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This journal is about raising identical twins.Thirty Eighth Month
Previous entriesNote: This page may contain Chinese text in Big5 encoding.
Wednesday, Sept 6, 2000 (3y+1m)
The twins are 37 months old today.The twins stayed home all day. Joanne starts to have a runny nose. She got it from Jasmine.
Thursday, Sept 7, 2000 (3y+1m+1d)
The twins went to school early in the morning. It is the first full session for the new school term. Joanne's runny nose has already recovered after just one day.Daddy had a business dinner with boss and others. Mommy and the twins went to have dinner with Jenny and Mary.
Friday, Sept 8, 2000 (3y+1m+2d)
Mommy and the twins had lunch with Lillian. They stayed at Lillian's place for dinner too. CW's family was also invited to the dinner. Daddy joined them after the conference ended.
Saturday, Sept 9, 2000 (3y+1m+3d)
We all stayed home most of the day except we went to Ikenohana Restaurant for dinner. We took a tatami room for our dinner. The twins ran around in and out of the room and had fun with their shadows cast on the rice-paper partitions.
Sunday, Sept 10, 2000 (3y+1m+4d)
We had breakfast with Elizabeth's family. In the afternoon, Cousin Natalie joined the twins in the community pool for a swim.
Monday, Sept 11, 2000 (3y+1m+5d)
Mommy and the twins visited Debbie's new house in San Jose. Daddy is busy at work attending a training class.
Tuesday, Sept 12, 2000 (3y+1m+6d)
The twins went to school for their second session. Mommy didn't do her homework. On the first day of school each week, she is supposed to help the twins choose a favorite item from home to show their classmates. The twins were busy digging through their school bags and wondered why other classmates pulled stuffs out of their bags and they got nothing in theirs. Mommy saw the embarrassing moments from the observation window but could not help without disrupting the class.
Wednesday, Sept 13, 2000 (3y+1m+7d)
Mommy took the twins to Farmer's market. They bought some fresh vegetables and fruits. The twins were very happy to see the colorful stuffs in the market. We had dinner at ABC restaurant.
Thursday, Sept 14, 2000 (3y+1m+8d)
The twins went to school again. Jasmine was very attentive to the teachers' instructions. When the teachers asked the kids to line up outside the classroom after the recess, Jasmine ran to the playground and dragged Joanne back in line.Mommy took the twins to shop at Costco. After their afternoon nap, they went shopping for some snacks. When they got home, they took a stroll to the community pool and back. The twins enjoyed the walk in the neighborhood.
Daddy worked overtime at the office.
Friday, Sept 15, 2000 (3y+1m+9d)
In the morning, Joanne went straight from bed to the toilet. When Joanne got down, mommy was nearby. She instinctively wiped Joanne's butt with a piece of toilet paper. Joanne broke into a tearful tantrum. She didn't appreciate the help because she wanted to wipe herself. Mommy told her it was too late that the action was already done. Joanne said she wanted to pee again so that she can wipe herself. She broke into tears again when she failed to produce any output.Mommy, the twins, Melinda and Alan went to Debbie's new house. The twins played with Kendrick and Alan.
Saturday, Sept 16, 2000 (3y+1m+10d)
Daddy worked overtime at the office. Mommy dropped off the twins with Grandma Ling and went shopping with Jenny et al.
Sunday, Sept 17, 2000 (3y+1m+11d)
We had lunch with Pat and Angel. Pat came back from L.A. to visit her family. Then they went on to shopping at the Great Mall. Daddy went back to the office to work overtime.
Monday, Sept 18, 2000 (3y+1m+12d)
The Bay Area is hit by a heat wave at over 100°F. Mommy and twins stayed home to avoid the heat.
Tuesday, Sept 19, 2000 (3y+1m+13d)
The heat wave still set the temperature over 100°F. The twins went to school in the morning, this time they brought an item for their show-and-tell. Joanne picked a red ball. Jasmine picked a 101 Dalmatians toy. Mommy made sure they know the items' English names, so that they could introduce the objects to their classmates.
Wednesday, Sept 20, 2000 (3y+1m+14d)
As I was walking out the door this morning, Jasmine ran downstairs to stop me from leaving. I asked her what was the matter. She said she forgot to kiss me goodbye. Then she sweetly blew a kiss from the stairs towards the door. It is definitely a good way to start a new day.
Thursday, Sept 21, 2000 (3y+1m+15d)
The twin went to school as usual. We had dinner at Banana Leaf restaurant.
