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Happy Birthday Rachel

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!

Chinese New Year

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. :)

Family 101: Week 5

Week 5: Understanding Our Children's Personality

This was one of my favorite topics and very helpful for us to
understand Sophie and learnt how to parent her effectively. For this
post, I'm adapting from my text book - Building Families For Life. We
do these 8 sessions over a period of a week but it can be condensed if
required. "Understanding Personality" is one of the sessions. The
others include My Childhood Family, How Does My Family Relate?,
Growing and Learning, Really Loving Your Children, Setting Clear
Limits, Keeping Boundaries In A Loving Way and Restoring
Relationships. We also have them in Chinese. We've been trained to
teach and facilitate these and love to share if given the opportunity.

Each person has their own character, but that doesn't mean that they
will always be that way. The way we act or react in most situations is
our personality. So if we mostly take charge of situations we may be a
Captain, if we don't take things very seriously or treat them as
important we may be a Clown, if we are strong about doing things a
certain way, and are tidy people, we may be a Busy Bee, and if we
worry about how other people might be feeling we are possibly a big
soft Teddy Bear.

Captain
1. Is not scared of trying new things
2. Quickly decides what to do, can lead and organize people
3. Is serious about what has to happen
4. Likes winning/hate to lose
5. Gets impatient with others, doesn't like saying "sorry"
6. Likes direction, not demands. Give choices instead.
7. Enjoys being in control.

Clown
1. Takes over conversations. Makes up stories. Likes fun rather than work.
2. Makes friends easily. Likes to perform on stage.
3. Is creative and colorful, energetic and funny.
4. A happy child that sees the good in everything. Inspires others.
5. Hate deadlines and boring activities, is easily distracted. Forgets
and makes excuses.
(More info: makes a joke when you are trying to be serious, tends to
tell lies when they are young, then to have a lot of friends but have
shallow relationships)

Busy Bee
1. Is neat and tidy, places toys neatly in rows. Like to do things right.
2. Does well in school. Does homework on time.
3. Asks a lot of questions. Talented and creative.
4. Makes friends cautiously, doesn't like to take risks.
5. A good listener, afraid of criticism, cries easily.
6. Often feels not good enough. Easily discouraged when things don't work out
7. Likes things done the same way. Sticks with something until it's done.
8. Likes details.
(More info: If you promise something, they'll hold you to it. Read
instructions.)

Teddy Bear
1. Always loyal and faithful to friends, and a good listener
2. Likes to help others, and feels sad when others are hurt.
3. Doesn't like arguments
4. Is kind and wants to please.
5. Completes schoolwork on time but doesn't look for exra work.
6. Doesn't like big changes.
7. Easy going and relaxed.

It's amazing how you can see these little personalities developing
even from a young age. I remember a friend's daughter who will line
the shoes up at creche and when it's time to go, brings the shoes to the
child it belongs to! Sophie's NEVER done that before! I found that
fascinating! But I can see Levi doing that because he loves to clean
up! Definitely a busy bee. Sophie is a full on clown personality. We
worked out that she is probably a Captain Clown. Sometimes they can
have a mix of two strong personalities. In fact, as I'm typing it out,
I'm going... oh, she is so Clown!

Sometimes during the workshop, we divide the class up into their
personality types to discuss for example "What would you do if you had
$1, 000, 000?" and it is HILARIOUS to observe. The captains are always
almost close to fighting (in a fun way, i mean) because everyone want
to have a say and they are quite loud. The Teddy Bears are having a
break for tea, slouching and enjoying their conversations. The Busy
Bees get right on it, are taking notes, being super organized and
normally makes the safe and logical decisions. The Clowns are ALWAYS
LAUGHING and definitely the loudest.

Amazing how God's made us all different :)

Can you see yourself or your children in these descriptions?

I'll follow up with how to best parent these different personalities next week.

Ching Chiong Galore!

Funny how being away from home has brought out the ching chiong
(chinese) ness in us. Once again, we're going all out this year. Just
got ourselves a steamboat appliance. Can't wait for the feast tomorrow
night!

The goodies and mandarins
These are the ones we got here. My MIL has sent us some goodies from
home even before I asked! They won't be in time for our guests
tomorrow night but it'll be in time for us! :) Yay!

