so relieved, so surprised

I'm a big second-guesser. I'm the girl who goes shopping, buys things, and then comes home and wonders if I bought the right thing, if it looks/fits/works the way I thought it should. So, surprise, surprise, I also second guess my decisions.

Last night, I was writing in Emma's journal (a little book we started for her before she was born) to record two funny stories that had happened in the last few days. Since the stories I was writing are pretty crucial to the whole point of this post, I will relive them for you:

Story #1 - Emma, mantha, my house helper and I were driving back to our house a few days ago after a morning shopping trip. On the way back, my house helper was chatting away (like she usually does) about how she was making a special present for emma so that emma's feelings woudln't be hurt on samantha's birthday (tomorrow, don't forget!). The big present was a pair of homemade shoes that are supposed to be so cute I will barely be able to contain my pleasure, or so I'm told. :) Anyway, during this conversation (happening totally in asianese), emma is staring out the window and doing whatever she usually does in the car. Later that afternoon as we were eating lunch, emma looked at me and said, "Mommy, did you know that (househelper's name*)made some shoes for emma?" My house helper and I looked at each other and were truly shocked. That means that emma must have understood seriously more of our conversation than either of us thought possible!

Story #2 - Later that evening, emma was helping the two of us clean up and get ready for dinner. My house helper took several plates to emma and asked her to put them on the table. I opened my mouth to translate for emma, but then I thought better of it and held my tongue, just to see what would happen. To my great surprise, she took the plates and put them right on the table, exactly as she was asked to do.

Do I think she's so brilliant? I'm so one of those annoying moms that thinks their kid is perfect/beautiful/brilliant/insert your word of choice here, so just watch out! :) but, really, I have been so pleased at her language progress. Which brings me to the point of this thing.

I sat down to write in emma's journal, and I glanced at my most recent entry. I hadn't written in there since my meltdown at the kindergarten a few months ago, and the last paragraph in there ended something like, "I hope we're doing the right thing."

While I was writing these two funny stories, I felt so relived and SO confident that we made the right decision not to send her to kindergarten. Our plan of 3 times a week of focused language study has gone so well; her sunday class that we attend togetherhas far exceeded my expectations and is something we both look forward to now every week. Emma knows almost all of her colors, shapes, animals, several songs, many basic commands, and basic requests in asianese. She understands when people ask her to do things. She is doing so great - and I am surprised, but more than anything, so thankful that she is able to accomplish all this without needing to go to kindergarten.

AND...maybe a new motivation for emma to learn asianese - did you know that Dora speaks asianese? My ever-resourceful husband found a collection of 10 DVD's that have been made into asianese, and since many of the episodes are ones emma has watched in english, she really enjoys watching them in asianese too.

So anyway, there you have it about emma. She is super excited about samantha's birthday tomorrow. She knows that all of her friends will be coming over to play and she knows that she'll get to eat cake and ice cream. She also knows that she is going to get some presents on mantha's birthday (things I've saved back from recent packages from the grandparents!) So after her class in the morning, we'll come home for naps and then have a fabulous party! Any excuse to eat chocolate falls in the "fabulous" category.

And all the preparations are going well - the brownies and cupcakes were made tonight (though I certainly missed nana's help making the cupcakes this year!), decorations were hung, the house cleaned, the bathtub filled with water...

yeah, that's right. A notice was posted outside of our building announcing that on June 17th our building would be without power and water for the morning. So the bathtub is filled up in case we need to get a bucket of water to flush the toilets! We'll just hope the power comes on before all the guests arrive!

Birthday updates and pictures will come soon!


* I did not omit our house helper's name for security reasons, but I just thought if I wrote her name in asianese you wouldn't really even understand it, so that's the rationale behind that!