The Year of 2005

My dear friends, The bell of 2006 is coming. I recall what happened this year ...

Kate, she prefers to this name as she is older, becomes a leader in the small team of three. She will say firmly to her younger sister or brother, "You can not push/hit/bite." Just like me. She can give her brother and sister breakfast, pick their clothes, and put Vaseline on them. She is a strong learner in all academic areas in her regular school and she is working above grade level. She completes from learning the phoenix to chapter book reading within one year. She wants to write chapter book by herself now. I am glad that she does not have fear in trying new things. For improvement, she is working on selecting a suitable place to study so that no being interrupted :-) "She has really taken on leadership role this year.", as a first grader in the K/1 group, commented by her teacher. I do not push her in learning because I believe that knowledge and ability are different. She likes Chinese school now as she becomes more comfortable in studying it. The effort in being bilingual is tremendous both for kids and parents. But it worth the effort. She has good potential in piano because she has big hands and she is quick in memorizing pieces of music. On the sport side, it was funny to see such a tall girl not moving much in the soccer field in the first session. However, in the second session, her coach distinguished her as the girl who covered the whole ground, from back to front, and still remembered to say, 'Coach, tie my shoe please!' Where, the later part is the slipping portion of busy parents. She is planning to play soccer again next year. Kate's teacher told us that she is such a delight to have in class, and we are very proud of her.

Minkai and Minda are in daycare now. They love their teachers and make many new friends. Two weeks after being there, they started to clean up their toys with the ever-famous Barney song. Minkai is the whining baby and Minda is still the loud girl. Minkai expresses himself very well in both Chinese and English. He is very curious and often asks 'what is this?' （这是什么呀？）. On the first snowing day, he fell on ground. He got up and pointed to the ground madly, "Milk!" (牛奶！） He loves to watch airplanes on the sky. Then one day when we are driving on the highway, he said, 'there are lots of airplanes in front of us', pointing to the street lights at the sides. He likes pointing out things that he knows. Minda has her favorite nuks/pacifiers and blanket. Her blanket is embarrassingly dirty and she still wants the only one. She likes to sing and she starts to talk when Minkai is quiet. She will hug Minkai, hold his hands, and pat him when he cries in the daycare. They are very close to each other. Minda will reach for Minkai's hands if she did something purposely wrong. She is fairly athletic -- she probably can climb up to the ceiling if we let her. She can climb the robes of the ladder in the playground all by herself, while I need to put Minkai to the last two steps and push his bottom when he working on those two steps. The twins' job is to test the limit and my job is to define the limit. I started the discipline part, and made progress slowly.

Their allergy is still bad and literlerly they are allergic to every protein including wheat except milk is marginal. They are still itchy at night so parents are still sleep-depressed. When they will grow out of it? We do not know.

Fuming likes to keep busy. He painted the house from outside to inside, and remodeled the kitchen by changing to hard wood floor, upgrade the counter top, and etc. The consequence is that we have a ten years new house. He has agreed to terminate the house projects and focus on raising the kids.

Xiao/I has rejected an offer from Target Corporation and decided to stay in 3M, so that our family is really stable. However, I am into the mood of adventuring. I will teach in the Keller Management School on eight-week section basis as a part time hobby.

Happy holidays! Happy New Year to every one of you and your family!

Be well, do good work and keep in touch! I have put some pictures on http://home.comcast.net/~xhuang4420/Album/PictureAlbum.htm.This server does not have big capacity. So if the link fails, please try again later.

Xiao