Category: advice and tips

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advice and tips fun

Throw fits

This afternoon (Friday afternoon), as a recent custom, both my wife and I went to school to pick up our daughter. My wife was pretty happy, until she saw Serenity started to cry as soon as she saw mom. The reason, she felt we went there too early, and she just started some drawing project. The teacher tried to help, to no vail. The kids tried to persuade her, no help. Being a extremely thin skinned person, my wife wants to leave. We managed to take her out, she still cries cries cries.

Once a while, not very often, our daughter does this when we picked her up. Reason varies. Not wanting to leave is one. Also sometimes she is just tired (probably she did not get much nap after lunch). Anyway, those things sometimes could seem embarrassing, as kids just cannot stop crying, or throw fits. But looking at another way, that’s just a part of their growing processing. Not all kids do this. But I imagine many kids once a while hit a rough patch. As parents or teachers, we just need to have a lot of patience.

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advice and tips fun kids

Birthday party places for little kids in St. Louis

We went to the Chick-fil-a Chesterfield valley today for lunch, actually we spent quite some time today. The reason being we have a birthday party at 3 pm at Chesterfield mall, and it takes 40 to 50 minutes going back and forth from the Chesterfield to our home in Creve Coeur. Talking about the birthday party places in St. Louis, since Serenity turns to 3 and went to pre-school, there are a lot more birthday party invitations, and I typically obligated. Here are the place we went so far, and I added my comments there (purely my personal view as a dad):

1) St. Louis Zoo (3 times): good for little kids. Kids got to see the insects and the birds and small animals (such as guinea pig). Their Owl cup cake is big (maybe I will do a cup cake series next time 🙂

2) Bounce-U (3 times): the first time was quite amazing, kids just bounce bounce bounce. I think Serenity still enjoyed the 2nd/3rd time, except me as a parent got a bit tired in the 3rd time as 2nd/3rd time was fairly close.

3) Magic House (2): one is for big kid (grade school, 7 years old), the other is for Serenity’s classmate (4 years old). So the content is slightly different. The first one is science focused, the second is more art focused. Both has cup cake decoration.

4) Des Peres “The Lodge” wave swimming pool (1): unique place, one of a kind in St. Louis (the other one being Carousal below, both places the parents need to prepare own food, other places pretty much they offer pizza, or cakes).

5) St. Louis Carousal/Foust Park (1): one of a kind, it’s interesting Serenity does not like the carousal at the Chesterfield Mall (she got scared once when she was much younger), but she like the original Carousal.

6) Hi Energy Gymnastics Chesterfield Mall (1): a lot of gymnastics exercise, from pure gymnastics point of view, Team Central at Dorset is probably better, but this place is good for party and the location is also good. Note Chesterfield mall also has a carousal.

7) Last but not least, the art/drawing place in Chesterfield mall (1). I forgot the name now, but it’s by the Sears store in the mall (near mall entrance).

Quick summary: work-wise, probably less work for parents at Bounce-U, St. Louis zoo, and magic house. Fun/unique factor: Des Peres “the lodge”, the Carousal at Faust Park are probably the winner. But more work for parents.

I will refine this post as time goes.

(Update 05-10-2014) Last month we went to Butterfly House at Faust Park, which is also very nice and unique. The kids got to tour the butterfly house with parents, the staff played a butterfly themed game/Q and A with kids, art project, decorating cookies, etc. Overall I think this is very good. This is a bit similar to Magic House (the art part), as kindly reminded by one of the parents.

(June, 2014) That paint spot: this is a unique spot near Manson and Olive, we went there for birthday. Kids like painting, the unique thing they do is they paint on ceramics, then they will put it on fire and make the color stick. I guess from business point of view, customization (think T-shirt, mugs) is very interesting.

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advice and tips fun

Serenity wants the lemonade from Chick-fil-a

Yesterday evening, after my wife and I picked up our daughter, and decided to go to a local Chinese restaurant for food, Serenity wanted the lemonade from Chick-fil-a. I cradled quickly, and suggested we stopped by Chick-fil-a before going to the Chinese restaurant. My wife was extremely upset, and wanted nothing of it. We calmed down it, during the time I went to dollar tree store to pick up something. After that Serenity still wanted the lemonade. I suggested we go to Panera (St. Louis Bread Co.) for the lemonade, because it was on the way vs. Chick-fil-a which was a bit out of the way.

Thanks to God eventually I was able to persuade Serenity to get it from Bread Co., and we went o Jiangxiang afterwards. Which is a another story (hint: they are extremely busy on Friday evenings)

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advice and tips fun

Signs we do too much googling

This morning, Serenity asked me to show her draw a pig. I said I don’t know how. She said google it, as mommy always did. So I googled how to draw a pig, and it comes up some results. I showed her the wikihow step by step animations. Now she is into wolf 🙂

(Update 02-19-14) This reminds me similar phenomenon in software development area, the popularity of sites like stackoverflow.com, coupled with some of the flaws in technology books/documentations, make me search much more and read much less. As a matter of fact, one of the iPad book author, Kurby Turner, mentioned this phenomenon in his learning iPad programming book.

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advice and tips

Serenity got sick

She got some fever, and cough. Not too bad, but a nice two days break from her school. Reflecting on this “kids got sick/fever” topic, I recall a few instances when she was much younger, and we were really worried sometimes. I recall in one winter evening, she couldn’t stop coughing, I walked to nearby Walgreens in blizzard condition, the road is totally covered, and after I got there, I found out the cough syrup is really not for young babies. Even now she is 4, as the doctor told us today, honey might be do much better compared to cough syrup.

