I guess it was more than a minute until I returned to the washroom.  I saw Adrian driving up himself and Livie in the shower.

Adrian: Mommy, were you surprised?  Olivia and I cooperated.  I left the shower on when I came out and she went in.  Aren’t we smart?

Yes, they’re very smart.  I always set the shower to the right temperature before the kids go in because they may burn themselves if they move the handle (whatever that’s called) too far.  They know not to turn it off so the next person can go in.  I was so touched that they would work things out to ease up my workload.  Suddenly I felt that my kids are growing up.

Fight

Our neighbour has 2 boys.  One of them is about Adrian’s age.  They used to play well together a couple years ago.  However, we’ve been so busy going out that we seldom get out in the back yard to play anymore, so the kids don’t see each other as much.  Tonight, Ho and I needed to do some gardening before the sun set, our neighbour had a party at home and they invited Adrian and Livie to their house to play with all the kids.  I thought this would be a good opportunity for the kids to catch up.

After a short while, Livie ran out and told me, “Adrian is fighting with Ivan.”  I asked her, “What do you mean?”  Then she ran away saying, “Oh, never mind.”  Since Adrian had never got into any fight before, I thought a minor verbal argument was what she meant.  Finally our neighbour brought Adrian back and said he and her son had a big argument.  I could see Adrian’s face, he’s really mad.  He started to say bad words and when I tried to stop him, he got more upset and went in the house.

I asked Livie what happened.  She told me,

“Adrian was very brave.  They were playing well at the beginning.  Then Ivan started to use his sword to poke on Adrian.  He (Adrian) didn’t move, he was so brave!  Ivan was teasing him saying, ‘poking a baby, poking a baby.’  That’s when Adrian started to yell at him.”

This situation is first of its kind and I’m so glad to see Livie standing up for her brother.  As you can tell from her words, she loves and respects her brother a lot.  I took her upstairs to see Adrian.  Once he heard that Livie helped us to understand what went wrong, he calmed down a lot faster than usual.  At the same time, we reminded Adrian that he needed to love his sister as much as she loves him.  Livie adores her brother.  They do fight sometimes, as all siblings do, but sometimes when Adrian cries, Livie will bring him tissue, pat on his back, or kiss him on the face.  Even though Adrian is not as good as Livie in comforting others but he will also try to make Livie smile when she’s sad.  Hope they’ll love and support each other like this forever.

Swimming Lessons

After 4 or 5 swimming sessions at community centre, my kids still don’t know how to swim.  For Livie, it’s because she had been sick frequently so she kept missing classes.  For Adrian, he was doing well until he had to go to the big pool.  Suddenly he hated swimming, didn’t even want to walk near the pool.  Therefore we stopped swimming lessons for half a year.

I heard about this swimming school from a friend, so I suggested taking everyone there to have a look yesterday.  On the way we asked Adrian if he wanted to start taking swimming lessons again, he said “No” right away.  Yet when we arrived there, he saw that it’s a difference place, he finally told us what happened at the community centre to us.  He said the last instructor he had at the community centre didn’t give him any warning when she took off her hand on his back, he just sank in water.  He described her as an “evil” instructor.  Then he kept telling his experience to the nice young lady at the reception desk of the swimming school.  When the girl told him that they wouldn’t hire any person with “evil” written on the résumé, Adrian was relieved.  Then on the way home, he couldn’t stop telling me how excited he was about starting swimming lesson the next day.  

We decided to put them in individual class of the swimming school because we want them to catch up quickly on what they learned before.  It was a good decision because I can see how comfortable they were in water today.  They are back to the level where they left off after just one class.  Maybe I should start my swimming lessons soon too!

Reading

Tonight both kids offered to read me a story before bedtime.  Adrian will be 7 in 2 weeks and Livie will be 5 in 6 weeks.  Both of them picked a Dr. Seuss book.  Adrian has been reading very well since SK so I let him do it.   When I looked at Livie’s 62-page book, even though there was only one short paragraph on every page, I didn’t expect Livie to be able to really read it.  I said to her, “You don’t have to do the whole book.  It's so long.  You are going to just recite from what you heard from class, right?”  As she started reading, she was serious.  She went on and on!  She couldn’t remember that much, she was really reading!  I was so impressed.  I only hinted her no more than 5 words.  Then she finished the whole book.  I’m so proud of you, Livie!

Frankenstein II

Adrian's assignment was to write a story about a puppy using some of the words provided.  Frankenstein II was the title Adrian used.  As usual, he only used a couple and made up the story mostly with his own words.  I don't know since when his mind has started to be occupied by the word "die" and "blood".  Seems like every story he wrote mentioned somebody or some animal, insect died.  When I read title of his story this time, I was wondering what he would write.  Here's the story:

One day, I bought a puppy.  I played with it.  Then it got sick.  We brought it to the vet.  But the vet was Frankenstein!  Now it was Frankendog! It could talk!  We realized it was Halloween!  He took of his mask.  It was daddy!  He said, "Happy Halloween!"

On back of the assignment sheet Adrian even drew a picture of the Frankendog.  Whew!  Finally no one died in the story...

Good girl

This is the 3rd day of our visit in Hong Kong.  Same as yesterday, Livie woke up first.  This time at 7:15am.  I vaguely remember she got up and got a drink of water.  Then when I really woke up, I realized that she had already brushed her teeth and started doing more worksheets!

