Raising Richard - 有儿初长成

恭喜发财 (Gong xi fa cai)

2012-01-22T23:33:00.000-08:00

Because it's Chinese New Year Eve today, and a Sunday, kids got to take their final (Chinese school year calendar is following the traditional school in China) in the first period and last half an hour of the class, they got to enjoy a party, which meant devouring as much as sweets as they want, thanks to all the parents' contribution.

As a token, Chinese teacher also gave a lixi money bag to each student. Before giving one to each kid, she asked the kids to each say a New Year greeting, in Chinese, of course.

Some said "新年好", some said "新年快乐", some said "万事如意" and some said "恭喜发财", like Richard. All were fine. Then I started to notice a little variation. A bigger kid throwing something so formal that I couldn't say or remember or repeat. He turned out to be the presenter of the incoming Chinese New Year Gala and he was reciting his "script" :) Another kid just said "你好", mm, hello?! Then the funniest thing I heard - "守株待兔" (A Chinese idiom that was the title of the last lesson in Chinese textbook!) 。LOL.

Funniest thing I heard in Chinese school today.

Year of Dragon

2012-01-22T23:12:00.000-08:00

It's year of Dragon again. 12 years ago, in the year of dragon, at the tail of it, Richard came into my life. And look at what he has done! Although I'm not superstitious about the almighty "dragon", a legendary animal of the Chinese zodiac considered the sign of divine bless with fortune and dynamism, I was and am proud to have a dragon baby. In the year of dragon, Richard will go to a camp without parents for the first time and will go to middle school. Above all, Richard will continue to be this sunshine boy that is my son.

Richard's email to a pen pal:

Dear xxx,
Sorry I didn't KIT. Well, there isn't much to tell u. And guess what, this year is the year of the dragon. I was born on the year of the dragon. My dad was born in the year of the sheep. There was this legend in China in which 13 animals took part in a race. One year was dedicated to each animal according to what place they get. The mouse and cat rode the ox through the river. Mouse threw Cat overboard, because he wanted to win. When the ox go to the other side of the river, mouse ran over to the finish line and was first. The ox was second, because he needed time to get out of the river. The tiger was 3rd, the rabbit was 4th, the dragon was 5th, the snake was 6th, the horse was 7th, the goat was 8th, the monkey was 9th, the rooster was 10th, the dog was 11th, and the pig was 12th. The pig was fat, so he got last. He said at the end of the race, "有没有东西可以吃的吗?" The cat was last, and he did not get a year honored for him, and he got mad at the mouse for throwing him overboard. That's why cats want to eat mice. Well, the legend's over, and it is 8:03 PM, so I've got to go to bed soon. KIT (Keep in touch).

6th Grade

2011-09-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Here we go again! First time that one hand is not enough!!! And we almost reach the peephole.

I have been telling myself: have to keep this blog alive! have to keep this blog alive! And this is precisely the reason. I have to keep this tradition going.

Last year in Alderwood, can't believe it. This will probably strike a chord about how fast time flies - pictures taken in front of front door at the beginning of each school:

Richard's jokes/

2011-06-29T17:30:00.001-07:00

What is a sad tooth? - bluetooth

What is an animal that is always hurting? - an OWL

What is the animal that likes to cheat? - cheetah

The whole 5th Grade

2011-06-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

Reading Comprehension

2011-01-15T22:44:00.001-08:00

Recently my tutoring session with Richard is focused on reading comprehension.

OMG, this was a year ago (editing a post starting on 1/15/2011 at 1/22/12, Chinese New Year Eve). At the time, Richard was still with Bridges Reading and Writing, which we have stopped since April 2011. Since then, we have had Barun, ACI, and now finally settled with Mrs. C. More about Mrs. C later, who deserves a brand new post by itself!

Parenting debate

2011-01-15T22:17:00.000-08:00

Two parenting articles apparently stirred up quite a bit of a turbulence in the net world:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read#articleTabs%3Darticle
By Tiger mother Amy chua
(—Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire" and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Amy Chua.)

and the other one:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/american-mothers-superior/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

By AnnMaria De Mars, sort of a counter.

Richard, I don't know by the time you are reading this blog if these two articles are still available but basically they are about the eastern and western parenting style debate. It's utterly stupid and arrogant to say one extreme is "superior" to the other extreme. The truth is always somewhere in between. That is the advantage that we are hoping for Chinese raising kids in America.

2011 first tooth update

2011-01-15T22:06:00.001-08:00

Did I say Richard is a tooth extraction pro now? There goes another molar by Richard pulling it out himself 2 o'clock in the morning. I think it is time to pay the dentist a visit even though there seems to be no need to make a tooth extraction appointment.

When do we need braces? You see? there goes one problem (changing teeth) and here comes another (braces). Never ending. How about the ever night brushing and once in a while flossing? Parenting is a perseverance test.

Tooth Update - Richard pulled out his tooth on his own

2010-10-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

When Richard called me after he walked home from school today, he excited told me that he pulled out his own tooth today at school. My first response was that "did you freak out?". I imagined that he saw all the blood and he would scream and make a scene. Richard is not particularly good at pain or blood. One time he was wiggling his tooth and saw blood oozing out and started crying.

But he told me that he did not freak out and I would take it as that. He said he was wiggling his tooth at class and blood start to come out and the teacher asked him to go to the bathroom to clean it up so he went to the bathroom and pulled it out and dry the blood with paper towel and then went to the nurse's office to get some cotton ball. I wouldn't have done it better. In fact, I would freak out. And this is the lower right second molar! It's big!! Hooray!!

Junior Olympic time, well, almost!

2010-09-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

Richard swam a very good 100 breaststroke time during last weekend's Nova swim meet. 1:35.42 (1:35.30 is Summer JO time, which is slower than Spring JO time). So his standard is the June INVITE time - June Invitational time? Whatever that means, it means a lot to us.

We didn't expect much from this meet because first of all, it was the first meet intwo months and after an easy summer swimming. Second of all, Richard didn't have very good practice lately. Lastly we have been struggling with Richard's butterfly lately. (Coach Tao's private lesson didn't seem to help much, Lynn's lessons brought out the problem but didn't really correct them; Dad's home-brewed coaching sessions went in vain; Michael Phelp's butterfly video was too perfect to follow).

First day of the meet, on Saturday, Richard didn't have a very good day. Although he still dropped his time for two events out of the three, he did horrible in the first event. Richard's problem is race strategy. He has the capability but doesn't know how to race his best. His race results are often no better than his training time. We were mad because his 100 free time after one and a half hours' hard training is better than his race time. After "coaching"/"talking"/"motivating"/"bribing", he did better and better in later events.

It was a hot weekend and Richard also had his first USTA tennis match on Saturday afternoon. I think we both got overheated/dehydrated so when we came back we crashed right away and Richard skipped dinner and slept till the next morning since 7pm the night before. I was going to scratch Sunday's events but Richard said he wanted to go. Allen and I suspected that he just wanted to go there to play so we warned him that he would just sit quietly and read in-between events and Richard agreed.

What a great decision! On Sunday, Richard swam 3 best times and all 3 times are first time blue standard times. What's more, his 100 breast stroke time is almost summer JO time! You bet we are proud. Lately we have been feeling a little frustrated with Richard's swimming because he show little improvement. This definitely helps as a motivation.

Tooth Update

2010-09-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

I think by the time when Richard is done changing teeth, I will miss the "tooth updates". Recently Richard has many of his teeth pulled so I think he is almost done. He just had 3 teeth pulled during the last couple months so I thought it will be a while till the next one. Last night Richard woke up in the middle of the night and asked his dad to pull his tooth. Naturally, he was turned back to sleep. But this morning before school, before breakfast, he had to have it out. So there it goes:

5th Grade

2010-09-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Our tradition: Taking a picture in front of the porch with the fingers showing the grade. Next year, we will to have Richard use both hands.

This year, Richard has a guy teacher - Mr. MacWilliam, A.K.A. Mr. "Mac", who has a girl's first name - Kelly because his parents name him before he was born and thought he was a girl. And he got a sister whose name is Kevin. It seems his parents got them all confused. But anyway, Richard thinks he is funny. Being funny is almost Richard's utmost praise for anyone. So we can see Richard likes him. He also still has Jordan Montrose as his classmate - best friend and share the same birthday. As Richard put it: "I can't believe it, three years in a row!". Yes, they have been placed in the same class for 3 years, unbelievable, and most unbelievable, they are still best friends.

Tooth Update

2010-09-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

So fast, two teeth in one week, and another one coming. It came out in 2 seconds. Couldn't wait till the weekend... Looking at his missing and half-grown first and second molar in the mirror, Richard yelled, "I got Texas!". I looked and, really, Richad got Texas in his mouth:

So now we have a continent (his birth mark on the belly looks like Australia) and a state (Texas)!

Summer is over

2010-08-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

My last blog is "summer has started" and this blog is "summer is over", what is in between?!

Well, obviously Richard didn't go back to China. Long story short, I almost sent him home. We found this summer camp in Shenzhen that kids stay in a boarding school for 3 weeks. I booked Richard a China Eastern flight to fly to Shanghai and then to Shenzhen but was later told that "unattended minor" service was available only to Shanghai and then we will be on our own from Shanghai to Shenzhen, which sounded ridiculous but I had no choice but to cancel the ticket with a penalty.

So Richard went to Chinese school summer camp for one month, and then tennis camp for a week and three weeks to Irvine city excursion camp on and off with one week vacation at the end which was last week. In between we also took a short weekend hiking trip to Mammoth.

I had been talking about taking Richard to visit Alice (our neighbor's relative whom Richard made friends with last Spring break) in Phoenix some time. Since he is not going to China this summer and Allen didn't feel like a big trip to Bahamas or elsewhere so I thought this is a good time to make this trip. And some friends invite us to go jetskiing in Laughlin in the weekend of August 28th so we made a week-long trip from Irvine to Phoenix-Sedona-Grand Canyon-Las Vegas-Laughlin-Irvine. The highlight of the trip, for Richard, are playing with Alice and Chelsea on Sunday at "Amazing Jake's" (similar to boomer's except that everything is indoors - thank God - it was 114 degree outside), pink jeep tour, rock sliding at Oak Creek Canyon and last but not least, jetskiing in Laughlin.

I will let Richard tell all about it in his blog at: www.allenliang.com/Richard

Now, we have to shop for school supplies.

Tooth Update

2010-08-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

Another tooth update after almost two months! This is the first blog in two month, unbelievable. Summer comes and goes, now school is starting in a few days. I shall make an effort to at least blog about Richard's summer after this tooth update.

This time, upper left first molar. Richard has been wiggling it all last week during our vacatin (more to come later). I had warned him not to wiggle too much because we were not taking him to a dentist because it was a molar and it probably needed a dentist to pull it out instead of dad's floss.

Today, apparently Richard asked his dad to take him to the dentist and his dad "refused" - either mom take him to the dentist or dad pulls his tooth. Finally Richard gave in and asked dad to pull his tooth, which usually means the tooth is so loose that he can bear it anymore.

So even it was a molar, it came out in seconds.

Tooth Update

2010-07-05T23:43:00.000-07:00

Richard had 3 teeth pulled with one month. When Richard told us he had 3/4 loose teeth, we told him to slow down, wiggle one at a time. But Richard has a thing with loose tooth: as soon as it becomes loose, he wants it out immediately so you can see him constantly wiggling it. So that the result: 3 out in a month. Allen pulled one at the beginning of June and took him to the dentist to have the second one pulled on June 25 and today, while he was upstairs reading, we heard this loud, hysteric cry that he needed to have his tooth pulled. We ran upstairs wondering what went wrong and found out that Richard's loose tooth was bleeding because he wiggled it too much. And the hysteric cry was just Richard's typical reaction to seeing blood. The tooth (#3 in the lower left side of the chart) was gone in no time. Allen is practically a dentist as far as Richard knows. Now Richard trusts him pulling his teeth as much as he trusts this one dentist (not any dentist).

Summer has started

2010-06-26T23:47:00.000-07:00

4th grade was over last Wednesday. That was the third consecutive 3-day school week in June because of the furlough so school was pratically over since the beginning of June. Next week, summer vacation officially starts.

This summer we don't have plans for Richard to go back to China. Mostly because Richard is now swimming with coach Tao and the only time we can take vacation without being yelled at is August. Going to China for just one month is hardly worth going, in my opinion. Not enough for Chinese to sink in. Secondly, this summer's air fare is very expensive, probably because of the Shanghai World Expo. Thirdly, we kind of want to find Richard a summer camp in China to go so he doesn't get bored at home with grandpa and grandma but we haven't found one yet. We recently found one 3-week boarding experience. I'm not sure about it yet. I think that's a good experience but 3-week no going home, in a foreign country in a different environment with kids with different culture and background might be a little too big to swallow now. Although Richard surprised me by flying back to China by himself last summer. We will see.

