Thursday, January 31, 2008
Pack mule
Poor Eliana. Karys thinks she has a personal pack mule.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Chew your food!
I would love to know why our girls hold food in their mouths for indefinite periods of time.
We noticed that Karys did this in China. I assumed it was some form of learned orphanage behavior but here we are, home for 4-1/2 months, and she’s still doing it.
When I came home from work this afternoon, she had something packed away.
“What are you eating?”, I asked out of curiousity.
She tilted her head back slightly and opened her mouth just enough to reveal the liquid remnants of a Hershey’s Kiss. 30 minutes later and the melted chocolate was still there.
Eliana still holds food but mainly while watching television. It’s almost like she forgets the food is in her mouth. If I tell her once, I have to tell her half a dozen times with each new bite, “Chew your food and swallow it!”
Do you encounter this behavior with your children?
{extended}Figure out
Karys figures out the yoyo while…
Eliana experiments with the remote. I’ve lost (the) control in my house.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Boo-boos
Karys visited her pediatrician this morning to have blood drawn and to get a few vaccinations. Poor little girl was stuck in both arms AND both legs.
Carmi said she was a good patient. Well…until she was poked for the second time in her arm. Then she let ‘em have an earful.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Eliana has bling
Today was anything BUT a vacation day as I also had to take Eliana to the dentist at 2:00 this afternoon.
Eliana has bling in her mouth now. She did so good that the dentist gave her a trophy for being the “best helper” of the day.
I thought I did pretty good too but all I got was a freakin’ bill. A big one at that.
:mad:
I’ll stop tomorrow
I’ll stop biting my nails again tomorrow!
Now I know
Two of the clearer phrases that Karys is uttering lately are “turn on” and “turn off”. She gets big kicks out of flipping a light switch.
When I returned home after taking Eliana to school (I see the dentist in a bit), Karys had finished breakfast and wanted down from her booster seat.
“Turn on!”, she demanded while pulling me by the finger into our living room.
“What do you want me to turn on?”
We stopped. She raised her arm and my finger towards the television set.
“Turn on!”, she demanded again.
“Oh. You want me to turn on the TV?”
“Turn on! Watch Doo-bops (Doodlebops)!”
Uh-huh. Now I know what she and Nancy-Coe have been doing in the mornings.
{extended}Sunday, January 27, 2008
Letting her fingernails grow
Eliana is doing a great job of letting her fingernails grow.
When I look at those talons, two beautiful words immediately come to mind: back scratches.
Some day I’ll show you mine again. Right now, though, I’m just not prepared to shame myself. It’s shameful enough to be schooled by a 5-year-old.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Chinese for Children
For Christmas, Carmi bought Karys a 2-DVD video series from ChinaSprout called Chinese for Children.
Chinese for Children is a creative language learning tool for kids that presents lessons in the form of a story with animated introductions. Children will learn words and phrases for greetings, family members, household items, play, health and more.
In my humble opinion, the quality of the production is pretty lousy. However, the DVDs capture Karys’ attention and I suppose that’s what is important.
I’d love to know what’s going through that sweet little mind.
Friday, January 25, 2008
For the record
We made a trip to Target tonight after dinner. While traipsing around, we ran into a friend from my office who was shopping with his wife.
“Hello!”, Karys warmly greeted.
“Well hello!”, my friend replied. The two adults oohed and aahed over Karys as this was the first time they had seen her.
“Awww, she’s precious. Does she talk much?”, the wife asked as she knelt down to the girls’ eye level. My friend followed his wife’s lead and also knelt.
I’m thinking that the newest Henderson will wow them with her cute - albeit limited - vocabulary. She wowed ‘em all right.
As soon as they both stooped, Karys’ actually spoke a sentence. With perfect clarity she said, “Daddy poots.”
Nice.
There was uncomfortable laughter from everyone and so, of course, Karys repeats herself. again. and again. and again.
I just can’t wait to get back to work.
Oh, and for the record, I didn’t.
Growing Up - Giant Panda
The five Beijing 2008 Olympics mascots were announced on November 11, 2005 - the 1000th count-down day to the Olympics in China. These five mascots are: a fish (Nei Nei), panda (Jing Jing), Olympic flame (Huan Huan), antelope (Ying Ying) and swallow (Ni Ni).
