One of the hardest thing about coming to a different place is trying
to find friends. I mean deep friendship, the kind you talk for ages
and know that you are accepted for who you are.

God has been super gracious to me this time and answered our prayer
for community. Thank you for praying along with us!! I have found
such a good friend in Grace. A fellow sojourner, same age!,
homeschooling stay-at- home mum who hasn't got it all together and
doesn't claim to be, someone I can share and pray with. But most of
all, it makes me laugh each time I think about it - at the last "date"
we had, we were the last to leave and were laughing our heads off and
I think, oblivious to us, talking really loudly and the waitress at
the sushi place said "You meeting after a long time?". Erm no... we
just meet at chapel earlier in the afternoon!

I have found my hang out buddy. :) Thanking God for you Grace.

completed our Valentine's decor with glitter filled hearts, continued with our study on butterflies and insects (learnt that spiders are not insects!), for history we did american history and made a Native
American village (it was supposed to just have teepees, she went wild with the clay and made a whole village with Red Indians, dogs, fireplace and all), we are still reading Dr Dolittle for bedtime and having a good laugh at all the animals, we found a Chinese learning video series called BaoBei the panda at the library and the kids are enjoying it (it's slow and totally boring to me, a bit like Your Baby Can Read but Levi seems to love it and follows along and Sophie tolerates it, all in all, a good tool to fill the time while I prepare dinner), a proud mother moment - an A for Chinese at her class! (btw, I'm sure everyone got an A, but it's Chinese, you know! I'm gonna gloat anyways, indulge me :)), and some exercise to end the week.

we slowed down this week and took time to hang with friends. the homeschooling network just started a meet up for the westside folks, we are excited. that will mean more friends
her age to hang out with at school hours! definitely a prayer answered. thank you Lord.

Oh this boy just melts my heart. He calls me "mar mee", sometimes "mum".

He still has a voracious appetite, in fact, in the morning, he wakes
up "starving" and polishes up his whole bowl of cereal like this! I
have no idea how much he weighs but he's really heavy. And tell you a
secret, we still rock him to sleep! Ouch! I think it's really my
fault, he's so cuddly and I love the last few minutes of the day
rocking him to sleep.

He's a lot more vocal these days and shows his displeasure by whining
or screaming or simply crying. We are more out and about these days
with more of a social calendar but that also means more bus rides and
Levi doesn't do well on bus rides. Most times he is screaming coz he's
stuck in the pram. Thank God bus rides here are usually quite short,
max 10-15 mins and we have to feed him with snacks to "endure" that
period of time. This too is a passing phase right?!?

On the other hand, he's also imitating our speech a lot more. I
thought I'll teach him Chinese. And he repeats the words in perfect
pitch! Ah... wonderful! Let's try to keep it that way for a bit. He
say "mao" (cat), "yu" (fish), "ma" (house). Super cute. And he says
"mao" when he sees a cat in a book. Hope this headstart will result in
As in Chinese but alas, my vocab also kinda ends here so he's stuck
saying the same words until a better teacher comes along. Ha! :)

He's super mobile now and walks pretty steadily. But a lack of food
(e.g close to lunchtime) can cause him to tumble and fall which I
noticed when we were at the play gym on Thursday. However, as soon as
he finished his last bit of sandwich (lunch for him, yes, I'm getting
very Western here, sandwiches for lunch, it's quick and easy lah), he
was up and running around. Super funny to watch.

He's a real sweetheart and sensitive lil boy. We love him to bits! :)

I posted this on FB but I must remember to post it here too.

At her second art class, I walked in to pick Sophie up from class and
saw this! Her teacher said, "We were drawing ships and Sophie wanted
to draw the Titanic!" We've just been reading about the Titanic and
she was fascinated. But I didn't know that it impacted her so much
that she would draw it. A bit dark for a 5 year old girl don't you
think? Wonder what the teacher thought. But she was cool and started
telling me how amazing the thought patterns of home schooled children
are. Nice. I felt a bit better. But I think deep down I was quite
pleased to see how she thought out of the box and the teacher went
along with it!

