Katie…Katie…Katie…this little lady is growing way too fast. Since her pre-molars have exited her gums, her vocabulary has enhanced exponentially. If she doesn’t say a new word clearly the first time, she will within a few tries. Lucky for her, she has plenty of practice just from addressing her relatives on both sides of our families. In the Chinese culture, Katie has to address each grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc differently depending on which side of the family (mines or Yogi’s) the person is from. If you’re interested in learning more check out this link Family Titles.
Katie doing Yoga with Daddy.
To help her practice, each time we enter a house we have her say hi to everyone in the room and each time we leave, we have her kiss and say good-bye to each person. She also likes to take our framed family photos off the bookshelf and name each person even 爺爺 (Grandpa/Yogi’s father) who she has never meet in person. Nonetheless, she’s still able to recognize 爺爺’s photo at grandma’s house too. Grandpa would be proud. She also knows to identify the person talking on the computer screen as 姨姨, her auntie (my younger sister) in Missouri who she has only seen and spoken to through Skype on two occasions. Katie has her work cut out for her coming from a big family but she’s doing very well thus far!
Trying out her Chinese New Year outfit.
All this practice with addressing family could pay off really soon with the celebration of a brand new lunar new year which happens to land on Valentines Day 2010. Last week, we started teaching Katie to fold her hands together into one fist in front of her and wave them back and forth as a gesture to wish others a happy and prosperous new year. We thought it may take a few weeks for her to get it down but again, we only showed her a handful of times, a couple days later she decided to it on her own. She can’t quite multitask with saying ‘have a prosperous year’ (in Chinese) and doing the hand gesture at the same time but at the least she knows to do the gesture when told to. It’s the cutest thing and hopefully it’ll bring in enough red envelopes (aka $$$) for a new carseat…haha…
In other news, she just turned 17 months yesterday. One more month and she’s due for an 18 month wellness checkup with her pediatrician. She seems a bit winky dinky compared to other kids her age except she’s eating, sleeping, and talking back too so surely there doesn’t seem to be any deficiencies in her. Nonetheless, the visit will also catch her up on her shots…fun…fun….
Her first face paint at a birthday party, 3 out of 4 flower pedals is not bad...
