Friday, October 18, 2013

Luca says his first complete sentence today

He says, "I love you." He says it quite a few times to mama and pappa.

He says it so fast that it sounds like one long word.



Luca is a natural entertainer and he can really make you laugh. He seems to know he's funny because he'll pat your head or arm to get your attention before he starts his "shows." He likes being a magician, hiding stuff underneath a pillow and retrieve it with a great smile and an exaggerated shoulder and arm gesture, as if to say, "Look how smart I am!" He likes "attacking" his food. He makes sure that you're watching him while he puts a HUGE spoon of food into his mouth - yes, he can finish a big banana with three or four bites.

He loves food, but it's difficult to make him eat vegetables. Actually he wants nothing to do with them. Mommy has to put vegetables into smoothies (luckily, he likes them) and dumplings.






Luca and his beloved trains 




Thursday, October 10, 2013

Catching up and Maya classroom pictures

Here are some photos from her teacher Mr. Dihn's website. Maya's class number is 20.

http://mrdinh.weebly.com/about-our-class.html

We've been super busy. Luca went to the hospital many times for his persistent coughing (one night we almost took him to the emergency room). It was said to be asthma initially (by two doctors), but thanks for the x-ray Dr Rosen ordered, the real cause turns out to be pneumonia - the left corner of his lung was slightly clouded. After taking medicine (what a struggle to make him take his medicine!) for 10 days he was finally well. We'll have to keep using qvar for a while as a prevention.

While Luca was sick, we always slept in his room, making sure he was okay. He used to a fantastic sleeper, falling asleep on his own, sleeping through the night. But he's a terrible sleeper now. He can no longer fall asleep on his own - it only takes more than an hour to get him to sleep, even to nap during daytime. When he wakes up at night, he cries and wants to be carried out of his crib and to sleep on the mattress on the floor instead - of course, with mama or pappa next to him.

Maya is not so good a sleeper either. She refuses to nap even though she's tired after school. She finds all kinds of excuses to delay her bedtime. She cries when she wakes up at night and needs to comforted - the result is that she spends the second half of the night in mama's and pappa's room EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.

Mama and Pappa are quite exhausted, with with waigong and waipo's help. Hope Maya and Luca will sleep better soon.

Last night, while Maya was playing with a pen, she accidentally stuck it into mama's left ear (well it's hard to explain what really happened. Mama asked Maya to give her the pen. Maya made a big movement, trying to be funny or what. Thus the accident took place). It hurt quite a bit and there was blood coming from inside the ear. Mama had to see a doctor. Luckily, the injury seemed to be external and mama will have to use certain ear drops for ten days. This incident reminded mama of a funny website called Look What Your Kids Did to YOu. Something like that.

Luca's vocabulary has grown a lot but he hasn't spoken a clear sentence yet. And of course, his pronunciation can still be hard to understand unless you know him well.

Examples in English
"Ar-bi"= airplane
Ar-pen = open

Two of his favorite words: "open" and "mine." Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine, sometimes he says, especially when Maya is trying to grab stuff from him. He's curious about anything with switches, buttons, lids, caps, covers....and always tries to study them with his unique (or brutal) method.

His favorite sport: soccer. He positions himself like a pro when he kicks, he's accurate, he's powerful (for his age at least), he can even run with the ball. Mama and papa are definitely sending him to a soccer class. He likes tennis balls too and kicks them like soccer.

Maya has learned some not so great phrases from school, such as "you're not my friend," (which she's used on mama and pappa couple of times) "what the hell," "I don't care" (when mama asked her to organize her room), "I can do whatever I want" (when she doesn't feel like to do what mama or pappa tells her to do)....hmmm, talking about peer influence.