Happy Chinese New Year 2016!
My silly girls, Amelia (age 22 months) and Erika (5 and 3/4 years old, as she puts it).
Amelia's "weird" expression is her saying the word "cheese" with a lot of emphasis. Erika has a placating "are we done yet?" expression.
The pink silk brocade jacket that Amelia is wearing was purchased by my (now deceased) mother, back when she lived in Shanghai, China. I think it may have been 2009 or 2010, before my first daughter was even born, when my mother purchased 5 or so outfits in varying sizes, for her future grandchildren. I scoffed then, but now that she is gone, when I put this jacket on Amelia for New Year's this year, and Brian commented that it looked a tad too small (hence it's not buttoned up...), I simply said "but my mother bought it for her" and he dropped the subject.
It is tradition on Chinese New Year (which is really a 15-day celebration) to wear red and/or new clothes.
Children (and really, it's any unmarried folk; though normally once you reach your 30s, people stop giving it to you) are given "ang paos" (or "hong paos" in Mandarin, sometimes also called "lai see" in Cantonese). It translates to "red envelopes" and they are the packets you see in Erika's hand. That's her loot from going to ONE Chinese New Year party! When we left, she said with solemn reflection: "I do like money on Chinese New Year..."
Crying is taboo (or avoided at all costs), so children and babies are overwhelmingly placated. You're supposed to bend over backwards to keep them happy!! So this is also why children love the holidays.
In our household, we don't clean or take out the trash on the first two days of Chinese New Year. We also don't take showers or wash our hair on Chinese New Year. I think in some families, these two practices extend for the whole 15 days, but I just can't imagine...
Taboo topics during Chinese New Year include death, illnesses, or anything negative. Everybody has to try and be happy happy happy! We compliment each other, and say nice things, and try to be generally good to one another. It is believed that how you behave during Chinese New Year is a foretelling of how the rest of your year will go, so many Chinese will even avoid cutting anything (no knives or scissors) and in my household, I won't cook! (No burns or cuts!) We have to eat out! (It also minimizes the trash and the clean-up that I won't do on the first and second day of CNY).