She loves the art class and can't stop talking about what they are
going to do next. This is what learning is about isn't it? Passion. I
love it!

Week 6: Learning To Parent The Captain Child (Adapted from Building
Families For Life)

Ah... this one I've got first hand experience. I mentioned in my last
post that we think that Sophie is a Captain Clown. In the early years,
the Captain traits in her were really strong especially in comparison
to her best friend Evan who is so sweet and easy going. I'm not sure
if it was just a developmental stage or that both James and I were
novice parents totally baffled by our really smart and super
opinionated child.

However, once Sophie got past the terrible
twos/threes/fours.., you get the idea, she kinda settled more into a
Clown than a pure Captain.

So why do we need to understand their personalities? I think in
understanding their personalities, we begin to understand their
greatest loves, fears and motivating factors. This can really help us
in our parenting. And it gives us a glimpse into the person that God
has made them to be and how He has gifted them. God has made every
child different and it's our job as parents to discover that and
nurture our children to fulfill the purpose of that difference. We
want our children to "make a difference" right? How one earth do they
"make that difference" if we expect them to be the same as their friend?

A Captain child is very special and could be God's instrument to
change the world thru his/her leadership.

A Captain feels that they really belong when they are in control.
Control is a BIG thing. A Captain will get control by using anger or
leadership.

Your Captain child is a strong-willed child, full of energy,
adventure, impatience and born to lead. As children, they can be very
hard work for the parents, but as adults they have a lot of promise to
be good leaders. If discouraged, they will try to become the "Boss" in
the family. If they are sure of your constant love, the battles will
be small.

Tools to Help
1. This child needs adventure and things that are hard or risky to do.
(E.g challenges, constantly teach them new things, give them projects
to accomplish, support their random ideas e.g. A friend of ours had
their 5 year old boy plan for his own sweet shop and sold sweets on
the base coz it was his own idea.)

2. Parenting needs to be firm and the same every day. This will help
the child with self control. Give only one command at a time and give
clear instructions and give a consequence if it is not obeyed. (As
soon as Sophie knows we are wavering between two opinions, she'll
strike! Very smart this one. Gotta nip it at the bud. Once she could
read, we wrote the rules down and she surprising sticks to it and
refers to them constantly.)

3. Keep your Captain child busy and give them responsibilities. (This
is what we had to work hard to do. But once Levi came along, Sophie
easily took on the role of Big Sister and loves "bossing" him around.
Whenever she can decide about things, we let her. We try to choose our
battles.)

4. Be sure to offer good clear reasons so that they understand what it
is you want from them, otherwise they may rebel. (Communication and
explanations are very important for Sophie.)

5. Respect your Captain child's need for fairness, justice and be open
and honest. (This is big for Sophie. She's big on injustice. We need
to be very careful on this one. If we reprimand her wrongly and didn't
hear her side of her story, she'll get really upset. On the other
hand, once she knows the rules, she is rather law abiding!)

6. Use situations when your Captain child is hurt or disappointed as a
way to help them understand what it is like for others when they are
hurt. If they develop tenderness, they will be less likely to bully or
bossy.

My thoughts

The temptation with parenting Captain kids is to lose patience through
anger or give in through compromise. James and I have done that so
many times. Homeschooling actually helps me because I'm forced to plan
the days and I do all I can to keep Sophie occupied and learning. The
routine that is in place helps to reduce the battle of wills - we just
stick to the plan and Sophie knows the drill. And on days when I'm
tired, I'm glad I have a plan to stick to rather than try to figure
out what to do on the spot.

For new situations, one thing that really helps is for me to brief
Sophie of the plan (e.g. before we leave the house/about the next day)
and talk through her concerns and my expectations of her.

I'm really still feeling my way around here and learning. Pls do share
your thoughts and insights!

(Btw, I forgot to mention this in my earlier posts. Pls do not copy from these posts because a lot of it has been adapted from Building Families For Life. We are trained to use this material and are allowed to teach and use them. So if you wanna quote, pls let me know first.)

