Dear Friends,
It is our great pleasure in this holiday season to share God’s blessings in our family with you. We used to write letters like this a few years ago, but we haven’t done that for a couple of years. This year we decided to resume this tradition.
Our youngest daughter, Ellie, was born in January 27, 2011. Like her older siblings, Ellie was relatively small in size (18 in.) and weight (6 lb. 2 oz.) comparing to other newborns. However, Ellie grew fast after going home from the hospital, and by her 6-month checkup she was weighted at 75th percentile. Unlike her brother and sister, Ellie was very active and her physical development was more on schedule than her siblings. Neither Samuel nor Emma was able to roll over until about 8-month old, and none of them could crawl before 10-month old. In contrast, Ellie started to roll over at the age of 4 month and she could crawl at 7 month. Ellie is now able to walk by holding onto the side of chairs or end tables. We expect her to be the most athletic person of our house.
Samuel turned four in August this year. He is now in charge of not only his sisters but also his dad and mom. Samuel has always been a very curious and cautious child. He not only asks why all the time, he also wants us to explain the reasons behind every decision we have ever made. Sometimes we feel so tired of answering his questions, but we recognize his intelligence and eagerness to learn new knowledge. Samuel has very good memory and he likes to read and count numbers. He will start kindergarten next year.
Emma is now 2 years old and she is the happiest child of our house. She laughs a lot and she is the joy of our house. Emma also likes to talk and we are very impressed by her language ability. Since this August, Emma has been attending a half-day mother’s-day-out program with her bother three days a week. She is the only girl in her class of 10 students. Emma is very creative and she likes to paint, draw, play music, and do all kinds of artistic activities. She also likes everything that has the picture of princesses or Hello Kitty on it.
Raising children, serving in the church, and working fill the time of our life. Since Daniel must teach evening classes each semester, Yang-Ching has to take care three children from morning to bed time all by herself a few days a week while also doing cooking, cleaning up, and grocery shopping. This is a really challenging task, but we thank God for His providence that we have survived relatively well so far. We trust in God’s grace and we believe He will provide what we need to raise our family.
Daniel is in his 4th year working for the university. His tenure clock is ticking and he is one and a half year away from his tenure review. Daniel spends more and more hours working on his research and also with doctoral students on their dissertation research. Daniel puts a lot of pressure on himself and he hopes to generate enough publications to earn tenure and stay at UNT.
Both Yang-Ching and Daniel have blogs (in Chinese) and we share our thoughts, feelings, and life trivia on them. You can follow our blogs at http://ypchen.com and http://pushih.com. We wish you will also share what happens in your life with us. You can make us your Facebook friends or email us.
Last but not least, we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.