A letter to a friend

Lily wrote this all by herself. We’re particularly impressed by her punctuation and how hard she tried on the spelling. It actually starts with “Dear Hope” and circles back to the top .

Papa’s not going to buy me a diamond ring…

Lily is only 4 but already likes a lot of “girly” things. She likes to wear dresses and have her hair in braids. Her lip gloss ring is a gift from a friend and she shows me how her lips sparkle after using it. We also caught her and a friend using washable markers to paint make up on their faces and teddy bears’ faces.

As parents we’re kinda torn between how much to allow her to enjoy these things and how much to shape her to know her worth is not in her appearance. Our hope is some type of grounded mind set in the middle of extremes. That she can know how to have healthy hygiene habits and thereby look presentable without obsessing over these details. How do you teach a young girl that she will be judged by her appearance (hard to escape this fact) but that you don’t have to accept those critiques?

People say this to girls all the time… Some people say, “Oh Lily you look really pretty today.”  She often replies, “I look pretty EVERY day.”

Recently Daddy was genuinely sad/mad because Lily has fallen in love with her new shoes. She wants to wear these dress shoes all the time and even sings songs about how pretty they are.

Today on the drive home she told me she wanted an anklet (because her cousin and aunt wear them sometimes) and that she wants a ring. She even says, Mommy I can’t say Ring. So we practice “R” sounds some more. She said she specifically wants a diamond ring, because they are pretty. I asked her, who do you know has a diamond ring? No one.

I told her they are too expensive and we will save the money to use on something else. I didn’t tell her that there’s no way Daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. We don’t subscribe to that lullaby song.

 

Big Toddler On Campus

Serena, maybe some day you will be a politician. You like to greet strangers a lot, especially at restaurants. Now that you have been walking with me to Lily’s school there are even more people to see.

You often wave to any Asian kid who is less than 5 years old. I think you assume we know them. You are also good at greeting the other babies who pick up their older siblings at school. Whether they are sleeping or not, you like to touch their cheek. Thankfully you have learned a little bit of gentleness over this past year.
From the very first morning that Lily started Kindergarten perhaps you decided you are a big girl now too, so you have insisted to try to use the potty, despite our new requirement to get out the door on time.

You also love to pick up rocks from one house’s front yard near the school. I need to park on another side of the school to avoid that yard unless I have an extra 10 minutes to kill. You also picked up some flowers one day, copying what Lily was doing.

When we get to the classroom all the parents are hovered outside the door, slowly getting their kids to walk inside. Serena, you find Lily’s classroom so fascinating. You know you can’t go inside so you stand at the doorway and stare inside for as long as we let you, while everyone tries to walk around you.

On the 3rd day of school, Lily paused at the doorway and I wondered what’s wrong? Then she pulls out her flower and gives it to the teacher. Very nice. So of course I took out my camera to take a picture. Then Serena follows and gives the teacher a flower and a hug. That’s my cutie pies.

All I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten… lots of rules

Dear Lily, You have just started Kindergarten and you are learning all sorts of things. Did you know your Auntie Natalie skipped Kindergarten? I wonder whether she learned these things yet…
Here are some new rules from your first week of Kindergarten:
1. Listen to the Teacher
2. Listening to the teacher means you have to sit still and face forward. Mommy learned a new phrase: zuo hau.
3. When the Teacher asks you to face forward, it is not a game, you need to do it all at once, not a little bit and then smile, then a little bit more.
4. You love to wear pretty dresses to school. Yesterday the teacher said you need to wear shorts under them. Also a new rule (every day a new rule!) is that students are not allowed to show off their pretty panties to other students.
5. Most recent rule (but an old one at home): No screaming! (even if others are not doing it right! use words…)
One friend of mine tells her kids to not scream unless it’s an emergency… but I think in Lily’s mind, if another kid is pushing in Lily’s chair, or touching anything of hers, it’s pretty much an emergency.
Lots more to learn in school! It’s only the first week!

