6/6 - 6/12/2022

6/6 - Monday

The 25 questions of Iowa turned into an hour! Ella was a trooper and did very well. She got frustrated after reading a 4 line question and don't know the answer. I encouragement her to read again, 3 or 4 times if needed. She read again, cracked a big smile and said "oh this is the answer". She got it right.  She did get frustrated again a few times, but recovered after I reminded her it's normal to read multiple times. One time she explained to me, for the question "if someone got a hole in one, what equipment did they use": you can't use a ball to hit a ball, and this bat looks like the one from 小猪佩奇。 She got the right golf club.

6/7 - Tuesday

When I picked up the girls from Ruyi, she commented on how beautiful their hair is. She asked how I washed them every day, I revealed I don't XD 

When we walked back home, Ella asked to play outside, but Mimi didn't want to. Ella asked me to play with her, luckily Jam was already home to watch Mimi, so I got the beach chair and sat outside watching her, while running some GDPR dataflows. After a bit she ran to the door, couldn't open it, and whined for me to open it so she could tell Mimi something. I asked her to wait a bit until I'm done with this chunk of work, and told her last I checked Mimi was upstairs so she need to redo her shoes. She then asked me to tell Mimi that the ants are still there and she's killing them. I went inside and told Mimi that. After a bit, Mimi came out and said she's wearing boots so she can be fast, to go kill ants. 

I watched the girls for a bit more, then came inside to eat dinner. After a while, Mimi came in first. I then went out to get the chair and presumably Ella. Ella came to me and grumpily said that Mimi gave her the job to dig dirt, it's dirty and hard, but then Mimi didn't want to kill more ants and left her with dirty hands. I held her on my lap, she whined a bit more, then said "it's ok my nails are dirty, I can use the fork". I assumed she meant the plastic fork I used to dig dirt for them sometimes. She then went to collect more leaves. After a bit she said she wanted to come inside too, and we did. 

After I stocked the chair and cleaned up myself, I found Ella at the table with a big silverware fork trying to dig out dirt under her nails. I checked Ella's nails and they're not leaking dirt, so I sent her to eat dinner first.  Ella asked me to read the Cactus book. I put the book on their table, Ella read the title, she got it right except she read Cacti as Cactus. I explained Cacti is plural for Cactus. Mimi: "like a cactus team!" Then stared with her big eyes. I gave her a big nod. 

Mimi raged on homework and roamed upstairs - although Jam asked her to stay in her room. I made her come down and sit beside me. While Ella did Kumon half heartedly, chanting her made up story and planking on her chair. (She did finish without mistakes Jam reported.) After some time, I heard Jam going upstairs, then heard him come downstairs, while calling for Mimi. He then came in the living room and found Mimi and me. Mimi looked Jam, said "I hate you", and to me "ugh do we have homework?". I insisted she couldn't finish in time and she doesn't have too, and she insisted she'll do part of it at least. She got a bunch of easy questions and finished on time, plus her Kumon :o 

6/8 - Wednesday

Ivan announced in the afternoon we'll have a reorg and ITS will get more hands. Hooray. But also moderation will go to another team and we'll focus on identity. Nay need to ramp up again. Although I won't miss GDPR. Good thing I already decided to take an easy day that day, and took a long walk around the neighborhood in the morning XD

I walked to school to pick up the kids so I can see their playground tricks. They showed me hanging on bars on all fours, and swinging from bar to bar. Then they went to the swings, Mimi jumped on the short one and I put Ella on a taller one. They each asked me to push once. I pushed Mimi twice and Mimi yelled for me to stop. They both could kick and swing well! Ella does it better and her swing was flying :o 

On the way back Ella decided they were like my Pikmins <3 (I've tried to teach her to feed my Pikmins and being careful of the 200 limit. She did ok, but frequently fed more flowers than needed.) The kids had so much fun collecting in the forest, they asked to go through the 2nd part of the trail too. It was a short one. At the end of it, they were torn wether to go on the "3rd part" of the trail, so I promised we'll take another walk after dinner, they were pumped.

After dinner we went for a walk like promised, but the girls were really mean to Jam, especially Mimi who yelled for Jam to not walk with us. Jam split and were grumpy the whole night :( We had a good walk and picked wild flowers along stormwater and the forest trail. (We didn't do the 3rd part of the trail but went to road to stormwater to get blue wild flowers.) Ella got a cut and decided to not go in the ditch anymore, but it didn't bother her. 

Pgo adventure week really gave me motivation to walk around!

6/9 - Thursday

After arguing with me that kids shouldn't move on to A1, Kumon gave me A1 homework anyways XD

6/10 - Friday

I had a nice lunch with Hagit talking about her kids and mine, and our amazement at how the other airspace people seem to love Dave XD 

Walked with Jam to school to pick up the kids. Came home to find Jaime in a hurry to wolve the revoke apple access token problem, had a "war meeting", where Anhang joined to use his credit card to pay apple to submit a ticket ^^; and a sleuth of conversations afterwards. But Danny might have saved us again by finding we might not be using an "access token", so tried to forget the problem and carry on with family life.  

