Archives for January 2008

Basket Ramens

Allison had her Eton interview on Friday, and it went really well. We dropped off Katherine that morning, made a quick trip to Safeway and then took Allison back to Eton for her interview. She separated without any issues to spend 5 minutes with the admissions director, who asked her to try several works. Allison talked animatedly about the fruit puzzle, identifying them and saying that “Grapes!” were her favorite. She then stacked pegs on the board, noting that there weren’t enough pegs to fill the board. For the last work, Allison choose to use tweezers to move small objects from one bowl to another. She had such a great time, she wanted to stay in the interview room! We convinced her to go to the main building and meet with the school director. We all chatted for half an hour, with Allison flipping thru books and checking out toys. We were very proud!

That afternoon, Katherine climbed in the car and asked, “how did the interview go??” Allison responded, “We saw two jets!” I told the kids that for a special treat we’d go to Baskin Robbins to get ice cream. Allison’s pronounciation was hysterically funny – “Basket Ramens.” Guess what flavor they picked to take home for dessert? Bubble Gum!

The Holidays

The holidays passed relatively peacefully. We had Christmas Eve dinner at our house with Grandma Chang. We then celebrated Christmas dinner at Aunt Pat and Uncle Art’s house with the extended family.

Our goal for this holiday was to keep a lid on gifts, e.g. not give the kids too much. We sort of accomplished this purpose, although the kids had two towers of presents in the living room. Katherine’s big present was a new 16″ bike that she rides with parental assistance without training wheels. Allison received a dress up chest and jewelry box, just like Katherine, to her delight.

New Family Members

This is why I shop at the toy store by myself for birthday party gifts….Steve and I went to the local toy store over the holidays to buy a gift for Patty’s nephew. At the store, displayed on an end cap, was a bunch of gel ant farms. Steve proclaimed that the kids really needed an ant farm. So, last week the harvester ants arrived. Having watched the Arthur cartoon where he accidentally sets the ants loose, we very carefully read the directions. They said to put the ants in the fridge for 10 minutes to slow them down (really) and then to dump them from the little test tube into the farm. Steve and the kids spent all evening watching the ants running back and forth. After 4 days, the ants have dug a tunnel down to the bottom of the farm and are starting a series of arterial passages.

Basically, our new family members – 20 ants – sleep during the day in their tunnel. Then they wake up in the evening and dig, dig, dig. They carry the gel material in their pincers to the top of the farm where they carefully deposit it in piles. Very cool stuff. I think the adults are more fascinated by this than the kids. 🙂

Allison’s Developmental Milestones

Allison now sleeps in her big girl bed…backwards with her head facing the headboard. She still gets very squirrelly at night; we’ve told her that if we catch her out of bed that we will turn off one night-light at a time. That seems to work, although I found her sleeping on the floor several nights ago!

Allison is 90% potty trained during the day. Occasional accidents occur in front of the toilet, when she takes too long getting ready to go to the bathroom. Her routine consists of: telling everyone she has to go, running to the toilet, setting her stool by the toilet, pulling down her pants and then climbing on. Then she wrestles with the soap, hot water and towels. She can generally stay dry during her nap, but still needs a diaper at night.

Allison’s lack of height continues to present challenges for her. We’ve recently renamed “Katherine’s old bike” to “Allison’s new bike.” Allison was so excited to sit on the little 12″ wheel Trek bike with the seat post all the way down. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the leverage yet to move the pedals with her feet. So, she’ll move them a couple of rotatons and then cry, “please push me, I want to go with Katherine!!”

Allison has her preschool interview next Friday. Fingers crossed it goes well!

Katherine’s Milestones

Katherine is progressing nicely with her reading these days. She has started to read “Green Eggs and Ham” and can get through a lot of Dick and Jane stories as well. Her (and Allison’s) favorite D&J story is “Dick and Jane – a Christmas Story.” They’ve both memorized the words (Katherine can read them) and pretend to eat the beautiful cookies in the book. A couple of nights ago, Katherine read from her D&J Friends book as Allison read aloud from the Christmas story.

Katherine talks a lot about school these days. She tells us stories about the animal years, who did what to whom, and lessons from the teachers. Katherine is convinced, despite my arguments, that she was born during the year of the Ram. She wants to be a Ram, just like Dad. One of her papers came home the other day titled, “I wus a ram.” I see a lot of sentences, numeral and arithmetic works come home. She writes sentences phonetically which means that they require some deciphering.

Katherine also does pretend play at home with Allison. Tonight they pretended that they were in a fire drill at school, running all through the house. They pretend to give each other checkups; Katherine will hold a clipboard and ask Allison, “how are you feeling today?” And, they make up games like “Daddy Space Monster” which is just an excuse for the family to run around the house and scream.

Despite this progress, funny things pop out of her mouth. A couple of days ago, Allison said that she wanted to play with her ball. She said, “I want to play Bollyball.” I assumed this came from Katherine and asked her, “What do you play at school? Bollyball or Volleyball?” She told me very seriously, “Bollyball!”

Skate King

As part of our Eton Together fundraising and community building, a couple moms on our parent team organized a family field trip to Skate King. Skate King is a rather dingy but very popular indoor skating rink in Bellevue, targeting the 6+ age range. This event was really for lower elementary kids, but I decided that Katherine and I would check it out and take pictures. Katherine was sooo excited and made me promise that I would consider letting her skate. The conditions were that the skates had to be reasonably safe for her age and skates were available in her size. Lo and behold, she lucked out, and I rented both of us skates.

It was a wild experience, being on skates myself (not an issue) and holding up Katherine on skates (a real issue). I then figured out that I could wear my shoes if we were next to the rail. So, we made another couple of laps around the rink, with Katherine clutching everything in sight. By the end of 90 minutes, she could skate holding onto the railing (not me). Plus we had played a game called sock, where they turn on/off lights to indicate who should leave the ice. Katherine and I were ironically still on the ice at the end, which meant we won candy. That sealed the deal for Katherine. She asked me on the way out, “can we come back here next month?” When I asked her what she really enjoyed she said, “everything!!”