Storybook Parade

Here are some of the pictures of the storybook parade, and Baba's excellent costume she bought. It was very cute and she was such a good sport, parading around the classrooms and working the waddle. By the time Chris got her home at 9am she was wrecked!

On an outing with Daddy

Audrey's birthday

Last Sunday we went for lunch and icecream for Audrey's birthday. Gemma is a good eater when it comes to sweets.

On an outing with Daddy

The dance continued

There was a five layer cupcake tree, which Gemma thought was excellent! She also LOVED the entertainment, especially this lady. Gemma was so starstruck, she was memsmerized the entire act. She was up on the stage, stamping her feet, clapping her hands...It was too cute.

Dancing Queen!

Ceremony

OK, we're late with the pictures BUT Chris did put a bunch on flicker (go to the Gemma pics link on the right). Here are some ceremony pictures. It was at a beautiful seminary church up in the mountains. So green and lovely. You can try and match the captions to the photos.
-I had to bribe her to let me put the hair things in, and take the picture. She pulled them out right after.
-How 'princesses' sit on the bus.
-A total fluke picture that turned out great. I couldn't see at all, the sun was so bright but I clicked away and got this gem.
-Tree Hugger

wedding pics to follow

There were some awesome pictures taken at the wedding, and I will post them as soon as they are ready. (it was a late night!)

Panada

So we're learning lots of animals. Here's what she knows so far:
bear
mouse
horse
cow
duck
owl
bird
dinosaur
hippo
rhino
elephant
fish
dolphin
octopus
starfish
turtle
koala
panda


And some others but I can't remember...Anyway. She knew panda and she also knew Canada; we have Canada flag stickers on my bike. But now she has combined the two and instead of saying panda, she says panada. :)

Modelling (?)

No new pictures, so here's some from a few weeks ago... Should we send this to the agents?

The new obsession

We are entering a new era....the age of princess! I didn't think it would happen so soon. It all started with a Barbie movie on TV. After that every princess/fairy/pretty lady in nice clothes became Barbie. And somewhere that got changed to princess. Now she sees princesses everywhere.

I made the mistake of showing her bits from the Wizard of Oz. I thought she would like the singing, which she does, but she LOVES Glinda, the witch of the North. We've watched the beginning scenes, when Dorothy discovers she is in Oz until her and the Scarecrow depart, dozens of times because she is obsessed with it. Here is Gemma's dialogue:

Bubble, PRINCESS PRINCESS! Dorothy, dog. Funny kids! Singing. Funny kids.
Bad witch! Go away, bad witch, more singing (I told her that the witch would go away so we could sing more)
Bad witch go away! Princess. Dorothy.

Princess go away (sometimes tears) No princess! (to which I say "she has to go help more people, like Dorothy." and she says OK.

Man, dancing. (this is the scarecrow) Funny!

From this scene we skip all the way to the end, where the 'princess' helps Dorothy go home. And Gemma says "Dorothy home. See Auntie and Grandpa. (She thinks the uncle looks like a Grandpa.) And then she says, "More princess!" and we go back ad watch it again.

We watched it once and I hoped she'd forget, but she didn't. Then at the zoo I was singing the Follow the Yellow Brick Road song and she kept asking for it all day, then when we got home it must have clicked to her where she knew it from because she right away asked to go up and see her movies and asked for it.

We always read books at the end of the night, and she wants a princess book, and so is convinced Daddy is going to buy her a princess book on his trip. (Good luck Daddy ;) no worries if you don't!

Fall in Taiwan

I had to post these to combat all the fall pictures and comments from back home. We found these HUGE leaves at the park, and so we brought them home to draw on. (I tried to teach her leaf rubbings, but she liked darwing on them with markers instead)

It's sort of fall here. The temperature is down to about 26 instead of 36. All the trees are still green; leaves fall all year and are replaced all year. They actually have city workers who go around every morning and sweep up the leaves from the streets. IIts easy to see how leaves of that size could cause lots of problems if left to accumulate. Anyway, Happy Fall!

10/10

Happy Birthday, Taiwan!

-Diner for brunch
-Sand park for the afternoon
-Nap!
-Fruit ice with the Wu's and some flag pictures. Enjoy!

Thanks for the pics, Andy!

