A haunting misunderstanding.

The other day I was working on something or other, when Jonah ran to me crying. I tried to fifure out what it was that was scaring him. Occasionally he will suddenly become scared of this toy or that toy after staring at it's face for too long.
"The girl."
"What girl. Show me the girl."
"Right there." he said as I followed him over to the other room. He was pointing at black space

After asking him to point several times he said, next to the door. The girl with the sad face. What color is her hair? Brown. Is she a little girl or a big girl? She's a big girl like mommy.

Of course Jonah is two so his answers weren't that clear and I wanted to make sure I wasn't putting words in his mouth by asking yes or no questions. But I was becoming mildly disturbed. I do happen to believe in spirits and ghosts. But since different cultures have different opinions of them, I no longer believe that they necessarily have to be destroyed, or that they necessarily exist outside of our minds. Or rather they exist in our Mind but does the mind exist outside of the brain? Well the main point is, could I just ignore this? Was I being effected negatively in anyway? I suppose I was making some poor decisions recently and those books that were missing and would suddenly appear was weird. Grace was all for these items being moved by spirits.
But my beliefs are that spirits can only act through human action. So either way it was Jonah moving the objects around. Noah didn't see what Jonah saw and neither did Grace...


Then the next day he started talking about that girl again. Except it was now a boy and a girl. And I found  some duplo faces of a boy on one side and a girl on the other. We had put them in the closet of scaring things along with Hulk, a dinosaur, and some snacks. Snacks on scary, but the scary things protect the snacks. Anyway, I guess these duplos which are no more than a cubic inch or so in size fell out and onto the floor. Ahhhh. I guess that makes more sense than ghosts. But it was funny that we believed it was a ghost to the point where we were at least mildly freaked out by Jonah seeing something. But again, it wasn't completely his imagination either. He saw a physical plastic thing. But I was looking for a picture on the wall or something. Not a duplo lying on the ground. Actually at first I thought he was talking about the Rapunzel doll on the mantle until he told me that was not it.

An interesting Baptism

We had the boys Baptized yesterday after Church. It was much more difficult than I imagined. They wouldn't stop moving or asking questions, not just about the ritual itself, but like everything. Noah didn't want to listen to a thing the priest was saying, he just wanted to jump around and ask me why the Earth went around the sun. But every time he asked that I kept thinking ,"Gallileo."
Not sure why.
There was another child also being baptized, and I can totally see now, why they baptize the kids at that age, when they can move, or talk.

When Noah realized they were going to put water on his head he started freaking out and part of me though the water was going to go up in steam and burn his skin, like that girl from the exorcist. Or at least I thought I should explain that my kid is not a devil, but just doesn't like water on his face. Did we get pictures of that?

But I skipped the introductions and some of the questioning. Fr. Shen talked to Grace about her getting baptized later, and mentioned to me that she was quite beautiful. I felt like he was being polite. Grace felt she was being hit on. I think it's just a cultural thing.

Then we started talking about the meaning of the names Noah and Jonah, and I realized I didn't really know much about Jonah's story. So Fr Shen explained.

Then we got to Noah's and I knew that one, so I started telling the story to Grace at the request of Fr. Shen. (Grace preferred to read the New Testament.) But in a weird way, I felt like the story was almost inappropriate for Church. Does that even make sense? Well the story is the angels were getting it on with all the human women and creating giants and the world was corrupt so God decides he's going to kill everyone and start over.
Then I thought I'd talk about Noah's brother. So I did. Then I realized that version of the story with Noah's brother is from the Koran, so I started back pedaling big time.

Then Noah jumped off of something onto some other thing so I had to go stop that.

There were also a lot of questions at the Baptism and Grace was like, "I think your were supposed to study for those." I was only at two baptisms before and one of them was my own, so I don't remember much about that.

Some of them were pretty straight forward.

"Do you renounce Satan?"

"Ummm yeah sure." I thought. Why would I be for evil? I mean I guess my view of Satan is closer to the Jewish view, where he is sort of just an argument against God but is actually work for Gos. More like Severus Snape and less like Voldemort. And Dumbledore would be God. But in the Catholic view, if he's just Voldemort. Yeah I renounce that.

"I do." I said.

And then as the questions went on I sort of started getting solemn and holy feeling. Like there was light emanating and I was taking on a serious quest and had found my calling.
Then Noah would whisper extremely loudly in my ear, "Why's that guy talking?"

Well we did that. They are baptized. And depsite Noah wanting to play with the candles, we managed to keep the Church in harmed too.
On to the next step.

