Growth record (April 2012)

Alyssa: 10 yr 1 mo, 147 cm (4' 9.9"), 34.1 kg (75 lb).
Vivian: 8 yr 2 mo, 130 cm (4' 3.2"), 27.7 kg (61 lb).
David: 5 yr 9 mo, 113 cm (3' 8.5"), 20.4 kg (45 lb).

Growth record (June 2011)

Alyssa: 9 yr 3 mo, 141 cm (4' 7.5"), 29.9 kg (66 lb).
Vivian: 7 yr 4 mo, 126 cm (4' 1.6"), 24.9 kg (55 lb).
David: 4 yr 11 mo, 107 cm (3' 6.1"), 18.6 kg (41 lb).

Not a baby anymore

Two milestones for Alyssa:

1. Yet again, she claimed to have outgrown her bike. I can't even remember how many times this has happened. This time, she took over the 20" folding bike that Ann and I were sharing, so technically, she is adult-sized now.
2. On our family ride today, instead of going with Ann by car, she rode 4 km with me in Taipei's crazy street traffic to get to the bike path. I am amazed by how well she managed her first ride on the street.

Family ride, then and now

Amazing how much has changed in 4 years. When we lived in Athens, our "family ride" involves 2 bikes + 3 child seats:





Apparently the bike seats we got were pretty good, see how David loves them all:




Fast forward to 2011, now it take 10 wheels to get all 5 of us on the road:










The little dude made it to the 5.5k mark this time:


The girls got a bit further with me:






Oh, and this is what happened on our way to dinner:

Family ride along the river

To celebrate David's big achievement, the whole family went out for a ride along the river this afternoon.



The weather was a bit warm but David made it to the 4k mark before turning back with Ann.


Alyssa and Vivian went on with me for a bit further; everyone had a great day today. :)

No cure for geekiness

Alyssa is learning the multiplication chart recently and likes to ask me to test her all the time. Being a lazy geek, here is my solution in perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
my $script_name = 'multiplication_test.pl';

# Chih-Horng Kuo 
# multiplication skill test

use strict;
use warnings;

my $answer         = 0;
my $count_question = 0;
my $count_correct  = 0;
my $count_wrong    = 0;

print "\n";
print "*** Multiplication Test\n";
print "*** Type 'quit' to end the test.\n\n";

while (1) {
 $count_question++;
 # get 2 random integers
 # the first one should be between 2 and 9
 my $a = int(rand(8)) + 2;
 # the second one should be between 1 and 9
 my $b = int(rand(9)) + 1;

 print "\n";
 print "\tQ$count_question:\t$a x $b = ";
 $answer = <>;
 chomp $answer;
 
 if ( $answer =~ /(\d+)/ ) {
  if ( $answer == ( $a * $b ) ) {
   $count_correct++;
   print "\t\t\tYeah!\n";
  }
  else {
   $count_wrong++;
   print "\t\t\tOops. The correct answer is ", $a * $b, ".\n";
  }
 }
 elsif ($answer eq 'quit' ) {
  last;
 }
 else {
  print "\t\tYour answer is not a number. Try again!\n";
 }
}
print "\n";
print "*** Thank you for playing!\n";

my $count_total = $count_correct + $count_wrong;

if ( $count_total > 0 ) {
 my $score = int ( ( $count_correct / $count_total ) * 100 );
 print "*** Your got $count_correct questions right",
  " and $count_wrong questions wrong.\n";
 print "*** Your score is $score%\n";
 if ( $score >= 90 ) {
  print "*** Great job!\n";
 }
 elsif ( $score >= 75 ) {
  print "*** Good work.\n";
 }
 elsif ( $score >= 60 ) {
  print "*** That's okay.\n";
 }
 else {
  print "*** Try harder next time.\n";
 }
}

Initially I wasn't sure if it's a good idea to use a while loop, however, after she got a chance to play with it, I am very glad about the decision. She simply can't stop!

Potato harvest

The kids were thrilled to find the three tiny potatoes they planted gave them quite a bit of return on investment.

Fiddle contest

With the encouragement from their violin teacher, Alyssa and Vivian attended their first ever fiddle contest today. It was a pretty big event in the Reid Park with a fairly large crowd.