Talk Talk Talk

I wish I had the video camera handy during some of our conversations today. She is really taking off with this talking business. Tonight before bed she was going on and on, I'll try to summarize:

Daddy go airplane visit CANADA!!! Daddy visit come, Gemma hug, give Gemma hug, K. Bownen come visit Gemma Canada, airplane, come, Bownen, ok.

And on and on. She says Bowen like Bow-nen, so I spelled it like that. She is talking lots about Daddy and the airplane because that's where daddy went, she added the Canada part by herself, and Daddy this and that and see Daddy Ok, see Dadddy, Daddy see Gemma airplane, Ok. She totally stole the phone from me to talk to Mikala; "Gemma have it, no Mommy talk, Gemma talk, Hi Auntie Kala, JUMP bed, doing? " It was so funny. She is also doing the "What's that?" now, to everything, and amazing me with her words. Like today she heard a loud bang and asked me what it was and I said "I don't know, Gemma, it's a ..." and I tried to think of a word she knew, and she filled it in all on her own; "Noise!" I didn't know she knew 'noise'. She is chiming in with the TV songs and her DVDs, counting...In English she does one two three over and over, in Chinese she does seven eight nine over and over.

Another 'trick' she pulled out of nowhere today; she was giving me a hard time; didn't want to bath and get dressed, etc, so when we were finally done she was standing on her dresser (change table, where I was pulling her pants up; she wasn't just standing on her dresser) she plugged her ears with her fingers and said "No Mommy!" and pretended she couldn't hear me. It was SOO funny, I have no idea where she got that from. Anyway, she is acting like a real turkey just in time for Thanksgiving.

Family Date

Chris left today for Hawaii (for work, not play, so don't get so excited!) so we had a family date yesterday, taking Gemma to a children's museum downtown (Thanks Heather for the tip). It was really fun, so many activities and all interactive, hands on stuff. There was a firetruck, digger, and motorcycles to climb on, dress up stuff and a theatre, painting, coloring, blocks of all shapes and sizes. We were there for about an hour and a half and she ran all over, trying everything for 10 seconds then moving on. Activities that lasted long were the firetruck and the painting. Short activities were dress up and some blocks. She's not into dress up yet, but we managed one awesome picture. I really liked the real grocery store, where you could actually take items off the shelf, put them in your basket, take them to the checkout and ring them out. The till would beep and ring, and give a total at the end, opening the money drawer and everything. Very fun.

Boing Boing...Bunny!

We saw a poster in the post office of a lady wearing bunny ears, so when we got home we had to make some.




She kept saying bunny ears, and then today she added the boing boing part. Her talking is so amazing; she is answering why questions and using sound words and adjectives. Like yesterday Adrienne came over, biking in the rain. When she got here she asked Gemma, "What's wrong with my pants?" and Gemma says, "Wet!" Adrienne then asked, "Why are they wet?" and Gemma goes, "Raining!"

Peopled Out

Our girl hit her people limit this weekend.

Poor Chris was supposed to come, and watch her for half days. (They had babysitting for half of the day) but he was feeling so rough and hardly been out of bed by that point we thought it better he stay home and recover rather than make the trip with us. So Gemma spent the whole day in childcare with people she didn't really know (except lunch hour with me). Friday she handled very well, but today she cried and cried until one of her regular babysitters from home showed up and took her away. In the afternoon they watched a movie so she was ok, but just clung on the lap of the sitter until I got there. The rest of the time even with me was hard, too, because everyone there is a friend and wanted to say Hi to her, and touch her hair, and be really friendly to her, and she just is not into that. Everyone was very understanding when I explained to them why she says 'No Touch!' and hides from that, so that was fortunate. I did my best to protect her and spent the whole evening Friday night and the whole bus ride home being very attentive to her and giving her lots of personal attention. I am happy she has boundaries and that she knows to say 'No' and stand up for herself.

Tonight we had a party to stop by at, and I just held her tight and tried to keep everyone away. She did warm up at the end; I think respecting her space allowed to get comfortable first and then she could come out a bit. She put on a great show for a friend's video camera, hopefully it will be up on facebook soon.

Parents need to protect their kids, on so many levels. This would be a great sentence starter for an essay. Our biggest challenge here is protecting Gemma's personal space. This picture is from our weekend at GreenBay; a picture of people taking a picture of Gemma.