Aquarium pass blunder

I scheduled a pass to go to the aquarium on Monday, but what with the children's Baptism today and several other things I forgot to pick it up. The Library is not open today so I won't be able to pick up this pass until the day I have to use it, Monday, at 12pm. Originally I had planned to take Jonah to the aquarium from like 10am until around noon. Maybe get lunch at Haymarket. I know it's silly to worry about such a small thing. But I did. Basically I woke up at 3am today and suddenly remembered this and realized there was nothing I could really do about it. Maybe the library opens at 9am on Monday I hoped. But it doesn't open until 12. So my plans will have to change. If I take Jonah in the afternoon, he may very well fall asleep. Which makes me think, maybe I should just take both kids in the evening. Would that work? I would have to pick Noah up early I think. Otherwise I could end up being late to pick up Noah.

Then I started feeling guilty that I've been taking to Jonah to all of these things by himself. I know that if Noah knew that, he would be upset. Hmmm.

Well actually it looks like the Aquarium always closes at 6pm too.  I guess me and Jonah will go there for lunch. So 12pm until he falls asleep. I don't see what else I can do. Maybe I'll push his nap back. Why didn't I just pick these things up yesterday? Because it had slipped my mind that the Library wouldn't be open on Sunday.

Sifu Noah

I ended up cancelling class today because of the weather, but I had promised to let Noah teach and to go over the class schedule with him. So we did and tried to have class inside the house.
 We came up with the following schedule.

1. Freestyle

2. sword

3. Song

4. Drawing

5. Exercise

6. Push hands

7. 100 Hits

8. Slow Spar

9. Meditation

10. Play

We got to number four and frankly, Noah really dragged our "class" down because he only wanted to watch at first while Dai Dai did everything. At some point I threatened to just stop the class and then he said he would do it. We ended up really just doing the regular class we usually do inside with drums etc. Which is fine. But here is what I have in mind for  using this schedule outside. After all , it gets me to see what activities Noah wants to do.

For Free style inside I had the kids do their Free style forms one at a time to the drum. I guess outside everyone can do their own Kung Fu. to warm up. Eventually, when my kids can carry their own stuff they can all go through the fist stick knife spear sword by themselves with their own equipment.

For Sword we will do drills with the pool noodles. Sparring each other in partners or relay style or both.

Song. This is the wheels on the bus and other games we do.

Drawing. This is doing journals with crayons When they are older I suppose they could actually write in their journals. It's a good way to take a break physically

Exercise. This is stuff like squats, push-ups, sit ups etc. Maybe even laps or running in place. Basic punches and kicks too. It can change week to week. Road work. 

Push hands. I'm going to make push hands a bigger part of our training. It will be done in pairs, and the main thing to focus on is actually just not to hurt each other. Even if the kids sacrifice the martial aspect of the drill that's better than having to stop people from doing it in a way that might hurt each other. And also it's just to difficult to make people do it a certain way. There is so many different kinds of push hands and sticky hands, and I noticed that most kids just want to do it without actually "learning" it and they actually won't hurt each other at all, as long as they go about it in that way. So it's not "real" push hands. But I realize that there is a lot to be gained from working in partners, trying to relax, and trying to stick to the other person. It's fun too.

100 hits. That's pretty self explanatory. But as they get older it can go up to 300 or something.

Slow Spar, This is slow motion play sparring. I guess you do real moves but you have to be slow and definitely make sure first and foremost not to hurt each other, probably even not touch each other. I noticed when children play like this, they can get a lot out of this without getting hurt. Besides full force and full speed are used with the pool noodles. 

Meditation. Probably not sitting mediation. Maybe this would also be done on your own and in your own way, either through poses movements, etc. The easiest thing is to just say, "Find your own space and meditate in your own way.

Play. This is just going and playing as the kids always do eventually anyway. But it's listed because it's also important part of group dynamics etc.

Originally I only wanted 5 things listed. But I guess as the kids get older we will be able to do more things. How long would this class of 10 things take? I think at least 2 hours unless everything was really rushed.

Glug Glug jug

Jonah likes going into the bathroom filling up an aluminum water bottle with water and pouring it all down the drain. It's a waste of water of course.
Recently Grace bought a Glug Glug jug. It is a pitcher made to look like a fish. Not only this, when you tip it to pour out water it air is let into the handle. When the pitcher is set up right again an air pocket is created and the bubbles are temporarily trapped. As they bubble out, they make a glug glug sound.

