Season's Greetings

Season’s Greetings

Dear friends and families,

We hope this letter finds everyone high in holiday spirit and you and your family are in good health. Since the holidays are coming and we all want surprises, why not start our letter with an exciting news – we are expecting a sibling for Alvin in early summer! Every child is a gift and our family is so blessed.

In addition to the news, we want to give you a little bit update on our family whereabouts. Alvin continues to amaze his admiring parents everyday with his physical and intellectual achievements. He is now 17 months old and runs and climbs everywhere as you can imagine. He just started to learn how to stand on one foot and jump without landing on his soft bottom. Dancing with music is his favorite physical movement and crying without tears is his most powerful tool to gain parents sympathy. Alvin also loves to draw like an artist and plays hide-and-seek everywhere in the house with his daddy. His language acquisition is improving everyday. He can now speak 20-30 words and recognize about 80 names, including animals, foods, objects, some US states and of course, China and US on the maps. Quite impressive, um?

Alvin’s Dad continues to be a fulltime engineer at work, a fulltime babysitter in the house and a part-time student at Hopkins. How can he handle all these? We don’t really need to know as long as his boss is happy, Alvin is healthy, Alvin’s Mom is merry, and the grade reports are all As.

Alvin’s Mom continues to enjoy her motherhood with an extremely supportive hubby doing all the housework, a wonderful boy giving her free massage on demand and a cute little baby kicking her tummy every now and then. What a life!

That is all about it. We are just doing as well as you would expect. Our holiday wishes go to you and your family.

Alvin, baby-on-the-way, Hope & Yuelun

Jungle night

Alvin had a night out with Santa Claus (sort of)! In spite of the severe cold weather, the parents took Alvin to attend his first evening event at the Gaithersburg Concert Pavilion. The event featured Christmas Chorus, Santa Claus arriving on a Firetruck, free jungle-bell bands and free picture taken with Santa Claus!

In many of the pictures, you will see Alvin wasn't happy. But, don't read it wrong. He loves the night light scene but we had to squeeze his face because he was supposed to look at the camera so he couldn't turn around to see his favor lights !

The goods always come with the bads. The trade off for the fun night out is that Alvin got a bad cold. You would think we are crazy parents but we are not crazy enough like others to wait in line for a picture taken with Santa Claus. Maybe we should have done that ... :)

Dancing around the Christmas Tree

Daycare Halloween Party

It is Alvin's first Halloween Party in the Daycare. Since every baby is supposed to dress up in costume, Mom had no choice but bought a Little Lion Cub costume for Alvin. It turns out that he looks too cute in that costume and many people in the evening Trick-or-Treating thought he is a "she". Oops.. next year we will buy a superman!

Halloween Costume - $9.97
Daycare Tuition - $355 per week
Alvin's Lion show in the daycare - priceless
for everything else, we use Daddy's paycheck

Do you know how hard it is for our 23 pounds Alvin to make peace with these two 30 pounds babies everyday? j/k. Alan and Jena are wonderful companions for Alvin.

Here is the Hershey Kisses.

Harvest time for Alvin...

Seneca Park

Not to disappoint our readers, we are finally posting some recent pictures from Seneca State Park visit. There is a "Tire Playground" there, soft and kid-friendly.

Alvin loves ducks. He doesn't want to leave them.

Fatherly Loves...

Our Pumpkin Pie

On a gorgeous autumn morning, Alvin teamed up with his buddy Ben and swept the pumpkin field at Bulter Orchard farm in Germantown. We taught Alvin the word Pumpkin and showed him a picture of pumpkin beforehand and he seemed to recognize it

Here is our Pumpkin Pie picking up pumpkins.

Alvin is trying to protect his pumpkins.

ZOOoooo

Before the parents go hibernated with the animals, we visited the National Zoo the weekend before. At Alvin's age, he can only see what he can see, like big animals or animals move very fast, or playful animals like Apes who played "peek-a-poo" in front of us!

We first stopped at the Panda House. Guess what? Panda Tian Tian hibernates even on a hot Fall day! It was only 10 o'clock in the morning!

Panda Mei Xiang is the active one.

I guess they are comparing the size of their eyes.

We were lucky to see an elephant talent show. They first say Hi to us. Then, they show their friendships by doing "hand-in-hand".

