my little valentine, the circus, and conversation hearts about Chinese school

Hannah was being a funny little monkey on Saturday before we left for the Chinese New Year party with some other adoptive families. "Are we going yet?" "Daaaad! Are you ready?" She wanted "my Chinese dress" on early in the afternoon and couldn't understand why she was all dressed and ready to go... and we still hadn't left yet. That and I had to keep her from helping herself to all of the leftover yellow dragon cake icing.

Our photo taking spot is right inside the front door with a blank wall as a back drop. I open up the front door to let in natural light... but in January... IT'S COLD! I snap snap snap as many photos as I can super quickly and sing things "Twinkle twinkle little hamburger" to get a rise out of Hannah, get some quick picks, and SHUT THE DOOR before we freeze.

I heart this little pink sweater. Old Navy. Need to buy another to save for when she grows out of this one. Cute cute cute.


We went to the circus tonight for the first time with Hannah. We've been reading a book about going to a circus and she was really excited when I told her we'd take her to a real circus. Hannah didn't like the really loud music and was a little over stimulated. We were in the second row right in front of the tiger cages and had a great time. She said that her favorite part of the circus were the arial acts that did flips and spun in the air. Mine too! At the end of the night she was "big tired" and fell asleep before we were out of the parking lot.

It may have been a mistake to start Chinese school so young. Our class started this fall with children ages 3.5-7 with Hannah the youngest in the class. There's a HUGE difference between children at this age. Class is two hours long with a 15 minute break in the middle. Hannah can barely sit and pay attention for an hour and fifteen minutes. Two hours is a long time. She's still shy and rarely answers her teacher's questions, and refuses to participate in songs and dancing. The teacher has children come to the dry erase board and circle answers and write letters. She's a wonderful wonderful teacher and I'm learning a lot and having fun, but it's not my class. It's supposed to be Hannah's. If Hannah were five and had five year old skills, this would be perfect. But... she's a pretty shy little thing that just turned four. I've debated pulling her out of class or keeping her in. I think I'm going to stick with it and we'll see how much she absorbs from just being there. Hopefully she'll be better prepared next fall when she can write more letters and has more classroom experience from preschool. Hannah's learned more from Chinese language DVDs because she'll actively participate repeating words back to the TV, but I've picked up more from her Chinese school than the DVDs.