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This journal is about raising identical twins.Ninety First Month
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Sunday, Feb 6, 2005 (7y+6m)
The twins were 7.5 year old today.We went to Hing's home for lunch. We rushed home to get ready for the Superbowl party. Hing also invited his friends to his superbowl party. Albert and Jenny arrived first. Then Deanna's family arrived later. Addison and the husbands watched Superbowl, the wives prepared dinner in the kitchen, they also played mahjongg between breaks. Deanna disappeared with the twins into the playroom. We had dinner while watching the second half of the game. After dinner and the game, the adults continued the mahjong game. The kids played UNO and Squence. The guests left at around 10pm.
Monday, Feb 7, 2005 (7y+6m+1d)
The twins went to school as usual. From now on, Benjamin rode with the twins from school every day. His mom had complication with her pregnacy and her doctor ordered her to stay in bed. His dad dropped him off at school every morning. Since they live only a few blocks from us, we gave him a ride from school every afternoon. In the afternoon, the twins practiced piano, did homework and played games on the computer. Mommy was mad at them for spending too much time on the Internet.
Tuesday, Feb 8, 2005 (7y+6m+2d)
The twins went to school as usual. They had private piano lessons in the afternoon. It was Chinese New Year Eve. As Chinese tradition, we have a get together dinner with family. The twins changed into their Chinese qipao outfit for dinner.The twins requested bedtime story after almost two weeks. We continued to read about the pilgrim's adventure in the Journey to the West.
Wednesday, Feb 9, 2005 (7y+6m+3d)
The twins went to school as usual. It is Chinese New Year today. Welcome to the year of rooster. They had piano class in the afternoon. Both twins had a fever. Joanne was at 99.8°F and Jasmine was at 98.9°F. Some kind of virus was passing around in school lately. It was just a matter of time to catch it from school. Mommy ordered them to go to bed early. They wanted bedtime story too. We read about the pilgrims being offers some magical fruit that look like new born babies. Jasmine fell asleep before we finished.
Thursday, Feb 10, 2005 (7y+6m+4d)
Jasmine woke up with a fever of 101°F. Joanne's fever subsided. Joanne said her head hurt though she had no fever. Mommy decided to let both of them stay home because Jasmine couldn't go to school with a fever.The twins rested a lot all day. Jasmine's fever was down to 98.5°F after dinner. Joanne returned to 100°F. We learned from many friends that this flu season was very serious, probably because of the flu shot shortage a few months ago. For example, Addison's school had less than half the class in school. The rest were all sick.
The twins were tired and they went to bed early.
Friday, Feb 11, 2005 (7y+6m+5d)
The twins still had a slight fever. Though they caught the bug from school, we still didn't want to spread the bug back to school. They stayed home all day.In the evening, we held a dinner party at home. We invited Julia and Vicky's family to dinner. We also invited Clare's family, but they went to LA, only Clare's dad came. After dinner, the moms played mahjong with Clare's dad. The other dads watched TV. The twins went to bed early. The guests stayed till 2am.
Saturday, Feb 12, 2005 (7y+6m+6d)
The twins still had a very slight fever, but they seemed to have recovered. But both of them started coughing. The in-laws came to visit in the afternoon. Mommy, daddy played mahjong with great grandma and others. They left after dinner.
Sunday, Feb 13, 2005 (7y+6m+7d)
The twins' fever had subsided. We went to Hing's home for lunch. We did some shopping after lunch. When we went home, the twins already fell asleep in the car. We let them sleep inside the garage. When it was dinner time, we went to the restaurant and woke them up before we went in. We had dinner with Hing's family. They came to our home after dinner. We watched some TV together. The twins went to bed after the guests left.
Monday, Feb 14, 2005 (7y+6m+8d)
The twins returned to school after two days of sick leave last week. They were okay in the morning. When they got home in the afternoon, they had a fever again. We didn't know if they got a new bug or last week's bug came back.They took a long nap in the afternoon. They finished homework after dinner. They didn't do the optional homework because they looked tired. We sent them to bed early.
