Many people have asked us how her English is coming along. Well, it is amazing! She experienced an explosion of language at exactly 3 months home. I am sure school is helping tremendously with her language acquisition with the exception of a few phrases I would rather her learn a little later on such as: "I can't stand this", "Just leave it alone", "Shut up", and "Oh my G*d" (which have explained to her that it is not nice to say and to say Gosh not God so she says "Goch").
She can pretty much understand EVERYTHING we say and is now verbalizing a tremendous amount. Basically, if someone new interacts with her they usually cannot tell that she has only been learning English for a few months. When we do tell them...they are AMAZED!
She knows the way home from school and last night we were driving home from a birthday party and we passed the street that led to her school. She immediately said "mom, first go right, then go left, left again, left again, and then go right" which is exactly how to get to our house. Smart girl!!!!
She also loves to write and basically copies everything in sight. She has a little writing pad and loves to look around the room to find words to copy in her notebook. She even knows some words by memory. I will scan some of her work to post here.
As for her Chinese, she refuses to speak it at home...REFUSES no matter how hard I try. She is seeing her tutor once a week right now just to speak Chinese and keep up her comprehension. She resisted at first but now feels comfortable enough to speak it with her tutor but does not enjoy it. I feel bad for forcing this on her but I also feel that it is my responsibility to try to save her native tongue. So far, she can still speak Cantonese and Mandarin fluently but we will have to increase her sessions and exposure eventually to keep it up.
I will try to capture some video of her English and post it here!
Sydney's first Halloween went over quite well...of course. She had a blast trick-or-treating and after a couple of houses she became a pro! She got a ton of candy and even a little football that was her favorite. It was so cute to hear her say "trick or treat" or sometimes "happy Halloween" at each house. She is now looking forward to Christmas. She asks me daily "when is Santa Caus com'n to my house?". 
Molly is on the left and Sydney is on the right..jpg)
Having fun...together again. 
And we could not be happier!
Sydney had a blast at our neighborhood block party. My sister's family came to join in on the fun and everyone had a good time. Sydney and Rylee were excited to have their faces painted like tigers and made the poor "balloon lady" make several different creatures and objects for them. They were either standing in line for another balloon animal, jumping in the jump house, or playing basketball. Sydney played a ton of basketball and will most likely be on a Y team soon. 
UPDATE: She loved dressing up for school and I had to plead with her to take it off to get ready for her first Daisy Troop meeting. She begged to wear her police uniform to her daisy meeting but I promised her that she could wear it when we got home. She is really looking forward to wearing her power ranger costume!
