Parenting is most enjoyable experience of life.  Parenting is not one way, it is a mutually learning and enrichment experience.  To an extent, ‘childing’, if you will, is as important as – and certainly more fun than – parenting in the daily parent-child interactions.   Children teach parents as much, if not more.  Over the last decade, I have recorded little stories on my daughter’s growth, mostly in my Chinese blog.  Now that she is getting to the last year of high school and soon will leave home for her own adventures in college, I think it is time to ‘publish’ a collection of them in English, titled "Little Stories of Tian Tian", to share with parents as well as kids in different stages of their life, and to record the frustration, the fun, and the love that have accompanied us.  

It all started with that moment 17 years ago of which Tanya had her own version of description when she was 10, as follows:

Chapter 1. The birth of an angel

I am a born Canadian!



Vancouver

Ten years ago in March 1996, Ahh, Ahh, screamed my mom in pain and agony. It was the 2nd week I was in the hospital. I was finally going to be born after being 2 weeks late for my birth. This is the day I am going to be born in the Vancouver Women’s Hospital. As soon as I was born, spank! The doctor had spanked me. Immediately I cried, “wah wah!!”. My mom and dad were so happy that they had brought me a 50 centi., 7.5 pound baby into the world. As soon as I cried, my mom was immediately thinking of a name for me. First my Mom exclaimed, “let’s name her Tian Tian”. But my Dad disagreed and corrected, “Mary, that’s a Chinese name. If you want to translate that to English you can choose either Tanya or Tina.” So my mom quickly decided to choose the name Tanya because Tanya sounded like a better name.

Here I am!

from  

Tanya’s Amazing Life by Tanya