Steven and Weiran
News Page
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Here you can find the newsletters that we send out to our family. We don't update all that often, although we probably should.
2006.12.25 - The Christmas Newsletter
Dear Family and Friends
Another year is over and it's time for Christmas. We even went out and bought a Christmas tree and decorations for this year. As is the tradition for our family, we're sending out this letter with the news of the past year.
At the start of the year, our family situation was:
- We were living in New Zealand
- Weiran was pregnant
- Reian was unable to sleep through the night
- Steven had just started his job at a bank
- Weiran's parents arrived from China to help us out for 6 months
Since then we've had our second daughter, Shia, arrive in March; Reian has started talking in sentences (unfortunately for Steven, most of those sentences are Chinese); we all moved back to Shanghai in July; Steven finally found a job and Reian turned two in September; Weiran started working and Reian started kindergarten in October.
At
the moment, Reian is enjoying kindergarten because she can play with all the
other kids. She loves to sing and is often heard belting out songs at the top
of her voice or softly singing to herself when she should be going to sleep.
Since starting kindergarten, she's been exposed to a lot more Chinese so most
of the songs she sings are now in Chinese. Reian has become very communicative.
Her favourite foods are cereal and yoghurt, bread with vegemite and anything
sweet. She loves watching her kids DVD's, but especially Chaohu (a series to
explain to and encourage kids to put on clothes and brush their teeth and
things like that) and Dora the explorer. She can even say a few words in Spanish
thanks to Dora. Reian loved receiving presents on her birthday and I think
she's looking forward to opening a few more presents at Christmas time.
Thankfully, Reian usually sleeps through the whole night now.
Shia
is developing well too. She's standing on her own now and can say Daddy but not
Mummy (the opposite of Reian when she started talking). She also says
Jiejie (big sister) but we're not too sure she knows what she's saying as she
doesn't necessarily look at us when she's saying those words. She's very mobile
and crawls around very quickly all the time. We're not sure when she'll start
walking properly, but it's likely to be a while yet as she's dressed up like a
little ball most of the time. Reian is looking forward to that time as much as
we are. Shia loves to eat everything and if you show her food, she won't be
distracted by anything until she gets that food. Now that Reian is sleeping so
well, naturally we have Shia to take up the slack. Shia keeps us awake way too
much and is too stubborn to just drift off to sleep by herself when she wakes
up at night. She is cute enough that we forgive her, though.
Weiran is working in an IT software company and finding her company's Chinese management style rather lacking. Currently she's looking around for other opportunities but will keep her eyes open for something particularly good before she changes her job. This year, she fell from her bike and managed to open up a deep wound on her chin which required stitches and also meant quite a few teeth broke. She's slowly getting back to normal with that, but it's quite ironic how just as the scar from the caesarian was healing, she got this other one. Anyway, Weiran is enjoying our two children in the evenings and weekends, but not so much at night when she'd rather like to sleep for a full night.
Steven is working in an English school in Shanghai but has also been looking for a job with a good future. He's recently been spending a little too much time being lazy and not enough studying or looking for other work. He's caught a lot of colds in the last few months as his job and Reian's kindergarten bring us all into a lot of contact with bacteria and viruses.
That's pretty much it for our family this year. We'd love to hear from everyone and feel free to pass this on to anyone you feel would like to read it.
Lots of love from
Steven, Weiran, Reian and Shia.
stevenandweiran@gmail.com
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