First trip to DC

I am from the DC area, and this past month we took the girls for the first time to visit DC, where their grandparents still live. We survived the 5 hour flight and had a great time – here are some highlights:

* Lily went from a liability to an asset when traveling. She took one of our full-size carry-on luggages and wheeled it around as we went through the airport – she did such a great job.
* It was wonderful seeing my sister’s family from NY with their kids, Sarah and Andrew, who are a bit older. Sarah and Andrew are so good playing with Lily and Serena – though everyone this trip was WAAAYYY into their Apple devices. Much of the time it was the 4 kids playing simultaneously with 1 Macbook Pro, 1 Ipad, 1 Iphone, and 1 Ipod Touch, and every so often looking at what the other kid was doing. Apple is clearly winning the next generation.
* Lily is getting more comfortable swimming – coming off of her first swim class, we set a goal of doing one more “bob” in and out of the water each time she goes swimming. By the end of the week, she was doing 2 bobs, and she recently did 4 bobs the last time we went swimming. Next step, “chicken, apple, soldier” and learning to swim.
* Lily and Serena really enjoyed their DC day – the monuments and Capitol building didn’t mean too much to them, but they loved the Smithsonian carousel, and they had a great time at Air and Space museum and Natural History museum. Serena would walk around the museums excitedly pointing at exhibits and shouting, “Look! Look!”
* Lily and Serena had a great time running around Grandpa’s office. It was especially nice that everyone in the family was active and healthy. We all went around together, and it was such a nice time as a family.
* As is typical at Fang family gatherings, we ate huge amounts of fruit. Lots of yummy peaches, cherries, watermelon, and pineapple. We also had Maryland Blue Crabs, which weren’t quite as meaty as they can sometimes be, but were good nevertheless. Lily and Serena enjoyed eating crab, especially since Daddy was doing most of the work extracting the meat.
* We also ate a GIANT sundae at Ben and Jerry’s one night – the mini Vermontster. Sarah was super excited about it. Grandma thought it was kind of funny, but then she had a really pained look in the pictures as we were finishing the sundae. Definitely not the healthiest part of the trip, but it was memorable.
* Lily, Bert, Andrew, and I had a great foursome playing tennis! It’s neat that the next generation will be able to play together more and more as they get older – last time we started playing basketball, and I think the trend will continue.
* Lily is also sitting on my lap now, and she says that a highlight for her was “drinking so much juice on the airplane.” Thank you, United Airlines.

First Day of Kindergarten

This past week, Lily started kindergarten. Since her birthday is late November, she is very young for kindergarten, but after a little bit of going back and forth, we decided to start her this year.

Mimi, of course, was up before everyone on the first day. I think she woke up at 5 AM or something. Lots of nervous, excited energy for the big day.

Serena actually had the first surprise for us on the 1st day of school – when they woke up, Serena had a dry diaper! We took her diaper off and sat her on the potty, and she went ahead and pee-peed in the potty – the first time. Clearly, Serena did not want the day to only be about Lily’s growing up milestones.

Getting to kindergarten was a madhouse. On the first day of school, EVERYONE and their mother (literally – and father) are out on the roads at the same time. Traffic was a nightmare. I had never been to Lily’s classroom, so I also spent a while carrying Serena around the school looking for the right kindergarten classroom. But, we got our pictures in, Mimi didn’t cry, and Lily was super excited to go into her kindergarten class. All in all, a very good first day.

At the end of the day, as we were saying grace, for dinner, this is what Lily prayed: “Thank you God for a great first day at Kindergarten, thank you for helping me stay calm today and for the yummy food. Amen.”

Serena’s new challenge

I recently officiated a friend’s wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, we went to an Italian bocce restaurant, which was a lot of fun. Mimi taught the girls a cheer: bocce, bocce, bocce, BALL! They loved it.

After dinner, we played bocce ball and ate desserts. The desserts were on trays, and so I shared several bites with Serena – flourless chocolate cake and tiramisu. Serena has been doing well with her egg allergy – she’s tolerating egg in baked goods, so I thought she’d be ok. When we got home, Serena was amazingly still awake, and she took a bite of a cookie that Mimi was eating, that had a chunk of walnut.