Tooth Update

2010-06-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

6/25/2010 pulled at the dentist. Now Richard only goes to Dr. Ngyun who pulled his first tooth successfully.

This one (lower, left #4) was relative big, not that loose but the permanent tooth was coming out so the job belonged to the dentist. No big fuss. Richard has become a pro now. He even sang a little song to calm himself down at the dentist's.

tooth update

2010-06-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

This one came off within two weeks since Richard started noticing it's loose. There's no time Richard was not wiggling this tooth. It has gotten to the point that I was annoyed by him putting his finger in his mouth all the time. He also became very antsy about the loose over the weekend so he asked his dad to pull his tooth. Trying to prolong it, his dad said it would hurt a lot if he had it pulled right now. Knowing Richard, that's the most powerful weapon. But I guess it had gotten too uncomfortable that this morning after swimming, he insisted having it pulled. "It will hurt a lot!", one said. "I don't care", replied the other. And boomed, it was out in no time. "It didn't hurt AT ALL!!!", Richard exclaimed, partly in disbelief, partly in pride, partly in relief.

Quail Hill to Newport coast - 4-hour hike

2010-05-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

Ever since I knew that the quail hill trail is open to the public I have wanted to take Richard on a hike from quail hill all the way to Crystal Cove State Park, having a friend who lives close by to pick us up at the end of Ridge Park Rd. and drive us back home. And we did just that last Saturday. In 4 hours! I was wishy washy so we ended up starting late (at almost 11am) in the mid-day sun. The first hour was a bliss, the next was long, the third was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, the last hour seemed to never come to an end. The last half mile was really Richard's limit. 300 yard from the "finish line", he wanted to sit down right there right then. That's good, that means his limit has been reached and that's what I wanted - to test Richard's limit, physical limits anyway. Richard is a pretty good walker/hiker. He rarely complains about not able to walk any further so this was a good test. Not to mention that the 4-hour hike was after the hard swim lesson earlier in the morning.

Although Richard vowed not to ever take that hike again, I think some day, when he read his blog, he will feel proud of himself.

p.s. The hiking spur is spawn from a fellow swimmer in Coach Pauline's swim team who was taken to hike by her dad since she was 3-4 years old and that's how she developed strong kicking legs. And I secretly hoping that some training will lead to Richard's ulitimately joining us in Mt. Whitney hike 10 years after we did it in 2002. Year 2012 will be our 10 year anniversary.

Orlando Walt Disney World

2010-05-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

It was pretty crazy. We have it all here and we went all the way across America for disney. It was fun though. If ask Richard what he likes the most about Disney World, he would probably say the Sea Serpent water slide, which is not even in disney. The place we stayed at - Disney's Port Orleans French Quarter has a nice themed water slide and that's what Richard liked the most. As far as rides, "Expedition Everest", "Space Mountain", "Thunder Mountain Railroad" are at the top of the list. Scariest is probably "Tower of Terror" but it's a nice challenge that he would like to take on. We were going to go on Rock'n roller coster in Hollywood Studio, which is boasted the fastest thrill ride in disney, but we didn't get the fast pass early enough for that day so we passed. That was a shame. But at least we did "Expedition Everest" twice! Oh man, we zoomed through the parks like we were on a computer-optimized program - dashing from one end to another to maximize fast pass ultilization.

Another fun thing is the water taxi right next to the pool at our resort. Free water taxi running between resorts and downtown disney all day long. Nice perk.

We also liked the Cirque de solei show "La Nouba".

tooth update

2010-04-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

Very busy day, almost forgot about Richard's dentist appointment. I'm so pround of Richard that he's becoming more responsible more quickly than I think. The appointment is 3:30, I need to leave work at 2:45 and I knew that. As soon as the meeting started, I got sucked into it and totally forgot about it. Luckily, at 3:15, Richard called (I just stepped out of the meeting then) to asked why I didn't return his call or come home yet. Then I rushed home. We were late for about 20 minutes but I would have totally missed it if Richard hadn't called.

Richard has been looking forward to this appointment because this tooth was bothering him since the pamernent tooth is coming out underneath it and next week we are going to Orlando so we won't be able to go to the dentist next week. We definitely don't want to miss this one.

Richard has totally mastered the dentist office visit. Very proud and very relieved.

Western States for 600

2010-03-09T21:34:00.000-08:00

Lately I have Richard memorize all the state capitals. We start from western states and will move slowly to middle and estern states. We made it a game so it was fun. All three of us will participate, taking turns to be the questioner and questionee.

I have to say that state capitals are anything but intuitive. Western states are easier and it gets more challenging when we move on to the east. Allen asked "What's the capital of North Dakota?" Richard and I were quiet for a while. I shushed Allen when he was about to give out the answer. Richard quick-wittedly said: "Quietville?" - because I shushed :)

Then the format changed to multiple choice because it was too hard. Michigan's state captial is A. Springfield B. Lansing C. Detroit. I buzzed and said "What is Springfield." Richard said, "I chose 'Western states for 600'!". Then everyone was rolling and laughing.

I think Richard must have memorized 1/2 - 3/5 of all the capitals by now.

Winter Olympic

2010-03-08T23:24:00.000-08:00

2010 Vancouver winter Olympic is over and Richard became quite an expert on all winter sports. It was like festival to him because for the two weeks that winter Olympics was on, he got to watch TV for 30-40 minutes every night as long as he had his homework done.

Whenever an Olympic came along, Richard will pull out his sports encyclopedia and read it. This has been the case from 2006 winter Olympics. We missed the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing, which is a shame and Richard asked if we would go to Vancouver to watch the winter Olympics. I would like to entertain the idea but when the time comes closer, it still seems very unpractical.

At the end of the Games, one day, Richard pulled his shirt over his head and mimicked the skaters skating. I said that was long track skater (long track skaters don't wear a helmet, instead, they wear an overall with a hood). Then Richard mimicked Apolo Ohno cutting the corners of short track and the incredible gymnastic jump over a crash during a semi-final. All was very funny and real. I couldn't help but laughing hard. I think Richard got encouraged so he started to micmicked a lot of other althletes he know about, including US 4-man bobsledding team pilot Steven Holcomb pushing his sled off. He was good at it: catching the most character-defining moves of them all. One of my favorites was when Richard micmicked Linsey Vonn's celebrating her victory, waving her arms in the air, sliding down the hill. You have to see how Richard does it to love it.

I look like an egg

2010-02-08T21:03:00.000-08:00

Richard's hair grows so fast. We asked the barberer to not cut his hair on the top so short because now that he's older, he might care about how he looks and hair too short might not work with his friends. Soon hair gets in the way of swimming. Wild hair is hard to get under swim cap's control. Today, I asked Allen to cut Richard's hair at home. It came out great, in my opinion. Richard seemed shy and said, "I look like an egg." It's round, right, but I think "looking like an egg" is not necessarily a bad thing. We will see how that goes and if Richard would let his dad to cut his hair again.

When Richard said "I look like an egg", he was so cute.

Second and third swim meet

2010-02-03T19:33:00.000-08:00

The first month that Richard was with coach Tao, he made tremendous progress in every stroke. That's why we wanted to stick with her for a while even though she is very strict, too much sometimes. But since she pushed us to switch to morning practice, Richard seems to hit a roadblock. I started to think that he might have burnt out. Too much too soon has never worked for Richard. Maybe we need to back off a little. One and half hours Morning practice is just a lot, maybe too much.

(3/8/2010)
We wanted to get Richard some private lessons from coach Tao but was afraid that that will add to the burn out effect. Plus weekends are always busy and we didn't want to have Richard do double workouts during the week so we never did get private lessons. One of Richard's swimming buddies - Eric got a lot of progress since he started private lessons. Maybe that was a coincidence, who knows?

The third swim meet we only signed up for one day partly because of convenience, partly because of the concern that "more is not necessarily good" but got scolded by coach Tao. We thought she was being unreasonable, coming out from the old Chinese regimental school of training. But none matters. As long as we stay, we need to compromise. It's not a winning game to argue with her while at the time putting our kid in her swim team. Some of her tactics I thought was out of the line. For example, she scolded the kid and, in my eyes, humiliated the kid for his mom's tardiness.

Richard's performance at the third meet was very good. PR'ed at every race. So anyway, we still stay.

Tooth Update

2010-02-03T19:12:00.000-08:00

Upper right first molar gone. (It is interesting that the first molars are gone before the cuspids, hopefully this is OK.) This is the third time Richard had his tooth pulled by his dad using a piece of floss. He has gotten so used to it that he doesn't want to go to the dentist anymore. Maybe it is less intimidating for him. But for me, personally, it is more scary. What if the tooth doesn't come out completely? What if Allen pulls the wrong one? Luckily, nothing seems to have gone wrong. After all, our teeth were mostly pulled by parents.

Academic Excellence

2010-01-04T22:48:00.001-08:00

Because Mr. Hornor was on leave for a knee surgery at the end of last year, the quarterly award ceremony was postponed to the beginning of the year.

Today I found a slip from Richard's backpack inviting to me to the award ceremony for Richard's "Academic Excellence" award from the first trimester. Even though 1/3 of the students got an award at one of the 3 award ceremonies during the year, it is still gratifying to learn that your kid get an award.

I am whole-heartly excited about every Richard brought home.

Christmas break

2010-01-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

If you ask Richard what his favorite season is, his answer will be winter. Easy question, because Christmas is in winter. Not that Christmas is special to him, but that he get two weeks off, he get Christmas presents, usually games, and we often go skiing during this time. Whenever we are on vacation or go to holiday parties, he's pretty much on loose - which means he's either playing DS, or Ipod Touch or PS3. This time since he just got a PS3, we took it to Mammoth so he can play there.

After coming back from Mammoth, there were dinner parties after dinner parties. I wasn't hosting any so Richard got to play his portable game devices (DS, ipod Touch) a lot but didn't get enough of PS3 time. Couple days before school started, I was on a dilemna between wanting him to play more because vacation is ending and not wanting him to play so much because it would be hard for him to adjust back to school from gamedom.

Richard and Kathleen singing "Jingle Bell" in the ski lifts in Mammoth was definitely a highlight of this holiday. Although the Avatar movie and spending New Year Eve at Universal Studio (with Anan) and counting down at Li Fan's house were all fun.

Lyrics from "Jingle Bell" is included here for future reference :)
Dashing through the snow
With a pair of broken skis
Or the fields we go
I'm Crashing into trees

The snow is turning red
I think I am almost dead
I Woke up in the hospital with stitches in my head

Oh, Jingle Bells, Batman smells Robin laid an egg,
Batmobile lost a wheel and Joker did ballet, Ei!

Oh,Jingle bells batman smells Robin laid an egg
batmobile lost two wheel and Joker did ballet.

Batman in the kitchen, Robin in the Hall, Joker in the bathroom peeing on the floor
Oh, Jingle bells Batman smells Robin laid an egg, Batmobile lost three wheels and Joker did ballet.
Oh, Jingle bells Batman smells Robin laid an egg Batmobile lost all of his wheels and Joker ran away, Ei!

Morning Swimming

2009-12-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

Today marks the completion of Richard's first week of morning swim practice. I applaud him and especially Allen for getting up when it is still dark to go to swim. I heard the pool is like a sauna pool in the early darkness of the morning.

3/8/10
Till today, two and a half months since the start of morning practice, I have yet to get up with Richard once to see him jump into the pool. I feel pretty bad. But I need my sleeeeeeeeeeeeep.

First USA Swimming Swim Meet

2009-12-09T14:44:00.000-08:00

Richard has switched to Coach Pauline Tao's team practicing at Water Works Aquatics since October. This is the third month and first swim meet. We missed the first two meets because of the USA Swimming Membership registration.

All these time, we grew up and evolved with the kid. First we found out it is a two-day meet, then we found out we had to attend both days because the coach like Richard to attend relays. Let alone all those "minor" details of the coach suggesting Richard to come to morning practice which starts at 5:30am !!! The coach asked Richard because she knew I would scream "Noooooooooooo!" More on this later.

