Like Gran gran's house

We went to an open house on Saturday that had knotty pine paneling in it ("rustic style") and Sierra commented to gran in Chinese "This looks like gran gran's house."

Good observation! :)

SHE kept on napping after her nap

Sierra fell asleep in her tricycle today!

so Josh carried her home. (It was 3 blocks.)

Speaking of falling asleep, Sierra continues to fall asleep in the car sometimes on the way home from a morning activity. I am able to carefully carry her upstairs and put her in bed. I hope that lasts!  I know if she stays in the carseat, she'll wake up sooner since it's not as comfortable.

SHE's getting a ride with a new friend at the park

Here we are at Peers Park in Palo Alto. Josh was trying to show Sierra how to fly a kite. Suddenly, this girl came across the street in this pink car.  Sierra was transfixed. She walked to the pink car like it was the Pied Piper.  This girl's dad saw her and asked if she wanted to get in the car. Did she?  Oh yeah. Sierra stayed there the whole time as the girl (Elly, age 4) drove around in circles and all over the grass. I heard them talking with each other too. Elly stopped the car at one point to show her the battery under the hood.  I asked if she wanted to get out and she said No. They kept driving.  Finally, Elly said "Let's go to the playground!" and Elly ran out to the playground. Ra-ra climbed out and followed her.

Late when she recounted this event to me, she told me she had asked Elly where the battery is, so that's why Elly stopped the car and showed her! Wow.

SHE thinks in Chinese

I forgot to mention that Chinese is definitely her first language. How do we really know for absolute sure? Because she thinks in Chinese. When she talks to herself, she speaks Chinese!  So fun and cute to watch.

Bilingual girl

Sierra's very fluent in Chinese now.  She can speak in complete sentences and express most of her thoughts. She constantly surprises and makes gran and ayi laugh. The other day, she said in Chinese, "Let me think of another way to solve this problem." and Ayi said "Oh boy I'm in trouble now!"(in Chinese)

Her English is closer to "normal" for a 2 year old.  Speaks in a mix of phrases and sentences. Much smaller vocabulary than in Chinese.

Which is amazing. The way language acquisition works, when learning multiple languages, the child learns the same total number of words, it's just split between the languages.  On top of that, there's the different grammar rules, etc.   So if she only spoke English, we could not imagine...  She's already helping with Gran's English vocabulary sometimes, and my Chinese. :)

SHE's "sleeping" to twinkle twinkle

Tonight, daddy played song after song on her toy piano based on Sierra's song requests:
"Daddy play X!"  And he would start playing and she would sit on the stairs and bounce to the beat. Then she would get up and say "Daddy play Y!" (and repeat)
When he played Twinkle Twinkle, she climbed on the chair and pretended to sleep. It was so cute!  She even got back on the chair to pose for this picture. :)

SHE loved the noodles at lunch

Don't open the door for strangers

Just now a solicitor knocked at the door. Ra-ra ran to the door excitedly saying "Daddy!" and opened it. I heard (from upstairs) someone say "I'm not Daddy. May I speak to the head of the household?" at which point Ayi came forward and just closed the door.

Ayi immediately told her in Chinese not to open the door next time. She said "Just like the goats"  (referring to the goat kids and the wolf story in the Richard Scarry book.) I said, "Yes, it could be the wolf. Only open the door for Mommy, Daddy, or Ayi." And she added, "Or Gran gran." She got the point.  Wow.

Ma-meh (more of Sierra's burgeoning sense of humor)

I noticed that when she wakes up in the middle of the night or from her naps and cries for me, she says "Ma-meh!" so I asked her the other morning:

Me: Ra-ra, how do you say mommy - "Ma-meh" or "Mommy"?
Ra-ra: Ma-meh!

And this repeated for the next 10 minutes. Now she finds it so funny when I say "Who am I? Mommy or Ma-meh!" and she always says "Ma-meh!" and laughs.

More Sierra-ese (i.e., Sierra's toddler-ese accent)

Before she loses her accent, I want to note as much as I can. It's so cute. :)

new-dles: noodles
nacks!: snacks (as in, as soon as I buckle her into her carseat, she asks for nacks!)

SHE was excited to see Sophia

At her last playdate with Caitlyn and Skyla (who is starting preschool at Lingli) on 2/16, Sierra was really talkative. When She wanted to go outside, she asked Caitlyn and then Skyla "Ni yao bu yao qu wai mian?" (do you want to go outside?) several times. Unfortunately, Caitlyn and Sklya were engrossed in the new toys and did not respond. Later, Skyla sat at the picnic table with the toy piano while Sierra took a seat opposite her and explained the buttons to her in Chinese. Caitlyn then took a seat too, which made for a great picture.

