some holiday cheer...

some holiday cheer....Friends & family, festive meals, sleepovers, home from school, and of course presents, presents, and more presents!  Aoli is all in for Christmas and holidays in general.

An elegant meal in silk pajamas...does it get any better than this?  Violet doesn't think so.  Aoli likes to treat Violet to tastings.  According to our agreement, A. is nice to Violet "even though she doesn't like her" because V. is part of our family and in the hopes of someday getting her very on cat.

Yes, these are for Aoli (well, minus about 4 gifts)..Mamma was in denial about  Christmas until very late in the game but once one gets started shopping it does become hard to stop!

I decided to give Aoli both "Ivy" and "Rebecca" - good thing.  She really was  not taking to Ivy right away.  Apparently it does not matter that she is the Chinese American Girl doll, her hair is just not long  enough.  My sister tells me that Ivy can be sent to the "hospital" for a Hair Transplant for longer locks!!
American Girl Shopping - Just one more thing I never thought I would do....

Aoli has excellent taste in clothes and picked out Baba's gifts herself - including this new shirt and his new black/white tie which she insisted he open on Xmas-eve.

Every day on the way to school Aoli asks me for a tree-house.  This tree-house  gets more elaborate  by the day with features to involve electricity, sleeping quarters, etc. and she would like it constructed now!  Though it is really not terribly big, I couldn't pass up getting this little tented tree-house to put in one of Aoli's rooms (she has two small rooms - one for sleeping one for lounging/playing).  
I think she it was a big hit!  She slept in on Christmas night while her cousin slept right outside.

Aoli's Christmas evening sleepover was topped off with a next day trip to The Belly of the Beast - the AG store in Natick - brunch for all (including pink lemonade for the smaller girls in our group), hair styling, and ear-piercing.

Rebecca was invited today.  Ivy (or "Lili" as she is called by Aoli) was left behind at home.

All done and now off for sledding and sleeping (hopefully, at least a little) at Marissa's house!  

girls day out...museum excursion

museum excursion...

This way!

Some viewing...

Some posing...

A little shopping...

A little lunch...

Collecting acorns in the courtyard.

so good to be home.

Beautiful fall!

Yes, Aoli LOVES Halloween.  Collecting candy throughout the neighborhood was a big hit.  She was more skeptical about giving away all of the "expensive" candy we had purchased.  "Dor shiao Money!" is all we heard throughout the afternoon.  "Dor shiao chen" in Mandarin means "too much" or seems to mean "spendy."  That somehow morphed into other related phrases in the fusion of English and Mandarin that is frequently spoken in our household.  In the end, she ate a few pieces of candy and divided the rest between mama and baba for all of their assistance on the excursion (mama for carrying the excess candy that overflowed from her bucket and baba for carrying Princess Aoli back the last stretch of the walk).  She is a girl with a generous heart.

Despite the casts, A. led the charge through the neighborhood.

A motley and amusing trick-or-treating crew.  Aoli's wig (which she wore all week-end) had worn out it's welcome before we hit prime time and never made it to the trick-or-treating scene.

Aoli is passionate about fall.  She loves leaves and literally cried after I made her get in the car after we took this video. She wanted to bring a pile of leaves into the car and Mean, Wicked Mama would not let her.

Sweet Aoli spent her whole $20 to buy my birthday cake and coffees for both mama and baba.

Tea party!

Out to dinner.

the last 2 weeks...lots of fun and hard work with family, school, and 2 sets of casts!

My in-house chef!  Aoli loves to cook, including cooking the food on the stove (especially adding her favorite spices), prep (chopping vegetables, spicing and rubbing fish or poultry), and is ready to set the table, and clean up as well (though not all necessarily on the same night).  Her favorite meal to prepare is lightly steamed bok choy with sauteed shitake with red pepper, and soy.  

Aoli is wearing casts for a couple of months to help correct a medical condition with her feet.  Though her parents may fret, she approached this in typical Aoli style by selecting a bold shade of purple and making fast friends with the casting clinic staff at Boston Children's Hospital.

Enjoying Halloween prep with her new cousins, whom she loved immediately and immensely.  She would like all of them to move into the house and has outlined sleeping arrangements for everyone.

Off to her first day of school in a whirlwind.   She  refused to stop for a photo and implored me to drive faster (in Shanghaiese Mandarin) the whole way!! Aoli is smart and competitive and doing very well in school already.

A. enjoys the Boston Public Garden, just like her Mama! 

Violet, dog-tired and settling in with the stuffed animals...

At home in Newburyport

Aoli finished a scarf for me after a brief review of basic knitting skills.  She now wants to move on to a sweater for the dog (even though she claims she does not like the doggie and wants a cat!).

Teacher Baba:  learning to count US coins with a little multiplication thrown in!

Playground

getting to know you...

Sleeping beauty.  All tuckered out after our shopping excursion! 

Ahh..Yesterday she wrapped up Violet in the doggie blanket.  A big step!

After dinner activity tonight, measuring the dog.