Back to the meet. Swim meet starts at 9am but we have to be there before 8:00. Team building, warm-up. I don't understand the warm ups. They warmed up at 8:00 and for some kids, they don't start their event until 10am or later. What a learning experience for first-time meet going parents! I found myself constantly checking on time, event schedule, fetching towels, picking up slippers, wowing at more "professional" looking teams' color-coordinated outfit (like the sea of blue and yellow parka, swim caps, jammers, swim suits, jackets, t-shirts and the list goes on). "Professional looking" comes with professional fees, of course. Richard's knock-off parka cost $60 while I heard one team's "team parka" was $150 with the team name and swimmer's name embroidered. Our coach's chair is from sports authority. Their coaches' chairs all have their names on it. "Wow" is the only word. But at the same time, would I rather pay for the "team look" or more personal attention? This is definitely the edge of Coach Pauline. Our team is small but each gets a fair-share of personal attention.

You can only recognize our swimmers by their gray, low-key caps.

First day (Saturday) was excitement and the second day was a kind of a drag. This is only the beginning of probably endless meets.

Overall, Richard did pretty well. 5 ribbons for 7 events he entered.

Kidism

2009-11-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

Richard loses/forgets his jacket at school sometimes. Recently I have been bugging him to look for one of his most frequently used jackets at the school "Lost and Found" for days and he forgot everyday. And he forgot to call me after he walked home with a neighbor's grandma 3 days in a row. The other day, when there was something else (I forgot what, maybe his library book) he forgot in addition to the other two, he sighed, "I seemed so brainless". Hahaha, I said, "You are not brainless, you are just too happy doing whatever you are doing, my baby".

Today, after his tooth fell out, he played with it for a while, set it aside for a while and then put it back into his mouth. I asked why. He said he just wanted to see if it still fit.

Tooth update

2009-11-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

Another tooth gone, accomplished by Richard and Allen. Richard for wiggling it everyday nonstop and Allen for making the final pull. I don't know what to do if Allen is too chicken to pull it out today because when Richard told me, the tooth was literally just dangling. He didn't have the guts to pull it out himself but it can't stay there for the weekend.

Luckily this one was just a floss pull away from falling down.

Halloween

2009-11-03T11:59:00.000-08:00

This is the first time in a long time that we didn't get a pumpkin for Halloween. I asked Richard what he wanted to be about a month ago but he said he didn't want to go trick-or-treating. That's kind of sad because it means he grew up. I put out some suggestions but he seemed to be not very interested. And then he said he wanted to stay home to hand out candies. That's not a bad idea. I just needed to wait patiently to see if he changed his mind later and he did! In the morning of Halloween day, he answered my inquiry about whether to dress up or not by saying, "let me see my costumes". So we took out all the costumes he had worn "in his life" (altogether 4 of them left). The policeman costume still fits him and is comfortable and looks good. Richard does look very handsome in a uniform. And all the gadgets come with it - plastic handcuffs, belt, badge - engaged him. So he was wearing the costume for the whole day on Saturday, even on our bike ride.

We went out trick-or-treating at South Coast Plaza (probably got a whopping 6 candies from the whole mall:( ) and ate dinner at Rainforest Cafe and came home to trick-or-treat at Quail Hill and Woodbridge, which was fruitful.

I was glad that Richard has not grown out of it yet.

水平提高了

2009-10-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

As of swimming practice last night, Richard's time were:

50 Free: 37:xx
50 Breast: 51:xx
50 Butterfly: 47:xx
50 Back: ?
100 IM: 1:38:xx

Some of the times are the fastest ever recorded (non-official).
Water Works Swim Meet Time:
50 Free: 41.78 (10/17/09)
50 Breast: 51:72 (10/17/09)
50 Butterfly:
50 Back:
100 IM: 2:06.75 (5/16/09)

And yesterday both of us went to watch him for the last 15 minutes of practice when the coach timed 4 older kids (younger kids practice for 1 hour and older kids for 1.5 hours). There were a girl and two brothers who were all faster, way faster, than Richard when he just started. But last night he was consistently faster than the younger brother - Eric. Daniel (the older brother) and Christine were still faster than him. Because Richard's technique of diving and turning is not polished yet compared to other kids, he has bigger potential.

What I'm very glad to see was that when he swam with Eric and when they were close like in 50 yard Breaststroke, Richard really showed his competitiveness. He was always able to pull ahead at the last half of the lap.

Have I mentioned the coach was strict? Even she praised Richard after the practice. She said Richard started to pay more attention (He got scolded many times by not paying attention) and showed willingness to work hard.

Coach Pauline even said our goal is to compete in Junior Olympic next February. I better hold back that piece of information from Richard. I want him to try hard but I don't want to give him pressure. For now, exercise, boosting his confidence and giving him some skill that he will benefit from for the rest of his life are the priorities.

OK, so we said "Richard，你游泳的水平提高了很多!" (you made a lot of progress in swimming) and he asked "why my water bottle is raised?" (literal translation) "水平" and "水瓶". Yeah, not sure if he's goofing or seriously confused.

An old habit is kicked

2009-10-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it is just the right time or what, but I think Richard has really kicked the old habit of... Whew, it is about time. A lot of the success contributes to Richard's dad who camped out at Richard room to listen to the alarm because Richard sleeps too soundly to hear the alarm. Part of the success contributes to an effective alarm. And I think the rest contributes to the timing - Richard is ready.

Now Richard gets up about once, sometimes twice to go to the bathroom. Accidents are really getting less and less.

The process started about 3 months before summer. Thank god Allen didn't get backpain from sleeping on the floor for that long. The first 6 weeks we already saw a lot of progress and in the second 6 weeks we saw some real change. We were afraid that going back to China for two months would throw all these hard work away and it kind of did. Grandpa woke him up every night at 12:00am. We were ready to start from zero but found that Richard adjusted very well after he came back. A lot has to be said about maturity. Three years after the first time he came back to China, we struggled for weeks about his bed routine. This time, he came right back to his
"life in the States".
A big celebration for us!

Water Works swim meet

2009-10-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

Last week Richard attended Water Works (a nearby swimming facility) swim meet for about the 4th time. He swept everything! First place in all four events he entered and PR by a lot!

1st place Boys 10&under (Richard only turned 9 a week ago so he's the youngest in his age group) 25 yards free: 17.16 seconds

1st place Boys 10&under 50 yards free: 41.78 seconds
1st place Boys 10&under 50 yards breast: 51.72 seconds
1st place Boys 10&under 25 yards back: 23.78 seconds

And Richard's 25-yard back stroke is the record for swim meets at Water Works since its the beginning of swim meets in 2007.
http://www.waterworksswim.com/pool/resultpool.php

And Richard's 50-yard breast and 25-yard free are the second place ever in Water Works swim meet history. Don't know how much longer he can hold his record, but nonetheless, it's a record.

Well, speaking of swim meets, a little update of Richard's recent swim activities is overdue.

We had been thinking about signing up Richard for some sort of swim teams since maybe two years ago. We thought of Nova, UCI, Irvine City Summer Swim League and Water Works. Richard has been evaluated at Nova twice! Finally we settled at Water Works because of its convenient location and schedule. But we waited till April this year for Richard to join. I think starting from early 2008 Richard started to take some private swim lessons from Lynn (my coworker's daughter) up till the end of summer when Lynn went to college. After that the weather cooled down and we kind of set it aside for a while. We didn't sign up for Quail Hill team (2008 was its inauguration) for ISL (Irvine Swim League) because the practice time was too inconvenient. Then we waited till April 2009 to sign Richard up for Water Works swim team. Richard did well there. And then he spent 2 months in China for summer. We resumed Water Works swim team in September this year but the team has gotten so crowded that we felt Richard was no longer making enough progress. Then we again started to look into Nova and other options. We happened to see another group of well-organized young swimmers swim at Water Works after Richard's team's practice was over. We asked about the coach (she is a Chinese former Olympic swim coach) and Richard joined. So far we like it although it is a little expensive.

The coach is strict and practice time now is one and a half hours instead of 1 hour. And it is 5 days a week instead of 4 days. Coach Tao emphasizes technique. Have I mentioned that she is strict? Yes, Richard has gotten enough criticism for the short three weeks since he joined. Sometimes I told him "never mind her" in a way that does not overrule the coach but means "she is strict, therefore her students excel".

Richard's current team is part of USA swimming so he will be eligible to enter USA swim meets once his membership is received. We wanted him to enter the Water Works swim meet (maybe for the last time) before he joins some "real" swim meets to boost his confidence.

Richard doesn't seem to think that sweeping the 4 events is a big deal but I do :)

Good job, Richard!

late for detention

2009-10-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

Richard has been very good with homework since the start of 4th grade. He bought a planner from the teacher for $5. Anything that the teacher suggested buying, Richard takes it very religiously. Actually Richard takes everything the teacher says very religiously. So in that regard, Richard is a very good student.

And everyday Richard would take down homework for each subject in his planner. He wrote down everything meticulously. 4th grade homework is very tedious. They would have 1-2 questions for each subject but something for every subject on one day. I almost think the effort spent on taking out the right workbook, turning to the right page, figuring which page/quesetion to do is more than the actual time spent on doing it. On top of that, Richard has a very neat handwriting, which means sometimes it can take him a long time to finish his howework. I tried to tell him that sometimes handwriting is secondary to get it done on time. But being neat is not exactly a bad thing.

Last Friday, Richard got a blue slip (detention notice) for not finishing is social studies homework. He said he forgot to take it down because he thought that's something they had finished in class. That's OK and I was glad that he told me about it. But then check this out: because he was late going to his detention, he got another detention the next week! I just cracked up at that point. But seriously, maybe we need to work on time management a little more, more than just me yelling "hurry up, hurry up" for about everything.

R.I.P Fluffy lies here

2009-10-12T22:23:00.001-07:00

Per Richard, PIP stands for "Rest in Peace".

Acting it out

2009-10-02T13:48:00.001-07:00

Recently I found that Richard has some acting talent, or more accurately, "drama effect". He likes to act it out a scene or a story that he read or a funny sentence that he heard so much. I am oftentimes his sole audience but sometimes I'm laughing and rolling. When we do vocabularies, he is so excited when I explain a word and he will "act it out". We started with "drawing out" (draw a picture next to a word to help remember the meaning) but then he improved upon it by "acting it out" too. Nobody taught him to but I guess he is very visual and "physical" type of kid. All is very cute.

Fluffy died

2009-10-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

Fluffy died yesterday morning. We didn't know exactly why. We are not the most diligent pet owner. We don't talk to him or take him out from the cage from time to time. So his death brought more guilt than sadness. It also proved that Richard is not a pet person. When I asked, "aren't you sad?" He said, well, it already lasted for a long time, meaning, Fluffy had lived long enough. LOL. We had him for a couple weeks short of one year. That's pretty sad. We got it last Halloween.

I know it for myself that I am not the pet person. I grudgely took care of my neighbor's cat and fish while they were on vacation in China. The reason I got the parakeet is because of Richard. I felt like I owe him something not to have a sibling or pet for him. And a bird requires the least maintenance, in my opinion, so parakeet it was. But I ended up being the care taker. So much for pet experimenting. We are not going to get another pet for a while, that's for sure.

new school year and everything

2009-09-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

Richard's biggest change I've seen so far since the start of 4th grade (started a couple of weeks ago) is that the morning routine has become much easier. Since now his dad goes to work early, nobody is responsible for waking him up, the alarm clock is. Richard gets up as soon as the alarm goes off; finishes his morning routines (brushing teeth, washing face, getting dress) in 15 minutes and spend another 15 minutes eating his breakfast and off we go to school. I, on the other hand, spend 15 minutes preparing for Richard's breakfast and packing my breakfast and lunch while Richard was getting ready and then he eats breakfast and I get ready. Both of us get ready in 30 minutes, pretty efficient. I have been praising Richard for that. But I don't think I have done it enough. This is really a big change.

Richard also walks home from school with a 6th grader now. So far he has been very responsible. He calls me when he gets home. Again, very impressed.

Homework wise, so far so good although there hasn't been much homework, partly because school just started and partly because 9 days into school, their teach got laid off. So starting from yesterday Richard's classroom has a new teacher. Last night I went to the "Back to School Night". I bet the "new" teacher hasn't even know the kids name yet. What makes me nervous is that she has never taught 4th grade before. She has always taught 2nd grade. But guess what, she was pulled out from a 2nd grade class to teach kindergarten just this last week. So within 2 weeks since the start of school, she has taught 2nd grade, kindergarten and now 4th grade. This is definitely a rough start. I have booked marked Richard's classroom website but now the new teacher hasn't set up a new one yet.

Another big change is that 4th grade has homework on Fridays too!

Should we quit basketball?