For the first time, we had a combined learning time with Grace's kids
- Faith (10), Julia (7) and Gabe (5). Grace's friend Sheila is a
missionary in Nigeria. She works as a teacher's trainer so she came
equipped with stories, videos, photos, instruments and even
traditional costumes to share about Nigeria! It was so fun. In the
picture above, she's reading a lovely story called Catch The Goat to
the children. Even Levi was participating.

Then the kids "flew" in an airplane to Nigeria to learn about the
people and their culture. Sophie's favorite part was trying on all the
clothes and fabrics.

A peek into our homeschooling "board" - we've been learning the
different categories of animals - mammals, insects, birds, etc...

I love how Sophie draws but they are so unlike anything I've seen!
Here's a bird, flying towards you!

This is James' book but we're reading it.

Some other materials we use. I Heard Good News Today: Stories For
Children is a compilation of short stories about inspiring people like Louis Braille (who
invented the Braille Alphabets for the blind) and missionaries like St
Augustine. It's great but no pictures (warning!). We've been learning about France so we read about Louis Braille this week. We also read Different Like Coco, a book about Coco Chanel which I borrowed from the library. Sophie LOVED it. Anything about fashion she loves!
Her comment was "but I still prefer fancy clothes!" ha! Coz Chanel was the one who transformed fancy fashion to dull black and no frills in her day. Sophie loves her frills. :)

For Math, we use a book from Popular. I like lah, systematic and lots
of practice. She's learning to read time.

We baked bread, part of her Science experiment to see what yeast does.

And other experiments. She can do this all day long. Might consider
getting her a microscope for Christmas this year. Which reminds me I
need to sign up for Science World membership!

Looking back, it was quite a full week! :) That in addition to her
Chinese class, Art class, sewing and outdoor fun, I'd say she's had a
full on learning time this week.

I used to literally cry when I had to sew for Home Economics class.
Like real tears. My grandma used to complete my pieces for me, don't
tell my teacher.

How come no one taught us to sew these cute things instead?!?!

Sophie completed this with my help in 2 days. She begged me to start
on it and then after a couple of stitches, she was done and over to
me. Sigh. But nope, I refused! So she continued the next day and more
or less completed it. We stuffed it and I helped sew up the rest. Easy
peasy!

Who did she give it to? At first she wanted to make it for Benji (our
friend's son), then I mentioned that it was Yiyi's birthday, so she
said Yiyi and finally she decided to give it to.......... DADDY!

And guess what? After the first night, she told her dad she needed to
take care of Lulu. It's still Daddy's but she will take care of it. :)
Guess it's a bit hard to let go since she spent so much effort on it.
Wonder if she'll make another. Maybe I'll make one myself :).

Vancouver rains A LOT. So when the sun is out, we are definitely out
of the house.

We love going to the park near our home.

It's a little different now that Levi can walk.

And nope, he doesn't like swings.

It's my baby sister's birthday today. She turns...... 20 something.
Cannot reveal ah....

Rach is a good 14 years younger than me. Even though we are almost a
generation apart and miles apart (she lives and works in Brisbane),
I'm so thankful that at one of the most important pivotal points of
her life during these couple of days, we can talk and share (via
Skype, that is).

I love how candid she is and definitely a Miss Sunshine!

What a blessing you are to me my dear sister and I miss you SO MUCH!
Happy Birthday and May the Lord bless you and keep you close to Him!

We did the usual! We always have guests over on the eve for steamboat.
We have been doing that the past 2 years. I so love that our
mid-century Danish made table opens up to sit 10! The kids were meant
to sit at the coffee table but they wanted in on the fun too so we
squeezed everyone in and some of us were standing. But it was all fun!

The prep - I actually found longans and kway teow!

Our Friends

And we had another round on the first day of CNY with some new friends
who are new to Vancouver. But I forgot to take pictures, only what's
left after!

I think the hotpot is fantastic! Think we'll use it more often esp
when it's cold and when I'm too lazy to cook. :)