Miss Little Manners

I have to brag on my daughter for a second. Joe and I had a parent teacher conference the other day and as you expect from a preschool, she got raving reviews. Does preschool teacher ever say anything negative about your child? anyhow, she interrupted the meeting and said, "I have to say before I forget that when my daughter gets older (she is now like 5 months old), I want her to be just like Makayla when it comes to manners. Makayla is has the best manners I have seen in a child. Everytime she asks for something, it's always 'please' and then 'thank you'. It must be something you are doing at home, can you tell me what you do?" She was just gushing about Mak's manners.

Joe and I looked at each other dumbfounded and started laughing. That kind of gave away the opportunity to publish a book titled "how to raise a well-mannerd child". we were both like "we try to teach her to say thank you just like any other parents but we don't do anything special...." she looked disappointed that i didn't have a list of "how-to's" for her but i wasn't quick witted enough to come up with something.

I have to admit, i was very proud of her but knew that it wasn't any of our doing - since she is plenty rude at our home. but i was truly thankful. ever since i took a parenting class at COS, i realized that kids these days are becoming ruder and more spoiled. i remember thinking, "if i can even get my kids to have some manners, teach them to greet people well, they'll be like a beacon of light in midst of darkness!" so on with my little mission to teach my kids to have manners that should have been common courtesy 20 years ago! and i bet when ethan starts school next year, this teacher will NOT ask what we're doing right in our house :) God makes each child truly unique and God bless them all!

makaya in her school play

emergency room

while chilling after church on sunday, makayla and ethan were playing rough as usual. it is always in matter of a split second that fun enters disaster zone. ethan was sitting on a blanket when makayla decided to pull it out under him. he then fell and hit his face on the couch.

he then cried this cry that all mothers know that he's seriously hurt so i jump out of my seat to see what happened. sure enough, ethan was spewing blood. when he hit his face, he bit his lower lip so hard that it made a significant cut - not one of those little thing that happens when you chew your food funky.

i called the pediatrician here (you can call your dr. direcly on his cell phone - how crazy is that??) and he thought that i should take him to the ER to make sure there's nothing serious.

so off to our adventure in Krakow hospital for the first time.

we drove 25 min to the Polish American Children's Hospital - though there was nothing American about it - no signs in English or anything. It must have been started by an american, but that's about it. anyhow, i enter with ethan while joe parked. do i know the word "emergency room"? ofcourse not. but figured that some of those long words are similar in polish, i walked over to the store owner and say "gdzie jest emergencia?" - "where is emergencia?" - WRONG! they looked at me like what are you talking about?? - so I try different versions of it. "emergencianem?" "emergenski?" one of the lady looked at ethan and said "osatearejh lakhlkh?" and i was like "uh-huh." then pointed me to the right direction :)

we then managed registration and waited in the waiting room. we were seen by a nurse and then a doctor who decided ethan would need just one stitch. it was painful to watch the needle go in his mouth but ethan was brave and strong :) yay for ethan!

overall, it was a pleasant experience, though i was acting all freaky b/c all the trash cans with all kinds of contagious looking things didn't even have lids on it. i was screaming "DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!!!!!" to ethan and mak. joe was like "it's cleaner than i thought." i was like "it's exactly what i imagined - tolerably clean but gloomy. " so now i know where to go when emergency strikes again - and ethan is already registered in the computer so that's good news. or is it?

Day 2-3

having pretty brutal past couple of weeks. this post has been sitting on my draft for days - so here it is.

Day 2 was a sunday, so we started off with sunday service. then wing kiu and her boyfriend went on a 3 hour walking tour of the old Jewish neighborhood. they said that it was super informative and really interesting. we stayed home and gave the kids a nap and prepared a yummy tempura dinner.

Day 3

Entrance to the Wawel Castle

inside the castle's courtyard

there are only limited number of tickets to enter inside so we had to kill some time while we were waiting for our turn. We were just jumping around and taking action shots.

ethan looks like he's walking on air!taking some family portraits - and unfortunately, they won't let you take pictures of inside the castle. . . .then off to the market square for lunch - we stopped by this counter of this fancy food store we picked out a pig neck meat sandwich in fresh roll with mustartd. so yummy! it was so good we went back and got another one.

head statue in middle of the market square

makayla downing two ice cream cones

in the evening, we went to this carnival (traveling through different cities in europe) and rode this super unsafe looking ferris wheel that moved at inappropriately fast speed. i'm seriously faking ease and smile here - my one arm holding on to the rail and other arm holding on to makayla - for my safety, not hers :P then joe and his siter decided to ride this even more ridiculously fast spinning thing. (no litigation, no fear) they said that they couldn't breath when it was spinning at top speed. needless to say, this was the last ride. fun.