This is pretty entertaining for the kids, they could do it all day, and I knew that so I had them take turns pouring water into a bucket and then we refill the pitcher. Noah eventually figured out how to do it , sort of. Jonah somehow always manages to pour the water from the side so that it doesn't always make the sound. They could do this all day, but I'm afraid that at some point, the ceramic pitcher will be dropped and someone will be cut. Or at the very least there will be water everywhere. I guess that's not so bad though.

By the time they have the motor skills to play with such a jug with out dropping it, will they still find it interesting?

Easter Egg Hunt

I didn't get a chance to recap this event earlier.

Noah really enjoyed making Easter Eggs together. But Jonah didn't really get the concept of decorating eggs, He just wanted to break them open, and then eat them. Only before finishing one egg and eating it, he kept on moving on to the next egg. The result was I made a lot more eggs than we were finally able to eat. But first to the hunt.

We did Church and then went home and I quickly real eggs as well as chocolate stuff in the back yard (which we borrowed from our neighbor.)

I was expecting more screaming and yelling but ultimately the hunt involved two kids and there were more eggs than could fit in their baskets. After their baskets were filled they didn't really feel the need to get more.
"I won!" Noah said. Yes yes you won Easter.
To get them to "find" the rest of the eggs I had to get them to dump their loot with me and then go find the rest. Jonah didn't really seem to get was going on exactly, and I was worried that the eggs would be uneven so I said we had to divide our loot evenly like good pirates. (We've been doing a lot of Pirate stiff thanks to Peppa Pig.)
But they weren't that worried about it. They was so much chocolate. In fact there was no way I was going to allow them to eat all that anyway. It kind of made me wonder if there was a better way of going about this.


Anyway. I ate gite a few eggs and Grace made egg salad over the next coupe of days. Oh yeah, this year our eggs actually looked like Easter eggs because instead of a mixture of water and vinegar, it was straight Vinegar. But this whole week Noah has been asking to decorate more eggs. I don't have a problem with that, except that we hadn't finished the eggs we made yet. And then at some point, I ate an egg salad sandwhich that Jonah had left out, and I had stomach pain all that night. I was afraid to try the stuff that had stayed in the fridge, and nobody else in the family seemed to understand the importance of finishing the Easter eggs first before buying or eating scrambled eggs or other forms of protein.

I recall wooden and even a special polished stone egg from my childhood. Maybe we should do stuff like that. Or I could do what they do for another Holiday (the name of which I forgot) where the egg yolk and white is taken out of the shell by means of a pin and then the shell is decorated. Then I could just save the shells a few weeks earlier. I think they stuff them with confetti and throw them at people. I could have done something like that at the Kung Fu park. Well next year maybe.

Raise your banners

Ever since I saw Seven Samurai I always wanted a flag like the one they made out of two sticks and a cloth with six circles and a triangle. Not those particular symbols. I just liked how simple the flag was, how small it was (our Kung Fu flags are usually quite large and somewhat ungainly) I think at some point in the movie somebody straps the flag onto themselves, which means in theory that you could have a flag and say, play drum or something like that, and no matter whether the wind is blowing or not you can see the flag because of the stick at the top.

It's not as good looking as the huge Kung Fu flags, but a small flag has it's uses. Especially for a small group.

In fact a lot of the banners advertising things now seem to be a modernization of that flag. Instead of two sticks it is one curved metal pipe and the nylon banner reads T-Mobile or whatever.

Yesterday, I decided to make a family banner for the Wake Up the Earth Parade on May 3rd. I spent all this time cutting out a T-shirt and ended up writing the kids names in Chinese, one on each side of the flag, in ink. It took a long time and looked pretty crappy. And then when Noah got home he was pissed because he wanted to make his own flag. I was going to have them just paint on the flag after I wrote the names.

For someone who doesn't read Chinese, they just see pretty (well crude in my case) Chinese Characters no matter what it says. And for my boys reading it, they might as well get familiar with the characters for their name. But the more I looked at how crappy and tattered the flag looked I thought somebody with the Cheung family name might get offended to see their name on such a tattered cloth. And if I wrote White Crane, same thing. I scrapped that, made another flag staff with Noah and went with paper flags, and had them paint them. And the more I thought about it, nothing could possibly symbolize what our Kung Fu playgroup is about more than a flag in an Ancient Chinese or (Medieval Japanese) style put for symbols having multi-colored finger painting.

Apparently when I went to take out the trash the kid sgot all excited and started marching around with their banners and everything. Wel now they are bugging me to do a class so I will.