And tonight she wanted V. to stay and sleep in her bed.  I still can't believe she stayed!!  Now Aoli has her tucked in, arms around her and her new Build-A-Bear she finished sewing together in bed tonight. She calls this bear a wa-wa (doll).  Thanks Antonella.  

It's a process..

It's a process....I think I have said this a million times through our travel and arrival home.   The trip from China was easier in many ways than I expected and infinitely more challenging in others.  Here at home, Aoli and Violet are trying to sort out their relationship (not kidding).  I thought we were lucky to not have to deal with sibling rivalry but it turns out that V. thinks of herself as a person too (well, we do as well, truthfully).  Jealousy abounds but today Aoli was really trying to be nice.  She came down from bed in perfect form (dressed, teeth brushed, hair combed, bed made with "Good morning mama & baba & doggie."  Then the dog barked at her a bit aggressively.  In addition,  Aoli is small and when she gets down on the floor, the dog thinks she might be a mate!!  Oiy vay.


We had a fun night tonight.  Aoli is pretty consistently silly at the dinner table.  Tonight, Gerry had turned some music on and A. was playing various instruments and conducting with her chopsticks.  I think just having dinner with a table full of food and people to share it with fills her heart with 10-year old-style joy.  It may have been a perfect night for her.  She got to show off her newly pierced-ears (I promised her in China she could do this in the U.S.) and new clothes from shopping trip today, had a great dinner, computer time with Baba, and then a bath and book with the all four of us.  No major meltdowns today, thank goodness.  Afternoons between 2 and 4pm can be hard.  Sometimes Aoli has a an issue with following directions and I noticed this timeframe is particularly cursed.  Other parents tell me that this can be a problematic time of day for many kids.  As new parents, part of our ongoing challenge is just figuring out what is normal kid behavior.  I have found that keeping up with food helps a lot and also just understanding (on my part) that it will pass.


Yesterday we had a pretty successful trip to our pediatrician's office.  I LOVED her doctor.  She is going to assist with getting our expedited orthopedic appointment (for Aoli's foot) with a particular specialist at Children's Hospital.  Aoli has a medical issue that impedes her walking. At the doctor's office, Aoli, at first, refused to dawn the johnnie, can't really blamer her.  She do this eventually and did ok at the appointment until we had to wait in the lab for her turn to have 7 vials of blood drawn for tests.  Good grief.  She was hungry and bad mama neglected to bring snacks.  Won't happen again, I can assure you!


Some images from home:

Math Fun.  Last night Aoli enjoyed her new craft scissors by writing her numbers 1-110 and cutting them out into individual squares.  Today she wrote out and completed some math tables.

A girl after my own heart:  she LOVES workbooks.

Tonight Violet stayed up in Aoli's room for a few minutes when she went to bed .  I just noticed that Aoli took the ribbon off one of her teddy bear's and put it around Violet's neck.  Too cute.  

At Home!!

Violet meets Lili, well Aoli, at last!!  

We have been settling in and recovering from jetlag, all the while figuring out how to be first time parents.  Um, yes, lots of Hard Work.  

Aoli is doing very well.  She is cheerful and silly (mostly and except yesterday when she was exhausted and briefly sick to her stomach), seems to enjoy the house and yard, and has recently demanded Raman Noodles (instant).  She and Violet are still in the Getting To Know You phase.  I think both are a little skeptical, curious, and jealous of one another.  More Flashcard Fun, now out in the yard.  We broke into the second set.  We trace and copy them and then color in the pictures and write the text.  This was Aoli's idea in our first days in Shanghai.

First night home!!  So nice to be welcomed by beautiful  flowers, food, and gifts.  Aoli loved the grapes.

Aoli likes lots of different types of dolls.

Our 15 hour flight from Hong Kong to Detroit was great.  Aoli loved every minute of it and every amenity provided on her bus/first class flights.  The flight staff and passengers sitting near Aoli were completely taken by her.  She was extremely polite throughout the flight and Mamma got to watch two foreign films, read, and even nap!  One of the films was about Coco Chanel and her rise to fame in the fashion industry after she spent several years in a French orphanage (when she was 12) where she learned to sew.  Of course, this couldn't have been more fun to watch!

Aoli on the train out of mainland China.  I think I will always remember this moment, not sure what she was thinking...
I was fascinated with the train ride from Guangzhou to Hong Kong for other reasons too.  An amazing view into the industrial landscape of factories and factory housing (dorms, mid-rises) as we rode through Dongguan, known as the workshop to the world.  I read a really neat book about this area called year "Factory Girls" in which a journalist follows some young "urbanized" women as they move from the countryside to industrial towns like this and move from job to job.

Aoli's moment on the Red Couch, ostentatiously flashing her custom-made necklace that Baba bought for her at an art museum in China.  Though this looks all lighthearted and fun, she was actually a real stinker to get to take photographs of at different parts of the trip, including here at the White Swan hotel. I had to bribe her for photos here and also on the flight out.  Too bad I hadn't mastered the art of bribery earlier on (at least for our stay in China).