stlplaceHair cut
Mommy just cut Yoyo’s hair.
Mommy: wo yao kan kan wo de cheng guo. In english: I would like to see my fruits (results).
Yoyo: cheng guo ke yi chi ma? (Can I eat the results 🙂
Reading
Also, these days she just likes to be teacher, “reading” books to us. Sometimes she insists we sit on the carpet (that’s how it’s done ins her school).
Laptop
Seeing both my wife and myself are using laptop on bed, she got her VTech laptop and laughed at us 🙂
Same applies to Ruixian (my wife). Note for Ruixian I need to respect her authority as well (sometimes she lost patience when discipline our daughter).
Saw this from Saturday’s Kindermusik class, Serenity was a bit hyper that day (due to chocolate lollipop?). When the teacher asked the kids to put the sand blocks back, Serenity did not follow the instructions (she usually does follow instructions well). So the teacher asked “Serenity, could you put the sand blocks back”? Youyou hesitated for a few seconds, and walked toward the teacher. I was a bit relieved.
Another fun story from the Montessori teacher, on Friday, when the teacher read a story about a truck got stuck, Serenity suggested unload some of the lumbers, which surprised the teachers a bit (in a good way). That morning was also her first dental appointment, her routine was a bit off, and she played with food (run around) when they set up for the lunch. Of course she was disciplined. Serenity was a bit shocked (as I speculated) because she thought that teacher was the “nicer” one (more easy going).
My daughter has been to the Montessori Toddler program (Hope Academy in Creve Coeur) for over a year, and I think I am becoming a Montessori dad. This is a bit abstract, but I like to list a few examples about the school and teachers, and show why they are great.
This is the first US pre-school I have first hand experience. I never went to pre-school when I was young, I was raised primarily by my grandmas. There was an old saying “it takes a village to raise a child”. Hope Montessori was pretty much organized this way. We increasingly live in a consumerism society, but that I mean we run around for work and material things, and lose family time and equally important, quite time for reflection and time with friends. Hope has a few interesting activities each semester to bring kids, teachers and parents together. In the fall there is the parent work day. Today is the second parent work day we attended, while I had to admit I didn’t contribute much building the wooden slide. Our daughter did have fun painting the climber. Last year we helped out in the kitchen.
There are 4 fields trips each year: farm field trip in fall, magic house in winter, botanical garden in spring, and a state park trip in summer. Dave (the director) always makes sure the food are good in those field trips. Now when I think about it, the activity fits the season very well 🙂
Now a few words about the teachers. The most important thing is they love/care the kids very much. I am 100% sure my baby is in good hands when I drop her off in the morning. We also learned some parenting lessons from the teachers, tell the truth (be honest) to the kids, encourage her use the words, and recently, how to deal the emotion problem with the kid. One interesting thing is the teacher told my daughter we all have moms and we all miss mom (when my daughter cries for mom during nap time). Kinda cute, isn’t it?
I changed my job this Jan. I started working for a coal company as mobile app developer. Coal and mobile app (iPhone, iPad) do usually go together in the same sentence, I think. As coal is described as “dirty” in the media, especially by the environmentalists, the “green” people both in and outside government (think Al Gore, president Obama and his EPA commissioner Lisa Jackson). On the other hand, Apple the forerunner of smartphone, tablet revolution is famous for its environment friendly too, just recently they announced initiatives to replace coal powered datacenter by natural gas (they are like tube and box like, think those as natural gas modules). Those are developed by Silicon Valley based start-ups.
Back to topic, for me the rationale of working for coal company goes like this. I am a pragmatist (a pragmatic programmer 🙂 Coal is not the cleanest energy source and not renewable source. But before this year, Coal made up more than 40% if the US power generation (this year the number dropped to lower 30s). So, if one person really wants to make a stand on the issue (instead of just talking like the former vice president does, he got a huge mansion and uses a lot of electricity), the person can simple use 1/3 less of the electricity. That means, uses less light, AC, heat,…in her/his daily life. I am trying to be energy conscious on my life but won’t go as far as cut 1/3 of usage. At the same time, working for a coal company (5 minutes commute time), will help me be a part of the solution (less gasoline for commute for sure). I will be a stake holder in coal mining, as I recently learned, coal mining uses a lot of energy too (diesels, electricity etc.)
I have worked for my new employer for about 9 months, and so far I like what I see. Most recently I went on 2 mines, and met some down-to-earth miners. Since I went to Rolla (the former Missouri School of Mines, miner), now I became a real miner.
