31 in 17

I took this video to show my sister how much Katrina loves the Bible she got her (thanks sis !)

In this video, Katrina named 31 major Biblical characters in 17 seconds. (She's done it faster but I don't always have a camera around.) Katrina's one of those who likes to flip to the end of a book before reading the first page. She quickly found this page and made me name 'em them all for her. She memorized all of it flawlessly after reading through them maybe 3-4 times.

She even has all the faces matched up to the names so well that she would happily announce the name of the new character ("yay, Solomon !") as soon as she sees a picture as we flip to a new page.

I'm sure her love of this Bible has a lot to do with the extremely well done artwork (it's really very cute), but this girl still amazes me all the time. (I'll be very happy if my memory is half as good as hers nowadays)

Speed Reading

Words of wisdom

When Katrina was learning to speak in Chinese, she picked up everything so fast that we never had to teach her anything word by word. With Nathan, (the experts are right when they say boys's language skills emerge a little slower), we had to teach him '唔' and '該' separately.

In hearing us teach Nathan, Katrina realizes that some of the 'compound' Chinese words she's been using forever as 'one word' can actually be 'broken apart' and each character can have its only meaning.

Here are her words of wisdom to Nathan: 淨係講個唔字就曳喇,如果加埋個該字,咁就唔曳喇. (即係唔著襪, 唔食嘢, 唔瞓覺 就曳, 但係講唔該就乖喇)

Baby Breann is here

Little Breann arrived on Feb 17th. My brother-in-law is so organized, emailing baby photos and calling everyone just hours after the birth from the hospital.
Besides sharing the same birth month, Katrina and Breann also weighed about the same (6 lb 14oz. vs. 6 lb 10 oz.). They also have the same last name even though only their moms are related. I thought Breann looks quite a bit like Katrina when she was also a few hours old.
Of course kids look different everyday and only time will tell if they end up looking alike. Hopefully they'll get to see each other more and become friends when they grow up.

Katrina's Birthday Party

The timing of Katrina's birthday means it'll always fall right around Superbowl weekend - fortunately none of her young friends have become football fans yet But her birthday also will always be around 農曆新年 (Chinese New Year). In fact, her birthday falls exactly on 農曆新年 this year ! She was bummed a few of her friends were out-of-town for CNY festivities and couldn't make it to her party, but she still managed to have a pretty good time. Enjoy the pictures:

Katrina's 4th B-day

Marcus' Birthday Party

Marcus and Katrina are only a few weeks apart in age so they've been friends for a long time. It's fun to watch them grow together as lose their baby fat and gain their oval faces and tall lean builds together.

As usual, it's always hard to capture kids' photos but here are our attempts:

Marcus' 4th B-day

Miss Responsible

Katrina has been carrying her baby doll David around and tucking him in every night lately. Out of the blue, she did a really long monologue in the car. I was impressed not only by her ability to speak such a long and complex sentence, but mainly astounded by her sense of responsibility:

係噃,我要記住擤鼻涕嗰陣時要擤完左邊先至擤右邊, 咁就唔會病到咩嘢咁喇 (ear infection), 如果唔係如果我病得好厲害, 咁邊個湊David 喎. 因為爸爸又病, 又要揸車, 媽咪又要返工, 爺爺又忙, 嫲嫲又有嘢做, 佢(points to Nathan)又細個唔識嘢, 姑姐又要瞓覺, 咁無人湊David點算呀! 咁唔得咖嘛,係咪 ?

終於識叫媽咪

For months, Nathan would only sound out objects that are phonetically "B-ish": 波波, 鼻鼻, 拜拜, 包包 (麵包), 爸爸, bear bear. The rest were all 嗰個. (Another favorite everyday word was 跌咗.)
After calling me 爸爸 forever, Nathan finally started calling me 媽咪 a couple weeks ago. Not that he couldn't pronounce the "M" sound before - whenever he was frustrated, he would go mamamama (媽媽聲) - maybe I should be glad he never called me 媽媽 and went straight to 媽咪 and didn't associate me with the sound of frustration ?

Costume Contest Winner

We participated in several Halloween festivities this year:
Oct 26: Katrina's school had its Fall festival and Nathan tagged along.

Oct 31: Whole Foods Kids got to Trick or Treat for healthy snacks while mom picks up groceries, perfect for our early sleepers who don't eat candy anyway.

Nov 3: A neighborhood church hosted a Costume Carnival with lots of games. Katrina has probably never thrown bean bags or bowled or tossed rings etc. but she did pretty well as a first-timer on all of them. It turned out there were secret judges walking around judging hundreds of costumes and Nathan won in one of the 4 categories ! Check out the album to see which category he won !

Halloween 2007