It was held summer of this year from June 13 – August 6 at Bezazian Library. Every year the Chicago Public Library has a different theme for their summer reading program and this year it’s called Book Beats — Picture book readers and pre-readers who complete 25 pictures books will earn a Very Important Reader’s T-shirt. Children who read chapter books will earn a T-shirt when they complete 10 chapter books. Weekly book raffles, author visits, performers and presenters are just some of the activities that are featured throughout the summer in this drop-in program that helps motivate kids to read for fun.

My girls got two t-shirts from them now and they’re planning to collect them. In fact, they’re kind of excited of what would be the t-shirt design for next year. It’s becoming a part of our tradition every summer now.

Making their own bookmark

Picking their free books

Mr. Harry Osterman from 48thward was one of the visitor that day.

Freya with her crazy mom!

Well, I know I haven’t mentioned it here in my blog that our little Freya has started school already as Pre-K. Today is her 2nd week of school.  This morning, the moment we entered her classroom, she suddenly cried and she wants me to stay and if I cant stay she wants to go home with me. I stayed in their room for about 20mins and after they had breakfast the teacher told me that I have to go. She cried so hard while I’m heading out the door. It melts my heart to hear her cry from outside of the room that I wanna go back and take her home instead. I couldn’t give in to my motherly emotions cos she’ll have to learn that the world includes hellos and goodbyes!

When it was time to pick her up, I was at the waiting area 10 mins early. I want to assure her that I’m really coming back for her. When she came out, she went straight to the parents’ waiting area and tried to find me. She spotted me with a big smile on her face. Oh, how I love that smile!

This is our little conversation while walking home…

Me: How’s your day at school Freya?
Freya: I stopped crying.
Me: You did? That’s good. So are you still going back to school tomorrow?
Freya: again? Why do I have to go to school everyday? I don’t like school. I don’t like it there.
Me: Why? I thought you already have 4 friends and you said you like boys now.
Freya: I dont like Ms Lopez. I want a different teacher.
Me: Why you dont like her? She seems to be really nice. Is she mean? Did she get mad at you?
Freya: No, she didn’t get mad. But she has very dark skin.
Me: Baffled and thinking what to say @_@

I told her though that it’s not nice to think like that. If her teacher finds out about it, it will hurt her feelings. Good thing she never says anything offensive to Ms. Lopez. She still keep asking for the teacher she met when we enrolled her last April. The one that first interviewed her. Unfortunately, that teacher is no longer working there.

Anyway, back to the topic about Yuna’s summer piano lessons and her recital. This year she did a great job by completing the book 3 lesson. Her piano teacher made sure that before the recital she’s comfortable reading some piano notes and be able to know it by heart. My hubby told me that learning all the notes are not easy. He knows cos he plays the guitar. I’m so thankful for this great program offered free by our neighborhood community. We all want the best activity for our kids and if you pay every kiddie program, you’ll most likely end up being poor. I’m just being thankful here ^_^

The piano class lasted about a month. Last August 2, they had their piano recital. It was successful and Freya was able to participate by singing a song while Yuna played the piano. Yuna did a couple of mistakes cos according to her she got confused with all the people singing. Her piano teacher made a bouncy rythm version of the song “If you’re happy and you know it”. It’s the teacher’s idea of the song so Freya could join. Pretty neat idea. Yuna is going to have a one-on-one session with her piano teacher beginning next week. So instead of taking it during the summer she will have piano lessons all year round. But this time it’s not free. It has an hour rate of $15, still not bad. The piano teacher is planning to use the Zuzuki method. It’s kind of advance than the usual lesson. That’s what the teacher said. I wish Yuna will like the method without any problems. And by problems I mean fussing.

Enjoy the video 

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The party was a success I invited as much children as I can cos for me more children means more fun for the birthday celebrant. That day Freya was so happy. She really loved her Dora Princess dress and shoes that she wore courtesy of her grandfather from Las Vegas. Before the day of the party, she kept trying on her dress. She couldn’t wait to wear her outfit. She also liked her Dora cake a lot that I made for her. Actually, I thought about giving her a Dora themed party but our place is too small to hold a party and like I said I don’t want to get exhausted from planning too much. So our best choice was Chuck E. Cheese’s which is not bad at all. The most important thing is everyone had a blast including the celebrant, of course! Why Friday? because my kids has Girl Scout meeting every Saturday where by the way, she held a 2nd birthday party. GS celebrated two occasions that time one was a shower party for one of the GS leader and for Freya. Isn’t that great?

