ChinChing Farm

Gemma had a great vacation at ChinChing farm. She loved the animals, calling the sheep her friends and naming them all. She loved following them around and patting them, and trying to boss them around: "Come HERE sheep-y!" COME HERE!" She was quite the little shepherd and spent about 20 minutes unafraid and on her own following the sheep and feeding them, etc. Of course the show interested her little, even the horse show with these huge horses zooming around a rind and girls doing flips and standing on their heads on the horse's back. She was waiting for the kids merry-go-round and train that was set up at the entrance/exit. We had fun walking around, looking at rocks, climbing rocks, smashing rocks. I remember having lots of fun doing that, too, when my dad used to fly model airplanes and would take us out to the gravel pits to play as he flew his toys. Gemma loved the little playground/yard at our hotel, calling it her barn. There were some of those animals with seats on giant springs for riding and she called them her animals: goats, sheep, a seal, and her motorcycle. The gap in the hedge was her door, which she carefully locked each time she exited to protect her animals from robbers. Her attitude toward the constant attention from strangers throughout the trip was apparent as she toured me though the barn: "my animals do NOT like Chinese people." Sigh. Of course she doesn't really get what she is saying; when you ask her 'but what about Uncle Andy?' she will say that he is not Chinese, same with Auntie Audrey. To her Chinese is a language thing, not a racial thing. And it is annoying rude strangers she doesn't like, not Chinese people. We're working on it :)

Oh Gemma. She has been whiny since I've been on break which is so hard to take, and I even lost my temper with her twice today. On Christmas Eve, too, sigh... Lord, I need more patience and mercy as a mother.

It has been a fun Christmas eve day though, I hope for her too. Looking forward to our trip to Taichung tomorrow to see Andy and Audrey and Elias and then the mountains. I will make it a point to remember something cute she says or does rather than how frustrated I was with her.

Paper Storage

Any good ideas on how to store paper? Gemma got that huge Costco pack of construction paper for her birthday, but how and where do you keep it? Leave it on its end and it bends. Leave it on its side and to hard to grab out one sheet.

Accident

We had a cookie party this morning with a dozen people, and Gemma missed her nap. She had an ENORMOUS benny before church (a benny is a tantrum, my UK word of the day) making us late for church and anyway..she walked up to Auntie Adrienne at the beginning of the music and said, "I'm grouchy. I didn't take a nap." So Auntie asks if she wants to sit with her, so Gemma crawls on her lap and falls asleep fairly promptly. I was in the back with Guinness. In the middle of the service Adrienne all of a sudden jumps up, and rushes to the back. Gemma was so passed out tired that her bladder had let go and she peed all over Adrienne's lap. Adrienne ran to the back, Gemma bouncing on her shoulder; she was still completely out, and so they laid her down in the kid's room, and Auntie tried to clean herself up the best she could.

Oh, auntie! We're sorry! Thank you for all you do for us!!

And Gemma, so cute, when she woke up at church she said, "I'm all wet!" Hahaha.

3 years old

If I had any energy I would look through our external hard drives of pictures and get a good one of Gemma when she was born... They are all on the flicker if you want to see (check the our links section). Just look at Guinness' blog and you'll remember what she looks like!

The party was a huge success! Thankfully we got everything done in time, people came, and everyone had a blast. (Almost wasn't done in time; the party was to start at 3:30 and at 3:40 Chris leaned his head out the balcony to call out to me running around the yard setting stuff up, "Are you done? There are a dozen people here and I don't know what to do!" Bless his heart, he did a tonne to get ready but being the social director for a room full of toddlers is not up his alley.

If you look online you will find the plans for hundreds of Dora birthdays. I though I was being pretty original choosing Dora over the Princess Tea Party theme, but I guess not. :) Here is our Dora party outline:

Decor; we had an old Dora book that was ripped so we cut the good pictures out of it and hung them from long ribbons in the middle of the room, and put some pictures on the windows. Hung up multi coloured streamers and balloons. Taped Dora tissue paper on the table as a table cloth.

When the kids got there we had snacks (because it was right after school) and put on Dora tattoos. As the kids came Chris put the presents into a big box. After snacks we went open the presents, but OH NO! They had mysteriously vanished! There was a picture of Swiper there, and a note. So off we went to find the swiped presents. Map was there to help us. Our adventure took us to the parking garage looking for the purple planet, over seashell bridge (paper seashells taped to the sidewalk), to the singing gate (paper eyes, mouth, and eyebrows taped to the big gate at the front of our yard), through crocodile swamp (water bottles with paper crocodile heads taped on). The kids had lots of fun. We found the presents after jumping over the corcodiles, went upstairs and opened them, cut the cake (wahh!) and ate it up. Audrey, Adrienne, and I make Dora backpacks out of purple felt for treat bags, and everyone went home around 5ish.

