short legs

Meredith has short and stubby legs as seen in these two photos.

Meredith with Bandana

Boon Hong bought a new bandana for herself. Meredith saw and insisted on wearing it. Here's some photos of Meredith wearing the bandana and putting on her shoes before we go to the neighborhood playground.

Helping daddy get ready

Sometimes when we tell Meredith that we are going out, she would go pick up my cell phone, wallet and car keys. She seems to understand that when we go out, we will need the keys, wallet and cellphone.

Brushing teeth

Boon Hong started brushing Meredith's teeth a few months ago. Sometimes it can be a daunting task because she would not open her mouth. It hasn't been any easier lately but sometimes Meredith likes to imitate our action. We found her pretending to be brushing her teeth one day when she was playing with her toothbrush. She also likes the flavor of the infant toothpaste. She tried to suck on the toothbrush to taste the toothpaste.

New lake near Hwy 6 and supertarget

We recently discovered a lake with running trail near Highway 6 and Highway 59. The lake has about 2 miles of running trail around it and is not too far from our house. It is just behind Supertarget and we didn't know about it for years.

Meredith encountered some ducks near the lake and she was hesitant at first about feeding the duck.

Meredith at the playground

We just bought a new camera, Nikon P5000. So I took quite a lot photos to test this cameras last two weeks. The autofocus mechanism is rather but image quality is good. The following photos were taken at the playground near our house. Meredith likes to go on the slide.

Like mother like daughter

Eric did a post "like father like daughter" while back. I am going to do a version of "Like mother like daughter". Eric and most other people always complain that I am a clean freak. I like to "wipe" the kitchen floor with a wet cloth every time after I cook. Although we do have a mop at home, I still prefer kneeling on the ground and wiping the floor with a piece of cloth most of the time. Meredith observes me all the time and she likes to imitate my actions. One day, she saw the table cloth on the kitchen floor. Without any instruction from us, she started kneeling over and wiping the kitchen floor with the wet cloth. So, like mother like daughter, she loves to make sure the kitchen floor is spotless.

Teaching

Our cluster team has been meeting with many parents lately due to poor behavior (and consequentially poor performance) of the kids at school. X's parents are a shock to me. I could not imagine that X has been facing such problems at home. The parents were divorced a year ago and the mother badmouth X's father in front of all teachers and also her child and her ex-husband. From the conversation, the mother was telling everyone that X's father is soon getting married and becoming a father once again without disclosing much information to X. I was realy shocked after listen to X's mother statement. She was making very personal statements in front of X and the school teachers. Have she ever thought about X's feeling at all because X has to face all these people in school eight hours per day everyday. Through out the whole conversation, she tried to blame everything on X and X's father kept looking at the watch as if he was in a hurry to leave the meeting.

After two years teaching, I came across all kind of parents. We have MIA parents (we have to send police officers to send letters home), 24/7 parents who always want to make sure their child is the top 15% in class, rude parents and etc. However, many parents share a common trait as they like to blame all faults on the kid and the teacher, and parents always think they have done everything possible.