Friday, Sept 22, 2000 (3y+1m+16d)
Aunt Tina gave us a ride to the San Jose Airport before she went to work. We were leaving for Seattle and Vancouver for a weeklong vacation.It was quite a commotion when we arrived at the curbside baggage check-in line at the airport. We had two backpacks as carry-on, two big pieces of luggage and two bulky car seats to check in to the flight. We had to drag all the pieces along as the line moved. And meanwhile, we had to keep an eye on two curious kids who tended to run off to check things out in their surrounding. Only after the luggage were checked in, we spared our hands to hold on to the twins'.
We actually went to the airport earlier because we tried not to cause too much disruption to Aunt Tina's commuting schedule. We spent about 90 minutes at breakfast and at the terminals before boarding the plane. There was not a boring moment for the twins during the wait because they were extremely excited about flying on an airplane for the first time. They had been talking about the flight for days now.
The flight took two hours and we arrived at Seattle past noon. Twins were not too excited during take-off and flight. They did not like the flight because they were confined to their seats most of the time. When they looked out the window, they could only see clouds.
The twins screamed in joy when the plane landed. As the engines were put on reverse thrust, the whole plane shook violently and noisily. That turned out to be the most enjoyable part of the flight to the twins.
We took our time to visit the bathrooms before claiming our baggage. We rented a car with Alamo. It was almost 2pm when we had lunch at the famous Pike Place Market in Seattle. We walked around the market for awhile and headed for Vancouver at around 4:00pm.
It was poor planning on our part because we got stuck in Friday afternoon rush hour traffic for awhile. We crossed the border to Canada at around 7pm. We arrived at the hotel in Richmond past 7:30pm. We went for dinner after we checked in. The city of Richmond is packed with Hong Kong style restaurants and the food is better and much much cheaper compared to the Bay Area.
Saturday, Sept 23, 2000 (3y+1m+17d)
We went to Aberdeen Center in the morning before most stores were open. We had a quick breakfast at the food court there. Oh! I missed the Hong Kong style breakfast with rice congee (�յ�) and fried breadstick/donut (�o���A���Q�p). We had the best steamed-rice-noodle (�]�z��) that we tasted in years.We rendezvoused with Ron & Evon for lunch. They departed the Bay Area last night after work and arrived at Vancouver past midnight. Their mission of this trip was to eat good food for two days before returning to work next Monday. They go on this type of convivial "fattening tour" (�ΥJ��) at least once a year. Vancouver is their favorite destination because it is not too far from California.
We shared a big sashimi combo for lunch , the portion was so big that we could not finish everything despite taking our time and ate till the restaurant closes at 3pm.
Ron & Evon went on to shopping. We took the twins back to the hotel for their afternoon nap. Due to the late lunch, we met again at 9pm for hot-pot dinner. The restaurant offered a special herbal tea (�L�\��) that was ideal to balance the yin-yang with the hot pot. The twins liked it so much that they drank all our herbal tea and we had to order another glass for ourselves. It was past 11pm when we left the restaurant.
Sunday, Sept 24, 2000 (3y+1m+18d)
We checked out from the hotel in the morning. We had booked a timeshared condo in Vancouver for the rest of the week.We had lunch with Ron & Evon in Vancouver. We went shopping at Robson Street afterwards. We checked in to the timeshared condo after 4pm. We got a 2-bedroom unit on the 22nd floor. It was just 3 city blocks from Robson Street. It had a very nice view of the downtown area. We let the twins take their afternoon nap.
We had dinner with Ron & Evon back in Richmond. Ron & Evon also checked out from their hotel and joined us at the condo for the night.
Monday, Sept 25, 2000 (3y+1m+19d)
Ron & Evon departed early in the morning to catch a flight back to the Bay Area. We had lunch at a Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant.We went to the Capilano suspension bridge in North Vancouver. The twins screamed in joy when the bridge rocked side to side. They ran across the bridge back and forth couples of times. We had a hard time catching up with them.
We then went to Stanley Park. We drove around the park and let the twins play on the lawn and playground. They particularly enjoyed climbing on an old fire-truck in the playground. Mommy was not feeling well. Daddy took the twins to take a short stroll along the famous seawall while mommy rest in the car.
We headed back to Richmond to shop for some Chinese CDs. Daddy bought some Cantonese cartoons on VCD while the twins and mommy took a nap in the car. We then had a light late dinner at Aberdeen Center.