To our dearest Freya, always remember that we always love both you and Ate Yuna. We will always love you and your big sister and we will try our best to give both of you the best in life. We can see signs of brilliance towards you. We want you to know that you always make us smile even when you always have little accidents at home by always being silly. We always laugh at your wittiness. When you try to trick us, instead of getting mad or while getting mad at you we end up laughing  at you cos you are a very silly girl. A very observant and thinker. You little piggy! For everyone of you, yes she loves to be called piggy and fat. She’s the only person I know that loves to be called FAT .  We love you so much Freya from Ate, Mommy and Daddy.

P.S. I wanna say thank you to my friends here in Chicago who came to my daughter’s party. Thank you so much until next time  BTW, I’m sharing this video to all of my readers. I hope you’ll have fun watching and looking at the photos I posted here. Thanks everyone :kiss:

You know what she did with her money? She bought books from the book fair at her school. She also bought a Hannah Montana Microphone toy. Her classmate told her that the tooth fairy is not real and I had to tell Yuna maybe your friend is mean that’s why the tooth fairy never visit her and give her money. We have our own way of making our kids happy and my kids are innocent. I don’t want them to be part of this dirty world yet. I want them to believe in magic and fairy tales.

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Every six months we are required to visit her pedia and today is her schedule. Everything is OK with our little Freya. According to her doctor, she’s growing massively and even praised her for not wearing diaper anymore. The doctor did a couple of things to her like putting fluoride varnish on her teeth, took some blood for another Lead test and Flu mist. Flu mist is a nasal spray so no poking therefore no crying baby. Although she cried when it’s our turn because she didn’t like that I woke her up while in deep sleep. All through out our stay in the room she was grumpy. I even had a hard time putting the clinic dress on her. She also didn’t talk to her pedia but despite all of these I’m glad they finished everything they need to do with her. The next time we go back to Children’s Memorial Hospital is when she is 3 yrs old. I like that clinic. All the staff are nice and her pedia is so friendly and extra nice especially to my child. And as always Freya has a new book from her pedia

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If not because of my promise to my daughter, I won’t go there and if only I knew that it would be that crazy. I’d definitely not go without hubby. When we finally saw Mickey and Minnie going towards our spot, I let Yuna (my 7-yr-old girl) sit on my shoulders for about an hour so she can see the float’s coming. Crazy I know!  :pick:  Mickey and Minnie started pointing to light up the trees they passed and people started screaming out of happiness. My eldest was so happy while my youngest was still on the stroller sleeping. Although Freya, when she finally woke up, she was still able to see other Disney characters like Goofy, Donald and Daisy. Yuna saw Mickey and Minie, Phineas and Ferb and other mascots. By the way, we didn’t finish the parade although I’m not sure if the parade ended already since we started to get out from the huge crowd. All I can say about our first experience for this big event of Chicago is it was fun and super crazy! The important thing is my kids enjoyed the parade and that makes me happy too. Definitely not our last to witness the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival of Chicago. Next time, I’ll make sure to find a great spot for us. :love:

Horses on the street!!

See how crowded it was??

Posted all other photos in my FB and of course, we need to be friends there :hihi:

Also, here’s some videos. The 2nd one was recorded by Yuna while on my shoulders so my apology for a shaky video :peace:

Yesterday we attended a parent-teacher conference. My daughter’s classroom teacher commented both good and bad about her. The teacher said, “She’s a smart student and she can be smarter than what she is now if she concentrates in the class”. The problem with her is she can’t control herself from talking to her seatmate. She was moved 3 times to different tables hoping she would stop talking. Unfortunately, she still continued to talk a lot. She got A & B on her report card that’s why she’s on the Honor Roll.  Here’s the thing if a child keeps talking and doesn’t pay attention when the teacher is explaining their lessons tendency is she will not be able to answer their quizez or test properly. 2nd grade at her age is not easy, not at all. You cannot just learn everything at school without listening, right? Also, the teacher said, she’s kind of lazy cos she mostly doesn’t finish her writing works. Don’t get me wrong mommies, getting A(s) & B(s) are not bad at all but it would be better if she get straight A(s) especially when there’s potential that she can get it.

Now, what are we gonna do? Even how many times we remind her she still can’t stop talking. She even said to me that she don’t wanna think. Funny right? But I still like and love her. She’s sweet and kind and always nice to other people even to older people. Perhaps, we need to extent our patients to her. Not to get tired of reminding and helping her. I’m thankful to people around her from our community who help her a lot by teaching her lots of informative things. It really means a lot to me.

By the way, the photo was a note from her classroom teacher at the back of her report card. She told us she likes our daughter because she sees great potential in her in the future.

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