Journey of a Kumquat: Week 181 and Week 93.5

Imee is away from us at the moment and we are surviving. This means that we are ramping up our parenting duties - you know, what normal people all over the world do. Alas, we realize how reliant we are on our dear Imee, from taking the trash out to putting our clean socks in a place that we can find them. Sigh. I don't mean to be complaining (especially to our American parent friends - my goodness you guys are SERIOUS HEROES) but we are just getting used to our new normal. And it is FINE - except I just want to go take a nap now. Let us hope Imee will be back soon....

After two months of drooling over everyone else's bike we have finally gotten one for Charlotte! To say that she is madly in love is of course an understatement. Below is a picture and Charlotte is the happiest she has been EVER. She wants to ride her bike twice a day, rain or shine. She has gotten pretty good pretty quickly and Bob tells me that the training wheels are coming off soon. Really? That means I need to ramp up my riding skills much faster than I had hoped. Soon our whole brood will be gliding on bikes to get around on leisurely weekends.... while I walk slowly behind them? I don't think so. The gauntlet is thrown (who am I kidding? It was thrown 20 years ago and I have not progressed).

With Charlotte's bike came a whole new dimension of jealousy from dear Sophia. Uncontrollable crying, hitting the bike... ack this we did not expect. It seems to have subsided now so we will march on. We may end up getting here a little Radio Flyer tricycle because we are indulgent parents at times.

Sophia is transitioning into school better - apparently she is doing well though she is telling us 'don't want' still (though less and less). So that is good - especially with no Imee (of course it is good for the kids too- that goes without saying. Wait - what happened? When did I become kiasu?).

We went to visit our old boss this weekend - who has a magnificent house in Coloane. Sigh. Hopefully if we are around a while we will get one too. Will somehow convinced Charlotte to water his trees and she happily complied.

We went to see the Panda exhibit on Sunday with Rob W- I was just excited one of the pandas was awake and eating bamboo (pandas are a boolean - either eating bamboo or sleeping). The exhibit is in a decent park - great for Macau standards but still with mosquitoes everywhere and other animals in cages (how spoiled we were by Singapore's zoo). We came right when they were closed for their lunch hour - including the ticket sellers (who, may I add, were sleeping - um, why can't you sell me a ticket? How spoiled I am by the American service culture). The kids liked the pandas and they had little playgrounds so it was a great day for us (the toddler set) but perhaps a bit bland for older kids.

We went to dim sum before seeing the pandas and thought we lost Sophia's water bottle there. Yesterday she was looking under the sofa and saying 'wawa ba' and I did not see anything. And she persisted and I still did not see anything. Finally I looked down and saw from her view the water bottle behind the sofa! Such a clever girl...this made my day yesterday!

Saturday we hung out with the Rabbitts at Hac Sa Beach for the Mid Autumn Festival. An older girl (say 5 or 6) tried to take a large shovel Charlotte is playing with... and succeeded. Later in the evening, the same girl tried to take the same shovel from Sophia, and Sophia told her "No. Mine!" and the girl just walked away. Sophia is one tough little cookie!

Here is Sophia see sawing (she always says "See Saw! Up and Down!"). Being a tyrannical two (almost two), she gets made when Charlotte tries to offset her...