2009-09-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

Richard now plays basketball every week with a group of kids that we get to know from a friend's church. Once again it proves that Richard is not good or at least not comfortable playing contact sports, basically most of the ball games that involve fight for the possession of the balls. Richard is just not aggressive enough. That's OK. That's why not everybody plays balls. But now we face a dilemma of letting him continue to play or not. If we quit, that means he will never get comfortable with it. And he or we might regret it later on when he doesn't feel comfortable play social games. If we continue, it's a hard battle that is frustrating for all of us. It hurts his self esteem to not play well. I guess encouragement and not to push are the only things we can do.

4th Grade

2009-09-11T00:12:00.000-07:00

Here goes our picture again:

Richard has grown so big that he can wear my shoes now. Lately he has grown so fond of my running shoes that I have to fight with him for my running shoes. His Go game has also become better. He plays with Allen every once in a while. In a short game, if Allen lets him have 5-7 pieces advantage, sometimes Richard can win. He has played with 猪八戒 online in China. Playing with 孙悟空requires more skills. 19 private classes with grandpa's student has gave him some basic knowledge of Go game.

After Richard returned China, he immediately joined a basketball camp led by a highschool kid. Richard is not very good at contact sports but I think that's a very friendly environment for him to try, or just have some fun. If at the end of the season, Richard doesn't duck when he sees the basketball coming, I consider it worthy.

For a week and half, Richard hung out with Anan at her home with her grandparents. He had so much fun that he wanted to go to Anan's place on the weekend too.

Finally, last day of summer came. Even the summer with most fun has to come to and end. I guess one can never be completely ready for school, or the end of summer. But at least we can all say, we had fun this summer.

Richard's teacher is Miss Thornton this year. His classroom is in an outside trailer classroom because of the increase of number of students. Oh, well. Classrooom size has gone up from 19 to 34. But he was glad that Jordan, his good friend from last year is in his class. Miss Thornton said they could sit wherever they want today so Richard, as usual, picked a seat at the last row.

We change the working schedule so that Allen goes to work earlier, I drop off Richard at school and pick him up from school and go back to work and Allen comes home earlier. So Richard has about one hour to spend at home alone doing his homework.

Today I asked him to call me after he's done with his tasks and before daddy comes home. I didn't get the call so I called home. Nobody answered. I waited till the answer machine answered, and said "Richard, it's mommy, are you home? are you home? pick up the phone." Nobody answered. So I called Allen and asked him to go home early. After Allen got home, Richard called me and I asked "why didn't you pick up the phone?" (We asked him not to pick up the phone when there's no adults around.) He said, "I heard you, and I was yelling 'I'm here, I'm here' but you didn't hear me." Yeah, right, on the couch :) How funny.

Richard back from China

2009-08-26T22:15:00.000-07:00

After spending almost two months in China, Richard came back on August 23rd, last Sunday. I'm proud of him the most is that he travelled by himself as an unattended minor, connecting flight as well. I wanted to buy him a non-stop ticket but it was too expensive so Richard had two 18-hour flights including the connecting time at Seoul.

In China, he spent most of time with grandpa and grandma. A few of his main activities were: learning Go - a board game (19 1.5-hour classes altogether), playing pingpong with grandpa, swimming and watch XiYouJi (西游记). I only saw him for a couple of days in Shenzhen after we came back from Tibet then I needed to leave for the U.S. His dad then took him to his other grandparents' place to visit for one week. Richard hardly played with his cousin there and could hardly understand their dialect so when Allen left for the U.S., he brought Richard back to Shenzhen.

Something my dad told me cracked me up: after watching 西游记, Richard says "看看我老猪的本事" when he plays pingpong. His Chinese has improved a lot but it probably won't last for long. We have to come back to our reading comprehension projects pretty soon.

Richard has gained some weight in the summer, just as expected. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I still recognized him when I picked him up at the airport. It's hard not to gain some weight spending the whole summer in China, with grandparents, for someone who loves Chinese food.

As Richard grows older, the adjustment of coming back home becomes easier. The crying in the evenings for two weeks after coming back China is still vivid in memory. Engaging him immediately in some activities also helped. The second day after he came back, he joined a basketball camp in the mornings organized by our friend's church and goes to friend's house in the afternoon. He's never bored.

Richard sounds bored

2009-06-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

I called Richard today and he sounded bored. Grandma knows only how to feed him, but when it comes to how to entertain or keep an 8-year-old busy, she has no clue. Grandpa promised to take him playing badminton, pingpong, swimming, chess... but doesn't have time yet. Wait, Richard, how long you have been in China and you're bored already? I asked. It's only the second day. "This is the third day", he corrected me. Yes, the third day including the day that arrived. A little boredom will do you no harm. Just don't play DS all day long, that's not what I send you to China for.

What a relief!

2009-06-29T01:13:00.001-07:00

I don't think I have ever felt more proud of Richard than today. This is the longest weekend. Since Thursday I have not been able to function whenever I thought about Richard's leaving for China by himself (flying as an UM-Unattended Minor) for the first time. Last night after dropping him off at LAX and seeing him being escorted to the restricted waiting area at 11:10pm (plane , I had been waiting anxiously for the 22 hours (the time since we departed to the time I received my dad's call that he picked up Richard) to pass. I refreshed the flight status on computer so many times today…. Time is hard enough to pass, let alone the unexpected, unpleasant life stuff we had to deal with today (details to come). When I received the call from my dad that he had picked up Richard safe and sound, that's my happiest moment for a long time.

Now I finally have time to concentrate on dealing with the unpleansantries in life (the car accident 2 weeks before our vacation, tenant's unnoticed moving out 3 days before we leave on vacation, etc. etc. ) and our biggest, undoubtly most complicated vacation ever. Richard leaves on June 28 and we will leave on the following Thursday 7/2, having a friend drop us off at LAX. We will go to Shanghai, attend Allen's 20 year graduation reunion, another small UCI reunion at Wuxi - a nearby city and then leaves for lanzhou on 7/7; embark the highest railroad in the world -QingZang railroad to Tibet on the 8th, 9th or 10th (have not booked the tickets yet due to the bureacracy or China and ticket scalping activities), have a 10-day tour in Tibet and return to Shenzhen on 20th or 21st to reunite with Richard. I will leave on the 23rd for the US and Allen will take Richard to Xingxing to visit his parents and come home on July 29th, leaving Richard behind. Richard will return to the US on August 23rd, again, by himself.

This is the reminder email I sent to myself and Allen just now. A glimpse of how hectic the schedule of the following several days are. But all and all, today ended with a very pleasant note: Richard made it to China safe and sound, and most importantly, happy!

Allen: Get cash, think about shoes, shirts to bring to reunion, go through luggage; if I am late, cook 2 cups of rice and there is a dish in the fridge. garage door opener disable,
forward me the detailed itinerary or reunion

Susan: copperleaf appt., get sunglasses, order pasta, return books.
call celine, chengli, email Chuck pictures, copy lease, tell Chuck my return date

evening, go to Qiaohaibin jia. chenghong's $100, fan manzhen, Home, Xia Hongbin, Steve,

Wednesday night: drop off bird at Margaret's

End of Third Grade

2009-06-16T17:30:00.001-07:00

The end of third grade is fast approaching. Much too fast. Towards the end of the school year, especially the last two weeks, there's not much activities that requires sitting down and paying attention so Richard's behavioral contracts do not say much. The third grade show (U.S. Geography) was great. I got the whole show on video. Monday was board game day, today they had a pool party and tomorrow is "DEAR" - Drop Everything And Read day and Thursday-last day of school - will be end-of-year party, I imagine.

And after another week, Richard will be leaving for China to stay for the whole summer, in the heat of swine flu, sigh. In addition, Richard will fly by himself, for the first time. First was to debate whether if he can travel by himself. Then was to debate whether he will be OK to take the connect flights. Finally swine flu broke out so the option of cancelling the trip and our trip was debated. The tickets are non-refundable. It's much too expensive and disappointing to cancel. I have sweated enough about it so I'm just going to take a deep breath and hope for the best.

Several days after Richard leaves, we will fly to Shanghai, then to Lanzhou, then to Lhasa, Tibet by train and return to Shenzhen to visit the family, and finally back to the U.S. from HongKong.

Hi mom!

2009-06-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

From a couple months ago, Richard announced that he would start to call me "mom" instead of "mommy" and his dad "dad" instead of "daddy". And I'm impressed that he hasn't slipped yet. Absolutely no "mommy" or "daddy" ever since. He said even first graders call their mom and dad "mom" and "dad", yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm kind of sad because this is another milestone. Just like he no longer asks for kisses before bed (I might "beg" for it sometimes but it's not the same). But that's call "growing up" and I can't ask my son to NOT grow up.

ADD

2009-04-29T15:30:00.000-07:00

"Never let anyone convince you that Richard has ADD." - what Richard's piano teacher said one day stuck in my head. I think this might be the most appropriate topic line for this post.

This post could go on and on. But to keep it short, the time line of our recent endeavor goes like this:

Richard's an active boy, always.

First grade teacher never said anything negative about Richard's classroom behavior. We thought American teachers are mellower and not as strict.

Second grade teacher started to mention Richard's focus issue at school. We did the "good day" note on and off for a while.

Third grade teacher really brought this issue to the table, especially since the end of second trimester around the second conference. The teacher suggested us to seek medical advice. We started to worry about it more. So doctor's appointment, emails with the teacher, daily contracts, number strips (if Richard plays with his pencil or stuff, a number will be torn away from the strip) followed.

Richard began to go to Bridges Reading and Writing Institute for some tutoring. We stopped Richard's violin lesson because practice time are fighting with time to figure out and correct the behavior problem. Plus Richard does not show interest in violin. We would like to continue his piano lessons for a while but will see.

Quiet play time, puzzle building, etc. are introduce...

All of these, we need to with faith. One day, it will all work out, although we are not seeing any progress yet.

Most important of all, Richard is just a great kid.

Catching up

2009-04-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

OMG, I have been slacking for over two months. What to start? I will probably made a bullet points.

1. Another tooth update on 3/19/09: another tooth pulled, the one upper left cuspid with cavity and filling done before. Now I think pulling teeth won't be a big issue for Richard anymore since he has known what to expect.

2. Richard's running had been improving. We bought him a pair of running shoes last Christmas and had run some good runs around Quail Ridge. He started to talk a lot during running. And he said he liked to run with daddy 'cuz they had more to talk about, ya, whatever :) And I started to tell him my "life stories" while running which is fun - we never got a chance to talk just for talking's sake. Olympics came up in one conversation and Richard said he would like to watch 2010 Winter Olympic at Vancouver. He said he liked the skiing and shooting and skiing some more game. I said it would be fun to watch the 2012 London Olympics too. Too bad we missed the Beijing Olympics last year.

3. The second week of March we decided to sign Richard up for Waterworks swim team, something we had been thinking about for a long time. Finally I said, if not now, there goes another year because we are going back to China in the summer so we will miss the Irvine Swim League (Quail Hill team is called Baccurada, something like that) again. What took us this long is because the 5-8 group practice time is 4-4:40 which is early for us. Later we found out Richard could join the 9-12 age group for the 6-7pm pratice but instead of 2 days a week, it's 4 days a week. Now it feels like just as well. Richard does well even according to the 9-12 age group standard. So I think there goes AYSO this year. Richard's not too fond of contact sports. Now we don't have to worry too much about dragging him out to exercise. He's all set swimming for 4 days a week, one hour each time.

4. Allen started Richard on night alarm project #2 :) This time, it was serious investment. The alarm cost around $120. Serious investment goes along with serious approach. Richard is hard to wake up so Allen started to sleep on the floor in Richard's room. It has been two months now. But the method is working great. Richard started to get some dry nights in between and then started to have more consecutive dry nights and then before we knew it, 2 weeks of consecutive dry nights, for which he earned back a nintendo DS with Transformer game. (He lost his DS and all his games at Mammoth Motel 6 during our New Year ski trip). Two weeks is supposed to be a milestone for graduation but then he had some lapse because of the camping trip and Spring break and ski trip. So Allen continued the effort and I think Richard is on the right track to something we all look forward to.

5. In Feburary Richard ordered a Club Penguin joke book. Club Penguin is an online game that Richard plays once in a while, not so much now because we almost eliminate Richard's computer game time due to the second trimester progress report (more to come on that). Anyway, it was fun to listen to some of the jokes Richard told: "Why does 6 scare of 7? Because seven "ate" nine". Simple, silly but fun. And when we were skiing at Mammoth for President's Day weekend, when Richard was anticipating going down unload from chair 23 to go down Cornice Bowl, I said, "prepare to unload", he went, "Oh, no, Prepare to die."

