Allison

Allison is now TWO years old!

After this past week, Allison has a much better grasp of her birthday. We hosted a party for her at our place last Sunday: 11 kids + 11 adults made for quite a busy house. Our theme this year was gardening. We went and bought little annuals, pots, potting soil and various plastic tools for the kids. They decorated their terra cotta pots with foam letters and stickers, selected and then “potted” their plants. This activity went reasonably well, despite a rather large age difference. The little ones who were Allison’s age really enjoyed just playing with the dirt, shovels, and pails. The big ones got into the spirit of things, by and large trying to do the activity end to end.

Memorable Moments:

– My mom held Allison while she blew out the 2 candles on her purple cupcake. No assistance required – those candles went out in a flash.
– Allison loved her gifts. One of her favorites was a new Corelle stroller, which she described as “my stroller” and rolled around the house for hours.
– Katherine really struggled to help in a meaningful way with gift opening. She ended up “starting” the unwrapping and watching Allison slowly peel paper off her gifts.

As the week progressed, Allison got a karaoke machine from Patty, books from the Bushes, clothes from Grandma Chang, a framed Allison print from Sharon/Jamey and….a toyhouse with little animals and furniture from Steve and I. By Wednesday, she exclaimed in a loud and forceful two-year old way, “I want MORE PRE-SENTS!” We explained that all presents had been opened. She declared, “more presents upstairs” and marched up to the TV room closet to see if any other gifts were hidden away.& It’s a good thing that birthdays only happen once a year. 🙂

What are they learning?

We spend a lot of our time in the car listening to Dan Zanes, and in particular his latest album “Catch That Train.” It’s got some catchy tunes like “Loch Lomond” and “I don’t want your millions mister” which the kids love to try to sing to. We heard the latter& (a union protest song) at his latest concert in Seattle, which was very raucous but fun.& The former I& found& out last week is an Irish drinking song. So, you have to wonder what are these kids learning?!

Development Milestones

So I can remember this stuff later (Does Anyone Actually Read This Blog Besides Sharon?), here’s what the kids are up to.

Allison:

– She has started to preface just about everything with “my.” She is getting possessive of toys, but expects Katherine to “share.”
– She intersperses Chinese in her conversations with Mom and me, and Spanish with Patty.
– She wants to be included in and “see” everything. If Katherine and I work on a project in the kitchen, she pushes a stool so she can try and sit with us.
– She has started to talk about being afraid. For instance, if something scares her, she will cover her eyes with her hands (but still peek out) and say “I’m scared!”
– No is a very common word. She refused to take a walk with Bisco this afternoon (we eventually did), didn’t want to stay in her car seat (“I undo buckle”).
– Despite her terrible twoness, she is very polite and regularly says “Thank you mama!”
– She knows all upper case letters and almost all lower case, for instance mixing up “b” and “p.”
– She can count up to two items, telling me “two lauwn-mowauers” when seeing the neighbor’s gardeners outside, but count up to twenty (and sometimes thirty) easily.

Katherine:

– She displays a sense of order from school, ex. lining up her shoes neatly next to the wall, arranging place settings on her play table.
– She wants to do big person tasks. In one sitting, she learned how to use the manual pencil sharpener and sharpened almost a dozen pencils. She also told me that she has learned the bleaching work at school and can now help me spray and wipe down the counters!
– We call her a fashion-ista. She has a definite sense of what looks good vs. not and often provides input on my clothes telling me what she likes and what doesn’t match.
– She is pushing and trying to learn social boundaries with her classmates at school. For instance, we’re coaching her on how to talk about food, name calling and other interesting interactions.
– Despite some rather& scary& handwriting, her reading is progressing. She points at signs trying to read them out loud and reads common three letters words that she’s seen before fairly quickly. Today she said out of the blue, “TOP!” when she saw a sign for Top Food and Drugs.
– She can read the “o-clocks” on a regular, non-digital clock. For instance tonight, I pointed to a drawn clock in a book and she said “7 o’clock!” We would probably make more progress in this area if we actually had a& non-digital clock in the house (note to self: buy clock!).