We put the girls down for a late bedtime – probably 10:30 or 11 PM. At 2 PM, I hear Serena crying hard. I go into her room, and think that maybe she had peed through her diaper, but when I check her, her clothes are dry. I go ahead and change her diaper, which is wet, and I notice she is squirming furiously on the floor, crying. When I pick her up, she keeps crying, is super agitated, and is scratching her torso. I thought she might be wheezing a little too. It is very unusual that she doesn’t settle down, so my Daddy radar goes off (at 2:30 AM, things have to be pretty serious to trigger parental radar). I wake Mimi up, we turn on the lights, and Serena has hives all over her face, arms, torso, and upper legs. So sad. We give her Benadryl and try to decide if we want to take her to the ER.

We decide to wait and see how the Benadryl does. The only thing that keeps Serena calm and not scratching is watching Signing Times on the iPhone. She sits in my lap, and after a while, she’s calm enough that I start reading to her, and she falls asleep sitting up around 4 AM. She’s not wheezing, the hives aren’t getting worse, so we put her to bed.

The following week, we take her in to the doctor. They run a blood test (I think the RAST test), and she turns up not allergic to fish/shellfish, but she is allergic to peanuts, pecans, pistachios, and walnuts. The highest is peanut – which is a “High” level, but not off the charts – all the other blood reactions are quite moderate, but RAST reactions aren’t always correlated with physical reactions.

So, in recent weeks we’ve been slowly coming to grips that Serena has a nut allergy, and we’re trying to figure out what that means for our lives. The challenge with nut allergies, especially peanut, is that there is no limit to the careful spectrum – because the possibility of anaphylactic reactions, parents of kids with serious peanut allergies have to be super paranoid about any potential exposure – that means eating out is very hard if not impossible, practically no desserts, checking all labels of all food that could potentially go into the child’s mouth, and making sure that the child ALWAYS is with someone with an epi pen who isn’t afraid to use it. That’s a lot.

Does that have to be us? We aren’t sure yet. But I’m slowly coming out of denial and accepting her nut allergies are a new, bigger deal that her egg allergies, and we need to figure out how to change our lifestyle to make sure we take care of Serena’s needs.

VBS and Swimming

Lily went to VBS for the first time this year – a weeklong mass of 500 kids learning Bible songs and doing crafts.

Lily also started her first swim class this summer. She and Serena got the coughs and sniffles by the end of the week, so she didn’t quite make it to all of the classes. But the swim class was helpful in focusing our attention on what we need to push her on to get ready to swim: bobs. As in, bobbing her whole head in and out of the water, and learning how to hold her breath. Lily is happy that she is doing 1 bob per session. It’s a start .

Hippopotamus stretch

Mama and Lily are going for a walk this morning. Mama says – let’s stretch before we go. Lily says, ok – let’s do the hippopotamus stretch. And she sits down, sticks her legs straight out in a narrow V, and then CROSSES HER ARMS and touches her toes. Ummm… Lily, we can’t do that. Feeling a little bit old this morning…

Confidence training

Last week we were at a friend’s birthday party at Little Gym, and the first thing they had all the children do was introduce themselves. There was a big range in how the kids responded to this – some of them shouted their names exuberantly, others were on the extremely shy side. Lily fell in the shy category, which is in keeping with her personality – she can be extremely loud (like when she is screaming at Serena when fighting over a toy or when she is frustrated at something) but when she is around strangers or senses that people are looking at her, she gets very shy.

I decided that one of the things I really want her to be able to do is to introduce herself with confidence. Tonight, Lily really wanted to go roller skating after dinner. So as we were roller skating around the neighborhood, we passed by a neighbor that recognized Lily, and she introduced herself, and then asked Lily for her name. Lily was very shy, and didn’t want to say her name. This reminded me that I wanted to work on her introductions, so after saying hi to our neighbor, I turned around and said, “Let’s pretend to introduce ourselves to this lamppost.” Lily looked at me like I was crazy. In an overly loud voice I said, “Hi lamppost. My name is Tilden.” Then I asked Lily to try it. Silence.

Then I had a rare flash of parenting insight. “Lily, let’s start by whispering. I’ll go first. (whisper) Hi lamppost, my name is Tilden.”

Lily, also whispering, “Hi lamppost, my name is Lily.”

Me: “Ok, now a little louder. Hi lamppost, my name is Tilden.”

Lily followed my escalating volume until we were practically shouting. As we finished the roller skating around the neighborhood, we introduced ourselves very loudly to two benches, three trees, two birds, a pole, a sign, and a car. Next step… repetition… until we start trying it with people