Present highlights:a hello kitty coffee pot that sings and actually pours water!! It is so awesome. You add the water in the back, just like a real coffee machine, put the pot on the burner and push the button...TA DA! Out comes a single serving of 'coffee'. It is really adorable. Gemma also got a doll house, tea set, watch, Dora playdough set, arts and crafts stuff. We got her that huge pack of construction paper from Costco, the Wizard of OZ book, and a Dora doll with tonnes of clothes. (I found that on Kijiji this summer when home for 20$)

Gemma used her yellow playdough on a 'project' yesterday, mixing it up with glitter glue and sticking it to a piece of paper, and Chris and I scolded her. I told her, You won't have any playdough left if you do that with it, and she said, "that's ok. I'll get some for my birthday!" Ha ha, not for a while now Gems!

New Passports

Going for new passports this week, the kids and I. I thought the newborn photo was hard, well the 3 year old photo was not much better.

Sit up. Not so up. Put your head down. Lift your chin up. Look at me. Look at me. Don't look over there. Don't turn your head. Move your hair off your ears. Don't turn your head. Sit up. Don't smile. Don't show your teeth. No, you can't do that either. Almost done, Gemma. Almost done. Look at me...

Guinness was equally brutal. Pray they get accepted!

Survivor, anyone?

Usually we watch Dora before bed. So you can imagine my surprise when Gemma said,"Can we watch Survivor?" Adrienne was here and said, who do you want to watch on survivor? And Gemma replies, "Shambo!" (I guess you need to be following survivor to get it...)

She got some awesome new winter hand me downs, including some beautiful shoes. She insists they fit, even though they are 3 sizes too big. "Look," she says, "My feet are this big and they are this big! So they fit!". She was traispsing around ins some lovely pink dress shoes with pointy open toes and a small heel. Other treasures? A pair of white cowboy boots! She showed Chris and he said, No way. I don't like them. So she told Adrienne later that, "Daddy don't like them!" with her very serious face.

Gemma's baby

The imagination of toddlers...

Something Gemma loves to play with in the bathtub is hand towels and face clothes. She needs like 6 of them and then drapes them over the tap making a tower, or whatever. The last few months she's been pretending they are a baby.

She balls them all up and then cuddles it. And announces it is her baby. And she wants to bring her baby out. One time I got her a pan to put her baby in (you know those times you think it will be only one time and turns out to be the beginning of a very long tradition?) So now she always asks for a pan for her baby. (Usually it is a loaf pan, but sometimes it is an 8inch circle pan). She gently places her soaking, saggy, dripping baby into the pan, and refuses to let you dump it out. Weird, right? (I am reminded of Kaitlyn and her sleeping with the spatula days...)

turning the corner?

She slept completely through the night the last two nights. My toes are crossed, my fingers are crossed and every piece of wood in this house has been knocked on. Could it be we are rounding this corner?

Birthday

We are starting to get ready for the birthday party. Decisions to made on:
date
time
snacks? supper?
cake? There are about a million Dora cakes to choose from
decorations
guest list

Have some stuff organized, but not much. This weekend I'll get to it.

What does Gemma want? Hmmm, pretty much anything. She loves to say when we go out shopping, Can I get this for my birthday? It could be a pen, a drink, a book... On the real gift list is sand for her mini sandbox, construction paper, new paints, a dora doll with clothes I bought from Kijiji this summer, and some barrettes and hair things. A late birthday is good because any extra presents she gets can be saved until Christmas. She loves princesses, she needs some new coloring books.

We'll keep you in the loop.

Let's have a meeting

You can tell that Chris and I do a lot of church work; Gemma is all about meetings. She sits down with either one of us and says, "Let's have a meeting." So we pick a topic and ask eachother questions about it. We've had lots of meetings about Gemma's upcoming birthday, we talk about what we are going to do that day, or about Gemma's bedroom. Whatever. Today at Starbucks Chris and Gemma had a meeting about coffee. Chris asks her, What kind of coffee do you like? She says, "Strawberry." They go through some dialogue about cream or sugar, room for milk, ice or hot. Then Gemma takes on the role of interviewer and asks Chris what kind of coffee he likes. Black is his reply. Well, the little wheels in her brain start turning... She thinks about this for a moment and then retorts, "'I like pink coffee" (get it? Because she liked strawberry coffee but learned you should use a color when describing coffee, so she thought back to her answer and what color it was.)

papier mache

Had a great night of fun with Gemma. Took a nice walk, did some window shopping, then came home to finish up a papier mach project the nursery is working on for our church's 5th anniversary party this weekend. (Cinco de Pearlo). Gemma and I had to o the second layer because our friends are coming to help paint/decorate on Wednesday.

