This post was sponsored by Sagebooks. All opinions are mine and mine alone. 

Ah, the start of a bright and shiny new year! It makes me feel all sorts of unwarranted and unsupported optimism.

WHERE ARE WE?

We ended Week 18 at Set 3 Book 4 Lesson 18 despite my goal being to finish Book 4. Since I knew Christmas was one of the weeks and I was heading to LA to see my cousin’s new baby for the weekend, I thought it would be ridiculous to expect any sort of progress. However, I lied to myself and at least hoped for us to finish Book 4 by the end of Week 1 and to partially start Book 5.

DID WE DO IT?

Oh, come on!! Isn’t it obvious? Why do you have to make me spell it out?

No.

No, we made almost zero progress. I am a weak and lazy human being – especially when the weather is cold and I am not physically present at home. (Ok, even when I am physically present.)

WHAT HAPPENED?

As I mentioned before, I was gone for a weekend nuzzling, kissing, and holding a brand new baby human and I came home to Christmas. We constantly reviewed Book 4 and eventually finished it, but Glow Worm (5) was uncooperative because he felt as if we should move on to the next book.

He was not persuaded by my insistence that he actually KNOW the characters in Book 4 before moving on.

I think I forced it for about three days and then he sapped my will to live so I just said, PFFFFFTTTTT and pretended that Sagebooks was not part of our Chinese lifestyle choices.

WHAT ELSE?

I mean, it was Christmas and Winter Break so my husband was home and when he’s home, I try to not be home (or at least, hide upstairs), and it’s really difficult to remember to teach your kid Chinese when you’re cozy in bed, under flannel sheets, watching attractive Koreans sing, dance, and act.

Oh, you meant with the Chinese-ing.

I find it amusing that Glow Worm still confuses 果/guo3/fruit/ with 東/dong/east/. They do look a lot alike, but you’d think that he’d figure it out from context! I guess he’s reading and not paying attention to WHAT he’s reading.

This disappoints me.

But at the same time, his Chinese tutor claims that Glow Worm recognizes about 800-1000 characters (which is quite a spread so maybe it’s better to claim that he has been exposed to 800-1000 characters). And thus, I’m not super pushing Sagebooks some weeks because I know that he is at least getting Chinese from our tutor and I’m not solely responsible.

The beauty of outsourcing!

Anyhow, here’s a spoiler alert for the next update: the New Year and another week of Winter Break happened. So, erm… prepare accordingly.