Tuesday, Sept 26, 2000 (3y+1m+20d)
Mommy walked to Robson Street to do her shopping alone for two hours in the morning. Daddy stayed with the twins at the condo.We paid a visit to Winnie's mom and her daughter-in-law Barbara. They treated us lunch. Her daughter and son-in-law also joined us. We went back to her home after lunch and stayed for awhile.
In the late afternoon, we went to Port Coquitlam to visit my Cousin Tammy and her family. We visited them before about 5 years ago. This was the first time they met our twins. They treated us dinner at a nearby restaurant. After dinner, we took some photos outside of the restaurant. Jasmine was willing to kiss everyone goodbye, but Joanne just ran away.
It is a Chinese custom to greet the "older" generation with a salutation. That includes not only family members but friends of parents too. It is an informal system of acknowledging each person's relative position in the family tree hierarchy. For example, I have a distant cousin who is older than my mom, and her daughter is older than I am. When her daughter meets me, she is supposed to greet and respect me as uncle. Conversely, I can simply greet her by her name because I am higher up on the family tree in spite of age.
We have been training our twins to follow such tradition. When I come home from work, the twins will say "Daddy!" When they meet their uncles, aunts, grandparents etc., they would greet them with the proper salutation.
They do fine when close relatives are concerned, because they see them often. However, the twins have trouble doing the salutation when they meet someone for the first time. They were supposed to call my cousin "���h��" and her husband "���h�V", but they refused to do so.
They are supposed to call our friends "����" (uncle) and "����" (auntie) too. Although Ron and Evon spent two days with us, the twins did not call them properly. Sometimes, it takes a long time to warm up before the twins are willing to do the salutation.
Wednesday, Sept 27, 2000 (3y+1m+21d)
We took a ferry ride to Vancouver Island. The ride takes 95 minutes one way. The trip took more than two and a half hour including driving to the ferry and waiting for the ferry to dock. The twins loved the ferry ride because they could play in the playground and there was plenty of room to run around. Later we asked them if they like flying in the airplane, they said they like the ferry better. We visited Butchart Gardens and then went to downtown Victoria. We tried to visit the Miniature World but we arrived after their closing time.We took the 7pm ferry back to Vancouver. We had a late dinner in Richmond past 9:30pm while the twins slept through on the chairs next to us. Joanne woke up near the end and ate a little. We packed the leftover and fed Jasmine after we were back at the condo.
Thursday, Sept 28, 2000 (3y+1m+22d)
We got up late and ate last night's leftover as brunch. We walked out to Robson Street to do some window-shopping. We went through a building with very unique architecture. The building looks like a green house with open atrium and glass ceilings. It turned out to be the British Columbia courthouse. The kids enjoyed running around in the atrium and riding the elevators too. We worried that the twins would make too much noise because we saw many courtrooms were in session.We ate some afternoon snack at Aberdeen Center. Daddy and twins stayed in the car outside Yaohan Center for a nap while mommy went shopping inside. After the twins woke up, we joined mommy. The twins were happy because many stores there carry Hello Kitty and Pokemon products.
Winnie's mom and Barbara invited us to their home for dinner. Again, the twins rather kiss Barbara on her cheek than greet her as auntie.
It started raining when we left. We were told that the weather was just returning to "normal". We were lucky that we got six dry days in a row.
Friday, Sept 29, 2000 (3y+1m+23d)
It continued to rain. We checked out from the time-shared condo. We actually had the place reserved for one more day, but we decided to spend some time in Seattle instead. We had lunch at Sun Sui Wah Restaurant and tried their famous braised squab. We headed towards the border a bit after 2pm. It was pouring rain on the way. When we crossed the US border, we were picked for agricultural inspection because we ate a couple of oranges on the way and still had some orange peels in our car. The twins were asleep at the time. We were asked to wake them up and take them inside while the car was inspected. It was a lesson learned, we should have disposed of any fruits and remains before crossing the border.Again our timing was very bad. When we approached Seattle, it was in the middle of rush hour. We arrived at a hotel just across from the Space Needle at around 6pm. The rain turned into light drizzle, and most of the low clouds were gone. We figured the visibility was pretty good from the top of Space Needle. We made a reservation for dinner at 7:45pm at the Sky City restaurant on top of the Space Needle.
Before dinner, we went to the game arcade at the foot of the needle. The twins enjoyed the frog leap ride, which was a machine that jerked them up and down. We found that we only had a few US dollars left besides the Canadian currency in our pocket. So we didn't spend too much there.
