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April 30, 2007
Princess Katy
Sometimes we wonder what kind of child we are trying to raise.
She loves the tiara we got her over the weekend. She would take turn crowning us and speak in an excited and formal voice, complete with gestures, as if she is to introduce the newly crowned princess, Baba.
We were fortunate enough to have Katy's grandma with us last week. We had a lot of good food, and Katy had a week off from the daycare. I think the original plan was to have her potty trained, but she managed not to let that happen.
Here is another interesting article. I don't know how much of it is really true today (note how old the data are), but we certainly notice a lot of biracial children around. In our case, we encourage Katy to learn about her heritages, but we are not so sure about lessons, private schooling, etc - too formal. We'd like to take her travel abroad to see things and meet other people. As for challenges that she might face one day, we keep telling ourselves that we live in California, so it can't be that bad. But we know kids can be really mean to each other and hopefully she is strong enough to deal with that.
By the way, she likes to be a pirate too.
Posted by Mike at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2007
All Better
Katy likes her dress clean and dry. She would rather be naked than be seen in a dirty outfit. As you can guess, this was taken right after the previous picture.
Today was a very good day. It has been pretty good lately. We went back to the old park again. Yes, she wanted to get on the swing. But there was no lacrosse or soccer practice today, so the field was open. She was running around checking out everything, for about 30 minutes. Her mom was very pleased.
Katy does have attention span of a two-year-old. I think it lasts about 10 seconds at the most. Whenever we are about to leave, there is always something distracting her, be it flowers, benches, twigs, etc. She would want to check those out and totally forget that we are supposed to get into the car. When you remind her that we are going to go home to have some yogurt and Dora, she would say happily, "Yeah, sogurt! Dora!" and then follow you for a few steps before she decides the lamppost needs some attention. It takes a few minutes to get her into the car. Yogurt and Dora have been quite effective.
Last week Katy's mom had to work late for a few days, so her daddy picked her up. She wasn't as upset as the week before. However, instead of saying "bridge" she said "watch bird" to her daddy. It meant she wanted to watch TV (The Backyardigans).
Her daddy then asked, "You don't want to go swing?"
"Fwing," she said, "I want fwing."
The next day when she saw her daddy, the first word out of her mouth was, "Bridge, Baba." She has learned that Daddy could take her to the park as well, not just putting her in front of TV. ;-)
Posted by Mike at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2007
Suk, It's Yucky!
For some reason, Katy says "suk" (or sook) in place of "look." "Suk at me!!" She also says "sogurt." Every morning, when she wakes up, her first word is, "Sogurt." It is her favorite food. If we let her, she can eat that all day.
Here is an interesting article. Pretty long, but worth a read. My only comment is that I wish I could accommodate Katy's schedule. She has her own agenda. She does not understand we need to get to work at certain time, need to get home at certain time, need to eat, sleep, and play at certain time. Yes, we would be one of those parents hustling the child along at the Metro.
Posted by Mike at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2007
Barbie
Katy got her very first Barbie last Christmas from the daycare. She doesn't really play with dolls, but once in a while she would show some interest. In this picture, she was very concerned that Barbie was poopy and needed a diaper change. She does that with all her dolls. "Boy [doll] poopy, Mama." "Doll poopy yucky."
Yesterday Katy's mom had to work late, so her daddy picked her up at the daycare. She was worried when she saw her daddy. Katy grabbed his legs and asked about Mama. It sounded like she was about to cry. Katy really got used to the routine. She didn't expect her daddy to pick her up. She did say to her daddy, "I princess" when they got into the car. They didn't go to the park yesterday.
Today we checked out a different park because the park we went the other day was empty. Not very safe-looking. Didn't want to hang out with young boys practicing daredevil biking. Katy would demand to go to a park when we leave the daycare. She would say, "Bridge. No house." She doesn't say "park," instead she would say "bridge" because they usually have bridges on the playground. She doesn't want to go home just yet. She could, however, wait in the car if her mom needed to change her outfit.
The park we visited today was much smaller than the other two. Katy spent half of the time swinging again. She was okay when we left. However, she really took her time to get in the car. Her mom lost patience and yelled at her. It went downhill from there. When she got home, she was so sad and told her daddy, "Mama did it." Yes, that is her favorite sentence. Either it was "baba did it" or "mama did it." Must be the daycare.
Posted by Mike at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2007
Short Hair
We trimmed the back of her hair over the weekend. Neither of us is a professional hairdresser, so it is a bit crooked. Her hair had some curls; but of course, we didn't take any picture before we trimmed them off.
Yesterday we went to the park again. Katy was on the swing for 40 minutes. There were hardly any kids, so it was not too bad. After she got off, her daddy showed up at the park, so back to the swing she went. She was there for probably anotehr 10 minutes. We had to pry her off. Big tantrums ensued. Good thing there were two of us there.
Today we tried a different strategy: we went to a different park. It seemed to work really well as the playground equipment was different, she was happy to check things out. I think this park has more kids her age, so she seemed to interact more with other kids as opposed to being intimidated by older kids at the other park. So maybe that is what she wants: a little variety. I guess we will be checking out different parks in the neighborhood from now on.
By the way, we forgot to mention this when we said S is Katy's favorite alphabet: she wrote an S in the bathtub a few weeks ago. She can't do A or B, but she sure can do S.
Last post we also mentioned that Katy's mom brought home just enough to cover the daycare expense. I suppose we could elaborate a little as this involves Katy and one day she will probably be wondering why we are doing things we do. Thus, I am writing this for her benefit.
We choose to bring home just enough so that we can reduce our tax bases and also check to see if we are able to save one income after the daycare expense. Seems very logical: if you have to pay for daycare when you go to work, then save whatever is beyond the daycare and other associated nuisance (taxes).
Both of Katy's grandmas were stay-at-home moms, so we thought that would be nice to do one day. We talked about paying off the house so life would be much easier when we had kids someday, preferably two years from whenever we had such a discussion. That didn't work too well as this "two years" is more like a rolling two-year period; we have given up on that idea.
Our new plan is to save enough money so that it will generate, ideally, the average of our incomes. Pretty noble goal, no? Well, our incomes keep climbing but our savings are still at the mercy of the stock market. So on a good day, it will be like ten years from now that Katy will have a stay-at-home parent. She is probably in junior high by then, maybe a little late for her. On a bad day, the plan will take about sixteen years or so to complete, and it is too late by then. Especially if she is going to college and we will definitely need the second income to pay for the college, if we choose to pay. Our contingent plan is to cut back hours or become a freelance if needed. The contingent plan looks quite appealing on a bad market day. Supposedly, when you have enough, you are more likely to weather market fluctuations. We don't have enough so we don't know if it is true.
Both of us work in a rather [financially] conservative, risk-averse profession, so it is important to us that we have saved enough to allow one parent to stay at home. Unfortunately, what may be the best for Katy may not be good for the entire family. The idea of having just one person working is simply too risky. What if something happens to the "breadwinner," would the other person be able to go out find a good paying job the next day? No, not without recent work experience. And please don't say that we are too pessimistic; we work for the insurance companies, we are aware of statistics of bad things happening to good people. We don't want to be one of those statistics. So yes, even if one of us is practically working for the daycare, it is still worth our while to keep working.
However, *this is very important*, it is our decision based on our experiences and information available to us. So, if one day Katy or her significant other decides to stay at home for the child(ren), we will support her decision as her experience will vary - as long as she is not asking us to finance it. We are not to judge others.
Posted by Mike at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)