Iris 100 days old

Iris turned 100 days old 8/23/2010. The 100th day of a baby is one of the most important days in a baby's life in Chinese tradition. It's a mildstone and implies that the baby will live 100 years. In the past, family celebrated this day by eating noodles, and friends and relatives would give the baby greetings and gifts. For Iris, we just took a lot of pictures:)

Heidi's new school

I like Heidi’s new school. She likes it, too. She started in June, when Iris was only 2 weeks’ old and everybody at home was still adjusting to the life with a new born. Surprisingly, Heidi’s transition from old school -> home stay -> new school was really successful. Now, she doesn’t want us to pick her up early in the afternoon since she still wants to play at school. This never happened before while she was attending the other two schools.

There’re so many reasons that I like her school:

10. She spends 1.5 hours everyday playing outside (or in the gym if it rains or too hot/cold to play outside). She got tanned but we are both happy. I love to see her play in fresh air and under the sky.

9. She gets to choose the activities she wants to do. Each hour in the morning, she can choose one out of four activities by putting her name clip on that activity on the board. Each activity has an assigned table. And of course she can do all four activities in that hour if she wants.

8. I know exactly what she eats everyday, though I don’t always check the menu online.

7. She does not ever watch TV for a single second at school! I really appreciate this! She sometimes plays on computer though, but just for 15 minutes, and it’s educational games.

6. She washes her hands right after she arrives at school. So I have a good reason to believe she won’t be sick that often this fall and winter.

5. There’s a fountain in the hall way, so she can drink water whenever she needs.

4. She’s been learning a lot. They have a weekly theme. They’ve had ‘camping’, ‘Hawaii’, ‘picnic’, ‘all about me’. She’s slept in a tent, brought a picnic lunch, slept in a sleeping bag, and had a Hawaiian style luau. She always ‘surprises’ us with her new knowledge. She talked to us about playing with aliens in outer space, and she said jail is for mean people.

3. This week the fall schedule began and the part I like the most is they will get serious in learning the alphabet and counting. I feel a little sorry for her that she began to have homework now. But she seems excited about it. Plus, she will have regular Spanish class and music class.

2. There are a good variety of extra curriculum activities: karate, soccer, gymnastics, ballet, and piano. At present Heidi is doing gymnastics, but I may sign her up for another one, which I haven’t decided on.

1. She has 3 teachers and she likes them all. I haven’t met all of them yet (one is new), but I believe they are great teachers according to Heidi’s feedback.

Now I have no doubt that it is all worth the 2 years and 9 months waiting to get in this school. My next goal is to get Iris in there hopefully in 2 years.

By the way, her school is Shandon Presbyterian Church Child Development Center, one mile from USC.

Another Monkey Joe's party

I always wonder why there are so many summer babies. Heidi got 5 birthday invitations at school in 2 months. Her little friend Wes just turned 4. Happy Birthday!

I simply love this picture

sisters

We are happy to see more interactions between the girls. Heidi likes to pretend to be a baby, too.

Heidi was counting Iris' fingers. After counting several times, she said to me "baby has 9 fingers!" I was like "What happened to the 10th one!"

Iris: "Looke at me, Heidi!"

Heidi: "That's enough pictures, mommy!"

Growing

Iris is 2.5 months old. She weights14 pounds and can sleep 5-6 hours at night.