Urkidding

It's because we have BIG... .... .... ... .. . Ten Gallon Hats Andrew

My wife is a stay at home mom so we decided to give her a couple of days off by sending him to school and it would allow him to socialize with other children his age. She has schooled him to say the alphabet at the age of 18 months, count in Chinese and English to thirty and now at 3 years 4 months old begin adding and subtracting numbers. A few months ago, Alex came home from Montessori school and was saying ¡°uno, dos, tres, cuatro¡±, and he continued until ¡°diez¡±, in which I stopped him and asked him to repeat it. Again he went thru the routine and repeated the counting in Spanish until he reach ¡°veinte¡± (twenty) this time. I was completely amazed and I called my wife over and asked her to listen. After he repeated it again she turned to me and asked me ¡°What did he say?¡± After a little humorous laugh I then explained to her that they were teaching him Spanish in school. Keep in mind we live in Katy (Houston Suburb ¨C south Texas) and speaking Spanish will come in handy later on. My wife and he just returned from China in July and with that visit it reinforced his Chinese in which he understands everything and will speak some words. At three years old, I am amazed as to what sponges children¡¯s brains are and how much they can learn. I myself speak Greek and a little Spanish and I was tempted to teach him Greek in addition to the other three languages but then decided that I will put this off a little longer as to not confuse him too much! Andrew

Our government is now allowing name checks on our side for your SO. Apparently there is a new law in place for this and it is causing delays for a lot of K1 applications. Here is a link I read yesterday in our local paper regarding this new law¡­ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/us/17bri...amp;oref=slogin Andrew

My wife learned to drive from a Chinese driving instructor here in Houston. It is very important that you have an instructor teach your SO only because she will not be as nervous and intimidated as much. The instructor would let them take turns and he would run his errands with a chauffeur (Student) driver. On one occasion she told me that they went to the live chicken market and he ordered a couple of chickens for his dinner. I don¡¯t think they ever taught her to drive on the freeway because she is very intimated by it. I can tell most of you, the best training that I did with my wife after I got her a new car was to have her follow me and we would drive around. She did great and we even went onto the freeway with no problems. Actually, the more we did this the better she became with remembering the roads around our neighborhoods. She also wasn¡¯t as nervous because I wasn¡¯t sitting next to her. Just to show you how much she drives, I bought her a new car in the year 2000 and now with 2007 around the corner she has only 20,000 miles on it and I know that I have put at least 2000 of those miles myself. Andrew