Cherry season is in!

It is cherry season again. Very sweet cherries at Spring Vally Orchard.

With Jennifer

She built the whole thing on her own, I was pleasantly surprised.





The two of them exchanged artwork, both asked the other one not to throw their work away.

Ice-cream party at MM's school

Last Sunday was MM's school picnic, we did not go because Ms Erin was not able to attend. The Seal class organized an ice-cream party that included all the parents instead. It was really great. The kids have been talking about it all week long. They did really well preforming the songs, and most of all, were really happy and excited that all the parents were there.
The preformance consisted of three songs:

the grey squirrel: they have made a squirrel tail

the frog song

the lady with the alligator purse

ice-cream party 2

class photo

squirrel tail

pizza friday

ice-cream!

Tyress

Dahlia

Ming Ming before nap, she got a little bit of tears in her eyes because mommy was leaving..

child labor

peeling zucchini

shining papa's shoes

the first time she took out her block and played on her own, without any prompting on my part.

School

Monday morning at school, with Eva.

Miss Erin will be leaving at the end of the month. The turnover rate at this school is killing us. The main problem is that the teacher's wages are too low here. Miss Erin really loves these children, but the salary she gets is not sustainable, and not to mention that she often paid for extra art supplies out of her own pocket.

MM is going to be sad as she likes Erin so much. The other day she told me her best friend is mama and papa at home, Miss Erin and Miss Beth at school. Who says that children's memory are pretty short-term? She still remembers Miss Beth after all these time.

Luckily the whole class will be moving up to the three-year-old class once Miss Erin left, and all of them know Miss Michele pretty well as they nap at her room.

Matthew is the talker at the class. He can talk non-stop for a while, and Miss Erin has to remind him "Matthew, take a breath! breath!"

Sunday afternoon

MM woke up from her nap and wanted to go to the museum. It was quite a rush but finally she got half an hour of play there, she spent every minute of it building this little brick house for a little pig so that it would be safe when the big bad wolf came. This is the first time she showed so much enthusiasm in building.

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papa was feeling generous and treated us to a french restaurant. Here MM was showing us how to eat a lemon, she could really eat up the whole thing. When the waitress joked that why she left the skin, she tried to eat that too.

I asked Antoine to feed MM as she was too distracted to eat her dinner. Since she was too distracted and took her bites really slowly, Antoine ate them up thinking that she did not want it anymore. When MM realized that all her food was gone she was not happy, and finally papa has to ordered her a chocolate cake with ice-cream to compensate. Way to go papa!

it is time for strawberry-picking again!

this is her third year picking strawberries, quite a veteran worker already! and this is the third year that we had come back to Chiles Peach Orchard regularly through out the summer. It is a really great place: 20 mins drive from home, got strawberries and cherries in the spring, peaches in the summer, always have ice-cream and milkshakes ready, and a pavillion for picnic, and most of all, open on Sunday! =)

papa started out as the manager (his all time excuse for not actually engaging in the work itself!), but since his only two workers were too distracted - MM preferred picking green strawberries and green leaves, mama was taking some picutre - papa had no choice but did the picking himself.

We have had many rainy weekends lately. This spring has brought a lot a lot of rain. This morning we (I) decided not to stay home and seized the chance of the three-hour sunshine predicted by the weather forecast. Direction to the starwberry farm! Still, it took me a lot of energy just to pull father and daughter out of the door in time for some picking.

the strawberries were pretty, and there were plenty of them, but there were not so sweet, too much rain these few days. But I found them sweeter the next day, could this be?

our farmer got tired...

but there was always ice-cream to boost her morale.

See, just moments after we had finished picking and had our sandwich picnic, the rain came pouring down. there were still some people in the strawberry field, they ran back totally soaked up in water.

family art fair

Life here starts to turn in circles. I remember last year we attended the same family art fair at the same gallery, around the same time in the spring. Then furit-picking season would set in, we would have strawberries, cherries, peaches, and then apples in the fall. There would have free film screenings in the local cinema for children throughout the summer. We would have a lot of swiming sections as the pool would be open soon. Come June and July there would have quite a few birthday parties (her class is full of June and July babies). Then in no time it would be red leaves and holiday parades and christmas trees all over again.
Then one day I would wake up and MM would be already 18 years old and moving out to college...

