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This journal is about raising identical twins.One Hundred and Fourteenth Month
Previous entriesNote: This page may contain Chinese text in Unicode encoding. Some web browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer 5) can display the text without any user intervention if the fonts are available. Some web browsers (e.g. Netscape) will display the Chinese text only if you switch Character Set under the View menu to Big5 traditional Chinese.
Saturday, Jan 6, 2007 (9y+5m)
The twins are 9 year and 5 months old today.We had lunch with Jasmine W's family. We bumped into Derek and Raymond's family in the restaurant. We had no idea they would go to the same place. They were having lunch with their family friend's family from Santa Cruz. They stayed with this family when they attended daddy and mommy's wedding. So this family from Santa Cruz heard about us for many years though we had never met.
We parted our ways after lunch. The twins and daddy went home to practice piano. They played their DS games for the rest of the afternoon. Mommy went for a coffee break with Derek's mom. Derek & Raymond went out with their own friends.
In the evening, we went out to dinner with Derek's family and their local friends. After dinner, they all came to our house for fruit and tea. Raymond brought his collection of video recordings and he showed those to the twins on our computer. The adults went through our photo albums, including our Spanish vacation album and the twins' baby albums. The guests left after midnight. The twins said goodbye to Raymond and Derek. We asked them to give them a hug. They just moved closer to receive a hug instead. After they went out the door, Joanne said she missed them already.
Sunday, Jan 7, 2007 (9y+5m+1d)
The twins went to their new piano teacher around noon. Mommy decided to leave the Russian teacher because of the cats in her house. Another reason was that the Russian teacher was not very strict on the kids. Though the twins had improved on their skills in the past few months, they were not very disciplined. Daddy fell asleep on the sofa until they came home.Mommy prepared some instant ramen noodles with some very delicious non-instant toppings as late lunch. The twins and daddy enjoyed the delicious meal. After the late lunch, mommy took the twins to Jocelyn's home. Since they lived next to the school, the kids went to their school playground to play. Jessica also got a Nintendo DS for Christmas. The girls played their games at their house. Daddy fell asleep again on the sofa for the rest of afternoon.
In the evening, we went out to dinner with Jocelyn's family. When we returned home, we wanted the twins to play the new songs they learned this morning. They played very poorly, but that was as expected before some practice.
Mommy helped Joanne wiggle one of her loose tooth. She tried to lasso it with a strand of dental floss without success. Finally she just grabbed it with her fingers and pulled. It came off with no problem at all.
Monday, Jan 8, 2007 (9y+5m+2d)
The twins went to school as usual.
Tuesday, Jan 9, 2007 (9y+5m+3d)
The twins went to school as usual. Mommy took them to Burger King after school. They bought a milkshake. After they finished the homework and practiced piano, they painted some Kirby pictures. When daddy came home for dinner, Joanne was still eating. Jasmine already finished and was busy downloading Mario Brothers wallpapers for the computer.We got a phone call from grandma Ling. Great grandma fell down on a bus and broke her femur. She was in the hospital waiting for surgery. Great grandma is over 80 years old and she has osteoporosis.
Wednesday, Jan 10, 2007 (9y+5m+4d)
The twins went to school as usual. After they finished the homework and practiced piano, they painted pictures again. Joanne said she tried to mix some mud color but ended up with greenish poop color. Then she decided to add a piece of dung into her picture. After dinner, they read a Chinese story book to daddy and mommy. They did pretty good in that. We watched Deal or No Deal on TV before they went to bed.
Thursday, Jan 11, 2007 (9y+5m+5d)
The twins went to school as usual. The local newspaper visited their school to report on their bilingual program. The reporter picked the Caucasian students to speak Mandarin in front of the camera. The twins look too Chinese to be interviewed because Chinese speaking Chinese is no big deal. When the twins came home, they looked up the news article on the Internet and watched their classmates on the news.
Friday, Jan 12, 2007 (9y+5m+6d)
The twins went to school as usual. In the evening, we got together with Jasmine W's, Ashley's and Natasha's family for dinner. It was Jasmine W's birthday today and she would have her birthday party tomorrow. We went to Natasha's home after dinner. The dads watched TV in the family room. The moms chatted in the kitchen. The kids played their Nintendo games in the living room. We stayed past 10:30pm before we went home.
