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Kathlyn
Stephen

Translation:

The card shows Andrew’s Christmas Party, with a tree, flying ornaments, gifts, and Andrew, Dada, and Mama opening a present. It’s signed “Ducky and Dog!”

We spoke with some of his teachers at daycare this week, and they said that boys don’t usually start drawing bubble letters until the second or third grade. We are constantly being surprised by how fast he’s learning… (but strangely, he’s not all that interested in numbers or math…)

We stayed in the room for the midnight show, and got this image from the window.

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?

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.

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!

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.

The only thing though… after we put the tree up, he demanded to know why we didn’t have a star on top of the tree and he told his mom that we need a tree skirt. What are they teaching him at school?

We snuck the tree in to the house and put it together before he saw it. It saved us from answering the questions about why our tree was in three pieces, at least until we have to take it down.

Andrew helped to decorate it with ornaments. As a result, we had a lot of ornaments hung at the bottom of the tree.

Andrew admiring his handiwork.

When people asked me what Andrew was going to be this Halloween, I told them “a monkey.” Most people responded by saying something to the effect of “isn’t he a monkey everyday?”

I suppose so… but this Halloween, he had the costume and the requisite banana to complete the illusion.

Truth be told, though, monkey was only his third choice. His first choice of custome was a cow, but that one was too small for him (amazing how fast they grow!).  His second choice as a bumblebee, but daddy thought it was too much of a little girl costume (with antennea, leggings, and all). So the monkey was his third choice… but so much for not picking little girl costumes. Witness the mass-market in action with this picture from last year’s post:

At the Port of Miami, there’s a large dedicated cruise ship terminal. We onboarded 3000 people and all the luggage in about 4 hours – pretty efficient!

We sailed on the Carnival Valor, a 110,000 ton cruise ship – the largest in Carnival’s fleet right now. The ship is over 900 feet long, has 3 pools, a water slide, and a whole bunch more things that took a while to explore.

The first night at sea was a “formal” dinner night – any excuse to get dressed up and have a good time!

Our first port of call was Cozumel, Mexico. We spent the day at the beach, and Andrew had a great time playing in the water and with the sand. He had been looking forward to this trip all year… Here he shows that he’s already learned how to lounge while on vacation!

The cruise ship port at Cozumel is very developed… in fact, it’s impossible to exit to the city from the ship without first passing every shop in the shopping center… a well designed tourist trap, if you ask me.

The Valor is huge – we spent seven days and still didn’t explore all of her features. I looked for the mini-golf, but never found the entrance. Supposedly it’s right under the smoke stack, but I sure didn’t see it.

The waters off Cozumel are gorgeous.

We took an organized shore excursion to the Mayan ruins at Altun Ha in Belize. It was about 45 minutes away by bus (air-conditioned, thankfully). We traveled down a very bumpy and winding two-lane road, or as the locals call it, the “Northern Highway.” It’s one of three highways in the entire country – the other two are… yes, you guessed right, the Southern and Western highways. Why no Eastern Highway? Well, any further east than Belize City and you’re in the ocean.

Altun Ha is a partially restored Mayan ruin that was originally built about 2000 years ago. The weather in Belize is unbelievably hot and humid. The air was very still, and sweat would pour off just standing around. Plus, there were mosquitoes everywhere. But, the view from the highest structure on the ruins site was spectacular. Yes, those specks are people down below.

Andrew fared OK in the heat, but did enjoy his very first fresh coconut in Belize. No complaints from Andrew, but $3US seemed a bit steep for a coconut…

Roatan, Honduras is an up-and-coming port of call. It’s currently being developed, and at least two new cruise ship terminals are being built (rumored to cost $35-$50 million each). Step away from the terminal, and the area reminds me of the way southern Taiwan was about 25 years ago. I took a SCUBA excursion (my first time) – sorry, no pictures! The SCUBA was a bit scary and pretty thrilling at the same time. We dived about 40-50 feet with a certified master instructor, and the dive lasted about 30 minutes. Not sure that I’d do it again immediately – but maybe in the future.