6. Richard has been spending time with Julia's (our neighbor) parents at Julia's house for afterschool for every Tuesday and Thursday since Feburary. Julia's little niece - Alice - from Phoenix, Arizona came to spend her Spring break her at Julia's place. They instantly hit it off. They had such a great time together that it was hard to say good-bye.

7. Camping trip at Joshua Tree National Park at the beginning of the spring break was fun. The highlight was climbing rocks. Richard was really cautious the first day. He was the only kid didn't climb within the Park. He and another mom waited for the rest of the "climbing team". Later I heard that he told the other mom "we only have one life, we need to protect it." LOL. We climbed, hiked and some more climbing. For fear that it would rain on Friday night, we left on Saturday morning. Richard was unhappy that we only got to camp for one night. And it turned out that it didn't rain at all. After a day at Jushua Tree National Park, we went to our camp site which was outside the park. There were a lot of rocks there too, just right next to our camp ground. On Sunday Richard got a little more adventurous. Also he didn't want to be left behind so as a group, before leaving for home, we did the epic "climb" that made the trip memorable. I was surprised that Richard stuck to the end and made it up and down without major mayhem, albeit a little slower than some daredevil kids. That's alright.

Tooth Update

2009-02-19T15:42:00.000-08:00

Last week I took Richard to the dentist for a clean/check up. This is the first time I took him for just a routine check up because up till now we pretty much did whatever we can to avoid taking him to the dentist unless it was absolutely necessary.

It went pretty well. There is one loose tooth but not enough to pull yet. He had some minor cavities to fill. Richard has had that done before so he wasn't very afraid. All his pamanent molars (4 at the back) has cavities so I have to remind him to brush the back teeth well. I am afraid the dreadful thing has happened: Richard has inherited my bad teeth gene :(

President's Day Weekend Skiing/Snowboarding

2009-02-19T12:37:00.000-08:00

Driving up there at 5am as usual, we got there at 11:30. A nice half day boarding, everyone. This time we stayed in Snowcreek with another family. Richard instantly hit if off with the two boys from the other family. The top of the mountain was closed due to loose snow from earlier storms. And more snow was coming.

It's forecasted to snow the next two days so we didn't expect the top to open. Our group decided to ski in June Mountain the next day. We had to drive with snow chain on the whole way to and forth. It was pretty brutal weather. Luckily the wind and snow die down in the afternoon so we were able to hang out at J4 (June Chair 4) to hide out from the wind and later traversed to J7 to take several rides to the top of June. Deer Bowl (single diamond), Pro Bowl (double diamonds) and sunset (single diamond) are all very nice. The ride back down J1 was a thrill. Richard did well.

Monday - President's Day - we woke up to a beautiful snow fall. It was cold. Gloves were frozen, so were our hair. I need to pull Richard's hood over his helmet sometimes and shake out snows from his sleeves and gloves, but he was on the slope all day without complaining. Well, maybe a little when his board stuck in the deep powder but I was amazed that he didn't quit. It's like, he doesn't like the weather condition all that much, but in order to snowboard, he will take it. Because when I asked if he wanted to quit after lunch, he said no. By 3:30pm our goggles fogged up so badly that we knew we had to call it a day. It was probably too late because the ride back to Eagle took a long time. "I can't see anything, I had to look through the little hole in my goggle." Richard said.

Richard got me something for Valentine's day

2009-02-09T12:16:00.000-08:00

Last week Richard came home one day with a box of sudoku sheets and said that's what he got me for Valentine's day using 15 stamps he got from school. His teacher gave out stamps for good behavior and they can use stamps to "buy" little stuff. Wow, that's the best gift I can think of for Valentine's day or any day from Richard. He is just aware that I started playing sudoku after we came back from the cruise during Christmas. I never talked too much about that to him and he just noticed that. And he got me an "expert" level pack of sudoku too, which is what I have been working on!

Love ya, Richard.

Blog

2009-01-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

Richard is blogging. He started the blog last week and has been blogging everyday so far. He loves it because I said you can write about anything. So there it goes: life as a penguin, best Halloween with my buddies (other penguins) and best New Year in clock tower (club penguin hang out place). I am not against it. I think he put out the best writing effort writing about his virtual life at Club Penguin. As long as I make sure he is safe blogging or doing other things on the internet, writing about his game and virtual world is a great motivation for him to write. I enjoy reading it! And the grammar is perfect, OMG. Way to go, Richard.

Don't tell mommy

2009-01-09T16:47:00.000-08:00

I was hurt and a little shaken yesterday. When I came home and Richard was doing some extra homework and his dad told me he forgot a piece homework at school and another piece at afterschool care and Richard started crying. I asked why and he said he didn't want daddy to tell me. Why? Because I would yell at him, of course.

I really need to calm down and control myself. Richard is doing good at school. He's just a typical boy who likes to play a lot. While I was a super self-motivated, diligent, teacher's puppy student at school and now an impatient mom always asking Richard to hurry up, focus, pay attention. While all I want is the best from him, eventually he will have to grow at his own pace.

I feel like I have to meditate. I missed the cruise. When we just have fun together, we do not have tension. I will try better, Richard.

New Year Resolutions

2009-01-09T14:57:00.000-08:00

On Monday, Richard brought home a worksheet with his "New Year Resolutions" nicely divided into categories such for personal, for family and friends and for school and society. This is the first time they do that in school. Maybe they think the kids are old enough to be burdened with growup nonesense. C'mon, if you really are not happy with something about you, and you really want to/have the discipline to change it, you should do it now. No, you should have done it last year.

Anyway, Richard's resolutions in the worksheet are:
Personal: Sleep earlier and exercise more.
Family and friends: unload dishes from the dish washer and try to get better grades to show
School and Society: don't waste and recycle

My analysis:
Sleep earlier and exercise more - my preach. I would have added "be more organized", "put things where they belong after done with them", "don't dilly dally", etc. to his list. :)

I would move "get better grades to show" to the third category. But told him that getting better grade is not to show me.

don't waste and recycle: School's preach or he just copied down teacher's examples

After all the preaching, I whispered, "so these are resolutions to show your teacher, what are your real resolutions?" And he whispered back: "Don't wet my bed". That' a boy. I gave Richard a hug.

Back from Mexico Cruise

2009-01-02T17:19:00.000-08:00

Winter break is almost over. We are back from a 7-day Mexico Riviera cruise over the Christmas. Richard had gone to Alaska cruise with us in 2006 so he knew what to expect so he was very excited about it. And we had a great time. Pix said it all.

We have three families who went on the same cruise. Julia took her daughter and parents. I told Richard, now we take you on cruises, when you grow up and earn money, do you want to take us to cruises? He said, "yeah, like Julia did?" Ya, exactly. That's comforting to know.

One day we missed the "belly flop contest" by the pool at deck 10 because we were taking a "formal" lunch. We took a break to watch it while we were waiting for our food. "Looks painful to land on the stomach in the pool", I said. Richard said, "if they don't land right, they could land on deck 4".

On the last day of the cruise, we participated in family scavenger hunt game. One of the quests were to have a guy dressed as a sexy woman. Our team's volunteer was, of course, Richard. He did an awesome job, totally earning us extra points. After he came back to seat, he went: " I should've said 'I feel hot'". Haha, I was just very impressed by his grooving on the stage. Video as proof.

Between the three of us, we won 5 medals and 37 reward cards, enough to trade in for a backpack and a visor.

Is there hot chocolate?

2008-12-21T01:03:00.000-08:00

Winter break officially started today. Yesterday was the last day of school so pizza and popsicle parties were in order. I told Richard I had a party too. My company's Christmas luncheon was yesterday too. And Richard asked: "Is there hot chocolate?" So cute. Yeah, the days that you are wishing for hot chocolate for parties seem merrier than those you wish for booze :)

Today we went shopping for the Mexico cruise trip we are going tomorrow, oh no, it's later today. Richard bought a pair of jeans, a pair running shoes (first pair of real running shoes, so excited) and a tie. He said he's going to wear the tie every night on the ship. He likes to dress up and we played dressed up so much tonight. I can see he is very excited. Got me excited too. Now I'm really looking forward to it.

I need to keep a journal on the cruise ship so I can post here after we come back.

Academic Excellence Award

2008-12-12T23:23:00.000-08:00

Today I attended Richard's award ceremony. It's only the first trimester and he already got an award - academic excellence - a category that he has never won before. I'm proud and I'm sure Richard is too. I'm glad that I went, Richard was looking around the multi-purpose room all over for me. I raised my hand and he saw me and greeted me with a big smile.

Richard has gotten effort award before but never academic excellence. I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes a lot of courage is the most important. Although we are still battling with concentration problem, we couldn't have gotten this award if we had not made some progress. Good job, son!

P.S. For the outstanding owl students, their classmates collectively wrote letters about why they were chosen to be outstanding owls. Those letters were read out by the principal.

One goes like this: “so and so is really funny. When I feel sad, he will make my frown go up side down…”

This is awesome!

Star of the week

2008-12-03T23:58:00.001-08:00

Richard is the "Star of the week" this week. Every week, one student of the class is chosen to be the "star". They put a poster about him/herself in the classroom; bring his/her favorite book to read to the class; share his/her favorite item to the class; and most importantly, the parents will send to school a letter writing something special about the kid, which means homework for me.

The teacher was responsible enough to send me a reminder a week ago. She also said that the letter could be in many different format and could be about many different things. Some parents even brought CDs and powerpoints. So I decided to make Richard a powerpoint, titled "the first 8 years of Richard's life", featuring a brief summary of major events in each year together with photos. It came out pretty nice. It has Richard's pictures from 0-8 years old. Richard was very excited about showing it to the class and had been looking forward to it. He said the girls would be drooling looking at it. What he really meant was that because girls like cute things, they would woo and coo at his baby pictures. He made it sound really funny, like he is the "bomb" that kill girls.

But I thought it was so cute that he said that. And he does have some very cute baby pictures.

Too bad today the projector broke so they only saw the black and white pictures.

If he felt special about himself, my work making the powerpoint is all so worthy.

Lego Jungle

2008-11-16T22:03:00.000-08:00

Richard likes lego. Airplanes, tanks, dinosaurs and of course cars.

Election Day

2008-11-04T21:49:00.000-08:00

We are watching election tonight. School has been teaching the presidential election process. I had bought a book from scholastic called "How do we elect our president?" and made Richard read it and discuss it with me (mainly just I asked him some basic questions such as what are the requirements for being a presidential candidate, etc.)

Tonight, we were watching the election. It is a landslide so the result was announced pretty early. John McCain was giving a concession speech on TV. Booing from the audience was audible. When Richard heard that, he started booing with thumbs down, saying, something like "you lost, we hate you, we're going to vote for Obama, we will never vote for you again." Of course I explained to him that it wasn't as simple as that. But does the wanting-to-win mentality play a role? It apparently does for a 8-year-old. Who wants to be on the loser's side? Right, we don't want the media to prematurely announce the result to discourage some voters to vote. What about the pre-election polls? When the polls show clearly who's the winner, will it discourage some to vote for the "loser"?

Costume

2008-10-31T01:00:00.000-07:00

Richard is a policeman this Halloween. Doesn't he look good in uniform? Yes, he does look very handsome in those. I don't really want him to be a policeman. hmm, what else requires an uniform? Yes, pilots. Take off those handcuffs and stick, he looks just like a pilot. Since the day he tried on this costume, I had been asking him if he likes to be a pilot in the future, because he looks so cool in the uniform.

It will be pretty funny if he really becomes a pilot. It all started with a Halloween costume.

pumpkin

2008-10-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

This year, I decided to do something a little more exciting than picking up a pumpkin from the local grocery store this year. We went to Tanaka farm's pumpkin patch. The pumpkins were not impressive, but it's a patch, rather than a big box in Albertsons. The highlight was the pumpkin cannon that shot a pumpkins to a hilltop whenever the wagon hay ride came by. We had fun strolling the dolly too. We used the pumpkin carving kit we bought from last year. Richard picked a pattern, the hardest one from the pack. Well, guess who's carving. The part I dislike the most is scooping the inside of the pumpkin. The reward of that is pumpkin seeds. I washed them, dry them, sprinkled salt on them and baked them for 20 minutes. Omg, my pumpkin seeds. They are still in the oven. I carved the pumpkin last Sunday and now it's Thursday night. I totally forgot until writing this blog.