Saturday, Jan 13, 2007 (9y+5m+7d)
We got up late in the morning. In the afternoon, we went to Alameda to see great grandma. We passed by mommy's high school and the church daddy and mommy got married in. Mommy even took us to her favorite hang out spot, a McDonald's overlooking the San Francisco Bay. After we had an afternoon snack, we went to the hospital to see great grandma.When we arrived at the hospital, she was almost ready to be transferred to the nursing home where she would continue to recover from her injury. She had a surgery few days ago with a metal pin to reconnect her broken bone. Despite her injury, she was still in very good condition. She described to us what happened. She actually didn't fall. She had both hands holding on to the pole on the bus. The bus jerked forward so forcefully that she lost her footing and was swung sideway. Her leg was slammed sideway onto the edge of a seat where she broke her femur. The bus driver should have waited till all the senior citizens had sat down before moving. We talked to her until the medical team came to move her.
We said goodbye to her and went to grandma Ling place for dinner. We left after 8pm. Joanne was eager to go home soon because she didn't practice piano in the morning. She told mommy that she really needed to practice before the piano lesson tomorrow. Mommy said Joanne had to explain to her teacher if she didn't play well. So basically we didn't nag them to practice, the twins were old enough to handle the pressure from the teacher on their own.
We stopped by Siu Ling's place in San Mateo to pick up some lobsters. She was able to buy some lobsters at less than $6 a pound and she got good deal at the geoduck clams too. So mommy ordered two lobsters and one geoduck. To our surprise, the lobsters were huge, we got two 7 pounders. Terence's parents also ordered a big one, his weighed 8.5 pounds. On our way home, we stopped by Terence's place to deliver their 8.5 pound lobster. They were also shocked by the size of the creature. It was so cold tonight that there were patches of ice on their driveway. We had to turn on our 4 wheel drive to climb the slippery slope.
On our way home, we called Deanna's mom to tell her about our lobsters. She was interested also because of the low price. We stopped by her house and off loaded one of our $40 lobsters to her.
After three stops along the way, it was past 11pm when we arrived home. We put the lobster on a baking pan and into the refrigerator. We were told that lobsters could survive out of water in the cold for a few days. The animal was too heavy to move around out of water, so we didn't worry too much about it making a mess inside the fridge. Jasmine took her shower, while Joanne practiced her piano. They were in bed around midnight.
Sunday, Jan 14, 2007 (9y+5m+8d)
Mommy and daddy got up early to prepare lunch. Mommy cooked a pot of Cantonese congee (rice porridge) in the morning. Mommy went to the supermarket to buy some cooking ingredients for the lobster. Daddy helped mommy slaughter the geoduck clams. She cut it into thin slices. The chewy body was cooked in the congee for flavor. The crunchy snort was added to the congee before serving.The lobster was still alive and well in the fridge. The twins took some pictures of the lobster. Jasmine prayed to the lobsters because she knew we were going to eat it. It took daddy some struggle to slaughter the 7 pound struggling lobster. Some meats were cut into slices for the congee. Some meats were cut into chunks for stir frying. Mommy got a Vietnamese style receipe from Siu Ling yesterday. She stir fried the lobster meat with lemon grass and cilantro. Mommy also stir fried some noodles as a side dish. Grandma Chui, aunt Elaine and Terence's family joined us for lunch. The lobsters, the geoduck clam congee and the noodle fed nine people sufficiently. The meal was delicious and fulfilling.
Terence's family decided to take the easy way out. They planned to take their 8.5 pound lobster to their favorite restaurant and let the chef take care of it. They would share their lobster with Terence's grandma and uncle in Oakland.
Mommy dropped off the twins to their piano lesson at 1:30pm. She picked them up again at 3pm. Terence and family stayed until the twins came back. Terence watched a Pokemon movie and a Hamtaro movie on DVD. Terence still remembered in our Alaskan trip, we played Hamtaro in the car for the twins. He announced that he didn't like Hamtaro despite he didn't even know what it was. After he was forced to see the movie for the first time, he started to like it. Today he picked the movie himself and he said he still liked it. It is amazing that how kids make up their mind without knowing what they are deciding on. This proves that parents should not let the kids make arbitrary decisions on their own.