Anyway, Friday 2/17, Sophia had the day off from preschool, so her dad brought her over for a playdate. Sierra was upstairs when they knocked at the door. I said from downstairs "Sophia's here!" and Sierra said "Yay!!!!" and jumped up and down upstairs (you could hear her pounding through the floor!)

SHE went to Ameet and Sayali's house

Ra-ra's imaginative

Yesterday, she looked at gran, ayi, and me standing there in a row and said "xiang mao mao cong!" (you look like a caterpillar!) which is totally true! And then she did it again today. Then she said "xiang huoche". (you look like a train!)

More cool translating

She's doing this more and more now, but here's an example from tonight.

Gran walked downstairs from taking a shower upstairs (which she knew bc we told her earlier). She said to gran, "Gran gran hao ganjing!" and then turned to me and said "Gran gran's clean!"

Sierra's blossoming sense of humor

In the last week or so, Sierra came up with a new joke with gran gran. Gran will talk about what Sierra is going to eat, and Sierra will start naming totally gross things to eat and laugh and laugh. Nitu (mud in Chinese) is one of her favorites. I walked in in the middle of this once and said "What's nitu?" and she turned to me and said "mud" and then turned back to gran gran, laughing. I think she is starting to realize what an idiot mommy is and how I can't even be in on her jokes!

Then tonight she was talking on the phone to Auntie Daisy and told her she was eating trees and mud and then she turned to gran and said "nitu" and started laughing. Silly ra-ra!

SHE's reading to Ken

Ken came over tonight and Sierra was so thrilled to have him over. She is usually quiet and observant when others come over, but she was so hyper and interactive with Ken. She was being Miss Naughty to get his attention while he was trying to talk with Josh and/or me. She threw her spoon on the floor (during dinner) and then tipped over the garbage can. Then she threw her crayons behind the cardboard that we use to block the CDs. It was very un-Sierra! But finally Ken sat down on the carpet with her and she got to read the Eating book to him. He moved over back to the couch and she said "Can you sit over here?" and wanted him to sit back next to her! He was such the perfect dinner guest later as Sierra made fake food for him in her toy kitchen, perfectly complimenting how delicious the ravioli was and gently guiding/explaining to her about putting just the right amount of tomato sauce on it. Sierra had a blast. Ken would be such a great preschool teacher, I told Josh later.

Making up words

At night, when we talk as she is falling asleep, one of her favorite things is talking about different people's houses. This entails her asking me to talk about X's house (X = Sophia, Skyla, Robbie, Auntie Daisy, Jaden, or Athena) and then talking about one of her experiences there. Sometimes I make things up and she enjoys this "experience" too. Like at Auntie Daisy's house, we help her feed her doggies, bunny, bear (which she says she has), and monkey (which she recently said Daisy got). Then one by one, we brush their teeth, change to their PJs, etc. Talking this out takes quite a bit of time, the goal being to lull her to sleep. I made up a story at Sophia's house of Sophia's daddy feeding Sophia all these foods because Sophia is so hungry. In my story, Sophia's dad asks her in English what she wants to eat, and Sophia always responds in Chinese. One night, Sierra said, "Sophia wants X" where X is some made up word. I couldn't figure out it was made up at first, but then realized Sierra was being funny. I said, "What's X?" and Sierra said, "X is Sierra's favorite food." and laugh. Then I would said Sophia tried X and loved it! X is usually something like "dodee-dodee" or some other silly sounding word. Now Sierra does this all the time. And Sierra will keep making up new words for foods for Sophia to eat.

SHE's at Happy Hollow with Sophia

Sierra calls it "Happy Halla" like challah. Last night, Josh talked with her about Happy Hollow while she fell asleep. Josh fell asleep and I heard her on the monitor saying "Daddy talk about happy halla" several times. Finally Josh stirred and started talking about the Challah book and how there is honey in challah. I was like what?!

SHE's at Happy Hollow with Sophia

SHE's taking a break from a grueling stroller ride

We went to look at houses in Hillsborough/San Mateo. We saw one house and then Sierra started getting restless and saying she really wanted to get out. So we took a walk at Crystal Springs. Sierra wanted to sit in the stroller for most of it, despite our constantly asking if she wanted to get out. Finally she walked back some of the way. We probably just walked 1 mile out on the trail. Then we went to the San Mateo farmers market, which wasn't nearly as good at the Mtn View one. Then we went home and S fell asleep in the car. I carefully carried her upstairs and she slept the rest of her nap in her bed. This has happened a few times in the past 6 months. It feels somewhat miraculous that I am able to do this. But usually when she is first asleep, she is at her most tired, so you can do quite a bit. Like at night, gran discovered that you can even change her diaper during the first few hours. So we always change it when it's wet to ensure no leakage (and a drier diaper) by morning.

