soccer under a rainbow

horrible weather for the whole week, rainy and cold... the only good thing is that we have heat now.. thursday late afternoon the little ones braved the weather during soccer practice...

rainbow on the midway

thursday and friday are both school holiday, MM spent the morning at Family resource center with popo.

new school, new traditions

The first part of the video is taken on Sept 16, after MM's first Friday at Akiba. She was explaining me what is Shabbat (the Jewish sabbath) and how they observe it at school: they light candles and eat a braided challah, and said "shabbat shabbat". The next week she came home saying "Shalom (peace) Shabbat", telling me that "shalom" means "bonjour bonjour". I guess she figured that out on her own, as her teacher do not speak French. She was also quite impressed with the form and taste of the Challah (a braided bread) and spent a long time describing them to me. The kids made the bread with their teachers, and MM was particularly happy about that.
In the second part of the video, she is chanting "Shana Tova" as school prepares them for the Jewish new year. They ate honey and apple at school, and made a bumble bee hat, and sang a new year song. Other than that she has two days off this week, we (meaning Antoine, the honey-loving bear of ours) enjoyed the apple and honey tradition with her.

School House Rock performs at Family Resource Center

There is a concert today to celebrate the opening of Family Resource Center of the university. I took Oscar and MM there.

Oscar enjoyed the play a lot more than MM; she is still a bit too young for it.

waiting for bus in front of Lab school.

visiting the Oriental Institute

Friday night.. with Oscar and Kaius... Kaius just moved back from Japan, this is the first time we met him. Although both Jessica (Kaius' mom) and I were pregnant around the same time and we were both at hyde park throughout our pregnancy, I left two months before MM was born, and they left for Japan a few months after the birth of Kaius, which is one month after MM's birthday... Finally we got to see him!

Visiting the Oriental Institute on Saturday morning

a huge bull with a human face guarding some Assyrian treasure

Soccer at the midway

meeting their head coach for the first time (you see the university buildings at the background)

the new ones are put in a separate group today... Ming Ming is a lot happier with this arrangement. She was very intimidated the last time, and did not felt like playing as she was not as good as the others. Today she kept telling me that she did not want to go, but I think that we should have a second try. And indeed, she likes it a lot better. As we are leaving, she keeps telling me that we should do our homework (drawing something about soccer) before we come back so that she could get a prize like the others.

She looks anxious here because the two coaches are pretending to be giants.. some games with the kids..

gathering to give out prizes..

running back for water break

second Ballet class

animal dance: from butterfly, tiger, elephant, to zebra...

parents are not allowed in the studio after the first class, so these photos and videos are taken behind a very foggy window.

sitting like a princess

walking around campus after her ballet class

Monday Morning Meltdown

We don't know if it is related to papa's departure on Sunday afternoon (after all, MM is getting used to having papa around all the time during the whole summer), Monday morning was hard. MM woke up with a bad temper, refused to got dressed, to eat breakfast, and did not want to go to school. After some screaming as I put her on time out, she started saying bad things to popo and throwing stuff in her room, I had to punish her for doing such things. I forced her to do her time out and sat with her and let her cry it out in her room. the whole meltdown lasted for more than an hour, and we were an hour late for school.

But after that things went really well. She understood that she did some bad things and apologized to popo. And when papa called in the evening to ask about her day and why she acted like that, MM said: eeerrr... ben.. c'est comme ca.

Ming Ming's new bed

face painting at school picnic (it was a rainy day ..)

trying out clothes knitted by popo

her canopy is up, but she still migrants to my bed for the second half of her night.

She was still talking exclusively in French in this video. the day after, since antoine was not around, she quickly shifted to English when she played alone. And it has been like this for the whole week when papa was in Washington.

end of the week

Thursday, photo taken after her first soccer training at the midway with Chicago fire soccer club.

MM was not as excited about soccer, which was somehow expected. But the fact that she is playing with Oscar and Lucas (another kid in our building) helped a little bit. I forgot my camera, but the scene of little kids playing soccer at sunset against the Gothic buildings of U of Chicago was something.

Friday, Ming Ming loves the little fishes popo has brought from HK. according to her, these little fishes decided to take the plane with popo to come see MM because they know that MM really likes them.

Hugo Bohnenkamp!

MM finally got to hold him.

Wai and Xiao Fan stayed at our place for two nights, and MM was really happy to have some more people to play with.

Saturday, the kids spent the whole afternoon and evening in the courtyard. Activities included: chalk drawing on the ground (they drew an ants maze and traced shadows of anyone who would stand still under the sun), then the girls and boys spend a long time negotiating and arguing how they should share some play mat, after a series of water gun, bubbles, and I-don't-know-what, they ended the evening with another outdoor movie.

First week at Akiba - school photos

Miss Hannah reading a story

MM's teachers created a website for their class for classroom updates and communication with families. It was great! We can expect a lot of school pictures this year.

Ming Ming the ballerina

Ming Ming has her trial class today at the Hyde Park School of Dance. She was totally ENTHRALLED! I have never seem her so excited about a particular activity. She asked me on our way home if she could go dancing and skip school tomorrow (usually she likes school pretty well). Then the next day, upon waking up, the first thing she said to me was "can we go to ballet class today?"
Hyde Park school of dance seems to be a pretty professional school. On theory, if we don't move, Ming Ming can dance there until 18 years old. They provide scholarships for promising kids, and many students volunteer in the school as teaching assistants.
I enrolled MM in the youngest "creative movement" class, with only a few three-year olds, there was the teacher (and she is the artistic director of the school), a teaching assistant (an eight-year-old showing the kids what the steps are like when the teacher first sat down with the young kids explaining what they were going to do, and showing them what they can achieve also), and most surprisingly (maybe for me only), a pianist providing live music. So although it is a dancing class, the kids are always dancing to the music and moving to the rhythm.
MM was a bit timid in the beginning, as the other girls seemed to have some experience dancing or have older sisters who danced. But once the teacher come to asked her to join in, she participated 100%, followed all the movements, and was very concentrated. well, sometimes she turned to give me a smile, showing me that she was really really happy.
It was very touching to see her dance and being so happy!
here she is showing papa the steps she learnt today: baby run, march and skip.

we went to buy her dancing clothes and shoes after her trial class. She was so excited during the whole evening. and curiously, just before trying on her dancing dress to show it to papa, she said: 穿上以後就不是明明了 (once i put it on, I won't be Ming Ming anymore). I asked her why but she was not capable of explaining.

can't wait to show papa what she has learnt today in class.

in the class, they danced to the music, and once the pianist stopped, they would hold a "statue" position. Here Ming Ming is doing a statue position.