1/24 - 1/30/2022

1/24 Monday

Received email last night the girls had close contact at the Y and need to quarantine T_T Thankfully Jam doesn't mind taking a few days off. Small upside is not having to force the kids to bed before midnight (they stayed up till 12:30) or wake them up early.

The whole evening was spend recording Chinese new year greetings. Lots of takes and some mom tantrums later, we had cute footage!

Sent to Jam's parents too. Good job me!

1/25 Tuesday

Took the kids for the evening again since Jam took them for the whole day. Good job Jam!

Got back to doing a little extra reading with the kids - have been doing only Spong homework since beginning of the year.

1/26 Wednesday

Got covid result back within 24 hours :o Stuffed kids back in school. Y wouldn't take them back until next week though T_T

Happily planned with jam: I'll pick up the kids and he'll take them till dinner time. He made sure I added an alarm for 3:40 and would aim to arrive early for pickup.

Got a call from school around 2:50, didn't bother to pick up. Listened to the voice mail, it was early release day and I was supposed to pick up the kids half an hour ago. Rushed to school and got the xiao sweets. 

1/27 Thursday

Talked with Megan the doctor on the walk to pick up kids. She does have a puppy! So she needed to wait outside the gate. 

I went inside, found Sabrina and had a brief talk about the tediousness of covid. The girls ran out and we decided to walk with Clement. Mimi said something along the lines of 'I know you like the mom but we don't want to walk with her', good thing she mumbled. Clement suddenly asked the girls if they wanted to 追追。Mimi seemed to understand what he meant and nodded. They somehow decided to go up along the fence, and the three of them ran along the fence all the way to the intersection. The girls said bye to Clement energetically and sweetly. They walked a while about how they were in a line with Mimi in the front, Clement in the middle, and Ella in the back and they were all running after the one in front of them, and Mimi was in the very front, and Clement was in the middle, and Ella was in the back, and Ella was running after Clement, and Clement was running after Mimi.

I told the girls I talked with Sophie's mom. They informed me they really like Sophie and wanted her to come and play, and Mimi wanted to show her where our cats used to live, because he love animals T_T Ella said she never played with Sophie, but liked her because 'she talk to me sometimes'. Mimi thinks Sophie is cute and she puffs her sometimes. 

Ramped back to pre new year homework load. Mimi was not happy. 

Jam cleaned outthings from the cats's bathroom T_T At night, the girls dropped by the bathroom before going to their room, Mimi said "so saaaad". Grabbed the round spiny ball toy, put it in the middle of the hallway, said 'don't get rid of it, I'll play with it'.

I cuddled with the kids for 10 minutes today - did it couple times since last week. The girls aggressively bullied me, but I got some brushes of soft cheeks. Ella: put your chin on her, she will make cute sounds. Her chin is so pointy. I groaned, sometimes cute, sometimes yelling. They always order me to "shiver cutely".

1/28 Friday 

Jam went to work for the day and decided to pick up a pot king for dinner. So I boiled all the frozen stuff I got for hotpot. Found a website to buy some Chinese books. And somehow it was already time to pick up the kids.

Talked with 霞儿 on the walk to pick up. She caught me in the forest trying to get signal to beat the stormwater gym. She immediately asked if I was catching Pokemon, and said I was cute XD I told her I went to work for the company that makes pokemon go, she said I was too cute XD 

The girls 追追'ed with clement again today. But they ran super fast, mostly clement, who didn't have his backpack on. And Elliot and I had to run after the kids. Sabrina didn't pick up clement everyday I guess. Ella fell down flat on the ground once. She cried for a bit, and continued to 追追。She was fine afterwards. Immediately after coming in the house she said she wanted to change her pants, she thinks it is dirty. She took off dirty pants and put on new ones all by herself :) 

We did some homework and made valentines cards until Jam came home for dinner. 

Mimi make cards for Erin, liana, and liana. When I pointed out to her, she said ooh! ooh? She looked at the name sheet and said she wanted to write Layla, but her eyes moved one line below (to Liana).

Ella did cooper and Erin.

1/29 Saturday

Woke up early to have playdate with Sabrina. Clement took off his mask because it got wet. He's always smiling after he took it off. He had been always smiling?! 

Mimi picked to have Ella help her with Chinese homework :D Ella did it wrong with her and they argued :')

Ella made a card for Noah n, Mimi made a card for Noah k.

Mimi: I must wrote n or k, or else Mrs spong might give Noah k's to Noah n, and Noah k might not like what I give to Noah n. I asked what did Noah. K like. Mimi: hmmm this. Points to her card

1/30 Sunday 

Ella made cards for Dan, Noah k, Layla, and Sienna.

Mimi made cards for Noah n, Anaahat, and Clement. She finished all her cards.

Ella whined about making her cards slower than Mimi. I told her she can make cards in her own style, and she can take more or less time as she likes. She wouldn't listen and continued to whine, I repeated a couple more times, and she puffed and squeezed my head aggressively for a bit, and went back to making cards. 

The kids suddenly asked me what I ate when I was little. I told them about 黄花鱼，刀鱼，辣肉（not to be confused with baba's ),  糖溜地瓜，春饼，and lots and lots of 酸菜。My mom cooked so much good food.

After dinner, Ella was all pumped up to do extra homework. She did one more sheet of math. Mimi decided she would do a sheet of Chinese writing to make Ruyi proud, Ella did one too. Mimi was sad Ella did one more homework and was going to get one more reward. After some encouragement, we did her math sheet together. I read each question and she wrote all the answers, she was quite fast :o And happy afterwards.