Kids & Reading

This past weekend was nice and low key which is what I've been longing for a while. No commitment to anyone other than Danielle's play date.
Saturday started with my usual upper body weight lifting & boot camp workout followed by Danielle's friends who are sisters, coming over for a play date. Let's call the two girls N who is 7 years old and B who is 8 years old. They've been wanting to come to our house ever since we have our hamster. When they saw the hamster they got excited about man handling our hamster which made me nervous. We don't normally let the hamster run around the house freely unless it's in a rigid plastic ball. After they got bored watching the hamster inside the ball, the girls ran up stairs with the hamster and I thought they were going to put it back in her little cage. While playing with Secondo, downstairs, I started to hear loud thumbs on the ceiling. When I checked on them moments later, they had the hamster running around on Danielle's bed.
Me: "Please keep the hamster in the ball because it poops frequently"
B: "We know, look at how many poops are in the ball!"
N:"He did poop on Danielle's bed so I picked it up and put it in the ball."
Me: "That's it girls, put the hamster back in the cage and go wash your hands. It's time for lunch"
They pointed out to me that they've put pillows on the foot of Danielle's bed to prevent the hamster from hiding under the bed in case the hamster ran away from them.

It was interesting to see that even at the age of 2, Secondo wanted to tag along and be accepted as part of the older girls group. She wanted to tag along in Danielle's room and her older sister didn't want any part of that. She'll say: "Hey guys, come back here!" but girls went on with and left her out. Her friends however,were a little more attentive to Secondo and didn't completely shut her out. During lunch, B sat next to Secondo and when Secondo mentioned that her chicken nugget was hot, B would wrap it with a tissue paper and asked Secondo to hold the tissue instead of direct contact to the nugget. When Secondo ate all her nugget and wanted more, N offered to share half of hers with Secondo. Danielle on the other hand didn't want anything to do with her little sister. I know deep down she loves her little sister but she's not generous with sharing her things with Secondo. She would only give Secondo things that she doesn't really care for.
In Mandarin Chinese there's a word called "rang" which translate to yield in English. As an older sibling, one of the phrase I heard all the time growing up is "Jie-jie rang di-di" which means, Older sister should yield to younger brother in many situations let it be toys, food, or TV shows. Older child has the responsibility to let younger child have his or her ways because little ones can't understand the meaning of yielding. I know Danielle felt resentment towards me because I asked her to rang mie-mei (little sister) often when Secondo acts up and I can't get her to snap out of it.

While they were watching Disney Channel, I went to the library alone to return and borrowed some more books. I was so happy that I found 1001 books you must read before you die at our local library. It's a thick and heavy book with little excerpts of what the book is about. After reading "Never Let me go", I do agree that it's one of the must read book even though the first several chapters seemed boring and irrelevant. It's one of those book that I'm re-reading again to tie the links together to better understand the story. The first set of books that I'm reading will the the ones that are on CD so it's going to be ones written after the year 2000. Within that bracket,there are 69 books to choose from so I'm going to rotate authors between different nationalities. Has anyone read the book "Life of Pi"? I've read mixed reviews about this book and I'm curious about how good it really is. Please let me know your take of the book if you've read it already.
When I got home the girls were getting ready to go swimming and again Secondo felt left out staying home with mom & dad.
After dinner, Danielle and I played Mario party 8 on Wii and we had fun teaming up battling computer characters Yoshi and Toad.