Mingqun Lin's Weblog

The sun hangs longer on the sky than before, but the temperature remains very chilly in February. We even got -14C two weeks ago. Fortunately, the blizzard blankened northeast US missed Ohio.
Now you may start to notice that train is not the only toy for my sons. Right, they explore new things, such as Dora! It is amazing that how suddenly they fall in love with Dora the explorer, within one week!

It's sure that two boys make more trouble than one. Actually, our major task is to keep these two energized guys from fighting. You cannot imagine that almost everything can be their causes of fight: toys, books, which video to be played, or even who should be dressed first! Of course, they mostly fight for their favorite train toys. They rarely fight for snacks, probably we always have more than enough for them (unlike our age of childhood, everything is in shortage).
Regardless of their fight, they do think of each other and love each other very much. Here are few examples. Last Thursday, there is a party in Eric's classroom to celebrate two kids' birthday, and their parents brought some party stuffs printed with Dora and Boots (their interests have diverted slightly to Dora's Explorer series recently). Eric took one set, then asked his teacher if he can get another one for his brother Rick. Before his teacher agreed, he took another set and gave them to me for Rick. Yesterday, Rick brought back a bag of M&M candy from school. When we're back at home, he took out two dishes from the dish washer and shared the candies with Eric. It's so sweet to watch them sharing things!

It's being cold this month, but my sons find their ways to burn out extra energies in the cold winter: Biking in the garage after dinner. Sounds odds, right? Sometimes we'll have to empty out the spaces for them, and they do enjoy it very much. They like bumping into each other, bumping on the walls or other stuffs, and circling around inside. In the past years, we used to bring them to the playground inside a big shopping mall. However, winter is also the flu season so that it is not wise to be with group of kids in a closed environment.
Happy Chinese New Year, Everyone!

I just saw a very interesting flash animation, and believe it worths sharing here. The title is "I don't wanna say I'm a chicken" (我不想说我是鸡). It's very cute and funny, based on the current situation of Bird Flu in China. Enjoy!

Happy New Year, folks! This update was slightly delayed since I caught a cold for almost a week.
Here are some pictures from last Christmas holiday. We had a party at home, and they stayed home for whole 3 days just playing trains.
Trains are the best toys for my sons. Or we can say they're the only toys my sons like. They might play with other toys like cars, trucks, but none of them can catch their attention long enough. Trains toys are different, they will play with them again and again, and again. Up to now, we got trains from Brio's wooden series, Thomas and Friend's series, and some bigger ones. When they browse Targets or KB Toys, the only section they look for is trains. When we're in the libraries, the places they're looking for are train books, train videos. They also like silly Teletubbies, but that's just a little part of their fun. We always try to divert their interestss to something else, but not very successful until recently, they start to enjoy Dora's Explorer videos and books.