A little accident: I broke the pumpkin knife when the project was only 1/4 done. I had no choice but to finish it using a steak knife. This is the end product. Not bad:
Unfortunately, after burning a candle inside, the witch's broom became too dry and finally broke.

Purple dinosaur

2008-10-28T22:24:00.000-07:00

"I love you, you love me, we are happy family. With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you
Won't you say you love me too?"

I know that song. It's Barney - the purple dinosaur.

But today Richard came home humming this tune: "I hate you, you hate me, Let's walk together carefully, with the shotgun 44, kill the purple dinosaur". I wanted to shush him for singing such an evil song, but at the same time, it's really funny. I have to admit, the purple dinosaur is pretty boring. I'm glad Richard has outgrown it.

Club Penguin

2008-10-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

The first time Richard mentioned club penguin was probably several months ago. He wanted to create an account but didn't know how to. I didn't pay much attention and thought it was just another kids gaming site. None of those requires any account so I thought why did he need one - he probably didn't.

And then I forgot about it until he mentioned again lately. He caught me at the right moment so I decided to find out what it was. Apparently this is a kiddy social networking site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_penguin

It is owned by Disney and intended for users aged 6-14. You can apply for a free account so you can play mini-games with other "penguins", send emails, read newsletters, chat (although limited to a selecting phrases, for good purposes) and all sorts of other things. It has parent monitoring tool so you can call it a tame version of social networking website.

What I don't like about it is that after playing with it for a while, Richard said he needed to be a member to buy a pet. "What are you talking about? You are a member, I just opened an account for you." Later I found out that you have to be a paid member to buy certain things using the virtual coins you earn from playing games. You also need to be a paid member to buy clothes, go to private parties, upgrade your "igloo", buy furniture. Basically, you have to pay to be cool. It is kind of like the real world. But consumerism is taught in a very unhealthy way to some very young kids.

I tried my best to convey my thought to Richard and hope he understands.

Birthday Party at Holiday Skate

2008-10-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

We had Richard's Birthday party at Holiday Skates last weekend. We first went to that place several years ago because my coworker and his daughter were learning and practicing roller skate there on the weekends. It was fun but kind of out of the way. For the last couple summers Richard went there with summer camps and he loved that place.

We reserved the party on Saturday morning's public skate period 10-12. Unfortunately Richard's best friend couldn't make it and before we knew it, about half of the kids invited were not able to come. And the other half were late for half an hour to one hour for a two-hour party :(

But it's a cool place nonetheless. I wish I had more time to skate myself! Richard had gotten a lot more comfortable towards the end. We tried to teach him rollerblade several years ago but his pair of rollerblades remain pretty new to this day. But he says he likes roller skate more than roller blade.

After the Birthday party, we went to my company's picnic at Irvine park to complete the Birthday party with bounce house and train ride!!

Bakugan

2008-09-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

Richard is on a program to earn a prize - a Bakugan. I knew this is another pokemon-like Japanese figure toy phenomenon and it was hot. So I bought it as soon as I saw it at Target. Later it turned out to be the "wrong" kind. Richard liked the smaller ones. I returned it to get a smaller one Richard picked out the other day but it was sold out. And so was the bigger ones. Since I returned the bigger one and it wasn't put back to the shelf yet, I came home nothing. The other Targets were all sold out too. This is how hot it is: I paid almost triple the list price for one on eBay.

All this fuss was for a tiny magnetic ball that when rolled onto a metal card, it opens to a dragon/rabbit/other aliens that I can name.

Nova tryout

2008-09-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

We went to Nova tryout last year around this time and we were basically asked to "come back when we are ready". Richard was suggested to join Nova's learn to swim school.

Since then, we looked into swim coaches/teams for Richard. We were lucky to have my coworker's daughter who swims at Nova and Irvine High School swim team to give Richard private swim lessons for several months although we take some breaks in between. Richard has since known the basics of all 4 strokes.

The result of today's tryout is that Richard is ready for the 8 and under frogs or munchkins group.

One thing that shows Richard had it all in his head is that when he was doing a 50-meter breast stroke, he did a flip turn which he's not supposed to for breaststroke and then realized it so he turned back and did a both hand push off. Pretty funny but I was impressed.

We think swimming practice everyday year round is too much for Richard right now. Plus he is still doing AYSO this quarter. If Richard is responsible enough to walk home from school twice a week next quarter, we might consider sending him to water works swim team.

Third grade

2008-09-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

Richard will be in room 14 Mrs. Edgar's class this year. Last night he said, why last year's summer was 4 months but this year's is like 2 months. I didn't think of a better answer but now I know what to tell him. Because last year's summer you didn't go to a lot of places so it seemed long. This summer you went to a lot of field trips and to China for three weeks. It seemed short when you had a lot of fun.

Blood test

2008-09-04T15:53:00.001-07:00

Yesterday should be marked as a milestone as well. Richard had his second ever blood test. A blood test like a blood draw, not like a prick of a finger. The first time was done when he was still a baby or small toddler when he could be overpowered and held still, although not easy. Since now it's impossible to do that, it's hard, I mean, really hard to coerce him. It's not the actual pain that he cannot tolerate, it's the imagination that overwhelms him. After the fact he admitted that it didn't hurt that much.

So there were struggling, coercing, bribing, threatening involved in the one and a half hour ordeal which took 3 doctors multiple tries in both arms to get it done. (the first couple tries had to end prematurely because he moved too much)

I didn't witness the whole thing but his dad sure won't let me get away next time around :)

China Trip

2008-08-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

This is a long due post. Richard and I went back to China for three weeks this summer. I had been planning on updating this blog about our day to day activities in China but it turned out we were too busy (having fun) to update this blog.

So now this is only a brief re-cap to hopefully not let the great memory fade out too quickly.

7/11/08: on board China Southern Air at 11:55 pm. Flight was uneventful. Richard played Mario Party DS game when he was awake on the plane. His sleeping on the floor raised the eyebrows of flight attendants.

7/13/08 Guangzhou time: Arrival. Grandpa and aunt came to pick us up. Ride to Shenzhen, Lunch, Rest, Kaikai came, Out to dinner at Xing Mei Yuan (新梅园).

7/14/08 Monday: Slept in, unpacked, bored, I went to Coastal City (a new shopping center) in the afternoon while Richard watch Chinese cartoon. Grandpa and Richard went to pick me up and got into an accident 2 minutes from home. Fortunately nobody got hurt. Called to see if I can get some golf lessons, waiting for reply.

7/15/08 Tuesday: Still no reply from golf lessons (Dad knew some connections that will give me big discount so I didn't feel like just walk in to order some lessons). I went to downtown Diwan Building to have lunch with two of my college classmates - Quan Haixing and Zhou Qian. On the way back, dad called me he already arranged for some golf lessons for me so I took the subway and Taxi back to 深大 and had my first golf lesson. I learned swing and chipping and I felt good. Because the driving range would close for maintenance from the second week - a unfortunate coincidence of my stay there - I would have to condense my 10 1.5-hour lessons into 5 3-hour lesson everyday. Ouch.

7/16/08 Wednesday: Morning meet FuYue and her son at her home and have lunch at 蜂巢印象中餐 and 满计甜点 for dessert, yum, yum. After lunch Richard and I hang around a little and went home just in time for me to have my second golf lesson. I was still tired from yesterday's lesson and I felt a couple blisters developing. I learned how to use sand wedge for the most part and switched to swing at the end of the lesson. My hands are hurting but I was able to hit some good shots. Too much taught and too little time to digest. I went out for dinner with the coach (nickname 小唐)and his assitant.

7/17/08 Thursday: I have a 3-hour golf lesson in the morning. I definitely lost the steam and feeling that morning. I kept hitting bad shots. Finally we decided that long sessions everyday would not do me any good so I had a 1.5 hour easy session and called it a day. There would be no lesson tomorrow and the driving range might remain open for longer so we had time. So that afternoon Richard, me and my dad took subway to go to downtown for dinner and movie - Red Cliff (赤壁). Richard had never watched a movie in China before and I don't remember when was the last time I saw a movie in China. It was a smaller theater, well, compared to those in the States anyway, located in the fourth floor in a shopping complex. Tickets are not cheap, RMB45 for maintee and RMB90 for evening shows. Richard kept asking CaoCao （曹操） and Zhangfei （张飞）. It was pretty funny.

7/18/08 Friday: I felt good that I didn't have golf lesson today. My fingers were sore. I ran around the campus in the morning and at noon I went to my hair appointment. I went to have my hair straightened but ended up having my hair curled. You should see the machine I hooked up to. It's ridiculous looking. So I basically spent the whole afternoon there. The service is pretty amazing. They even ordered lunch and have it delivered to the salon for me.

7/19/08 Saturday: My UCI classmate Xia Hongbin who was relocated from New York to Beijing for 2 years came to visit me. We went to Zhuhai for the day. Looked at some beach properties and had a seafood lunch. Richard had fun with his son Ryan.

7/20/08 Sunday: Went to the driving range with Hongbin after dimsum. Hongbin took up golfing about two years ago and was very diligent practicing his game. He scores between 95 to 105. That's my goal. Richard and Ryan also swam in Shenzhen University's Olympic size pool in the afternoon. Hongbin left for Beijing in the evening.

7/21/08 Monday: Another golf lesson at 10:00am. Still no feeling. Found out that the driving range would be closed from Tuesday after all. Coach agreed to refund the un-used lessons in my package since 5-day crush course just didn't work for me. Got out, did another jog around the campus. Went to Honda dealership to get back the car that got into accident the next day we were in Shenzhen. Went to 满计甜点 again. In the evening when we went to my sister's place, we saw a bunch kids waveboarding and I thought I would get Richard one.

7/22/08 Tuesday: Bought a waveboard. Richard learned a little and we went to a friend's （笑丽） home which was nearby and we went to 蓝鸟咖啡 for lunch. Came back to the shop to learn more waveboarding. The neat thing about China is that when you buy a waveboard, someone from the shop will teach you till you get it. Called my friend 蔓悦 and visited his company (满泰科技公司) and had dinner with his family. After dinner we visited his parents as well.

7/23/08 Wednesday: I was still trying to connect to the internet using my notebook computer. I bought a wireless router but for some reason I couldn't configure it to work. We had one hardwired internet connection throughout the house which is in dad's workroom which is hot and steamy. Computer is slow. I can't make it work if I can't do research on the internet. I took it to Ruoxun's place to try to no avail. Richard learned some more waveboarding while I killed time in a nearby bookstore. I bought Zeng zimo's autobiography and read it in China. It's summer so all these kids either waveboarding or hang around the bookstore reading comics. It's amazing how much energy the kids created within the community. All these high rise buildings in a small community mean a lot of kids. In the evening - the night before we went to XinXing, we went to 蜂巢印象中餐 again.

7/24/08 Thursday: Allen's sister took us back to Allen's parents place. On the way we stop to have lunch at a rural restuarant on a shabby boat. The boat was docked on a river. When you looked outside, you can see water bison submerging in the water and roosters resting under the shade. Richard mistook "白渚" as "百猪". And “东莞” as some kind of “馆”，like restaurant. The first impression he had is that Chairman Mao's pictures were everywhere - home, restuarants, convenient stores.

7/25/08 Friday: After staying up late and sleeping on the floor with his cousin the night before, Richard woke up and had "dog meat noodle" for breakfast. In the afternoon, Richard continued to have fun with his cousin and I went strolling on the small town street. In the evening, Richard's uncle drove us in his new Corrola to a restuarant in the moutain to have a taste of the wild including 田螺， snake， frog， etc。

7/26/08 Saturday: Left Xingxin for Shenzhen. Have dinner with Allen's sister in Baoan after finding out there are too much waiting at Kempinski Restuarant.

7/27/08 Sunday: Rest. Played badminton in the indoor badminton court with Richard. My first time playing in the court, very impressed. Had dinner with my cousins and their families.

7/28/08 Monday: Restlessly trying to decide what to do with our final week in China. We could just hang around or we could do some travelling. Finally I decide to sign Richard and me up for a tour to Guilin (桂林）。 I'm amazed that I was able to book a tour and leave the same night. I was grateful because we were in the tight time frame. Arriving in Guilin at around 9:30pm and got to hotel at 10:30.

7/29/08 Tuesday: Headed to YangShuo (阳朔）, 漓江 for a morning cruise. The mountains and waters were great, the weather was hot, the AC was way too weak, sales ptches are way too much. Afternoon LiJiang rafting was great fun. Evening show - 印象刘三姐 - not worthy. Hot, crowded and too many mosquitos.

