Look Inside! - Berenstain Bears in Traditional Chinese

For the past month my mom has been in Taiwan just relaxing and catching up with old friends and of course buying tons of stuff for speck and bean, her only grand-kids so far!!  As my brother and sister in law don't want to have kids so I foresee much spoiling in the years to come!!  The first two years she went back we received a ton of random books but over the last few years I've joined a few bilingual mom groups on facebook - Raising Bilingual Children in Chinese and English, Motherly Notes, Christian Parents Raising Bilingual Children in English & Chinese, whose members are even MORE determined to teach their kids Chinese (both speaking AND reading!!).  So this most recent trip to Taiwan I sent my mom with a huge wish list in hand and below is a sneak peak at my most FAVORITE books she was able to track down for us!!

The Berenstain Bears!!!

I grew up with Berenstain bears and own roughly 30-40 of those books.  Recently I have added to my existing collection a few of the newer titles released by Stan and Jan's son Mike.

Below is a look inside two of the titles...

 Double Dare:

 

And the Truth:

Considering I purchased the english version for $2/each back in the 80s.  These chinese ones are quite expensive at NT 290 (just under $10 USD).  However, the quality far exceeds the copies from my childhood as they are hard cover not paperback.  There are 10 titles released together numbers 1-10.  And then a second release of a few other titles numbered 13-16.  Oddly Eslite doesn't carry or sell books number 11 &12 and I'm not quite sure why...🤷.  Hopefully more titles will be released in the future...but I would mostly be interested in the titles I already own in english.  It makes reading them much easier for me as my reading abilities are pretty terrible.  But even with my terrible reading I am still able to read roughly 60-70% of the book and am able to correctly guess another may 15-20% - I'm a really good guesser.

Overall, it's a fun read!  But it could also quite possibly be driven by my strong sense of nostalgia!!  But I would highly recommend!

Comming soon...Look Inside USbourne books in English and Chinese!

Velcro baby - by my own creation?

So last night I went out to a MOPS - Mom's Night Out event (Actual event occurred last year!).  In conversing with a few of the moms there I realized that it was my first time out of the house, at night, doing something that didn't involve Speck!

We played games, ate food and laughed.  A lot!

It was fun while it lasted.  I occassionally checked my phone in case V called or texted with any problems or emergencies - but he didn't!  Whew!

9pm rolled around and I thought I best be getting home.  I drove in and tipptoed into the house not wanting to wake speck.

To my surprise - I was met with ZOMBIE BABY!  a teary-eyed, snotty, sweaty and sobbing speck crying 'mama!"  It was a pretty pathetic sight!

And to my horror I realized she's become co-dependant on me...unable to sleep unless I was the one putting her to bed 😖...

and a few years later...absolutely nothing has changed...except the addition of BEAN!!!

Stay tuned for more speckventures with sidekick bean!