Baby CP Joins the Sun Classroom

In July 2015, Baby CP joined the Sun Classroom at Little Footprints, a Mandarin immersion preschool.  I was worried that the transition from an English speaking preschool to a 100% Mandarin speaking preschool would be tough on him.  I feared potential clinging and crying in the mornings before being driven to school and drawn out tantrums, but Baby CP surprised me.  He went to school everyday without any drama.  We were told that he rarely ever spoke his first two weeks here.  This was because he had pretty much forgotten how to speak most of the Chinese that he used to know and he was a bit shy, particularly around the 5 year olds who were very fluent.  After those two weeks, many of the 5 year olds graduated and Baby CP started to find all his Chinese words and he even started to raise his hand and volunteer in class.

Comforting a friend

Interviewing people at a local business

Making a symmetrical butterfly print

Baby CP and the Dolphins

Baby CP started in the Dolphin classroom soon after his third birthday and was there until the week after he turned four.  One week in January or February was Spirit Week - One day was Pajama Day, one day was School Colors Day, and one day was Crazy Hair Day.  I had to go to work early on Crazy Hair Day, but this is what I found when I returned home...

The level of my shock was pretty much like this

Baby CP had his fourth birthday party at Acrosports.  He and his buddies ran around and jumped a lot, but almost everyone was too chicken to ride the zip line down.  He chose a superhero theme, so we designed and screenprinted t-shirts with our own Flash logo on the front for him and all of his guests.

Baby CP hanging out in his Flash t-shirt

Chatting with his Dolphin buddies

Instead of cake, we celebrated with Mitchell's ice cream decorated with superhero colored sprinkles and baby superhero toppers.  I wish I had a photo but it was so hot, the ice cream was melting fast and I just didn't have time to document my handiwork.  =(

So much catching up to do!

So, it's been over a year and a half since my last post.  A YEAR AND A HALF!  That's pretty terrible.  It's not that we haven't been taking photos of Baby CP or that we've had nothing to share. Life's just been busy.

Baby CP spent a year at Marin Day Schools in the Dolphin classroom.  He enjoyed his time there very much.  He learned a lot and grew up a ton.  His teachers loved his goofiness and he was almost always the sweatiest kid after dance parties.  His preschool was located about 10 minutes away from my office, so I could drop him off every day and pick him up on many days and getting over there to attend school events was pretty easy.

He ate the WHOLE crepe himself

After his 4th birthday, he moved onto Little Footprints.  While I was very impressed with his program at MDS, we had always missed the Mandarin immersion that he had when he was at his daycare.  He rarely ever spoke Chinese at home anymore.  While it seemed that he had forgotten his Chinese, especially during the first couple weeks at Little Footprints (his teachers told us he rarely spoke), once he got into week three, it all started coming back to him.  His Chinese is much better now and he's even learned to write some characters.  He's still a goofy kid and the teachers find his sense of humor amusing.  It's crazy that he's only got less than 3 months left.  He's turning 5 soon, and Baby CP no longer seems like an appropriate name for him...we'll have to come up with something new.

Enjoying some son after his ukelele lesson

During the fall of 2015, Mr. CP and I spent a ton of time visiting schools.  We visited mainly public schools because we had to decide which schools to rank for the SF public school lottery.  We also visited charter school programs as well as private schools.  It was so exhausting!  We ended up not getting into either of the charter schools or Friends (which is sad, because I would have loved for Baby CP to have had  Quaker education like I did).  Thanks to our CTIP status, we did manage to get into our first choice for public school elementary, which was Clarendon's general education program. We are excited that Matthew will be starting there in the fall.

A scooter stroll with mom in the Mission on a super gorgeous day

Another huge piece of news is that we welcomed a little baby girl on February 26, 2016!  We refer to her as Xiao MeiMei or XMM.  She is super cute and so well behaved!  She sleeps like a champ and Baby CP adores her.  I am looking forward to catching up and sharing the photos we've been taking of her during my maternity leave.  I've been updating Facebook and Instagram with a lot of these photos, but will try to be better about updating the blog.

The Baby Onigiri at the hospital.

She was soooo sleepy the first 8 weeks

His first time holding little sis.  He loves her so much!

We haven't gone on many vacations, but we flew back to NY a few times (even XMM got to go once at 1 month old!), spent a few days in Arizona and finally FINALLY went to Hawaii for the first time.

Celebrating Grandma's birthday in New York City.

Finally, we've been working on a few projects at home...yes, it's crazy to do these things right before and after the arrival of a newborn...but I guess that's how we roll.

More details of the past year and a half with more photos coming soon!