Tuesday, Feb 15, 2005 (7y+6m+9d)
The twins still had a fever in the morning. Jasmine was at 100.7°F; Joanne was at 99°F. They had to stay away from school again.Mommy took them to piano class in the afternoon. Since they have private lesson, we didn't worry about them infecting other kids. The lesson only last half an hour, the twins could handle it. They took a long nap after they came home.
The twins lost 5 pounds after being sick for a week. Jasmine weighed 44 lbs.; Joanne weighed 43 lbs.
Wednesday, Feb 16, 2005 (7y+6m+10d)
Jasmine still had a fever in the morning. Joanne went to school. Jasmine stayed in bed all morning.Mommy said Joanne was popular. When she approached the classroom, many of her classmates ran to her to ask her how she felt. They must have missed her when she didn't go to school yesterday. Kolico handed Joanne something, Joanne popped it into her mouth right away. Mommy saw that and gave them a lecture. The kids were not supposed to share their food because it was the flu season. Joanne argued "I only ate one!" Joanne later said it was a cheetos.
Jasmine followed mommy to deliver lunch to Joanne. The twins went to their piano class in the afternoon. We could tell Jasmine was getting better by dinner time. Her cheerfulness returned, she even joked with Joanne. Her smiles and grins were missing in the past few days. We checked her temperature to make sure her fever was really gone.
Daddy rendezvoused with them at the restaurant for dinner.
Thursday, Feb 17, 2005 (7y+6m+11d)
The twins returned to school as usual. Their fever were gone and they seemed to have fully recovered. They stayed home doing homework and practiced piano after school.
Friday, Feb 18, 2005 (7y+6m+12d)
The twins went to school as usual. They stayed home doing homework and practiced piano after school.
Saturday, Feb 19, 2005 (7y+6m+13d)
We paid a Chinese New Year visit to grandma Chui. We cancelled the visit last week, because the twins had the fever. We were concerned that the kids' illness would pass to grandma.Grandma treated us a next lunch. We returned home after lunch. The twins practiced piano and played games on the Internet.
For bedtime story, we read about the monkey king stealing the Ginsang fruit.
Sunday, Feb 20, 2005 (7y+6m+14d)
Hing invited us to their home for lunch. The twins played with Terence after lunch. We watched a movie in the afternoon before going home.The tiwn practiced piano and played soem game on the Internet. We went out to dinner at a Korean resturant. Daddy & mommy watched a movie on DVD afer we got home. We sent the twin to bed early, no bed time story.
Monday, Feb 21, 2005 (7y+6m+15d)
We went to Koi Palace for lunch with Deanna's family and another family. We waited for 75 minute for a table and we spent about 90 minutes for lunch. We went to the shopping mall in the shopping mall. When we were in the stored, both Jasmine and Joanne commented that they could buy the things they liked. It turned out the twins had brought along the lucky money they had collected in Chinese New Year with them. In the new year, each of them had collected about $250 each from friends and relatives. Today, they each carried more cash than mommy and daddy had in our pockets. Despite the money they carried, they decided to buy anything except a roll or Mentos candies. Daddy paid for the purchase.The mommy decided to do some grocery shopping together. So daddy and the kids rode with Deanna family. We stopped by the Fry's Electronics store. Daddy wanted to buy some on-sale items and Addison wanted to buy a graphic card for his gaming computer. Deanna and the twins played with some of the electronic toys in the store. When it was time to go, Joanne said her purse was missing. We ran round the store to revisit all the places she had been. Luckily, we were able to find her purse on the floor and recovered the hundreds of dollars.
We had dinner with Evon and Ronald at a Japanese restaurant in the evening. When we got home, mommy took most of the twins' money to deposit them into their saving accounts in the bank. Given the way the twins handle their purse, their money would be lost sooner or later.
The twins practiced piano and took shower before going to bed. We continued to read about the Monkey King for bed time story. The "Journey to the West" is a Chinese classic novel. So far we have only read about one third of the book. The twins said they like the story very much. Joanne said their classmates went to a Chinese acrobat show recently in a field trip. One of the performance was about the Monkey King. She said she really don't mind missing the show because the show would not have as much details as we read from the book.
