End of the Year Post

My school has finally caught up to me and I have not been posting for a while. With my term 2 finished over the weekend, I finally have come around to post some captured moments from the past. Renee loves painting, and is good at jigsaw puzzles. I watched her finishing a simple one without any help. I think I am going to buy some more for her. I also bought a book that teaches you how to paint simple stuff starting by tracing your hands. Renee loves it very much. Max is fun to be with. He can be demanding sometimes so I tend to discipline him. He does learn the rules fast though.

Max learned Tai chi by watching his grandpa performing in the backyard.

Renee went to a friend's birthday party and got to meet the Cinderella.

Renee is picking up horse riding. She is a lot more comfortable controlling them now.

On the day that I went with Max to watch Renee riding the horse, Max gave it a try as well.

As I am getting busier with school, I have been missing out a lot of outings with the kids. This is one of them. Renee and Max went to pumpkin patch and picked out the pumpkin.

I take the kids out whenever I get a chance and take some pictures with my new iPhone 4S. The quality is pretty good, actually. This is one moment that I captured and it is on my iPhone screen now.

We had a family visiting with their two kids. This is Ashley playing with Renee and Max.

Max' language learning and Renee's fight with him

Max is growing! It is still hard for me to believe that he is now capable of expressing his desire and jumping around. We thought Renee started having conversation with us pretty early, and Max was even earlier. Our theory is that he picked it up after his sister.

Unfortunately, he also picked up the temper from his sister. He sometimes yells when he does not get what he wants. What we learned is that, unlike his sister who actually do get upset, he actually didn't mean it. It was a lot easier to distract him.

Renee gets into fight with Max a lot more these days, and Max has learned to throw fists (or whatever objects in his hands). It is amusing and annoying at the same time.


Here we are at a park playing with the grandma.

Renee went to a ice skating rehearsal. At the end, everyone is a winner, got a medal and took a few pictures.

We also went to visit our friend at Sacramento and played in a mini golf park. Renee does not really like mini golf somehow, neither does Max. They are more entertained by dropping the ball at one place and watching them coming out of the other end.

We don't take as many family pictures lately.

I took Renee for a ride in the track. She was ready to stop at the end. I think I enjoyed the ride more than she did.

We also attended the birthday party for Hanhan.

For Max' birthday, we saw this rail set on sale with trains and everything. It turned out to be a great buy, because both of them play on it all the time. I think the enthusiasm died out most recently but they still play from time to time. Even with this big a table, they still end up trying to grab the train from each other and get into fight.

Renee's Eating, Max' Learning, and Easter

We still have problem getting Renee to eat her food. I got her cried so many times because I wanted her to finish her food. In the end, I took the teacher's advice: they will learn when they are hungry. So she will have little food for one meal, and eat well for a couple of days. I think that is the pattern, I am not tracking that closely anymore. It certainly is good for my sanity

We had a parties with all the kids. These are the kids of my buddies in the days I played lots of computer games.

Here is one picture when Renee refuses to eat.

Renee learned to write her name now. I wonder when she will be able to write her Chinese name.

Max's learning has accelerated recently. He probably did it by watching and copying his sister. He can speak a lot of words and complete short sentence now. One day I was shaving in the bathroom. He walked in, looked at me, and asked "What is daddy doing?" I said: " Shaving!". And he replied: "Kan-kan", which means "Take a look".

He also has learned to pee standing up, after which he sometimes says, "like daddy!"

Max followed his sister during the egg hunt in the neighborhood.

Here is a good picture of Max with his aunt. Max just looks like a big boy now.

Happy New Year!

Ok, fine, it is a bit late for that. We didn't really go anywhere either. We are both scared of taking Max out for long trip during the winter. I know many people are doing it.

Anyway, the past two months, as usual, are months of sickness. Both Renee and Max had high fever, and both recovered. The recall of Tylenol and Motrin didn't help on that matter, but they are behind us now. Renee recovered pretty fast. According to the grandma, when her temperature came back, she would stop playing and ask for a nap, a perfect patient. After medicine, Max' temperature would drop and stay there. From the morning, Max would keep playing until the evening, and the fever would come back even higher. On the fifth day, we took him to the doctor and put him on antibiotics.

It is also worth noting that Renee has learned to recite a long poem：前出塞. She was annoyed whenever her brother repeats after her, so I told her to just learn something complicated. After teaching her on the way to school for three days, she was able to do it by herself, sometimes without any help.

Max learned to jump and catch air. He even dare to do it from stairs as long as someone is holding him.

Renee is a lot more friendly to her brother now. I think I mentioned it in the past posts. We are encourage this behavior every chance we get. Sometimes, she still hits her brother though. She also plays rough house with him, and Max just takes it.

One thing Max has learned recently is to hold on to whatever item that Renee is trying to grab from him. This has caused quite a few fights and ended up with both kids crying, and ironically quite amusing to watch. But we found out that as long as Renee asks nicely, Max will hand the item to her. It seems that Max doesn't really care, he just does not like being treated like that.

We went out for our first hiking trip.

Max didn't want to go at all and attached himself to the mom. Renee was able to go with me and climbed up the hill. This is the picture I took after we climbed up. You can barely see Max and his mother.

Here is Renee standing proud on the hill.

Here is Max visiting the zoo. He liked it very much and he would not leave any one of them.

Max at the petting zoo. I still remember how hard it was for Renee to do it when she was Max' age.

Renee made valentine cards for her classmates and had a fun afternoon. Max was very excited jumping around.

We took both kids out to the nearby park. They don't go out together that often nowadays.

Max was barely able to hold on in this one.

We also took them to a Children's museum. I am wondering if I should install something like this in our backyard. Both Max and Renee were very focused and played for a long time.

Here is the water play. Max is still not good at defending his toys. I wonder how he learned to be so good against his sister. Anyway, here is during the time when there were not many kids fighting for toys.

Holiday Staycation

I took three weeks off during December, combined with company shut down in the last week. I ended up spending a lot of time at home to be with Max and Renee. The grand parents took a break visiting China. It was time well spent for me, as I learned a lot about Max.

A funny thing happen about Max that I thought I should write down. He grew a bad habit of biting his lower lip, to an extent it seemed that I could see the upper teeth all the time. For several months, we tried different things to correct him but couldn't.

And guess what changed all that.

He got a cold and had stuffy nose for a week. As a result, he had to use his mouth to breathe. At the end of that cold, he forgot about biting his lips.

Renee had her dance recital. The whole class had only one boy. The rest dressed up as beauty. Renee also had a music concert at school, and she was very good. I don't have any pictures though, because I took the video.

During the break, I took Max to visit the place where I work. There were holiday decorations around the floor, and Max liked this one the most.

Renee had an intensive swimming training, one every weekday. The new teacher pushed her through her fear, such that when she went back to her old teacher after New Year, she got so much better. She can swim under water for 5 seconds now! We are all very happy how this turned out. We took Max to swim lessons too, but between his fever and my cough, it is on hold for the moment.

What is a Christmas without the Santa. Renee is finally not afraid of Santa anymore and she took very nice pictures. Max is another story. See for yourself.

It must be a parent thing. I just think these two kids are so cute when they are dressed up and walk around.

We finally had some good weather, and we visited central park. Here Renee was crying in my arm after falling off the swing because she let go to brush her hair. Opps.

We set up a small Christmas tree this year. It seems to work out better than big ones, because the kids can see the whole tree and play with the decorations. Of course, we took some pictures.

We took some cute pictures.

We took some funny ones, especially those when Max was laughing so hard he fell back into the tree.

And.... Merry Christmas!!!