I'm so touch!

We went to Harbour City and let them play in and arcade with  indoor playground.  Then we took the kids to Toys R Us.  Livie saw some Lego type of toy and started putting something together.  When we asked her what it was, she said it's a roller coaster.  She did such a good job that the promoter even put her finished work on display with the others.  We took so pictures.  I'll post them when we return to HK.  When we asked Adrian what he was making, he said, "I'm making something that I don't know what it is."  Again, very deep...  Ha!  :-)

Conditioner

Second day in Hong Kong.  Both kids are still suffering jet lag.  Livie  fell asleep while we're having afternoon tea with Ho's high school friends.  Luckily there are strollers available for guests at the mall, so I didn't have to hold her for the whole time.    Then she woke up and Adrian took the spot and fell asleep while we went shopping.  I have to say, for the amount of sleep they'd gotten, they had been behaving super good.

Since we don't like the shampoo offered at the hotel, we went to buy shampoo and conditioner to bring back to the hotel.  The conditioner was mainly for Livie because her hair is long.  Adrian was so happy that he wanted to take a shower right after we returned from dinner.  He came out and told me that he mixed the shampoo and conditioner together (home made 2 in 1?) when he washed his hair because he wanted his hair to be clean and soft.  He also put the condition on his body also because he wanted his skin to be soft too.  Until then we realized that we had never told him how to use the conditioner.  He didn't need to use it when he was in Canada.

Homework

This is our 2nd day in Hong Kong.  Livie was the first one who woke up.  She woke me up at 5:45am and asked for water.  I gave her the water and told her to get back to sleep.  After half and hour, she woke me up again and said she couldn't sleep.  What a lazy mom I was, I asked her to keep an eye on my watch and wake me up when the long arm reached the number "9", which is 25 mins later.  

Livie: Is this the one? (She was pointing at the fast moving second hand)

Me: No, it's this one. (I was pointing at the minute hand)

Livie: But that one is not working!

Anyhow, she was so good that she waited all the time (checking with me a few times in between), and asked me what she could do after.  Since it's still early and the boys had not awaken yet, I told her to brush her teeth and do some homework.  She happily went to the washroom while I prepared the worksheets for her.   She was very focused and quiet while doing the worksheets.  She actually finished 3 sheets before Adrian woke up! 

She's such a good girl...

I ate a turtle

Adrian is in Grade 1 and they started to have creative writing in class a few months ago.  They have tests on it in class too.  Students will be given a set of words to create a story with.  They can decide on the title.  I'm not sure how much time they are allowed for each story, but since they only need to write about 4-5 sentences, probably the time limit is about 15 mins.

Last week Adrian brought a test folder back home for us to review.  Teacher wrote a comment on top. "Cute!"  The set of words are: turtle, family, spoon, eat, and something else.  I forgot.  Title was "I Ate A Turtle!"  Here's the story:

One day, dad was hungry.  Yuck!  It's a turtle!  Dad went to bed for 100 hours!  He woke up and said, "I'm free!"

Nightmare

Livie woke up middle of the night calling me last night.  That's right after Adrian woke up from a nightmare.  (They were overtired and over excited from the party in the evening.)  When I went to work this morning, all 3 of them (including daddy) were still in bed because they were so tired from waking up at night (yup, the whole family was up).  When Livie woke up in the morning, she called me at work to explain that she had a nightmare too.  She said mommy went to somewhere they didn't know.  Livie was in a deep dark forest with Adrian, Daddy was there also trying to take them back to school.  Then a witch came to catch them.  Therefore she was calling for mommy for help.  Later on, at our favourite chatting time - shower for Livie - she told me the second part of the dream, (ha, didn't know there's a part 2)

Olivia: I was thinking about Eleesha all night long last night too.  She was with us in the forest with other kids.  We were all crying waiting for you to save us.

Me: Was daddy crying too?

Olivia:  No, he knows the way, he was trying to take us back to school.

Me:  What about Eleesha's mommy?

Olivia: She was with us.  Then we heard some footsteps sounded like someone walking in high heels.  We thought that was the witch coming to catch us.  We were so scared.

Me: What happened after?

Olivia:  The footsteps were yours, you came to save us.  Then we were very happy standing around you and hugging you.

:-)  I like it, mommy was the heroine who came to save them.

Red Blanket

The kids come to our bed to "sleepover" every weekend on Saturday.  It's long weekend so we let them do it an extra night.  I asked if Livie wanted her red blanket.

Olivia: Why do you know the word "red"?

Me: Because I learned?

Olivia: From me?

Me: From school.

Adrian: How old were you?

Me: Kindergarten, oh, maybe grade one for the word "blanket".

Adrian: You were at our age when you learned "red blanket"?  Yeah mommy was at our age when she learned red blanket! .......

I didn't type the rest because Adrian and Olivia were happily talking about it for awhile.  Kids, they got excited so easily.

Smart Kid

Many people think that Adrian is pretty smart.  He is very observant.  Here are 2 examples:

1) He was watching a TV show about dinosaur this morning.  He told me that he knew the dinasours were computer generated because there was no footprint on the ground after the dinosaurs ran by.

2) When he was 3 years old, he was riding with me in the car on a highway.  He asked me why it was called a highway.  I explained to him that because the road was built high above the ground and the cars driving on it were all in high speed.  He added:

"Also because there is no traffic light?"