At 4pm, mommy took the twins to Jasmine W's birthday party. They have their party at a gym like place called Sky High Sports where kids and the young at heart could jump on trampolines and bounce off the walls. Our guests left at the same time. Daddy stayed home to watch some NFL playoff.
Monday, Jan 15, 2007 (9y+5m+9d)
The twins stayed home for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The twins said they learned about Dr. King a lot from school in the past few years. But for some reasons, the teachers have not talked about the topic this year. We told the twins that we have to be thankful to Dr. King. Without him, colored people (i.e. including ourselves) would not be allowed to use restrooms labelled "white people only". When we get on a bus, we would be required to sit at the back away from the white people. The twins may not be allowed to go to college just because they have yellow skin. I had goosebumps whenever I realized those scenarios were real only just 40 years ago. We are the lucky generation.Jocelyn's mom came to our house for a cup of morning coffee after she dropped off her daughters for an art class. The twins stayed in bed until 10am. They practiced piano and worked on their school project after breakfast. The two families went out to lunch at Pasta Pomodoro. In the afternoon, mommy took the twins to Valleyfair mall. They bought some LEGO kits that form keychains with lettering of their choice. They also visited the video game store. They wanted to buy a Nintendo DS game. Mommy told them to pay for it with their own money. They changed their mind after standing in line at the cashier.
After dinner, daddy helped Joanne fix the printer problems. She printed some pictures for her school project on the State of Alaska. The kids these days have easy access to all kind of information at their finger tips. They can easily gather all the information they need on the Internet instead of the library.
Tuesday, Jan 16, 2007 (9y+5m+10d)
The twins returned to school after a 3-day long weekend. They completed their school project before going to bed.
Wednesday, Jan 17, 2007 (9y+5m+11d)
The twins went to school as usual. They finished homework and practiced piano early. So they were allowed to watch 'Barnyard' on DVD.Daddy bought a film scanner from costco.com. It arrived today. The twins wanted to help, but the software was not installed before their bedtime.
Thursday, Jan 18, 2007 (9y+5m+12d)
The twins had to rush in the morning. Mommy said the movie delayed their bedtime and they couldn't get up in the morning. The twins went to school as usual.They finished homework and practiced piano early. Jasmine wanted to help daddy scan some negative of our old photos. Joanne read a book instead. When the twins saw the tiny T-shirt they wore as baby, they found it very funny. We still kept the twins' first shirts as keepsakes. The twins played with it sometime ago. They tried to put the T-shirts on their teddy bears, they wouldn't fit. The twins laughed at their baby pictures because they were tinier than their teddy bears. We told them it was because they were born premature. Mommy helped Jasmine squeeze out her pimples. It is too early for the nine year old to have pimples. We worried that she would have a hard time taking care of her skin when she reaches puberty. For some reasons, Joanne does not have pimple problem yet.
Friday, Jan 19, 2007 (9y+5m+13d)
The twins went to school as usual. Mommy told them that they could not play the Nintendo DS for more than one hour each day. We had dinner with Ashley's and Jasmine W. family in the evening. The twins were bored watching other kids play their video games. The twins could not play because they used up their quota earlier in the day. After dinner, the kids wanted to get together and play more, but we decided that everyone should just go home. The twins came home to practice piano.
Saturday, Jan 20, 2007 (9y+5m+14d)
The twins were playing in bed before getting up in the morning. While they were fighting for some toys, Jasmine flipped open Joanne's comforter. Joanne jokingly said, "Give back my blanket, I deserve warmth!" From that point on, they were speaking "I deserve" this and "I deserve" that all morning. They were laughing hysterically everytime they came up with something new that they deserved. They were actually mocking Jasmine W. because she always said "I deserve" this and that.In the afternoon, daddy took them to the park in the neighborhood. Joanne said she didn't need to go far, she only needed a park that have a horizontal bar where she could climb on. Jasmine was never very enthusiastic about climbing bars and she sat on the side after a while. Jasmine wanted to go home while Joanne wanted to play longer.
Sunday, Jan 21, 2007 (9y+5m+15d)
We stayed home all morning. Daddy watched the football playoff games on TV. The twins went to Piano lesson in the afternoon. Mommy cooked some Cantonese congee for the evening. We invited Christopher & his dad and Claire's family over to have congee for dinner. Christopher's mom went to Singapore to attend her father's funeral. We invited them over for dinner so his dad didn't need to cook.