Ella did Kumon with Attack on Titan songs in the background. She did well with only one mistake, she grumbled about how disappointed she was for not getting everything right again, then recovered and sorted laundry with Mimi. We watched an episode of Ms Marvel after. And it was only 9. So I did more Spong homework with the kids.

At night I gave the girls 20 more minutes because they were so good. But it soon turned into an argument and Ella kicking Mimi. Ella then walked around with her grumpy face, saw her cookbook on the table, closed it hard on Mimi's candy (I don't know why the candy was in it). I took the book into the garage and sent Ella upstairs. Mimi drew for another 10+ minutes until it was her time to go up. I went up with her to check on Ella. As soon as I went in the room Ella started crying. Mimi asked why, I told her about the book crushing of the candy and the taking away of the book. Mimi said she would take care of the book so please give it back to them. I refused, Mimi started to cry too and said she loved the book. I told the girls I'll give them another chance if they don't fight for a few days. I asked them what they could do better next time. Mimi said they fought because Ella asked her why she didn't give her a turn, and it was because Ella said she wasn't talking when Mimi gave her a turn. I took the mew and the tun and tried to act it out, I acted a little, and Mimi interrupted me and said she would do it. Mimi did the story:
mew: 'mew mew mew mew'
tun: 'can we talk turns'
mew: 'yes, mew mew mew your turn'

tun: 'I'm not talking'
mew: 'mew mew mew mew'
tun: 'why didn't you give me a turn'
mew: 'you said you were not talking'
tun: 'HEN!' Crushed on top of mew.
I asked Ella to show me her version of the story. She said she had no story. I tried the conversation again, and when tun said 'why didn't you give me a turn', mew said 'you said you were not talking, but do you want to take a turn now? you can take a turn if you want to.' Mimi said she wanted to do the story, and she did my version of the story, ending in tun saying 'tun tun tun'. Meanwhile Ella came and sat on my lap. I promised to give them back the cookbook because they have been very sweet, I know they're trying, it's easy to misunderstand and hurt people with words. Mimi then told another story with mew, tun, and little kitten. Where little kitten wanted to play tag, but his rule was mew and tun can only walk while little kitten can run. Then mew gave little kitten a talk about being fair. Ella then told a story where little kitten wanted to win all the time, and tun and mew told him about being fair. Mimi wanted to tell another story, I told the girls I had to go finish mama stuff. Mimi: 'ok let mom go. I'll tell another story so we understand what fair mean.' 

6/11 - Saturday

The girls sat with me at the adult table to eat dinner together. We alternated listening to songs and them talking, for more than an hour. Mimi told me about 

- Y Kaido, who made a loom band as tall as me, put it around Davianch's neck, and walked him like a dog. 

- If I see a kid with green shirt and blonde hair it's Y Erin. Y Erin is the cutest. 

Ella told me about

- How to make smarties from playdough. You have to flatten it but not like super flat (whole palm on table), but just a little bit flat. 

- She likes to use her hands but doesn't like to use scissors. Reminding us when she had a hard time cutting a perfect flower at Sabrina's.

6/12 - Sunday

We had an acceptable meal at Tapioca Express. The mild popcorn chicken was too spicy for the girls :o They downed 2 cups of water each, huffed and puffed a bunch, and finished a bunch of chicken and rice. 

Afternoon tea withe the ladies was so yummy and fun! Try ignore the $40 price, everything is so expensive now! The girls did well, told auntie a little about school, lost only one shoe down the balcony. I treaded a wet yard and was able to retrieve it. They also did some IXL and lots of color by number.

We then went to Lake Sammamish. I overshoot and had to make a U turn. The girls questioned the weird turn, and I explained to them why I had to make a U turn. Mimi then asked how many minutes away, I said 7. Mimi: "Seven? We were two minute away. We'll be the latest again right, we were the latest at the tea party." I said yes and it was ok. E called just as I was parking to make sure I wasn't lost again XD

The girls climbed on the playground, E & R were impressed by them, and many wilder kids. Ella then asked to go to the beach. I asked her to ask Mimi. Ella ran to Mimi (they've been playing apart, but she found Mimi immediately),  held Mimi's hands and asked, Mimi nodded, then they broke their hand hold and ran to us. 

The girls played on the beach. Ella lost a shoe in a puddle, and Mimi rescued it. Since E asked about swimming in her pool, I mentioned Mimi's sensitive cooter and her frequent touchings of it. R then told us (possibly again since it rang a bell) of her being molested when she was 7 :'( in China. It happened because she was early to school, so she tries to be on time / late in her life. :'( 

Later out of caution I asked the girls again about if someone tried to touch their butt at school. (separately with each girl while they pottied with me).  And they told me it was just Annahut. But it sounded more frequent, they only told us once and we thought Annahut stopped. I asked if Annahut is like this to others, they said Ben too, and Annahut wanted kids to show him their butts so he could pull their butts, their 前屁。-_-? I guess Annahut doesn't know the girls have nothing to pull on?  

Had to clean lots of sand but the fun was worth it.