We took the elevator up the needle to the restaurant. The twins enjoyed the ride because the elevator is on the outside and we could see the scenery while we went up in pretty high speed. We were told to wait 20 minutes for our table. So I took the twins to ride the elevator again. Mommy decided to wait outside the restaurant instead because she couldn't stand the nauseating ride.
We got a window-side table. We had a great panorama view of the city of Seattle as the restaurant revolved. We had a wonderful seafood dinner to celebrate mommy's birthday. The twins' meals were free because they are under 5 years old. During dinner, twins sang happy birthday to mommy. Joanne had better articulation in her singing. Jasmine just murmured along. For that reason, Jasmine was asked to sing in solo again. We had all that on videotape.
Saturday, Sept 30, 2000 (3y+1m+24d)
We had the complimentary breakfast at the hotel. The twins took a long time to finish their food, which delayed our schedule. And we lost our direction for several minutes. We drove to the airport in a hurry. I dropped off mommy, kids and baggage on the curbside check-in counter before I returned the rental car. There were also some delay and confusion at the rental return. I barely made it to the gate to catch our flight. The family radios helped a lot while I was separated from the family.The flight took off at 12:15pm. We arrived at San Jose two hours later. The first thing I felt was the heat. After a week of cool weather in the northwest, San Jose weather became too hot.
Aunt Tina picked us up and we had a late lunch together. . We put the kids in bed for their afternoon nap as soon as we got home.
We had dinner with Hing and Lucy in the evening. As usual, Lucy bought gift for the twins. It is a set of Halloween Pooh bear and friends in a wheel barrel. After dinner, we visited Wil'n'Lil. We watched a Chinese Movie "��������K" (secret of the moon) on VCD. It was very late when we left.
Sunday, Oct 1, 2000 (3y+1m+25d)
We slept in late. We had lunch at Milpitas Square for Shanghaiese style dim sum. We went grocery shopping at the supermarket next to the restaurant.By the time I got home, I got a headache from the heat. We all took a nap in afternoon. We had dinner at home because we bought fresh grocery in the afternoon.
After bath, the twins soaked in the bathtub for over an hour. They missed their tub toys because we didn't let them soak in hotel bathtub for the past week.
After the twins went to bed, we watched a Chinese movie "�t�k��k" (Needing you) on one of the VCDs we bought in Canada.
Monday, Oct 2, 2000 (3y+1m+26d)
Daddy went back to work. Mommy and twins stayed home.
Tuesday, Oct 3, 2000 (3y+1m+27d)
The twins went back to school after skipping two sessions last week. Ever since the beginning of the school term, Jasmine cries every time when mommy pulls the car into the school driveway. She is okay once inside the school. But she performs her crying ritual every time. Jasmine told me she does not like school. On the contrary, Joanne said she likes school.We were invited to dinner at Hing and Lucy's. They bought four Dungeness crabs to share with us. Joanne liked it so much that she kept asking for more. She ate too much and had an upset stomach and wetted her pants afterwards. She had to borrow a diaper from Terence before going home.
Wednesday, Oct 4, 2000 (3y+1m+28d)
The twins like to sing along with the CD that we bought from the Challenger School. They already learn the entire Alphabet song. They know all the sound each alphabet letter makes. For example, if I ask them "what does the A say?" they would reply "Aye and Ahh". Basically, they know the phonics of all 26 letters. The problem is that they have not recognized all the letters yet. We should have done more reading with them in additional to listening to the songs.When they are not singing along, Jasmine's favorite song is "Tra la la la la, la la la la" sung to the melody of "me3 me3 re3 do3 so2 re3 re3 me3 fa3". She sometimes just sings out one phrase loud on her own. I believe she learned that from school because I have never heard the melody elsewhere.
On the contrary, Joanne does not sing often. When I asked her why, she said she was afraid that we would laugh at her. I don't know where she got that idea. Perhaps we laugh out of joy, but we have never laughed at them mockingly.
Thursday, Oct 5, 2000 (3y+1m+29d)
The twins call us daddy and mommy all along. Today, they suddenly called us Baba, Mama and then laughed out loud. They would go "����, ����, ��������! (Baba, Mama, Hahahaha!)" They thought that was funny.���� Baba, ���� Mama is the traditional Cantonese way to call daddy and mommy. We didn't teach them that. I found out that they were mimicking the character in the Cantonese cartoon we bought for them in Canada.
Friday, Oct 6, 2000 (3y+2m)
The twins are 38 month old today.
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started on Oct 19, 2000