Monday, Jan 22, 2007 (9y+5m+16d)
The twins are 3456 days old. The twins went to school as usual.They did their routines everyday, homework, piano etc. When they finished early, they got to surf on the Internet. Especially Jasmine, she loved to collect computer wallpaper graphics. Recently she collected a lot of Nintendo Mario's and DS LITE wallpapers. Before the Nintendo graphics, they collected a lot of Naruto pictures earlier. Jasmine did the hard work of searching and downloading them. Joanne preferred to just get the wallpapers from Jasmine. Daddy showed them how to maintain their pictures in iPhoto albums and how to tag the photos with keywords so looking up certain pictures could be instantaneous using the Spotlight feature of MacOS. They also learned how to share the albums across their own login accounts.
Tuesday, Jan 23, 2007 (9y+5m+17d)
Daddy's laptop had a bad connection at the DC power jack. As a result, the laptop was not charging properly and this journal was stranded on a computer that could not power up. Before the power input was repaired, daddy jot notes about the twins activities on the iMac. The online copy of this journal was not updated until Feb 1, then it was in hiatus until end of April.It was status quo for the twins during the down time.
Friday, Jan 26, 2007 (9y+5m+20d)
The twins went to school as usual. Jasmine W's mom dropped Jasmine off with us in the late afternoon for she had a school activity to attend. The kids played together until her mom returned to pick her up. Daddy worked overtime. Jasmine and her mom had not left yet when daddy came home.
Saturday, Jan 27, 2007 (9y+5m+21d)
Mommy invited our friend Jennifer from Sacremento to help us improve the feng shui in our house. It would be Chinese new year in a few weeks. And it was about time to freshen up the house for a better new year.The twins played the DS all afternoon. Mommy didn't enforce the one hour game time limit any more, so the twins played the game a lot. Daddy asked if it would be better if they didn't have to share their DS. Jasmine said "But we have a big project coming up." Daddy explained that the window replacement project would cost $16,000 and the DS only cost $130 which was only a drop in the bucket. Looks like the twins were quite concerned about our spending and they adjusted their wants accordingly.
Mommy took the twins to their triplet cousin's first birthday party in Oakland Daddy went to a coworker's wedding banquet in the evening. The twins were asleep when daddy came home from San Francisco.
Sunday, Jan 28, 2007 (9y+5m+22d)
We stayed in bed until noon. The twins jumped into our bed to wake us up. We reheated our leftover food from yesterday for lunch. Daddy picked up grandma Chui to join us for lunch. Grandma only saw the twins for half an hour before they headed off to their piano lesson. Daddy sent grandma home and joined her in watching some Chinese drama series on TV. Grandma subscribed to the Jade Channel which reran decades old programs from Hong Kong. Those programmings were old by Hong Kong standard, but they were all new to grandma because she had missed all those shows after she moved to the US. Daddy left grandma at around 3pm because she needed a nap.Daddy came home and took a nap too. Daddy woke up at 6pm. A lot happened while daddy was asleep. Joie' s family stopped by to visit mommy. Terence came over too so that he could play with Joie. Joie's dad also took a nap on our living room sofa. Joie's mom and mommy chatted until dinner time.
We were all invited to Terence's home for dinner. Terence's dad cooked dungeoness crabs for dinner. The kids had dishes more suitable for children. The adults filled their tummies with only crabs. It was a very fulfilling meal. The kids retreated to the dan and played Mario Party on the Game Cube all night long. We left at about 10:30pm. The kids didn't want to quit their game. We forced them to because of school tomorrow for some of them.
Monday, Jan 29, 2007 (9y+5m+23d)
When daddy got up, Jasmine was sitting on the stairs reading comic book. She was in her pajama only. Daddy covered her with her bath robe to keep her warm. Before leaving for work, daddy sent Jasmine back to her room so that she could continue reading in her warm bed.The twins didn't need to go to school today. It was staff's learning day at school. Mommy took them to eat brunch with Benjamin's family. Jasmine lost her appetite and didn't eat much all day. Mommy said Jasmine must have weaken herself by not keeping herself warm yesterday and this morning. The germs and viruses won the battle and Jasmine was on the verge of getting sick.
