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Andrew surveys his bounty.

You’ll notice that he got two books from mom and dad… a Tag reader (Kung Fu Panda) and My First Dictionary. You might think it’s strange that a three year old would like a dictionary, but in fact he’s fascinated with the words. His favorite activity is to sit down and read through the words and meanings. Even though he can’t read everything by himself yet, he’s actually gotten quite good at sounding out most of the words!

He also got a cool RC car from uncle Arnold and aunt Peggy, and a board game called Blokus that we got at daddy’s company holiday party gift exchange. He also got a new (to him) computer, replacing the ancient PIII 500 that was in his room… that one was so slow it didn’t run most of the kids sites anymore.
 

Andrew: “The anticipation is killing me… What is it? What is it?

Andrew’s youngest cousin is here! Austin was born to Arnold and Peggy on 12/23 – and everyone’s doing well!

We had Christmas dinner with the Chungs this year. It’s fun to see that every year, there are more kids!

The kids have to be taken care of before the adults think about eating.

Andrew is not afraid to stuff his face.

After dinner, there’s nothing better than an ice cream cone!

By the way… the book Andrew is looking at is Thomas the Train. For some reason, he has developed a fear of Thomas. Whenever a TV show with Thomas comes on, Andrew breaks down and cries – asking to turn the TV off. He says it’s too scary. It explains the look he has on his face.

Recently, Andrew has been wanting to do everything by himself, from turning off the lights, to serving his own food, and climbing into the car seat. When he wants to do something, he’ll say “I want to be the helper!” He makes his point clear with the above Play-doh creation.

On a side note, he is really interested in letters and words. His new passion is cutting them out of paper. There are scraps of paper everywhere around the house, but you can’t really get mad at him because he’s so cute. He’s almost learned to cut all 26 letters out of paper (including the little triangle from the middle of the A and the holes from letters like B and D), and he uses those letters to spell words. He’s also typing on the computer keyboard, and learning to read. We’ve been told by the teachers at daycare that he’s doing pretty well with words – not sure how best to proceed from here, but suffice to say that we hope he continues to learn and not lose interest!

Each year, Andrew’s daycare holds a holiday celebration. No, it’s not called a Christmas celebration, but there are trees, reindeer headbands, and songs about Santa. Go figure.

The show started earlier than usual this year, and unfortunately, neither of us made it to see Andrew’s performance. We were told that he stole the show… meaning he sang really loud and acted like a little showoff…

We got this photo from one of the parents there. Note the showoff nature of Andrew’s moves.

Our little Broadway star after the show.