Without any experience in competition and not having much time to practice, we only hoped that they can have the courage to go up to the stage, finish their songs, and have fun along the way. We were pleasantly surprised by how well they did. Both of them ended up in the same age group, the "Pee Wee", for kids up to 9-year old. Alyssa was the 2nd one on stage for the whole event, playing "Old Joe Clark", "Country Waltz", and "Long, Long Ago":



Vivian was the 5th one, playing "Boil 'em Cabbage Down", "See Saw", and "Long, Long Ago":



And while his sisters were busy with the contest, David had quite a lot of fun running around and having delicious kettle corns:



When the scores came out, we were really shocked. Vivian was in the 5th place and Alyssa was in the 3rd place!




They were very happy to share the good news with their teacher Ms. Laura:



It was definitely a fun day for our entire family, especially for the two girls. In addition to the medal/plaque and all other goodies, they also won some cash awards ($10 for Vivian and $25 for Alyssa). Now there are two rich girls in the house contemplating how to use all that money!

Growth record (Feb 2010)

Alyssa: 7 yr 11 mo, 132 cm, 22.7 kg.
Vivian: 6 yr 0 mo, 115 cm, 19.0 kg.
David: 3 yr 7 mo, 97 cm, 15.5 kg.

Vivian's 1st violin recital!

Vivian had her 1st violin recital today. Instead of the Twinkle song, she picked Go Tell Aunt Rhody for her 1st solo play on stage:


Alyssa picked a difficult piece for her solo (Gavotte from Mignon):


The 1st time for us to see the 2 girls on stage together!

Learning about money is hard (not just for kids)

Recently David is getting very good with counting and some simple math. We thought that this may be a good indication that he is ready to learn about handling money and started giving him allowance last month. The little dude has been watching his sisters buying their own toys for quite some time now and is quick to grasp the idea. Not surprisingly, he requested to spend some money to buy his recent favorites: Matchbox cars.

I thought that this is a perfectly reasonable request and the $1/toy price tag works great for our purpose of teaching him money management. So I took the kids to the store last night and allowed him to find some cars that he wants to buy with his own allowance. As expected, the pile quickly grew to more than what he can afford so I suggested him to pick maybe 3 cars that he likes the best. He happily accepted my suggestion and made the decision. What surprised me was that, as we were on the way to check out, Alyssa pulled me aside and asked if she can buy a car for David with her money, "because I want to make him happy".

Understandably, I was thrilled to hear about that. After learning to manage her allowance for about 2.5 years now (we started back in July 2007), she has a pretty good idea about what this is about. She learned to spend money to make herself happy (certainly not as easy as it sounds), save up so that she can make bigger purchases, delay her decision to buy something so that she would be less likely to regret about it, and resist the urge to buy something just because her sister is doing that. Without a doubt, all these are pretty important lessons to learn. However, figuring out that money is a tool that can influence not only oneself but also others around you apparently is another big step.

So we went back to the toy aisle again and I got the second surprise. Alyssa didn't just get one, she ended up getting three cars for David, "because I think he will like all these".

My dilemma with these pleasant surprises is how to reward her decision for positive reinforcement in an appropriate way (still have no good answer after thinking about it for a day). After we got home, Ann and I both praised her and told her that we are very proud of her decision. However, I tried not to make too big a deal out it because I don't want to make her feel like she need to do this to gain our approval. Also I have to resist the urge of compensating her in material (money or other things), otherwise it will teach her the wrong lesson. Although I have to say that the temptation of doing so is quite strong for an overjoyed father.

Walking the fine line of financial education is indeed a tough business. It's not just the kids, the parents have a lot to learn along the way too.

Growth record (Nov 2009)

Alyssa: 7 yr 8 mo, 131 cm, 22.7 kg.
Vivian: 5 yr 9 mo, 115 cm, 18.2 kg.
David: 3 yr 4 mo, 97 cm, 14.5 kg.

Growth record

Alyssa: 7 yr 7 mo, 130 cm.
Vivian: 5 yr 8 mo, 112 cm.
David: 3 yr 3 mo, 95 cm.

Alyssa's TV contract

There is one thing that we really like about Alyssa's school: they teach kids how to manage their time in a very effective way. At the beginning of every week, each kid will get a contract that lists everything they need to learn for the week. The kids get to decided when and how to get the jobs done before the end of the week. Being an impatient kid, Alyssa always managed to finish her contract early, sometime as early as Tuesday, so she can arrange the rest of the week how ever she want.