Tuesday, Feb 22, 2005 (7y+6m+16d)
Daddy returns to work after the President's day holiday. The twins continued to have their mid-year recess for the rest of the week. The music teacher also took a break. The twins went to their writing class in the afternoon. We continued with the Journey to the West for bedtime story.
Wednesday, Feb 23, 2005 (7y+6m+17d)
The twins stayed home all day. The twins asked for half a paragraph of bedtime story. They said they were tired so they didn't want a long story.
Thursday, Feb 24, 2005 (7y+6m+18d)
The twins went to Rachel's home for lunch. Rachel and her mom then came to our house. They went to the park in the afternoon. Joanne said when she played with a sand funnel, her finger stuck in the hole. It took Rachel's help and some patience before she could release her finger. They later went to play tennis with Benjamin. Jasmine said she got hit by the balls on her face twice today. They went to writing class in the afternoon. The twins played games on the Internet after dinner. We continued with the Journey to the West for bedtime story.
Friday, Feb 25, 2005 (7y+6m+19d)
The twins are still in their mid-year recess. Mommy took them to shopping at Stanford mall in the afternoon.
Saturday, Feb 26, 2005 (7y+6m+20d)
We got up at 6am. We were out of the door by 6:30am. We headed towards Yosemite National Park. Before we reached Yosemite, Joanne said she wasn't feeling well in the stomach. A few minutes later, she threw up all over herself. She regurgitated stinky chocolate milk on her seat. We pulled over on the side of the highway, wiped clean the seat, changed all her clothes, gave her a plastic bag, then we moved on. We lived with the stench of the rest of the trip.We arrived at around 10:30am. We drove around to look for something to eat. Most of the restaurants are closed for winter. Instead of buying a cold sandwich in a deli, we drove to The Ahwahnee hotel and had a very filling hot lunch. We then drove to the Yosemite falls and hiked to the bottom of it. The twins wanted to climb the rock to the falls. They climbed to the bottom of the Bridal Veil Fall last summer and they wanted to do it again. We started climbing and Jasmine wanted to go to poop half way up. Mommy and Jasmine returned to the parking lot to find a restroom. Joanne and daddy continued on and reached the edge of a fast running rapid at the bottom of the fall. We took some pictures and returned. We met mommy and Jasmine on the way. We took some pictures and video with the Yosemite Fall as the background. We got back to the car and we headed to the higher elevation because all the snow on the valley floor had melted. We went up the mountain on CA-120 and we reached the point where the highway was closed for winter. We climbed to a patch of slope where we played with the snow and sledded a little. We left at around 4:30pm. We arrived at the bay area at around 8pm. We had dinner before returning home.
We unloaded the luggage after the 14 hours round trip to Yosemite National Park. We put Joanne's stinky clothes into the washer. Mommy sent the twins upstairs to take a shower. They came downstairs to play game on the www.neopets.com website. We were all tired and went to bed with no bedtime story.
Sunday, Feb 27, 2005 (7y+6m+21d)
We slept in past 11am. We went to Terence's home for lunch. Terence went to see at show at 3pm.We called Rachael to go bowling. When we arrived at the lanes, we found out that there were several birthday party. We had to went at least one hour for the lane. Rachel's family decided not to come because of the wait. We waited at the game room. The twins won some tickets to exchange for toys. When we got our lane, Terence joined us for bowling too. We were able to locate soem 6 pound balls for the kids to use. The lanes were equipped with bumpers over the gutters. The kids and mommy had the bowling balls bounced around the lane with no worry of rolling off the gutters. Jasmine won the game at 110 points; daddy was second at 101 points; everyone else was below 100 points.
We went to Terence's home for dinner. We returned home after 9pm. The twins asked for 10 minute of bedtime story. We had been reading about the ginseng fruits story in Journey to the West for the past week. Today we reached the end of the episode, the pilgrim fled from the place after the monkey king sabotaged the place and left a mess.