Traffic lights

In December, we finally turned her carseat forward. This allows her to finally understand why we stop the car when she is telling daddy to "go!". She can finally see traffic lights. And she totally gets it.

This provides some mild entertainment for her as she sees us follow the traffic lights.

On the way back to gran's from the Oakland zoo, Josh ran a red light as it turned from yellow, and Sierra totally caught Josh on that one. She said - "oh my goodness!" or "Ai yo way ah!" (or maybe both - I can't remember exactly) and then we realized she was remarking on how Josh ran the red light when she said "Daddy it's a red light! you're not supposed to go!" (or something like that - I wish I had posted this earlier so I could remember the exact words!)

It's very important to Sierra that we follow rules, and she is quick to point out when we (in this case daddy) breaks them!

Singing in tune and other miscellany

Sierra likes singing. She came back from Skyla's house in Oct and mudder observed that Skyla (3 months older) liked singing too, but could not hold a tune. Sierra totally sings in tune.

Sierra notices every detail. One that is funny is the toaster. She will walk in the kitchen and ask what's in there if she sees something cooking. Often it's something yummy. Like red, yellow, and blue mini potatoes the other day. She dipped them in ketchup and loved them.

Sierra's accent is constantly evolving. I love it. Here are some cute examples:
hoomidifier: humidifier
Snopey: Snoopy
hap birthday: happy birthday (she sings this way. I actually finally corrected her the other day and she started saying it correctly. I immediately regretted it because I love how she sings "hap birthday" :( )

Sierra's 2 year check up and food

Sierra had her 2 year check up today. It kept getting postponed since she was sick.

Dr. Fong asked her a bunch of questions today and Sierra was very quiet (whispered all her answers) and observant.

Dr: Do you like breakfast?
S: yeah
Dr: What did you have for breakfast?
S: Skyla likes Kix.
Dr: Oh do you like Kix?
S: yeah
Dr: Do you like fruit?
S: yeah
Dr: What kind of fruit do you like?
S: apples
Dr: Oh apples are good! Do you like vegetables?
S: yeah
Dr: What kind of meat do you like?
S: fish
(we hardly serve fish! (mostly due to mercury))
Dr: What kind of vegetables do you like?
(I was not sure if she could answer this since we call all veggies "cai cai" in Chinese, but later realized she could have said broccoli. But no matter. Instead she said...)
S: lettuce

I'm not sure where she got that from! Haha. We hardly give her lettuce. She always gets cooked leafy greens.

Speaking of lettuce, Sierra willingly ate a sandwich for the 2nd time in her life 2 weeks ago. I took a piece of bread, sliced it in half, and spread avocado on it. I put turkey lurkey (I copied this phrase from Tobi who uses it with Robbie) and American cheese in it, sliced off the crust and cut it in half (so it was 2 quarters of a sandwich). She ate the whole thing!

We repeated it with Caitlyn here on a playdate, and she ate it again! And small cubes of tomato on the side! (Tomato is one of Caitlyn's faves.)

Then she asked for a sandwich last weekend. This time she only ate half (1 quarter).

Then this week we tried again, and she took it apart and picked at it. Though this time there was thinly sliced cucumber and bits of tomato in it.

Oh well.

Speaking of cucumber, she finally started eating it a few months ago. I think it was all that talk about how much Sophia loves it. Skyla served slices of it at her playdate in Oct/Nov too. She really likes cucumber. She especially likes "Chinese cucumber", which is cucumber with lemon juice, salt, and sugar. We also cube it and cook it in homemade chicken broth and it gives it really nice flavor.

In contrast to Dr. Fong's office, Sierra was such a chatterbox at her dr appt at Berkeley pediatrics while at Gran's. She just kept going on and on to the dr (while the dr was talking to me and periodically saying "oh my goodness" and commenting to sierra. the dr. was good at toddler-ese!). She was telling her about how she had mommy nai nai and when I mentioned her head scar, she started talking about how she tripped over daddy in mommy's room (what she calls the room where she is now sleeping), etc.

Sierra was also such a chatterbox at gran's house when her neighbor Peter stopped by. She ran back and forth a couple times to get her monkey and owl and tell him what they were. It was so amazing!

But with other people (such as Dr. Fong and these 2 preschool teachers we met at a preschool tour), she is much more quiet and observant. Did she just get an extra boost of confidence while at Gran's?

SHE's cooking cookies

Josh: What are you doing.
S: I'm cooking!