Rainy Days

Asleep

Dance machine

Up for New Year's

I forgot to say that on New Year's Sam actually had gone down early and then woke up before midnight, so we were able to watch some TV and hang out together. He's pretty entertaining to us. Today he said the word "dance" (or "jump," tiao) about a million times. He jumped in bed, he jumped on the couch, he jumped at a restaurant tonight. He's probably seen kids at school who can really jump, and is working towards that. Right now, he can't jump from a standing position, but it's got to be in his near future.

He's a kinetic kid, happily dancing, running, climbing around the house. Combined with a stronger will (see last post) this can get frustrating. Still, it's kind of fun to have a kid who's so mobile. Today he was also doing little sprints in the house. Emily would count to three in Chinese--he can just say the first word yi--and then he would take off, yelling "go, go, go." This must also be something learned at school.

We're still trying to puzzle out why he uses certain words in certain languages. For instance, he used to say both "fish" and "jump" in English, after a fashion. But now he tends to prefer to say these in Chinese. I don't really know why. His English vocab is bigger, including words like hot and cold and up and please. But when he thanks people he always says "xie xie," which, come to think of it, may be easier to say than the more difficult "th" sound.

I wish I could say I was feeling a bit more motivated today, but I'm still not doing great on that front. I got up with Sam early this morning, around 6, and then napped with him later. I've done some of my own reading this week, and Alexander McCall Smith novel, and the autobiography of a Taiwanese church leader, but otherwise it's been slow in terms of work. Next week I'll be into a full run as one semester of language ends and as classes at the seminary start. It should be an interesting week.