7/30/08 Wednesday: 游银子岩，荔浦，午饭后游图腾古道（纯粹胡闹，四不像，骗钱的）。晚上游西街，回旅馆后小朋友在旅馆睡觉或玩，大人回西街吃宵夜。田螺，啤酒鱼，土特产芋头和南瓜，美味极了。桂林游吃得最好的一餐。

7/31/08 Thursday：Last day of the trip, shopping day of the trip. I knew Chinese tour would take you shopping, I just didn't know that they would take you shopping so much and so relentlessly. It was like tour stops, one after one, systematically. After all the shopping was done we were "allowed" to tour around Guilin city - 象鼻山，日月双塔，靖江王府。Richard and I were one of the few that climbed to the top of the tallest point in Guilin. The return flight was delayed so we didn't arrive in ShenDa till 2am. But all in all, it was well worthy. We have never travelled, not with a tour in China. It was an experience. And Richard befriended everyone despite his poor Chinese and at the second half of the tour, he was sitting with his buddies in the bus, in the dining table and one the plane. As a matter fact, Richard was friendly to everyone during our whole China trip. He became good buddies with essentially everyone in the matter of minutes. This itself made me feel that it is worthy. The only regret is that we have to come back before the Olympic started.

8/1/08 Friday: Rest, debating if I will change flight for Richard to stay longer, shopping with grandma and great grandma and had 面点王。

8/2/08 Saturday: The day before departure, time flied. 爸妈之间的磕磕碰碰让人心烦，决定带走Richard。 Some more shopping (for Richard's shoes), book store for DVDs. Looked for ATMs. dinner at ruoxun's.

8/3/08 Sunday: Last day. Scramble to pack at the last minute and copy, transfer pictures. Lunch at a Japanese restaurant - 中森明菜。My cousin Liu Yubin took us to the airport. MacDonald's at the airport (maybe at the whole China) replace pickles with fresh cucumbers in their burgers.

8/3/08 LA time arrived in LAX feeling cool and dry for the first time in three weeks. Richard kept excitingly talking in Chinese all the way back home.

I was afraid that Richard would have a hard time coming back to the US. Last time he cried many times, saying he wanted to go back to China - heartbroken for me. But not this time. I was proud of him. I explained to him why we needed to come back. It worked.

Tooth #8

2008-08-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

Richard officially announced that all of his 8 front teeth have fell out. The last loose tooth had becoming very uncomfortable for the last two weeks. I made an appointment for him for next Tuesday but he couldn't wait. The tooth was so loose that it seemed like it could just fall off. However, trying to get it out without a dentist's help is quite a challenge, with Richard's track record :)

Allen has tried to pull a loose tooth for Richard before without success. This time didn't seem like it would work either. He tied a string around the tooth and pull it. The string came loose several times. Then he tried using pliers. Richard was too scared to let him try. Then we went back to strings. And I think it just fell off while tying the string around the tooth. I bet it didn't hurt at all and it DIDN'T, Richard said. But he bawled regardless :)

It's all good now.

First 5K Race

2008-07-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

Woodbridge 5k/10K/kids run has been our family race for several years (about 4 years). Richard has been participating in the kids run for the last couple years. This year Richard ran his first 5K ever. We had prepared him by running with him from his afternoon to home several times. That was a little over 2-mile run. 3.1 miles is a distance he's never gone before. But we figure he will run/walk to finish it.

We crossed the finish line strong, in 44 minutes. So it's actually more like a fast walk pace. The official time is 41:21.

A lot of encouragement and occasionally pushing along the way were the key.

We are very proud of him.

Wild River - First Summer Field Trip

2008-06-25T12:31:00.001-07:00

Richard is going to wild river in Irvine with kids club summer camp (Irvine city summer camp) today. Last year was supposed to be their last year of operation in Irvine but then it renewed its contract for another year. Last year Richard had been asking to go but we didn't make it, thinking this year we would have to take him there no matter what. Richard had never been to a water park.

But the pool party accident two years ago which left Richard a 10-stitch scar still affects me. The idea of letting him go with the camp makes me uneasy. He is always clumsy and easily excited.
Finally we still decided to let him go. So starting from a week ago, I have been lecturing him about being careful, not running around, playing rough, or losing stuff, knowing though maybe less than 1% will stay in his mind once he gets there. And last night we went through a drill going through all the scenarios.

The day is drawing to its end and I haven't received a call yet so so far so good. If Richard comes home unscathed, this will be a big milestone for us. And if he comes home with everything he left with in the morning, that's a bonus.

All about 2nd Grade

2008-06-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of 2nd Grade for Richard. 2 years, 1/3 of grade school is over, time passing by too fast. And this sentiment is likely to get stronger and stronger as the years pass by.

This is Richard's essay:

All About 2nd Grade

Every Monday we share our weekend news. In art I like the butterflies the most. I like it because you can draw other designs on my butterfly wings. I like the popsicles from the jog-a-bunga. I like the stories we read. I like the Charlotte's Web book. I also like science. One of our frogs hopped out of the bowl in our classroom. We all tried to find it but we cannot find it. In math we had lots of things to do. We have money, fraction, measurement, water, length, distance, adding and subtracting. That is the end.

blue eyes can see better

2008-06-12T23:36:00.000-07:00

The other day Richard told me in a pretty serious tone that his friend in class told him that blue eyes can see better. Apparently his friend's eyes are blue. I thought not only it was funny that his friend can think of that, it is also funny that Richard took it seriously. And none of that racist cr*p is getting in the way of this precious childish silliness.

San Diego Roc 'n Roll Marathon

2008-06-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

June 1 is my annual marathon for this year. Richard and Allen both went down to San Diego with me on Saturday to be my supporters and personal chauffer.

Richard was always very excited about watching us at races. This year, he raised a big card board circle says "Go, Susan, Go" which I got from the marathon Expo and yelled at the top of his voice with Allen and several surrounding audience at the grand stand. Not many marathons I ran had grand stands so one would think it stand out. However, this marathon I had a particularly hard finish. I mistook the finish line as the banner at probably mile 26 or even earlier. So the shuffle to the end after that was miserably long. All I had in mind was to get this thing done. I didn't notice the grand stand, I didn't see or hear Richard and Allen, I didn't see any cheerers for that matter. All I care is to step on the finish line timing mat and not to ever run another marathon again.

Later I heard that Richard was so disappointed that I didn't see him. "She didn't EVEN look at me!", Richard said. I felt so bad about it. At Boston Marathon, I didn't see him either. I spent some time with him that afternoon even though I felt like just lay down do nothing. I told him that if I will ever run another marathon, I promise I will look for him at the finish line, even if it means walking to the finish line.

Looking the pictures of midway and finish line, you'll know how differently I felt as time progressed.

Luckily, Richard had a good time at the tank set up by the Marine Corp Recruit Depot.

检讨

2008-05-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

1/17/08
Richard

Today I did not get a good day note so I had to write about what I have to improve on so I have to pay attention to the teacher, don't play with any thing in my hand when the teacher is talking and hat's how you get a good day. And I can't wondering around when the teacher is explaining a worksheet that you cannot give any helps and it's timed. I can't ask the teacher to tell you a word that you don't know about when the teacher already gave out the schoolwork or homework. And that's how you do well at school. And the most important thing is to pay attention to the teacher!

4/16/08
Richard

Today I did not get a good day note so I have to pay attention to the teacher, don't play with anything when the teacher is talking, and look at the teacher when the teacher is talking. And that's how I get a good, great, perfect, super, wonderful, and fantastic day.

:) Apparently, promising and doing are two different things. We are still struggling with "concentration" at school everyday.

camping

2008-05-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

Last week we went to our annual camping trip with our friends' church group at Caspers Wilderness Park in San Juan Capistrano.

It was a hot weekend. So hot that the park put out the "no fire" enforcement for fear of wild fire. No campfire, not even barbecue.

Since video games are discouraged in camping, the kids spent most of their time in the playground. At night they played blackjack which I think is very educational for 6-7 year-olds. No dealer is involved. Whoever won got to put a mark under their names. It's a fun game to let kids practice addition. Only to 21, however.

Dentist office visit

2008-05-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

Richard had his upper right lateral incisor pulled today. It has been loose for a while and he has been wiggling it to the point that it was creepy to see his tooth dangling there. Finally it was out. His upper left lateral incisor is loose too but it will hurt if we pull it now so the dentist said we could wait till the next check up.

It was an uneventful dentist office visit, which was nice. When the hygienist took Richard's X-ray and explained to him that it wouldn't hurt, just pictures of his teeth. He asked if he should smile. :)

My favorite class in school is recess

2008-04-25T17:25:00.000-07:00

When you ask Richard what his favorite class in school is, his answer is "recess". It's hard to explain to him that recess is not exactly a class.

Since the talk with the teacher about Richard's concentration problem at the first conference in second grade, we tried giving him stickers on "good day" and each sticker earned him 15 minutes of video game time. That worked pretty well for a while. Then came the winter break. After the winter break, the teacher stopped writing him "good day"/"bad day" notes figuring he had been "corrected". Unfortunately, we struggled through the second trimester with lost backpacks, forgotten homeworks, etc. So at the conference at the end of the second trimester, the teacher and us agreed to resume the old reward method. However, I guess it got old. Richard doesn't seem to respond to it as much. So Mrs. Gavin made him a sticker chart at school and when he gets a good day, he earns a sticker which earns him computer time at school. The only difference is that now he gets the reward in front of his classmates. Peer pressure may do the trick. We have been trying this for a week and so far so good.

To be continued.

Having 100 jerks could really be a problem - Creative work

2008-03-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

Notice that the kids have smiley faces and the jerks have angry red triangular eyes and are creating a "problem" of "jerk piles"? And the "all-seeing eye" symbol on the green back?

DDR Update

2008-03-06T14:03:00.000-08:00

Yay! Richard got an AA playing "After the Game of Love" on DDR Ultramix training mode. This is his favorite song and he played it over and over again. He only played 3-4 songs in total though.

On the other hand, I have been hitting the DDR Pad hard. This is my tally of the songs I played so far:

Game Mode Light:
Castle in the Sky (B)
Ready Steady Go (Failed)
Ballad (B)
Healing Vision (B)
Overblast
Quickening (B)
Sweet Sweet Magic (B)
Let the beat hit em (CCC...B)
Dive (CC...B)
Exotic Ethinic (B)
Kind Lady (BB...A)
Disco Mix (CCCCCB)
MGS2 (DB)
The Earth Light (Fail, DDDDDC Fail CCB)
Drop the Bomb (A)
DXY (DCCC)
Hysteria (DDDCB)
Electro tuned (CCCBB)
Paranoia (Failed) - 5 feet
Sexy Planet (DDDC)
Super Star (DDDDDC)
Hypnotic Crisis (CCB)
Orion. 78 (FDFFD)
Trip Machine 7 feet (DD)
Gradiusic Cyber (DD)
La Senorita (Failed)

Game Mode Standard
After the Game of Love (B)
Shiny Disco Ball (6) (CB)
Infinite (6) (CB)
Let's talk it over (5) B
On the Jazz (5) B
Sana Mollete Ente (5) DC
Scret Rendezous (5) C
Ballad for You (5) DD
Keep your Body Moving (3) B
Healing Vision (6) DD
Keep on Moving (5) CC
Look to the Sky (5) DD (1.5)B
Overblast (6, 1.5) B
Put your Faith in Me (5, 1.5) CB
Quickening (5) DCCC
So in Love A
Sweet Sweet Magic (Failed, FF)
There 4 You DCBA

Castle in the Sky (6) FFDDD
Do that Thang (7, 1.5) DC
Ready Steady Go (8) D

Tsugaru FFDDD
Absolute (6, 1.5) DC
Candy (5) CDBB
Let the Beat hit em! (5) CCC
Insertion (5) CDC
.59 (6) B
Speed mix (6, 170bpm) FD
Dive (5) FC
Exotic Ethnic (5) F (1.5) C
Kind Lady (6, 1.5) A
Luv to Me (7, 1.5) DFD
MGS2 (5) CC
Earth Light (5) BB
Drop the Bomb (5) A
DXY (6) Failed

Sequel to Diary of a wimpy kid

2008-02-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

The wimpy kid diary was so fun that both Richard and I read the Sequel to Diary of a wimpy kid at Barnes and Noble bookstore during the weekend. The comics were really good. Wimpy kid has three hairs, his buddy Rowley has a square head and missing front tooth, Rodrick looks like a punk, Manny has a overbite, mom always wears glasses and dad looks a little geeky.