The decorations

Oh yes, and some lanterns made by us

For those at home, we miss you and wish you Happy Chinese New Year. Eat lots!!!

Gong Xi Gong Xi!

We've been teaching Sophie this Chinese New Year song!

Mei tiao da jie xiao xiang
Mei ge ren di zhui li
Jian mian di yi ju hua
Jiu shi gong xi gong xi

Gong xi gong xi gong xi ni ya
Gong xi gong xi gong xi ni
Gong xi gong xi gong xi ni ya
Gong xi gong xi gong xi ni

每 条 大 街 小 巷
每 个 人 的 嘴 里
见 面 第 一 句 话
就 是 恭 喜 攻 喜

恭 喜 恭 喜 恭 喜 你 呀
恭 喜 恭 喜 恭 喜 你
恭喜 恭 喜 恭 喜 你 呀
恭 喜 恭 喜 恭 喜 你

Family

Before we came to Vancouver, everyone was back home. Rachel was back
from Brissy. My parents were back from Brazil. Our whole family in one
country. Super rare.

It was a bit of a last minute decision to get everyone together to
take a family portrait but I'm so glad we did it. And I'm so glad we
did it with Wesley. We have been such old friends that it just felt
like family. So relaxed and fun. It shows in the pictures. This is not
Wes' usual style. He normally does black and white and much more stylo
and stated. Think my wedding pictures. But I think he made an
exception for us. Yellow was great! :) I think we're quite a yellow family.


A photo with my parents and siblings, all grown up :)

I thought I'll post these pictures up before you see them somewhere
else, other than on FB. We've just given away rights for someone else
to use it.

Falling snow

My dream has come true! I got to see falling snow for the first time
and it was so magical, so pretty! It went on for a few hours in the
morning.

Sophie made herself a mini snow man with the bit of snow we got in our
patio. Which was like just a generous dust of talcum powder.

And in the afternoon on the way to Chinese class, the snow around
Sophie's school was much thicker and she got to throw a few snow
balls. So happy.

There's just something about snow.... makes me happy :)

Family 101: Week 4

Week 4: Anger

Writing short snippets about family issues is a lot harder than I
thought. Family issues are so complex. And writing consistently,
weekly in this case, is real hard. A week goes by a lot quicker than I
think! Woah, and it's here again! :)

I'm sorry I missed last week!

I thought this week I'll write about anger.

During the FMS, I learnt a new phase - passive anger. I'm not sure if
you have heard about it before. I think I might have heard about it in
passing but it wasn't until FMS that I realized what it really was.

In How to Really Love Your Child, Ross Campbell, the author, describe
two different ways children display anger. One, aggressive and the
other, passive. Aggressive is easy to see - tantrums, throwing things,
shouting, saying mean things etc. Passive on the other hand is harder
to detect and sometimes do not surface until the teenage years.

This display of anger is usually a reaction to unjust anger shown
towards a child. Particularly from a parent or primary caregiver. I'm
not referring to terrible twos, throwing tantrums here. Unless parents
don't understand the stage of development and start abusing the child
with expectations beyond their age.

I'm talking about instances, for example, if a child, 4 years old,
spills milk accidentally and the parent pushes the child and shouts at
the child in a loud voice. This can be really frightening for a young
child."When children are yelled at, they are helpless, they cannot
think and are forced to shut down their ways of getting the anger out,
keeping their anger inside." Building Families For Life booklet. Some
kids fight back or take it out on their siblings. Anger is like
rubbish - it eventually needs to be disposed of. But learning to
maturely dispose of anger is a lifelong learning process. Even as an
adult, I still struggle in managing my anger and frustration.

However, the thing that struck me most is passive anger. When the
child doesn't react and seems like the most obedient child in the
world. Or if the child used to react and then doesn't anymore. It is
common in Asian cultures because we are not allowed to display any
fits of anger because it is terribly frowned upon. In fact, even
crying is a NO NO. And growing up, the cane was the fear factor. The
fear of the cane made us "obedient" but outwardly mostly. Passive
anger similar to inner rebellion, then begins to show up in other ways
like refusal to eat, nightmares, forgetfulness, slowness (taking own
time to do things), and the most common, lack of interest in school.
Because they have no control over other areas of their lives so they
will attempt to exercise their will in areas such as food (a lot of
eating disorders are a result of passive anger), school, time
management.