A group picture on Grand Cayman with the entire Chung clan, our traveling buddies for this trip. Thanks for the invite, guys! We really lucked out in terms of weather, as Hurricane Gustav roared through Grand Cayman a week later with 100+mph winds.

There’s an out-of-the-way spot on Grand Cayman called Hell. The name is perfect for tourist merchandising (you know… post cards that say “Wish you were here!”), but the name originally came from these interesting black coral formations found along the coast.

Andrew was never far from his boxes of cereal – a side benefit of having an open buffet all the time on the ship. Here he and the cereal pose with Kathlyn for a picture on Grand Cayman.

Andrew had a ton of fun at Camp Carnival, the onboard babysitting activities. He looked forward to going back every day, which was great because it allowed us to spend some “couple” time together.

After a long day on a shore excursion or playing around the ship, there’s nothing better than to kick back and catch some Olympics action on the satellite TV.

The last night of the cruise was a huge party – a lot of the passengers turned out on the Lido deck, and it got pretty loud and rowdy!

After seven long days as sea, the only thing left to do is sleep on the Heavenly Bed in Miami.

Evidence of a couple of things – Andrew’s future potential at being a crossword/Scrabble champion, and the fact that he’s been hanging out at the mall too much.

We didn’t see any ghosts – but we did see a lot of tourists!

Andrew hangs out on the famous front steps.

The river that flows through Estes Park is mostly fed from snow melt – the water is very cold!

This video was taken at night after Andrew’s bath. Earlier in the morning, before he went to school, I had written out “Andrew is cute” on his little magnet board. He looked at that for maybe 30 seconds in the morning, and managed to remember it all day. He spelled the words in the tub by himself…

He’s also doing well with his numbers… he can count from 1 to 20, and from 1 to 10 in both Chinese and Spanish. He’s also doing his colors in all three languages, although he’s by far got the most words in English. Andrew is also able to remember his birthday, our house number, and even our home phone number!

Andrew has been doing a lot of three letter words, and has recently moved on to four letter words that he can recognize and spell. (He’s the one putting the letters together to form the words.)

Andrew is also writing most of his letters without help, and can put together whole words on paper (mostly one letter per sheet…). Today he brought over these sheets and told us that he “draw Andrew Wang.” At first we didn’t believe him…

See the updated charts (use the tabs on the bottom of the new window to switch charts).

Andrew: “What am I supposed to do with this yellow thing?”

“Hmm… let me think about that.”

“Remember, daddy: ‘Measure twice, cut once’!”

And since I’m experimenting, the only way to remember what I did is to write it down (or in this case, draw it out.) Check out this sweet little tool that Kevin Kertz put together for Photoshop that allows for easy lighting diagrams!

What’s a trip to LA without good food? We visited Ding Tai Fung (among others!)… mmmm, steamed dumplings!

If IKEA ever decides to open a store in Denver (hello, IKEA, are you listeing?), we would probably spend many weekends there. It’s a favorite place just to stroll around and dream about new looks for the house. Andrew really like this kids’ chair that had a curtain that closed, making a neat hideaway!

We also visited my cousin Sabina and her family. Andrew and Sab’s older boy, “Peanut” got along very well! Peanut is about a year younger than Andrew, but he is SOOO smart! Must be good genes…

The trip to the LA Zoo convinced us that we need to take Andrew more often when we get back to Denver. He had an absolute blast, running around and seeing all the animals.

In addition to the kangaroos, koala bears, zebras, lions, gorillas, orangutans, elephants and giraffes, there were a flock of flamingos, whose color made for the best pictures of the day.

We also visited the KidSpace museum in Pasadena with the family. It was a nice facility, although there were a number of outdoor areas that were closed because it was raining pretty hard (a rarity in SoCal!). I’m really happy to see that Andrew’s attention span has been increasing… he actually sat and painted for over 15 minutes without getting bored!

What’s a trip to LA without a family portrait?

Andrew had a blast seeing all his favorite characters on stage, including the Little Einsteins (kinda freaky when real adults dress up as little kids…), Mickey and the gang, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Handy Manny with his tools.