Just the quote on the book cover is enough to catch kids, especially little boys' attention: "I always think I will grow to be famous. But right now, I am stuck in middle school with a whole bunch of morons."

It's a diary (fiction) of a middle school boy, mostly just silly stuff boys are into but great fun.

Backpack Nightmare

2008-02-20T00:02:00.000-08:00

I have always wanted to write about Richard's backpack. It has been put off and put off again until today when Richard came home with someone else's backpack! This couldn't be put off any longer!

Richard came home with Adam's spiderman backpack. They are the same yet different. It's newer - it's a first grader's backpack. Richard's has seen its second year of life. And of course the contents are different. The thing that bothers me is that it didn't bother him at all that he wouldn't have homework to turn in tomorrow.

A big difference of school today and school I attended back in the days in China is that in here school keeps everything in classroom. Kids only bring home the tear-out pages of homework and finished school work. So there's only minimum of backpack organizing to be done at home. They only need to make sure they pack the finished homework into the backpack to be turned in the next morning. We had to look up every night what subjects were for the next day and what textbooks, exercise books, notebooks, etc. were needed the next day and put them into the backpack every night. And I don't remember any incidence of forgetting that. It's another story for Richard. Many times he didn't have homework to turn in because he forgot to bring it home. Not reminding him and letting him learn his lesson or constant reminding/nagging? I've not come to a conclusion. At the mean time, constant reminding seems like our routine. Some day, one day, we won't need that any more, hopefully.

President's Day Weekend - Diary of a wimpy kid

2008-02-18T18:43:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful weekend so we went out for a bike ride on Sunday. Richard got this new bike around Christmas. It's a little big for him but he has been managing it well. We made a mistake about letting him wear his heelys to the bike ride. I don't know if that had anything to do with it but he fell twice that morning! Nothing major, the first fall was that his front wheel caught my rear wheel and he fell and landed on his left ankle. The second fall was on the way up the overpass across 405. He must have tried to stand up and the pedal skidded underneath his heelys or something. He got a scrape and a bruise on his knee. But of course he bawled like he broke his bone. After that there were tears, whining, me getting frustrated trying to ask him to tough up, stuff like that.

When we were passing time at Borders bookstore at the District yesterday, this book's title caught my eyes - "Diary of a wimpy kid". So I bought it for him for fun. Now whenever we see that book, we know why/how we got it. It turned out to be a very good children's book. I am reading it now. Great fun.

Weekend skiing/snowboarding

2008-02-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

School's was off on Monday in observation of Lincoln's Birthday. Because of last week's storm, Mammoth got 28'' new snow. And I just finished running the Surf's City Marathon (pacing the 4:10 group) last Sunday. So that was the perfect 3-day-weekend for skiing.

It was one of those epic skiing days: blue sky, no wind, great snow. Richard snowboarded the whole time. I think I have to keep in shape to keep up with him in the not-so-faraway future. When we hit the slope, Richard doesn't need to eat or drink or take breaks. He would eat breakfast and that would last him till 4:30pm when he's done.

The highlight of the weekend is snowboarding at June Mountain on Monday. There were practically nobody there, no line at all at every chair, trails wide and well groomed. Richard had a lot of fun at chair 7 coming down Deer Bowl. It was marked as black diamond but it's groomed and not very steep. He improved a lot on that run. Since he did so well, we got a full day's worth of snowboarding before we left for home at around 5pm.

Let's see what he will write on this week's Weekend News.

"I'll never go to Mammoth again. I'll go to June Mountain from now on. " said Richard on Tuesday after school.

Weekend News

2008-02-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

Richard brought home a booklet titled "Weekend news" with all this diaries about every weekend since last September - the beginning of second grade.

I'm still reading it and enjoying it.

"On Saturday my mom got a big bump on her feet and already signed up for the Surf's City Marathon. I can't believe how my mom can do it with a big bump on her feet. I don't know if it could heel just in time on Sunday. ..." - It warms my heart that even though he didn't tell me he cared, he did.

And this is how he went busted about he went to bed around 10 o'clock sleeping over at our neighbor's house the night before the Surf's City Marathon: "I played with David and Jeffrey on Addicting Games (a video game website called www.addictinggames.com) on the computer. When we went to bed we played in bed and we decided to play Jeffrey's monopoly game. When we finished we went to bed at 12:55."

And something that brought back the scary memory of wild fire in late October: "After I buy a pumpkin I watched the breaking news. It was a fire. It was very scary. I went out it looks like a river of magma."

Chess lessons

2008-02-08T23:02:00.001-08:00

First of all, Gong Hey Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year!

Today when I picked up Richard from after school, his chess teacher Mr. Matthew stopped me to tell me that Richard did really well in chess. And he said that he gave Richard some extra tasks to do for chess practice and it showed that Richard really has the thinking for it. And that Richard surpasses a 7-year-old's capability on that. And that he wasn't just telling every parent that.

My Richard??!!! Yes, that's my reaction. Because the normal comments I got from teachers were Richard has short attention span, gets distracted a lot, keeps playing with his pencils in class, etc. I'm really taken by that. And I praised Richard effusively on the way home, encouraging him to do his best in every thing.

I have to admit, sometimes I underestimate my son. That happens when I set my expectation too high.

DDR - Part II

2008-02-06T11:19:00.000-08:00

My coworker Jim - the DDR master - lent me his metal dance pad. Wow, what a difference it made! I could finally control which song and what level I'm going to play. The problem of the soft pad is not just that it doesn't register your step when it should, it also jumps around the menu when it shoudn't.

I'm slowly making progress. Still in training mode, music speed 1 but I'm clearing (mostly A's and a few B's) 2/3 or the songs. After I clear all the songs at speed 3, I will proceed to game mode level 1.

Richard hasn't played much. But he's so excited about me getting A's. I like to keep his interest up by doing it myself. We'll see.

DDR - Dance Dance Revolution

2008-01-25T12:03:00.000-08:00

It's a little late to catch the DDR bug but it's never too late to have a little fun. I heard about it several years ago but never tried it out. Only recently did I get a chance to try it and it was fun and addicting. I always like dancing. Although I'm not good at it, I always think it's fun and wish to do better. Anything that involves moving my body around, I generally like it. Although you can hardly call DDR dancing, you do have to move to the beat of the music. The addicting part comes from my competitive nature: seeing the score hovering around "Fail" and "D" is too much for me to take. However, as I am writing right now, my score is not improving yet. That's after 4 nights of 40-minute practice sessions. Part of it is because of the soft dance pad being not sensitive enough and too sensitive at times.

Richard tried it too. Dancing does not excites him too much but being able to hit the arrows and clear a song does. Richard doesn't show talents at hand-eye coordination. But that just says he is a normal kid. And for a normal person, you just need to practice a lot. The learning curve is pretty big and the scoring system is not very lenient :( So far Richard hasn't been able to clear a song yet. I need to find ways to keep his interest up. Seeing a five-year-old doing DDR on YouTube is inspirational and frustrating at the same time.

I will post our progress as time goes by. That is, if we don't give up.

New Year Resolutions

2008-01-17T23:57:00.000-08:00

Well, one of it should be to keep blogging. A month has passed since my last entry. Should never happen again.

2. Train hard for a marathon, at least as hard as when I trained for Boston in 2006. Goal is to get under 3:30 again in San Diego Rock 'n Roll marathon in June 1st, 2008.

3. Continue to practice golf. Get close to a score of 120.

my goals for Richard: (his goal will be one and only one: play as much as vedio games as possible)

1. Learn all 4 strokes of swimming, join summer swimming league.

2. Learn tennis or pingpong or badminton.

... will keep thinking about it

After the first Chinese class of the year, Richard came home and said, "Today everyone behaved, even me!", good job son.

The other day I was watching primary on TV. I explained to him what primary is and Richard asked if "candidate" means the person who eats the most candy.

Wordpad

2007-12-14T10:53:00.000-08:00

Recently Richard developed an interest in typing essays and homework into wordpad and print them out. He is very meticulous about format so there are a lot to learn even in just wordpad. One thing I notice is that things we take granted for are magical to a computer novice such as cut & paste, changing fonts, etc.

Richard finished typing his homework last night- 7 meaningful sentences using the vocabulary words -but soon found out that he forgot to highlight the vocabulary word in the last sentence. He wouldn't let it go. He said he would fix it so I said OK - just highlighting a word in the last sentence. But after a while when he's still not done yet, I found out that he's retyping the whole homework. Oops, I guess we need to learn about Save & Open...

A day at Knotts Berry Farm

2007-12-10T16:53:00.000-08:00

Ever since Richard came back from a field trip to Knotts Berry Farm during his "Kids Club" summer camp, he kept saying he wanted to show us this cool ride in Knotts Berry Farm called Ghost Rider. Last weekend we took advantage of the annual toy drive (bring a new toy and receive a free admission to the park). We had a fun day. We went on bumper car, jaguar, Revolution, Gold mine ride and watch a Christmas show on ice. We were 2/3 through the lengthy line for Ghost Rider when it started raining and the ride was stopped till further notice. It was almost 5 o'clock so we gave up and went home. It was a disappointment for Richard. I was just secretly glad that I didn't have to "take the challenge". Although Richard had kindly let me "warm up to it", taking the mild Juguar roller coaster and then Revolution on which I was already closing my eyes screaming, Ghost Rider still looks "too big". According to him, the highlight of the day was Juguar ride because it was the ONLY roller coaster we had been on. And the glowing sword I bought him at the ice show.

I don't know where Richard got this Roller Coaster Gene. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being the scaredycat and 10 being the daredevil), Allen is 1 and I'm 3 :) Maybe Richard has better Equilibrioception or sense of balance because he did learn how to ski and snowboard fast.

Eye glasses

2007-12-05T13:29:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I took Richard to have his first ever eye exam. The reason I took him for an eye exam is not that I suspected him needing glasses. First of all, Allen and I have pretty good eye-sight, no bad genes, secondly, he's just a kid. Although there are kids who wear glasses, I never thought mine would. Richard likes video games, TVs but we do our best to limit those. The reason I took him for an eye exam was that we noticed Richard were blinking a lot lately, for about a month. We began to notice that right around the Southern Cal wild fire broke out so naturally we blamed it on the fire and thinking it would go away when the smoke is gone. However it didn't seem to go away and sometimes it's better and sometime it's worse. So after dragging my feet for a while, I finally took him in. I almost believed that checking his eyesight is not necessary, the doctor just need to look into his eyes and maybe prescribe some eye drops.

It turns out that Richard doesn't have dry eyes or eye irritation. His blinking is from being farsighted, trying to focus. I was literally shocked by this news. None of us is far-sighted, or really needs to wear glasses. I get headaches whenever I have to wear sunglasses for long so I couldn't imagine how I will survive if I have to wear glasses. Now, my son!@#!

The optomotrist prescribed him is right eye 175 and left eye 50 (fully dialated prescription was R: 225, L: 100).

Discouraged, we did researches and got a second opinion. This time was an eye specialist. Her tone was a little reassuring. Basically Richard's eyesight problem is not big deal and doesn't need eyeglasses right now. We should stay monitored and let him rest his eyes frequently. Yeah, only if he would let himself!!

So we decided to choose the conservative approach: Keep his eyes moist and rested and come back for another exam next year.

Happy Turkey Day

2007-11-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

Looks like it's going to be a late snow year for Mammoth again this year. We are not going skiing at Mammoth for Thanksgiving for the second year in a row, which means a long weekend at home. I have never cooked a turkey before and since we are not going anywhere this year, I think I'm going to tackle a turkey.

If you ask Richard what he's going to do for Thanksgiving, he will say, "I'm going to get a live turkey for Thanksgiving." "How would you do that?" "Go to a pet store", he said.

Now that's some original idea for Thanksgiving.

Kidism - 60 more years to go

2007-11-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

Allen's 40th birthday is approaching. I joked, "So are you scared of turning 40?" Richard overheard me and said, "He still has 60 years to go, that's a long time. " LOL :) In his mind, people live up to 100 years old. And 60 years sounds like infinity to him so yes, he believes in immortality :)

Chinese midterm

2007-11-14T16:28:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, Richard took home the scored Chinese midterm exam. He got 96 out of 100. I was very happy about it. Last year's Chinese classes spent the whole school year teaching Pinyin which he found boring. But this year they started to teach Chinese character and Richard has always been good at penmanship so it is less of a drag although he still prefers not going to Chinese school.

One translation mistake on his midterm that we found very amusing:

大人：big man
correct answer is: grown-up/adult
However, "大" means "big" and "人" means "man" :)