"When we hurt our children's feelings over and over again, the
children will "close us out", shut down to us, stop talking about
their life with us, and stop asking for help from us. Pulling away
from parental love for long periods of time is very harmful for a
child. It's a major cause for the misuse of drugs and alcohol, and a
main reason why children become sexually permissive" Buidling Families
For Life booklet

I used to work with youths before Sophie was born. So many times I see
this happening and parents wondering why their child at 13 is becoming
so rebellious. Actually, it didn't happen overnight. It was over 13
years. "Being angry at children does not make good behavior last for
long" Building Families For Life booklet

The relationship between parent and child is not much different from
any other relationship that requires nurturing and communication. It's
not enough to just look after their daily needs and make sure they are
"good" (whatever that means). It's important to respect them as God's
precious children and not mistreat them thinking that they are young
and just little rascals.

Recently, we learnt about what Jesus said "Do to others what you would
have them do to you. Luke 6:13". Sophie took the opportunity to use
that verse on me when I shouted at her. Sigh... what goes around comes
around. What makes me think that I have the freedom to shout at her
when I have told her not to? I am far from perfect but one thing I'm
learning is to say sorry. Besides teaching our children how to handle
anger and learning to manage my own, the way to keep our children's
heart open to us is to apologize. I can't say that enough.

In fact, just today, Sophie and I were coming home from Chinese class,
it was late (pitch dark), we missed a bus stop and I was so annoyed.
Coming down the bus, Sophie started to play with the snow and we were
late for dinner. So I got impatient with her and raised my voice and
she got upset. I'm gifted with a really intelligent and sensitive
child (it's really God's way of working on me :)) and she can tell
IMMEDIATELY when I'm upset. She said "Mummy, you were upset with the
bus driver and then you got upset with me and now I am upset."
Sigh.... spot on. Well, I heard her. Very tempting to get more upset
at my smarty pants kid. But nope I heard her heart and most times, she
says it very matter of factly and not rudely. So I said sorry
(somewhat sheepishly) and said let's not be upset anymore k? And she
was satisfied. And she cooperatively held my hand and did a good run
for the next bus.

Love motivates, fear doesn't.

This week I'm going to practice listening to my kids more and speaking
kindly to them.

What does Sophie do all day?

Sophie at 5, loves drawing, painting and crafting VERY MUCH. I think
if I took away her scissors and glue, she'll have withdrawal symptoms.
Serious. Being homeschoolers, we are totally equipped with all things
crafty. Just for paints we've got a variety (more for fun for me than
specifically for her) - watercolor crayons (super fun to use!),
watercolor paints, poster paints, fingerprinting paints, acrylic
paints, oil paints etc...

So we invested in an homeschool art curriculum called Artistic
Pursuits for her. It exposes her to different art forms and art
history and different art mediums.

This was one of her pieces, experimenting with watercolor crayons. Her
current fav theme - Rainbow Fairies.

Other than that, we've got a couple of crafting books around. And she
just does it. All the time. Recently she made these.

Clay models:

She drew and I sewed:

Using cardboard (fire, wood and a pan)

Using pipe cleaners (a snail)

And most recently, we thought it'll be worthwhile to send her to a
class. She chose art class over ballet/piano/swimming. So here she is
at her first art class. 2 hrs a week. She didn't want to leave, even
after 2 hrs. Look at how happy she is, totally in her element! We are
very happy to find a home learner's class for her so the timing is at
mid day instead of late afternoon. Most enrichment classes here start
at 3.30pm, after school hours.

They are learning about Roy Lichtensteine, a pop artist.

That's her with her other classmates. Also homeschoolers.

Very cute to see.

Tomato Corn Salad

Did I already say this? I LOVE GOOGLE!

I was craving for something tomato and something corn. And I had both
in the fridge. So I googled tomato and corn salad and viola! I got
this. It was yummy! We are not a salad family (I even commented on a
friend's FB comment recently that salad is NOT food). Veggies for me
are mainly stir fries. Salads to me are like garnishing, just to make
the meat look pretty. :)

But for health reasons (and social pressure in living vegan
Vancouver), I think I'm going to eat more salads.

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