Happy birthday, Kevin

Much like I was surprised about Kate's lunar birthday the week before, I think Kevin's mom was surprised when I brought out a cake for his birthday. Keanu picked it out because it had a bunch of strawberries on it. Then he was happy that Ah-ma had bought some strawberries earlier in the day, too.

Tennis on Friday

Returning...

Helping...

Longing...

What we've been doin'

Kate's been rolling over for almost a month, but she still gets frustrated because that silly arm gets stuck under her tummy and she just can't quite get it out. She also loves 'jumping' when she sits on your lap. She's starting to sit up, but she falls pretty much right away so we have to keep pillows around her to prevent too many bumps! She's quite the little sweetheart!

Keanu's been practicing his tennis, basketball and baseball skills in preparation for the big summer season. (Here he's pitching)In addition to his sports skills, he's been showing interest in the ABC's lately. We've got foam tiles upstairs with punch out letters and one day while playing with them, he said the X looked like a star. Then another night he was playing with his Fridge Phonics (Thanks B&H) and said the same thing. He's since decided that the K looks like a star, too. ("Where's one, two stars? There it is! There it is!") He says that three other letters "are bowling", whatever that means! Can you guess which letters are bowling? I'll give you a hint: they might look a bit like pins.

He's also an aspiring photographer:

I've been taking a curriculum course to renew my teaching certification. I'm currently 3/4 finished with a 4 week course. The next ten days or so will be pretty busy as I finish the course requirements and also complete my hand-written grade reports for each of my 140 students... However, after that I think the rest of the semester should be smooth sailing, I hope.

Kevin has been filling his extra time planning our trip to America this summer. We're all four planning to make it and the approximate dates are June 29-July 25. Every day he proposes a different itinerary, so I'll keep you posted if you want to see us during that time.

Father and Son

Since I've been back at work, Kevin and Keanu have been able to spend quite a bit more father-son time. Kevin teaches almost every evening so he's off periodically during the day - either the morning or afternoon - and he's been using those times to hang out with his little buddy Keanu. Not only is it great for Keanu, but it gives Grandma a break (and some quiet time) to just focus on Kate.
I don't have any pictures, but last week one day they went swimming and yesterday they went up the mountain to see the trees blossoming and run around. What do the dads in your life do with their little ones?

Daddy's Car

Keanu always pics 2 books to read at bedtime. Usually it's Micky Mouse, the train book (The Little Engine That Could) or the Santa Claus book (The Night Before Christmas), but the other night, it was different. It is all in Chinese so I couldn't read it, but on every page he pointed to the picture and said "Daddy's car" "Daddy's black car" or "Daddy's white car". Do you know what book we were reading? It's a beautiful hard-cover all about the history of the Mercedes-Benz S-class.

As if that weren't enough, a couple of weeks ago we were out running errands. Kevin had run in someplace quickly and I stayed in the car with the kids. As we were waiting, Keanu looked out the window and saw a car parking across the street so he said "Daddy's car" as he pointed to it. What kind of car was it? A Mercedes-Benz SUV.

Notice a pattern here? I guess this little guy pays close attention to Daddy's dreams!

Birthdays

So our household celebrates three birthdays within a month and a day on the Julian calendar, but according to the Chinese Lunar calendar, these three are only 10 days apart. Are you confused yet?

Many Chinese holidays follow the lunar calendar (like Chinese New Year - that's why we never have exactly the same school holiday each year). In 2008, CNY was on Feb. 7, and in 2009 it will be on Jan. 26. That means that every day on our regular calendar has a corresponding lunar date. Most calendars here in Taiwan also include the lunar date, but I always ignore that information.

Now, back to the birthdays. Kevin's and Keanu's birthdays happen to be on the same day on the lunar calendar: 11/26, which happened to be this past Tuesday. I didn't even know it until today. Kate was born 10 days before that, so her birthday on the lunar calendar is 11/13. We don't really pay much attention to the lunar birthdate (in fact, Kevin's mom told him that he and Keanu shared the same birthday because Kevin didn't even realize it was his birthday), but traditionally that's when families celebrate the birthday.

Best Nurse

I think I've found the best nurse in Taiwan - my husband. As you may be aware, most nursing staff in Taiwan do more paperwork than bedside work. They distribute medicine and record information for doctors. When someone is ill and needs to stay in the hospital, it's imperative that a family member or someone else stay with the patient to help with basic needs like getting out of bed or going to the bathroom.

From the time we checked in on Friday night and Kevin spent the first hour completing the paperwork and taking me to the lab for bloodwork, he's been an excellent nurse. He thought he'd have a break to read the newspaper while I was in surgery (that's what the doctor had told us a week before), but then not long after I went into the OR, Dr Yang found him and told him that he could scrub in and watch if he wanted! So he even stayed by my side during surgery, in the recovery room, and most importantly in the days that followed.

For the first day and a half, I couldn't get out of bed. Kate was in our room most of that time, so Kevin would take care of her and then bring her to me when she needed to eat. He was pretty busy for a while taking care of the two women in his life! Now that I'm able to get up and move around (although slowly) he's still busy because one of his other duties is to make sure that I've got enough good food.

Tomorrow we go home and I'm glad to take my nurse with me.

Olympic fever

Olympic fever has hit our household, mostly because of the tennis nuts that live here! Like many citizens of the world, we watched the opening ceremonies in the comfort of our living room. Well, Keanu and I only saw the first half as we decided to go to bed at 10 - we got bored after watching an hour of athletes march in. However, Kevin was a trooper for the whole 4 hours and it's a good thing he did. Towards the end of the ceremony, 8 people carried the Olympic flag into the stadium and of course the comemtators announced who these people were. Being the socialite that he is, Kevin recognized one of the names from when he was studying in Seattle about 9 years ago. She had been there improving her English so she could work for the International Olympic Committee after retiring as a 13-time world badminton champion. At the time they were studying together, Kevin knew she was an athlete, but not a champion.

Tennis in Taiwan is a pretty close-knit group and so if you know a few players, it's easy to get to know the others. Kevin never planned to go the professional route, but since he's still in the sport, he knows alot of people. It's no surprise that he knows one of the guys who is representing Taiwan in Beijing this week. The interesting part of the story is that the Taiwanese tennis association didn't think this guy, Lu, would do very well so they didn't send a coach with him. Well, on Monday he beat #6 Murray of GB in the first round and on Tuesday he beat an Argentinian to put him in the third round, the round of 16. Well, he wasn't so fortunate today and lost in just 2 sets, but I would say he proved something to the local tennis assoc.

So far Taiwan has 2 bronze medals (that's two more than Canada!) and the big story here is that the coach who helped bring those weightlifting medals is actually Chinese!

I haven't heard much about specifics from America, but it sounds as if Phelps is doing what he set out to do and the US is doing well in the medal counts. I guess that's what's important.

More to come about our future Olympian!