明明在講"快樂王子"的故事

她肯定是把快樂王子和另一個故事混在一起了.
a video from 22 apri 2011

MM's expressions

sore throat and coughing
--MM would say "there is a stink bug down my throat", I know this come from Miss Erin

death and funeral
--Since Dahlia's grandpa passed away, whenever someone is going to a funeral, the expression at school is "xx's grandpa Joe became an angel".

itchness
-- MM would say "有螞蟻在這里爬過" (some ants crawled past here). this one comes from the french expression "avoir des fourmis dans les jambes" (to have pins and needles in one's legs), and MM changed it to express itchness as well.

------------------------
When MM was younger I felt like I knew her world 100%. I knew all the references of her idiosyncratic use of language, the sources of her fear or laugh, all the stories and songs... But now she often surprises me with new phrases, expressions, references. Like she know about "the Lima bean monster" and I knew nothing about. We try to keep up, from "Jack and the beanstalk" to "the lady with an alligator purse". One time MM was singing "Ring a Ring o' Roses", both Antoine and I had no idea. Finally, Antoine asked a bookstore keeper when MM was singing it at a children's bookstore.

I know, she is the mother!

scene 1:
Dressing a toddler is not an easy affair. This morning MM was moving in all directions, I was trying to persuade her to cooperate, she was not listening. I resorted to telling her to look at me so that I could give her a speech.
She did not wait for my speech and decided to give me hers: "mama, there is no need to whine, just say please. whining is bad manners!"
Okay, apparently she was the mum here and I was the child!

scene 2:
We read a story called "sandwich swap" where "yucky" and "gross" were used to describe food - these kind of offensive words make her laugh each time! Ming Ming decided to put her knowledge to use at dinner time. "This is yucky and I don't want to eat it."
I told her it made me sad that she did not like the dinner I cooked "specially" for her. She looked at me and said quietly, "我給你畫的畫你不喜歡, 我也很傷心" (but it also makes me sad that you did not like the painting I made just for you). Okay I admitted that sometimes (or often) I did throw her painting away (the problem is that every painting is "dedicated" to me"), and for a few times she got really upset when she saw them in the garbage bin. Since then I have invented more discrete ways of doing it. But I guess MM has collected enough evidence to prove her point.

MM playing with Isabel

MM narrated as she drew. A whole story about a shy witch hiding in a cave because she did not want to say Hello to people. She hid there for three days and the cave had two doors. She was a nice witch and a good friend of Snow White. She gave Snow White an apple, but it was a good apple, not a poisonous one. MM wrote down the whole narrative on her own, just above where my writing appear, in her own invented language.

the concept of "three days" for MM is like "seven days" in the bible. It means a very long time but also not too long. She often inform me these days, "I will grow up in three days, but then the next day I will become a little baby again, okay?"

MM's animals after a stencil, she wrote all their names under the figure (well, in her own writing system).

mother's day present

i forgot to take a photo of the present once it is opened.. will add one later...

MM was very excited that she finally got to present her present.

"明明肥啫啫, 媽媽胖乎乎" : 話說有一天ANTOINE找出一張明明小時候的照片, 然後他記起婆婆常常說的肥啫啫這個福建話詞彙. 明明很喜歡這個詞, 問我甚麼意思, 我話是胖乎乎的意思, 於是便有了這經常掛在口邊的一句話.

a secret

Miss Erin has been working with the kids on a secret mother's day present for the mums. Because it is supposed to be a surprise, she has asked the kids not to say anything about it.
The suspense is hard... eps for MM who usually tells us everyday what kind of art she has made in school. Today they must have finished making the present and finally MM could not hold her excitment anymore. She told me "I made a present for mama", then go on silence/whisper mode... apparently she can told papa about it but not mama...

MM reading a Chinese story to Mamiecath

imitating her teacher

these few weeks it is all about knowing the full names of her friends, and a lot of "prefect", "I love it!"

sunday morning picnic

papa is in charge of bathing MM now.