Her medicine makes her groggy and go to sleep really fast. Is it wrong of me to love that ;)

And today's lesson is...

Don't put sticks in your mouth. Especially if you found them outside. And used them to make nature stew with every rock, leaf, berry, flower, etc, you found while playing outside.

This is what happened at our house today. Gemma came in from outside, with her stick. I caught her with the end in her mouth and said, Gemma, that is so gross! Take that out of your mouth. Well 5 minutes later she starts bawling her head off that her mouth is hurting and burning. I look at it and it is all red around her lips and chin, and on her palm where she was holding the stick. Of course I assume the stick has been in poison or something and I run Guinness to the neighbour and we head to the doctor.

No official diagnosis (sigh, Taiwan) but got some medicine and a recommendation from the dr. not to eat sticks anymore. Thanks, buddy. The red is gone, but then at church she started crying because she said her hands hurt, but that seems to be ok now.

Such is life.

That's what she said...

Gemma was explaining to me how she wanted to do her America puzzle, and Chris and I were trying to tell her that, No, she couldn't do it because she needs help, Guinness was going to get it, etc... And so she said to Chris, "Ok, here's the deal..." and started explaining her situation. Heehee.

Also said today, "I love you so much so much so much so much..in the whole wide world." Adding in the whole wide world to anything makes it very very big in her mind.

We went out for a long walk after school today (oh wait, I stayed home from school because Guin was sick, I had a sore throat, and Chris wrecked his ankle playing ball) so anyway, this afternoon we went out for a walk and looked at the Sanrio store (makers of Hello Kitty, a pet store, and a few other places. It was a lovely afternoon walk with my kids.

Hurray!

She's potty trained!!!

I'm being played!!!

Wow! And unreal conversation took place tonight as Gemma was falling asleep...

Gemma was awake in bed, I was working in my bedroom, and Chris had just gotten home so he was in saying goodnight to her. She said, "Mommy's working, so Daddy, you lay down with me," And then Chris said, "No, I think you can go to bed by yourself," and she said, "Then I will just go like this: 'Mommy?'" Unaware of the conversation taking place in her bed, I replied (as I always do,) "Yes Gemma?", and she turned to Chris and said, "See?" with a look of mischief on her face, knowing that she is the puppet master of bedtime.

I am a sucker!!!!

Staff Retreat

It was our annual staff retreat at Green Bay this weekend (thursday friday) and it was awesome!!

Got to the hotel at about 4, jumped into our swim gear and hit the beach. Gemma LOVES the waves and the sand, and it was so perfect weather wise. She jumped the waves and slid down the sand hills, getting completely covered. Friday we spent the whole day at the pool (the ocean was a bit rough, and the sand super hot). Good thing we had one of those wetsuit style bathing suits, because Gemma got a super tan on her lower legs and forearms. Such a wonderful time.

It finally happened...

The conversation that was made famous by the movie Kindergarten Cop:

"Mommy, Guinness has a pokey thing and I have (pause) bumps."

And I say Hmm, 'uh huh...' and then a little dog walked by and Gemma added, "And dogs have...THAT!"


Yep, it was funny.

My body says...

Our new babysitter is very sweet and always brings Gemma a treat; microwave popcorn or goldfish crackers or whatever. So last night she brought over one of those lunch sized bags of fritos. Well Gemma talked about them all night; I want my chips. Even I have my standards and said, no, not before bed, we'll eat them tomorrow. First thing in the morning she is after Chris,"I want my chips." And Chris says, no. And she says,

"My body says, 'I want some chips! I want some chips!'" And she lifts up her shirt and wiggles her body, like its really her body 'talking' to us.

She tried it again with me tonight. So funny!

We started the whole listen to your body thing early in potty training. I told her that her body would tell her when she has to pee, she just needs to listen. So she often says, "My body says, 'I have to pee!'"

She loves pretending lately. She loves to talk to her toothbrush, her toys, Mr. Finger (mommy's walking fingers). "Make it talk, mommy." Or this one, talking about why she doesn't poop in the potty, and she says, "My poopy says, 'I don't want to come out.'" Oh great.

REALLY glad she was speaking English...

Preface: the first time Gemma saw me nurse Guinness she called them 'bottles'. And in the moment I just said, 'Uh yah. Those are mommy's bottles." Now I can begin the story.

We were waiting in line at the bathroom yesterday at the MRT. I was holding Gemma, and she pointed at the lady behind us who was wearing a pretty tank top with a lacy ruffle around the neck. "She bottles are so pretty-ful." OK, the English is bad too, by 'she' she meant her, by 'pretty-ful' she meant beautiful. It was funny.