Recall in one summer, she got fever, was sleeping on bed, I can tell her short breeze, or difficulty to breeze. Of course before she turns to 2, we already worried more when her temperature hits 102 F. This is a bit loosen as she gets bigger, and today I picked up a “20 myths about kids fever” print out at doctor office, and I agree with some of the things talked about there.

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advice and tips fun

I failed persuade Yoyo go to Gymnastics class

And I regret it now, because she appears have a lot energy after getting home. But at pre-school when I picked her up, she was complaining about “lip hurts” (probably due to cold weather, and low moisture indoors), and “fear of doing high beam”. No matter what I offer (snack, chocolate), she was not motivated, and cried while asking for “go home”. I can understand both factors, and I feel the high beam is probably a more important factor, but I chickened out eventually. It’s also one of the coldest day this winter (minus 10 c). And I feel a lack of energy myself, so I “let it slide” (borrowing Steve Job’s word).

But I quickly regret it as I saw she is full of energy after getting home, esp. when doing the Skype with grand parents and her aunt/cousin back home.

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advice and tips iPhone app

Prepare for shipping of Nexus 4 phone

I sold it much quickly than I thought (sold right after I posted on Amazon on Nov. 18, 2013), and I did back up photos using 3 approaches.

1) Dropbox;

2) Back up to PC using the backup utility on the Phone;

3) Google+

After using google+ backup on my Nexus 4 for a while, I liked it and decided to give it a try on my iPhone and iPad. I enabled the auto backup feature. There is a limit for each account, I believe. An interesting thing I found out about google+ in the new year, is it creates a slideshow (about one minute) using the photos in google+, for me it’s mostly about my daughter’s activities. This reminds me of Facebook year in review feature (kind like year book). One thing keep in mind is the privacy, if you decide to share it, the default setting it share to public, so use your judgement when you share.

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advice and tips iPhone app

Two good articles on touch screen generation

Atlantic

CS monitor

My take:
My daughter is 3 and half years old. My wife had iPhone (3g) before she was born, and I bought iPhone 4 when she was 6 months old. Then comes the iPad (1), and currently I have an iPad mini, and my wife has iPad 4. I spent about $30 buying apps for my daughter (mostly Toca Woca and Sigo Mini; also raywenderlich WildFable; and I see Ewe, I Hear Ewe). I felt the latter is better suitable for toddlers, while the former ones are more like games (which I have some reservations).

My observations on iPad app and screen time: my daughter also watches Netflix kids TV/Youtube for about half an hour a day. We tried pretty hard to make sure she did not watch too much TV before she was two (again, this is mostly from hearing her teachers’ advice; and from reading the articles about TV’s effect on growing children).

My thoughts:
1) Moderation, moderation, moderation. It’s not easy. I know, we all have been there. Grabbing iPad/iPhone from crying toddlers. “5 more minutes”. But we need to be firm. Otherwise the 5 more minutes will means 15 more minutes. And the flood gates started here. I found out, if I’m consistent, and if the child is tired of the silly game/TV, and if we can provide a better alternative (reading books, something more fun), she gives up iPad quickly.

2) Engagement, engagement, engagement. When she was very young (probably around 2), sometimes we let her watch the “Curious George” on Netflix, together with parents. And she will have a lot of questions. In that sense, watching TV is not purely passive, and that’s a good thing. Same can be said of reading/listening the wild fable, and the I see Ewe/I hear Ewe.

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advice and tips fun

Travel in Shanghai

I visited China with my family a few weeks ago. Shanghai is the flight stop where we arrive and depart.

We stayed at the Courtyard Xujiahui, and Four Points by Sheraton at Pudong during our short stay in Shanghai, a few weeks ago. As I have family and esp. little kid nowadays, I prefer western brand hotel (4 stars) so that it has good enough environment. I no longer go to Home Inn or Jinjiang Star. That was when I was single, and just need a clean place to shower and sleep.

Getting around
In general Shanghai taxi is very nice, with a few exceptions. For instance, we waited one hour in Shanghai Hongqiao railway station on rainy Friday evening (it was also the first day of Gao Kao, China’s college entrance exam). It’s probably better idea if one travel light (without big luggages). Another instance was we were at People’s square, about 10 pm, basically no taxi will take us to Xujiahui. There were a few illegal taxies pass by and asked us if we want to take it. Finally we decided to take Metro (subway) to get back.

Tour bus
We took the double deck tour bus at People’s square, my first time taking it, and was surprised to see a lot of changes in Shanghai, for example, I have not seen Lao Xi Meng for many years (probably not seen it since 1995, 18 years). Big big change. I would like to show my brother the picture some time as I thought he probably have not seen it for 18 years either. Tour bus No. 1 is a good idea for short stay visitors because one can use it for 24 hours, and see many interesting places (bus stops at those places) along the way.

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advice and tips fun

Went to tower grove farmers market yesterday

It was the first time I brought my wife and my daughter there. The weather was a bit hot, as I went there after 9:30 am. We bought the typical things: ribs and eggs from Bobbi (live spring farm), tomato, beans and cucumber from amish farmer. Serenity enjoyed her bagel and apple at the picnic by the market, it’s just some food we brought in case she wanted to eat.

I’m hoping to bring them more often to the market on Saturday mornings this Summer.

Btw, I was thinking about adding a “news feed” to the ToMarket app I recently created. It’s also funny Serenity singing about “ToMarket” couple times yesterday.