Presidential election will play a part in the coal industry too, as the current administration is very coal-unfriendly. I think green (renewable) energy is fine, but the traditional energy source (oil, gas, coal) got to be a part of the solution.
Last but not least, I have 2 scene kinda imprinted in my mind during the mine visit: when I eat the lunch comfortably in the office, I recall the miners eat their lunch in the tunnel. The devotion during lunch time from a few surface miners. In the HQ we sometimes lost touch of the toughness of the front line work. Now I do. At the same time, the company continues to do good things around the community, in all the locations. Here in HQ, we have the united way campaign. In a sense, we are all in one community.
I was involved into a car accident in the past weekend. We are all fine, so as the other party. The main thing is both cars got some damage. It’s funny when I drove the broken car on the road, I got quite a few “look back” from other drivers. And yesterday, at McDonald parking lot, the lady who looks after the parking lot, said “what happened to your car”. Not to mention, our daughter Serenity volunteered to repair the car.
Last but not least, my wife insisted I declare “Minjie is the one who got involved in the accident” 🙂
Fun aside, we are truly blessed we were not hurt.
Have not done this for a while. I have changed job again, and in the new year started a developer position very close to home, doing mobile (iOS, iPhone, iPad) development. I love what I am doing now, because I got opportunity to create an app from back end (database, web service) to front end (iOS UI, local database). At the same time, I have set up the source code control system (SVN), and web server (MS IIS).
My wife started as purchase assistant job at a local manufacturing company, the main task is communicate with Chinese suppliers, involves both Chinese language and mechanical engineering. As I was ME major, I got opportunity to talk to my wife about some of her tasks. Back to ME.
Baby is still a very important part of our life. She grew quite a bit, in terms of language (both Chinese and English), and other skills. We think the Hope Montessori Toddler program (Creve Coeur) helped quite a bit. It helped her be more confident as a person.
In my spare time, I still pay attention to the stock market, US politics, and last but not least, volunteer (serve) in Church. I have a change of heart on politics: in the past I think the government should take care of at least two things: health care and education. Now I think the family and individual should take more responsibility. Also I felt some of the welfare program is not necessarily good for the recipients in the long term. As I read from the news one welfare recipient (woman) is alleged helping her husband kill another person (lady) in Maine. On the tax, it seems local tax is always rising as time goes, and the federal deficit cannot sustain if we don’t raise the overall rate for all the tax payers. The buffett rule (have the rich pay a little more) is just a cup of water on the fire.
Last but not least, we bought a new car (Camry, our first), I like the blue booth audio very much, besides its signature smoothness.
More later…
Last week (Friday), when at friends’ house, and the hostess offered snack, she asked “这是什么呀？(what is this)”?
Today, after we put her to crib, when my wife and I both read iPhone on bed (her crib is next to our bed), she said “在看什么呀？(what are you reading)?”…Later, she also said “what are you doing?”
(Update 10-01-2011) We went to Youyou’s school this morning for “Parents work day”, basically they have some small playground improvement projects (painting, making a new climber), and in the lunch time, we have a BBQ and potluck. The ethnic diversity of the students/parents background surprised me a bit, reminded of Rolla (a lot of Indian and Chinese faculties and graduate students). It took some efforts to pull together such an event, thanks to David and his staffs 🙂
(Original) Youyou is a 18 month and 18 days old. She started the program on Aug 29, and 4 weeks has passed. She has transformed from “crying when mom left her in the school” to today “she no longer cries when mom drop her”.
She can say quite a few Chinese words and some sentences. She has good memory probably due to genetic reason (we are both good at memorizing things). She also can feed herself a bit, and be much more proactive when playing with us. For instance, she came to grab me for dinner when I was on phone last Sunday evening (mom did not ask her). Not to mention grabbing my glasses (she is very fast). When I go to work, she will usually say “Mao Zi” which means “wear a cap”, and say “bye bye” (which she learned a while ago).
I attended a class offered by David (the head of Hope Toddler program) this morning, Dave is quite enthusiastic and I think the No. 1 thing for me is to learn, because kid is learning from parents all the time.
This 9-month-old young lady.
Her first endeavor in Xcode
I think she is still a winner although there were 62 compile errors. You know why? Because Youyou tried (I am quoting my 5 and half years old niece).
I am sorry I have not updated this blog as much as I like to.
Baby is definitely getting more active and interesting: her favorite thing these days is flip over as soon as we put her down. And she will smile at us sometimes when we “found out”.
In addition to baby, I spent some time working on myNestEgg, my first iPhone app, a retirement savings calculator. I am wrapping it up and hope to submit it very soon.