In the afternoon, they went to Any Mountains Sportgoods store to buy a backpack as Jasmine's school bag. One of her school bag's wheels had been ground away after she caught a strand of fabric stuck in the bearing. They also went to Michael's and Target to get some supplies. Joanne worked on her homework and piano practice. Jasmine took a nap in the afternoon. But she still wasn't feeling well by dinner time. Daddy and mommy told Jasmine that she must learn how to take care of herself because being sick would be miserable and she herself was the one suffering the most.
Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007 (9y+5m+24d)
Mommy thought Jasmine might need to stay home for her sickness. However, Jasmine said she felt okay. The twins went to school as usual. They stayed and went to Ashley's mom's classroom after school. Brandon wrote on the blackboard a comparison list between her sister and himself. He wrote a lot of bad things about his sister. The twins helped Ashley argue against those allegations.The twins did their usuals when they came home. The twins proudly showed daddy their homework after dinner. They said they got full scores from the teacher.
Wednesday, Jan 31, 2007 (9y+5m+25d)
The twins went to school as usual. Nothing special happened today. Just the usual homework, piano etc.
Thursday, Feb 1, 2007 (9y+5m+26d)
The twins went to school as usual. They worked on homework and crammed on piano practice because mommy had to move Sunday's piano lesson to this evening due to a time conflict with a birthday party. They went to their piano lesson from 7:30pm till 9pm after dinner. Daddy worked overtime and was just home when they came back from their lesson. The twins tested each other in preparation on the dictation test tomorrow before going to bed. Mommy saved a lot of time ever since she asked the twins to test each other. They played and switched role being teacher and student.
Friday, Feb 2, 2007 (9y+5m+27d)
The twins went to school as usual. Mommy babysat Annette and her little brother Alex because their mom was in the hospital for a surgery. They were sent home when their dad came off work. The twins played on their Nintendo DS Lite. They also found some paper models of Nintendo characters on the Internet. They printed some out and started to glue them together to make 3D models. Jasmine said she loved to do paper crafts and printed another one after the first one finished. Joanne started hers, but just left it undone on the table. The twins urged daddy to change the fish tank water or the fish would die. But they didn't help.
Saturday, Feb 3, 2007 (9y+5m+28d)
We got up early today. We were in the window store talking to the salesperson about our upcoming project. The twins played with their Nintendo DS Light while we was busy. We then went to some furniture stores to shop for a day bed. We didn't find what we liked yet.We went to lunch with Terence's family. Jasmine W's family was in the neighborhood, so we asked them to join us too. The twins picked a Japanese restaurant. When we got there, we found that it was not open for lunch. Mommy picked another one nearby. When we got there, we found that it was not open for lunch either. Forturnately, we all have cell phone to coordinate the change of location. In the third attempt, we found one that was open. In the middle of our lunch, we saw Claire's family walk in. So we asked the waitress to let them join our table.
After lunch, Terence went on to a playday with his friends. Claire followed her parents to an event organized by the charity her mom worked for. Jasmine W and her mom decided to join us to visit the park. The kids had fun at the park. We parted our way after 4:30pm.
We came home and stayed home for the rest of the day. The twins practiced piano and worked on their paper craft models. Joanne suggested that we could look up the Internet to find if there was any football papercrafts they could decorate for the Superbowl game tomorrow. Mommy started to enter the numbers into TurboTax. She was disappointed when the refund didn't come out as much as she expected. Mommy reheated some leftover food for dinner. The twins went to bed before 10pm.
Sunday, Feb 4, 2007 (9y+5m+29d)
We went to Cornell's birthday party around lunch time. They held it in a park near the SFO airport. The park has a huge playground. The kids played on the giant structure that was like 3 story tall. The twins said they didn't go down the slide because it was too long, too high and too scary. After we had BBQ and cut the cake, we hurried home because we were to host a Superbowl party.We only invited Deanna's family to our Superbowl party at first. The news spread in Cornell's party. So a few more families including Cornell's joined our party after they cleaned up after theirs. The kids went upstairs to play on their own while the adults stuck to the TV to watch the football game.
Monday, Feb 5, 2007 (9y+5m+30d)
The twins went to school as usual.
Tuesday, Feb 6, 2007 (9y+6m)
The twins are nine and a half year old today.
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started on April 27, 2007