"When I grow up..

.. I will be a big tall DADDY!"

So says Gemma today as we are brushing teeth. Teacher was her second option.

Juicy

Maybe she's watching too many princess movies, but when we got married today I got a VERY long and juicy kiss. Sorry, Gemma, no romantic kisses until you are much much older.

She knows some numbers. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10. She doesn't know 6, 9, 8, and 2. I didn't realize she knew them. we have a preschool readiness workbook so we've been doing school a bit. She doesn't want to work in order, which of course kills me but I want her to have fun and learn so I go with it. She loves cutting out the little matching cards and when we play games with them.

OH, and she has started to earn her own money. I give her about 5 minutes to pick up as many toys as she can from around the living room and put them on a spread out blanket. Then we count them, and for every two she gets 1 NT (1NT = 3cents). She is earning roughly 10NT a day; about 30 cents, which I think is high but I want her to be excited about it and I wasn't sure how many toys she's be able to pick up and how much she'd be earning in a day. I think after the summer we will change the ratio from 2:1 to 3:1; 3 toys for 1NT.

What do you pay your children and how?

When Guinness grows up...

Gem and Guin were bathing together, and Gemma was admiring his 7 teeth. "Wow, he has teeth now! He's getting so big!" She then went on to talk about how big Guinness was going to be. She pointed to herself and said "He will be this big one day." And I started listing things he will be able to do then that she can do: get dressed, go to the potty, eat by himself, and she interjected, "Wear makeup!!!" Uh, hopefully not. Although with Gemma as a sister it is likely. The boy is already in love with Dora :)

We then pretended Guinness had a baby in his tummy. Hmmm..

Trickery

Gemma is refusing to take her medicine. *(Is this my punishment for staying up late to read the My Sister's Keeper???)

I told her to take it quickly and get it over with.

I told her she would be sick forever.

I told her we would never play with her friends because you can't play with friends when you are sick and she will be sick until she takes her medicine.

I told her fine, you don't have to drink your medicine but you have to have this glass of cherry juice. (with medicine in it; ha ha!!)

So how far should the trickery go? What is the most outlandish trick/lie you've ever told to your children?

Sick, too

Gemma is not throwing up, thankfully, but is having some interesting moments on the potty. Yesterday I was talking to Chris and she went to the bathroom and farted so long and loud that I just burst out laughing; it was so funny because it sounded like a 50 year old man or something. I guess she heard me and our sudden silence because then she called out; "Mommy? Are you laughing at my poop sounds?" Busted.

She's having a hard time because poor Guin doesn't want to be put down ever, which limits play time with her. And I want to clean when Guinness is finally down, so I am trying to resist that urge and focus energy on her.

Mommy, let's tell stories!

We tell stories a lot. They usually begin with Once upon a time, and have babies in them or witches. Or both :)

My favorite are stories that begin, "When I was a little girl" or "When I was younger..." She really acts so old and grown up and like her youth was so long ago!!!

Something funny that I am remembering this week is how super alert she is when she first wakes up. She opens her eyes wide and calls. I go to her room (stumble to her room) and say, What Gemma? And her first sentence is a completely clear and coherent thought. "Mommy, we need to get up and get dressed because today Annabelle is coming to take me out and we have to be ready on time!" Sometimes I can convince her to come lay down with me in our bed and she'll drift off again. But other times we just begin our day and ride that energy wave.

Today

Gemma announced that she doesn't like music class because she 'doesn't want mommy to teach all the other kids. Just her.' Kindermusik is going OK. Yah, I'll leave it at that.

Tonight in Gemma's world she had 'kohlorabi' to eat (she meant lasagne), and gave Dora an hour long bath in the sink, using her and Guinness' toothbrush and almost all the soap in the process. There was lots of singing during this bath time. We ripped Ariel's head off trying to play paper dolls, ooops, so then we went to Katrina's because we were out of tape.

The latest bedtime trap? Asking for a drink of water, then spilling it n herself so she can change pyjamas, buying herself more mommy time. She is sleeping in her underwear tonight because I didn't want to change her, and besides, all her other jammies are in the wash.

Moose

"I will roar. Like a cow!" I look at her with a puzzled expression. "Ah, honey? Cows don't really roar." She nods knowingly, accepting my answer. "Like a MOOSE." Um, ok. So I take this. "Maybe we'll see a moose this summer when we are in Canada," I tell her. "OK," she says. " I will ride it!" I raise my eyebrows. "Uh, well, you can't really ride on moose," I try to gently explain.

"Are they mean?"

"Well, no, but they are shy."

"Oh. Well, that's ok. I'll just go up to it and tell it my name. We'll be friends."

Pretend

By far Gemma's favorite game of late is Daughter. "You be the daughter and I'm your mommy" she says. So I comply. Variations include, "We are Dora's parents" (she has a toy Dora), or Dora is her sister. The one thing that never changes is Guinness. He is always the baby named "Yocho" Hmm, don't know how to spell it but they are both long o sounds. She loves having pretend names; Coreela, Cassandra, Katrina, etc. Or different princess names. Like the pretzel princess or the french fry princess, whatever is going on.

Today she was playing with her toy cell phone and got a few emails she had to read to me. One was from Lorranda, our cousin, and Gemma very excitedly told me that it said "Lorranda is going to have a BABY!" ha ha, did you get that Lo? We were also invited to a few weddings in some other emails. Ha ha.

My body says...

Gemma had a few accidents this week; waiting too long to go to the potty I suspect. So I was being more diligent in reminding her and I told her she should go. "You haven't gone for a long time, " I said. "Isn't your body saying, 'I have to go'" To which she replied, "Noooo.... My body is saying... squeak squeak" Ha ha!

Gemma Gemma! I love this girl tonnes. She has been dressing herself lately, which means stripping down to nothing and walking around the house, announcing that she is going to get dressed 'all by myself'. About 10 seconds later comes the 'Mommy, can you help me?' But she is trying really hard and can do a lot of it on her own.

She hasn't been eating much lately and having runny poops, too, that are the weirdest colour. Sort of wheat colour. And really stinky, and lots of stinky farts. YUCK! She seems better today and ate more, so thats good.

She was typing message on her keyboard tonight and she said 'this is how to type Gemma:' and she punched the G, and then the N two times (which is close, right? They look similar and are side by side) and the A. Not bad.

Sleepover Success

Well, the babysitters and the child were happy today so I count it as a success. She didn't go to sleep till 2:00am and INSISTED on coming home before going to work, but other than that PIng said "She was perfect" and Victor said, "We're waiting a few more years before we have kids." Seriously, though, they were so awesome and so great to her. They really showed her a great time. She made her first professional voice recordings (Victor is a musician) so that was cute. Chris and I got this email about 11pm; a sound clip of Gemma singing and Victor playing. She had a bath, she played chasing and Barbie, and after her quick trip home went to work for 2 and half hours and was super great again. They did some more visiting after that and didn't make it home till 3:40! We are so blessed by friends who love our kids so so much, as much as we do.

Sleepover

Gemma is at a sleepover with Ping and Victor (whom she calls her 'phony daddy') Ha ha. Hope they have a great night. I'm sure they will. She hardly said good bye to me, she was waiting impatiently for the end of church and was out the door of the nursery before Chris finished announcements, ready to go. It is 9:52, and I am hopefully going to get a good night's sleep. Of course I don't get my hopes up. 'A Aood Night's Sleep' has been teasing me too much over the last three years and I don't trust it at all.

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.