A few more quick stories

Anecdotes from the past week:

Thursday afternoon, we went to The Breakers in Palm Beach (where Tia and Dennis were staying) to go to the pool and beach. Grandpa, Abuelita and Daddy walked ahead of me and Ian. As we're walking, I hear him singing something that sounds like "John Jacob Jingleheimer Fintz, his name eh my name oooh..." And that became the theme song for the rest of the weekend. Ian has never sung that before, but he has heard it every time he goes to Tia and Dennis' apartment because they bought an Elmo DVD that has that on it. And when he was done singing it, he said, "Dat's Elmo's World."

Saturday morning, before the wedding, we went to the lovely heated pool at The Chesterfield, the hotel where we were staying. Gary, Makiko, Thomas and Alex and Gary's mom were also there, so we had breakfast at the restaurant with them first (and Ian could not stop talking about everything he saw the night before "And da big bus and da boat and the bwidge go UP and caws STOP and bwidge go down and caws GO!" (We saw the drawbridge go up while we were on the yacht.) Anyway, we were in the pool and Thomas playfully splashed me and Ian. I got water on my face and was wiping it off when Ian leaned in close, looked at me, gently wiped my face with his hand and asked, "Aw you ok, Mommy?"

Grandpa and Abuelita got a new car -- a black Mercedes convertible. Ian loved that car. When asked whose car it was, he said, "Carro de Grandpa y carro de Ian!"

When we were at The Chesterfield on Friday afternoon, Ian started saying "Yi1 zhi1 ha1 ba1 gou3, guai1 guai1 zhuo4 men2 kou3..." (It's the first half of a poem in one of the books that Wai Po brought for him from Taiwan. I was so surprised he could recite it. We've only read it a few times and I wasn't sure he was really paying attention. But he has been able to say the Chinese phonetic alphabet (zhu4 ying1 fu2 hao4) and even recognize some of the characters.