Dear Nathan and Hannah,
I will be back to updating the blog every Wednesday. So, this week has been quite eventful and I think the main theme for this week would be "lessons learned."
For a MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) night out, we got together and put some busy bags together. You guys really like these activities and about once a week, I'll pull them out for you to play while I'm cooking dinner. Most of the time you guys are able to play quietly very well while I get some housework done.
"Hannah, do you like your new hair cut?"
" Yes, but I have hair in my milk."
Lesson 1: Only adults are allowed to cut children's hair.
I rushed over and closely examined Hannah. Nothing too noticeable, but chunks of hair were definitely chopped off haphazardly in various spots.
Lesson 2: Wear knee pads when you are first learning to skate.
Hannah is starting to get comfortable skating around the tile floor. Apparently at one point of the skating session, you decided that your knee pads were not pretty and did not make you look like a princess. You wanted them off. Well, insisted that you keep them off and you were stubborn enough to just rip them off yourself and threw them against the wall. "Ok, you'll get hurt if you take them off." and sure enough 2 seconds later, you fell. Let's just say we've gone through quite a lot of band aids this week.
Lesson 3: When your sister does something that annoys you, you are angry at her. You do not want to kill her.
Throughout the day, I come across sweet moments of you two interacting. But there are times where interactions are bit more intense. I have been hearing a lot lately, "Nathan, are you going to kill me?" Seriously, where do you guys get this stuff? (We had a good talk about the meaning of the word "kill")
Nathan, you've been very diligent with being helpful this week. You have finally saved enough to buy a transformer rescue bot and since the whole team was a better deal than buying each bot separately, we bought the set and are having you buy each robot, one at a time. One day, I asked you to bring all the dirty clothes from upstairs down into the washing machine. As I glance over to make sure you are ok while coming down with a laundry basket, I noticed that you had used a step stool instead to carry the clothes. Ok, that worked out well.
You two both love to paint. So I'm so glad that I went ahead and got a few bottles of washable paints. When painting crafts I'm always so nervous about you two getting acrylic paint on your clothes, but with this type of paint, I don't have to worry too much. Finger paint? Sure.
Lesson 6: Mommy and Daddy are always right.
Well, that is something that you guys are still learning, so I take every opportunity I can to reinforce that. We've been eating outside a lot now a days because the weather is just too nice to be cooped up inside. However, there was one day where it was just super muggy and hot outside. Hannah, you threw a temper tantrum about wanting to eat outside so we told you that you can eat outside while the rest of the family eats inside because we don't want to get too sweaty while eating dinner. A few seconds later, Nathan, you chime in and say, "Hannah, I'll eat outside with you." And then your brought your plate outside. I snapped a picture of you two eating and chatting away and then Daddy and I enjoyed a quiet dinner inside. 5 minutes later, both of you came in and Nathan said, "We are coming in because it is not too hot outside. We just want to eat with family." Ok. I'll take that.
Lesson 7: Animals that you are allowed to pet at farms are not voracious animals trying to nibble your toes off.
This weekend, we visited Sweet Eats Farm up by Georgetown. They had lots of activities for kids to do. I was really surprised that Hannah was not afraid to ride the pony. I think the key thing is for you to go first. If you went after Nathan's turn, you might have hesitated and backed out.
Lesson 8: When doing a lot of walking in shoes that may be a bit too big, wear socks.
The farm had a pretty elaborate maze for us to go through. There were markers to find and we found ourselves zig zagging back and forth around the maze. I was so proud of Hannah to have walked the entire maze by yourself. Right before we got to the car, you started to complain about your feet hurting. When we checked, sure enough, there were blisters on 4 of your toes. Again, more band-aids were needed.
The orchard is still relatively young since this place just opened up for business last month. Most of the trees were still pretty small and for the most part, you two didn't really need too much help reaching the rip peaches.
Lesson 10: Tire swings, obstacle courses and ropes courses are fun.
There were lots of little activities for you guys to do outside and these few things were a first for Hannah.
Lesson 11: The "broken" end of a straw can be used to scoop up snow cones.
This was Hannah's first snow cone and maybe Nathan's 2nd. You guys simply did not know that one end of the straw could be used as a spoon. Oh you two are such deprived children.
This was a new thing for Nathan. At home, you were pretty insistent on wearing your swim shirt, but after about 10 minutes at the pool, you asked if you could take the shirt off. I think you had noticed that most of the boys did not wear one and you wanted to be like them too. Good thing I lathered sunscreen all over.
Since you don't know how to swim just yet, Hannah, you are perfectly content with doing "spider Hannahs" all around the perimeter of the pool. But this activity caused you to tear up the tops of your feet and pop a few of the blisters that had formed earlier in the day. Poor Hannah, you were walking around with band-aids around 4 of your toes for 2 days.
We made a batch of chocolate granola this week and Hannah you were so excited to try every ingredient that we added, especially the things that you were able to recognize as being sweet.
Lesson 15: Have faith in yourself. Your attitude is important.
I've saved this one as the last lesson to share because I think this was the most valuable lesson that Nathan learned this week. We've been working on the zhuyin characters that all kids in Taiwan and Hong Kong learn before they learn the official characters. It's sort of like the alphabet. There are 37 of them. After you've learned them, I wanted to improve your fluency and your rate of recognition, so for the past 3 weeks, we've been timing you to see how fast it takes for you to identify all 37. My goal for you was to ID all in under a minute and you diligently tried. Your first trial took 1:57. Each day we practiced, your time got less and less and then we plateaued at 1:02. You started to get discouraged and would tell yourself that you can never do this. We had a talk about how your attitude affects how well you can do something. And after seeing you down and frustrated after 3 days at 1:02, I decided to throw in another incentive: Another rescue bot.
Well, after the talk, we practiced some positive self talk and then started the timer. Well, sure enough, after 2 tries, was able to ID all 37 characters in under a minute and I have the screen shot to prove it.
I will probably take and fail the gestational diabetes test in a few weeks, so I should really start to be better about what I eat. We've been so busy with life that I have slacked on coming up with balanced, healthy meals. (However, I've been experimenting with the Instant Pot Pressure Cooker a whole lot).
Today I visited a chiropractor to get adjusted. He popped a few spots on my spine and my neck as well. The plan is 2-3 adjustments this week and then taper down to 1 adjustment each week or every other week to keep things aligned. I don't feel particularly better after being adjusted, but I don't feel worse either. I did, however, feel the baby move a lot more than usual afterwards, which was the same with Hannah when we were trying to get her to turn head down. I can't believe she is about a foot tall now. If she's going to be close to Hannah or Nathan, she really only has about half a foot more to grow...wait a minute, that's still a lot. Nevermind.
Meanwhile, I've been able to do Zumba once a week and hope to pick up some weights and possibly yoga. I definitely want to be fit enough to endure through and survive labor.
Ok, well, this has been a long post. Until next week,
Love,
Mommy