We thought that this is a very good system and encouraged Alyssa to do this at home as well. So when she comes home, she makes up her own to-do list, sometimes for the evening and sometimes for an entire weekend. Because this is not school, we let her have complete control about what she wants to put on the list and how soon she want to finish the things. Usually she just put down things such as doing workbooks, practice violin, and other things like that. So I was quite surprised when she used the reason "I have this on my contract" to ask for some TV time this evening. Ann and I had a good laugh. Guess we still need to teach her the difference between to-do list and wish list.

Waiting for the great sale

While we were in the bookstore this evening, Alyssa saw the 20% off sign and asked me what does it mean. So I used the fairy book that she wants to buy as an example to explain the concept, instead of $5, she only has to pay $4 with the discount. She thought about it for few seconds, and responded: "Wow, that's cool. I am going to wait when they have a 100% off sale!"

Well, good luck my silly girl.

The rainbow bikes and my new helmet

Ever since my bike helmet celebrated its 5-year old birthday in April, Ann has been trying to convince me to get a replacement. Being a cheap bastard, I can be very stingy even though it is my head that's on the line. Finally, after realizing how much money I have been saving by bike commute and how much time I have been spending on my bike, I agreed that it is time to buy a new helmet.

Initially I was thinking about getting a Bell Alchera after trying out a bunch of different helmets in our local Performance Bike shop. Unfortunately, they do not have a red one in stock and Ann insisted that I get one that matches the color of my bike (no, no more blue helmet with a red bike). So after lunch, I took Alyssa and Vivian with me to another bike shop to see if I can find something there. Before we left home, I jokingly asked Ann that if I can't find a good helmet that matches my bike, can I get a matching bike to go with a new helmet. To which, Ann replied with a smile and said do whatever I want. :)

So on the way to the next bike shop, I joked with the girls about how I am going to get new helmets and bikes in all colors, such that I can ride a red bike on Mondays, an orange bike on Tuesdays, a yellow bike on Wednesdays, and so on. Then somehow Vivian got the idea of getting a "rainbow bike" that has all the colors for her. I told her that I don't know where to find such bikes, and Alyssa quickly responded: "Vivian, when you get into elementary school, grandpa will give you a laptop, and then you can take a look at www.rainbowbikes.com and see what kind of rainbow bikes they have for sell". I was quite shocked to hear about this. How come young kids these days know so much about these kinds of things?

As it turned out, the second search was not fruitful either. However, when we went to Target to do some grocery shopping after dinner, I saw a Bell Adrenaline in the store that looked quite good. Initially I was skeptical about anything the claims "one-size-fits-all". Luckily, this one turned out to be a perfect fit for me. In fact, it fits even better than all other ones that I had tried in the bike shops. What's even better is that it carries a $22 price tag, which is something you don't often see in the bike shops. So I am really happy with my new helmet and looking forward to the bike ride tomorrow!

A powerful recruitment tool

A while ago Alyssa made a drawing of me and Howard sitting together at a table and has the words "best friends" and lots of colorful hearts on it. I thought it was pretty funny, as this is how she imagines what we are doing in the office all day, so I pinned it on the wall next to my desk in the office.



When Nancy saw the drawing today, she told Howard that he should use it to recruit new people, because "It is a proof of how good you are treating people in the lab. See all those hearts floating around in the air? If Chih-Horng is cursing at you all the time at home, his daughter wouldn't have drawn something like this.". I thought that this is a very interesting way to interpret the drawing, and even more so when I see Howard seems to be embarrassed by the praise.

Nails Fashion

Alyssa (aka Jenepher) and Vivian recently opened a nails salon at home, completed with a business name (Nails Fashion), and a sign:



I was half-invited, half-forced to become a customer of theirs, and the manicure they provide mostly involved putting tiny stickers on my finger nails.

Surprisingly, when we went to our local mall this evening, they spotted the name of a nails salon there is "Fashion Nails". The two silly sisters were very excited to find this competition.

What do you do?

A poem by Alyssa:

What do you do if it's a red light?
You stop.
What do you do if it's a green light?
You go.
What do you do if it's a blue light with purple stripes and lavender polka dots?

Difficult is difficult

Alyssa: Daddy, pick a difficult word for me to spell.
Me: Okay, try "difficult".
Alyssa: But that word is too difficult!

See what I mean? My daughter is really difficult.