On August 30, 2005, a giant panda baby was born at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in southwest China and remained unnamed until November 12, 2005. Just one day after the mascots were announced, the cub was named Jing Jing in honor of it’s Olympic namesake.
Animal Planet will air a one-hour program in their “Growing Up” series chronicling the first eight months of Jing Jing’s life on Monday, January 28, 2008 at 4:00 pm EST.
{extended}Thursday, January 24, 2008
The comforts of home
There’s nothing like juice and a foot prop to enhance a little girl’s enjoyment of the Disney Channel.
Disney reveals “The Princess and the Frog”
Eliana loves the Disney princesses and it looks like a new princess is coming to town in 2009.
A musical set in the legendary birthplace of jazz - New Orleans - “The Princess and the Frog” will introduce the newest Disney princess, Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose), a young African-American girl living amid the charming elegance and grandeur of the fabled French Quarter. From the heart of Louisiana’s mystical bayous and the banks of the mighty Mississippi comes an unforgettable tale of love, enchantment and discovery with a soulful singing crocodile, voodoo spells and Cajun charm at every turn.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Major League Baseball’s next big thing: China
Major League Baseball has billions of reasons to play ball with China, and its international business chief says the sport’s owners are ready to pitch.
MLB’s Paul Archey told Reuters China’s 1.3 billion people and still limited exposure to a sport once banned offer tremendous opportunity, while a new NBA-affiliated basketball business there, valued at $2.3 billion, turned baseball heads.
“It gets your attention and the attention of our owners,” said Archey, MLB’s international senior vice president, who is set to visit Beijing on Wednesday.
“Whether you’re a sport, consumer product or any other business, everyone is now interested in China to grow.”
The NBA has over a 20-year history in China with ties to the existing league and many broadcasters, hiring former Microsoft China CEO Tim Chen to lead its Chinese subsidiary.
Walt Disney Co and four Chinese investment firms took an 11 percent stake in NBA China for $253 million, a who’s-who of leading financial names including Bank of China, China Merchant Bank and Legend Holdings, along with a firm owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing.
When Chairman Mao banned baseball in China in the 1960s, he called it a capitalist sport, but times are changing.
Archey is expected to announce in Beijing that MLB will play its first preseason games there in mid-March, likely between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres.
The games would come as MLB ramps up promotion ahead of China competing in the sport at the Beijing Olympics in August.
MLB earned some $6 billion in revenues in 2007, but so far China has contributed little due to only minimal television coverage and marketing.
But teams like the New York Yankees have established beachheads there while trying to unearth baseball’s version of the NBA’s Yao Ming, a local star bringing millions of fans to the international sport and its by-products.
The Yankees signed the first Chinese players last season, also funding youth camps and inking sponsorship deals.
“When we get Chinese players in Major League Baseball, our business will expand dramatically,” Archey said in Tokyo.
Japan will host season-opening games between the Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics on March 25 and 26 and is currently MLB’s second biggest market.
Japan is worth hundred of millions of dollars in TV and marketing rights to MLB, but Archey says China may move up in the global batting order.
“If things continue to progress according to our plan, it will be a significant market for us as a business,” he said.
“Could it be (No.1)? Maybe, but Japan is our largest market now and (China’s) a long-term strategy.”
[source]
{extended}Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Declassified - Tiananmen Square
“Declassified” is a 13-part television series produced by Ten Worlds Productions for The History Channel that aired for the first time on November 9, 2004. The series took viewers inside vaults and archives around the world to reveal the untold stories of modern history.
One of the programs was entitled “Declassified: Tiananmen Square” and originally aired on January 19th, 2006. The DVD is now available at Amazon.
From Amazon’s editorial review: It started out as China’s answer to Woodstock, but it ended like Kent State. Here, using unseen footage and declassified diplomatic sources, we present a previously shrouded story of the battles and deaths of hundreds of young Chinese students in June 1989—martyrs for democracy at Tiananmen Square—and the imprisonment of many others. Watch the birth and death of a movement, and learn how the demonstrators changed China forever.
{extended}