Monday, Feb 28, 2005 (7y+6m+22d)
The twins returned to school after a week long midyear recess. They played with Rachael at school. Rachael is now their best friend at school. They played the game called shark. Someone would point their fingers and yell "shark!", then all the kids would run in the opposite direction.We continued the bedtime story. Today the owner of the ginseng fruit tree came after them.
Tuesday, Mar 1, 2005 (7y+6m+23d)
The twins went to school as usual. They played with Rachael and Ashley, they played shark again. They had lunch together at the student cafe. The twins went to piano class in the afternoon.In the evening, the twins asked daddy if I wanted to hear something scary. I said okay. Jasmine said her classmate Lynn's aunt died. She was stabbed to death in her home. They didn't know about what actually happened. The twins didn't hear about deaths that often. I would rather not tell the twins about this kind of violent crime and ugliness of humanity at their current age. Since this came from their own classmate, it was out of our control. In addition, the story had a bigger impact because it was from someone they knew. Actually the twins had heard about other deaths by nature and accident, for example, the tsunami in Asia and a car accident reported on TV a few months ago. The car accident involved two 16 year old girls from a local high school. One was serious hurt and the other killed when the driver, a young college kid, fell asleep and crashed the car into a tree. The twins felt bad about the death because the girl was young. We found out more about the girl later but we didn't tell the twins. The girl who was killed in the accident was the daughter of the twins' abacus teacher.
We continued on their bedtime story.
Wednesday, Mar 2, 2005 (7y+6m+24d)
The twins went to school as usual. They had piano group lesson in the afternoon.After dinner, the sandman "attacked" daddy. Daddy went to bed early. Half an hour later, the twins pulled daddy out of bed to read them bedtime story.
Thursday, Mar 3, 2005 (7y+6m+25d)
The twins went to school as usual. They had writing class in the afternoon. Mommy was mad at the twins because they wrote a bunch of nonsense in their homework that was not on topic. Mommy made them redo their homework over again to write something that make sense. Mommy was a classroom helper in many occasions. She got to read some of the twins' classmates' writing in class. She was quite disappointed in many misspellings and meaningless sentences. The twins did better than those sloppy work, but they still infuriated mommy.We continued the bedtime story. We read about the monkey king who sought help from Guan Yin to retore the ginseng fruit tree that he toppled. Jasmine commented that the reading went a little long tonight. I said I could read less next time. Joanne said she didn't mind because she loved the story. We were doing this night after night but we had not even done a third of the novel.
Friday, Mar 4, 2005 (7y+6m+26d)
The twins went to school as usual. It was rainning dogs and cats in the past couple of days. But the forcast said the rain would stop tonight and we would have sunny days next week.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2005 (7y+6m+27d)
Mommy dropped off the twins to Rachael's home for a play day gathering. Ansel was there too. They played for about two hours before we picked them up again.We had lunch with Evon, SiuLing, Cindy and Betsy. We had 9 adults and 4 kids among 4 families. We went to SiuLing's house after lunch. The moms played Mahjongg. The twins and daddy watched TV. We left at 6:30pm.
We went to a dinner gathering in the evening. We asked the twins to take a nap in the car. Mommy went in the restaurant first and daddy stayed with the twins in the car. We woke them up when the dinner was ready. There were 7 families in the party and we took two tables in the restaurant. Claire was there to play with the twins. Deanna went to a slumber party for the night. When she found out that her family was coming to this gathering, she asked her mom why the dinner had to be set on the same day as her party. She was upset because she would miss the twins. Her mom told her it was up to her to choose meeting the twins or her friends. She commented that "She had to face tough decisions in life." That could be an indication of the twins' popularity among other kids.
After dinner, everyone moved to Edwin's house to continue the party. The kids played and watched TV in the family room. The adults chatted around two mahjong tables. We left a bit past midnight. The twins were okay because they took a nap before dinner.
Sunday, Mar 6, 2005 (7y+7m)
The twins are 91 month old today.
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started on Mar 7, 2005