*** Family Update ***

The lazy mom got tired of taking care of Alvin days and nights so she trained the Dad to do all the works. Every night after dinner, Daddy will play with Alvin, and then give him a warm bath, dress him up, wash his face, put lotion on, brush his teeth, wipe his gums (watch out for the mad bites from self-defense), read storybooks, feed him bottle and put him to bed. What the mom is doing in the meantime? Lay in bed watching TV or read a book or do nothing, you know, all that good stuff. And, of course, now and then, she would ensure the Dad that (doing all the works) is the new trend for modern time Daddies.

Then, the lazy Dad got tired of not having his personal time in the evening so he trained Alvin to sleep earlier and sleep on his own. He would put Alvin to bed before 8:30pm, let the toy Giraffe to play a melody from MusicBox, and say "night night" to Alvin. The good boy Alvin will just play on his own to sleep, sometimes within 5 minutes and sometimes takes almost an hour but he just stays quietly and talks to the animal (or himself) and comforts himself by mouthing the corner of his favor blanket.

The "not that lazy" Alvin lately falls in love with reading storybooks. He spends at least 1 or 2 hours everyday browsing through all the books, pointing to each figure and asks for their names. Also, he loves looking at the US Wall Map and the World Wall Map in our house. Looks like he got that from his Daddy.

Inner Harbor

It is always nice to visit Inner Harbor but this time is especially nice! Mom's Auntie and Uncle are visiting the states from China and it is the first time Alvin in the harbor seeing the boats!

Do you notice Alvin is always looking away from the Camera?

Too much attractions in the harbor, or my boy doesn't like to be a camera star?

Without the hat, you can see what my Daddy has done to my hair on the last day of summer?!

*** Alvin's Update ***

It is not that much going on lately, except that Alvin has learned another language: Iranian! He understands "Clap Hands" in Iranian (da-shi-da-shi). Try him out next time!

Alvin can walk pretty well right now - without too much arm balance and with shoes on.

Daycare teacher told mom last Friday, "Alvin is weird. He never cries in the center, not even when he fell and got a bump on his forehead."

Firehouse

The Germantown Fire Department had its annual open house last Saturday. It is such wonderful event for kids. It features games, musics, foods, reptile petting zoo display, fire simulation, equipment display, and it is educational! Even Alvin enjoyed it !

Compare to my tricycle at home, this one has more bells and whistles.
Ride on the back of a Firetruck!

What's wrong with my parents? Even I know it is backward!

Woo...this giant thing matches my cloth colors. Must be a new toy mom bought for me.
Oh, no! It is flying away!!! (The helicopter takeoff swept up the dirts and grass and Mom was trying to protect Alvin. But he insisted to watch it off.)

They are eating my melon. Let me get in because I can crawl faster than they do.

Catch me if you can...

Look Out...

What is new? The Fountain Hills community has a new pedestrian! This little determined mind doesn't want to hold his mom's hand and he is up and down the street all by himself. So, watch out for the new traffic!!!


This little brave mind is also not afraid of anything. If he collapses or falls, he just gets up and walks again! He just enjoys his new freedom so much!
Mom read from a toddler book and found this paragraph: "Keeping up with the toddler's whims can drive parents 'up a tree' during this time. Some years ago a noted athlete tried to keep up with the gross-motor actions of a walking toddler. He literally fell apart by midday and gave up following the child about." This is sooooooo true. If I collapse on my butt 10 times a day, I will be totally disable by the end of the day. If I fall down on my knees only once, I am probably disable right then.

Marathon Social Events

Alvin was all booked up last Saturday. He attended 3 different events in a day!!!

Early in the morning, we took him to Imagination Station's Open House. IS is a school for early childhood education thru drama, acting and dancing.

Alvin enjoyed the games and singing in the toddler class.

And, we joined older childeren for a dance party.

Just after a 10 minitues nap in the car, Alvin woke up and found himself in Black Hill park for a BBQ Party. He was quite content in his portable highchair because he was placed just next to the foods.

He insisted to drink from a cup like other kids and he handled it pretty well (if we disregard the fact that the water dripped all over to his clothes).

Yes. Yummy..

The BBQ party exhausted Alvin and he took a long nap in the afternoon and he was all freshed up for Tiffany's Princess Birthday Party in the evening!

Gettysburg

Over the long weekend, we visited the great America history landmark - Gettysburg, PA. The parents claimed that they wanted Alvin to learn a little American history but the real reason behind it is that the town has a new shopping outlet. :)

In fact, we did learn American Civil war history and paid tributes to the soldiers fought for their freedom.

The famous 10 sentences 277 words 2 minitues speech byAbraham Lincoln

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."