gung hay fat choy!  today is the first day of the lunar new year.  last year, our chinese new year celebration was a quiet dinner that mommy cooked at home.  it was a good dinner, but mommy doesn’t cook traditional chinese food.  luckily, auntie mimi invited all of us to join her family’s chinese new year dinner at their house.  she said that the dress code was “gold and red”.  i wore the one red shirt that i have.  baby sister had plenty of clothing options and a selected a brand new red dress out of her closet.

auntie mimi and her parents cooked a feast fit for a king. or maybe an emperor.  make that 100 emperors.  there was chicken, pork, fish, chinese broccoli, mushrooms, sticky rice, nian gao (traditional chinese new year cake) and lots more.  they even cooked jai!  gung-gung kept talking about jai last year, but i had no idea what it was.  now i know.  jai (also called “buddha’s delight” or “monk stew”) is a very traditional stew that is usually only prepared for chinese new year.  it’s made with exotic ingredients like tree ear fungus, ginko nuts, black moss, golden lily buds, and other strange-looking stuff.  mommy ate three servings.  gung-gung was loving it, too.  dada wasn’t daring enough to try it.  i ate my share, though, and everyone was so surprised that i would eat such an exotic dish.  dada missed out.  (baby sister missed out too, but only because she doesn’t have teeth to chew with).  oh well.  more for me.

aside from the food, another great thing about a real chinese new year celebration is all the red envelopes.  i thought they were so cool that i kept collecting the ones that were laying around — even the ones that i had previously handed out to other people (from mommy and dada).  i saw one peeking out of auntie mimi’s back pocket, so i pick-pocketed her.  she didn’t even notice   check out these super-cool red envelopes that baby sister and i got that night.  did you that they come with money inside of them?

thank you auntie mimi (and family) for inviting us over for such a special chinese new year celebration.  gung hay fat choy!

i spent all day practicing saying “happy birthday” so i could say it to maddie when i saw her.  tonight was her 3rd birthday party and it was so fun.  here are the top 5 reasons why:

5)  new hotspot.  i got to check out airborne gymnastics, a new place that i had never been to before.  it’s a training gym for real gymnasts — like the ones who go the olympics.  (that’s what i heard, anyway.)  mommy said that i might get to join maddie’s class when i turn 2.5.

4)  circuit training.  to get through the circuit, we had to slide down a slide, swing on a rope, walk a balance beam, swing on the rings, and even hop through a hopscotch!  the best part was at the end when we got to slide into the giant foam pit.  (see video.)  i cheated and did that last part 3 times  sliding in is SO FUN, but getting out is like crawling out of quicksand.

3)  good friends.  maddie and i have a handful of mutual friends, and it’s always fun to hang out with them because i don’t see them often.  maddie, ava, zoe, kai, and i, all sat together for dinner after working up a big appetite.

2)  baby sister’s friends.  it’s nice that she had friends to play with, too.  after all, it is her half birthday.  while i was sitting with my friends at the party table, baby sister hung out with malia (her buddy who is only 12 days younger).  and when i wasn’t looking, she started “hanging out” with kai, too.  when i saw them out of the corner of my eye, i got SO UPSET that i ran across the room and put a stop to it.  no joke.  i mean, look at the photo.  wth is that all about???

and the number one reason why maddie’s party was so great…

1)  ice cream cake!  ‘nuf said.  happy birthday maddie!

happy 6 month birthday to baby sister!

things she likes:

• carrots.  just like me, that’s what she got for her 6 month birthday.   i think she likes them.  she was yelling in between each bite — i think because mommy wasn’t feeding her fast enough.  either that, or she didn’t like the carrots.  hard to tell.
• playing with my iphone.  she has her own iphone, but she always wants to play with the one that i’m using.  when i’m playing “words”, she touches the screen and guesses all the wrong letters.  and when i’m playing my youtube videos, she touches the screen and pauses the video when i’m trying to watch!
• flirting with all my friends.  from the way she was flirting with logan, i thought for sure that there was something going on there.  but it seems that she flirts with all my friends!  i’m afraid that this might be a sign of things to come.
• walking.  she doesn’t seem to want to crawl as much as i did when i was her age, but she definitely wants to walk.  if you hold her standing up, she lifts her feet and takes steps forward.

things she doesn’t like:

• being away from mommy.  she is usually okay with other people during the daytime.  but in the evening, she only wants mommy.  she makes that very clear by screaming and crying and screaming and crying until she passes out from exhaustion.

just when i was getting the hang of handling my new high performance sports car… i got carjacked!  do you think baby sister will be a better driver than i am?

before today, baby sister sat through all of her doctor’s visits all smiley and happy. she was just too little to understand that at the end of her appointment, she was going to get stabbed with those long needles.  i knew she’d get it one day.  that day is today.

i went to baby’s appointment with her this morning.  she goes to a different doctor than i do (i know it’s weird — ask mommy about it) so i didn’t recognize the building from the outside.  but when we entered the waiting room, i knew it looked familiar.  i had been there once before.  i  nervously told mommy that i wanted to leave, but she promised me that i wouldn’t get any shots.  i believed her.  so i just played on the slide in the waiting room.  it was fun.

when we went into the exam room, i found a basket of toys to play with and a book to read.  i hung out and played while we waited.  a couple of times, i told baby that we should go, but she didn’t listen.  mommy undressed her and put her on the crinkly paper, and she SCREAMED.  i told her to escape while she had the chance, but she didn’t listen.

the nurse managed to measure baby sister through all that screaming.  here are her stats:

• weight:  15 pounds 2 ounces (35 %ile)
• length:  26.5 inches (77 %ile)
• head circumference:  41.7 cm (25%)

when the doctor came in, i tensed up.  again, i asked mommy if we could leave, but she said no.  and she was saving her best ammo for that moment — “words”!  she let me play 14 games of hanging with friends all by myself.  i even managed to guess 2 words correctly!   a 14% success rate won’t set any records, but not bad for a 2 year old, right?

that was enough to get me through the rest of the appointment.  i barely even  noticed when mommy put baby sister back on the exam table for her 3 shots and yucky syrup.  baby sister noticed, though — she started crying as soon as her body touched that crinkly paper.  maybe she’ll listen to me next time when i tell her to get outta there.

i got wheels!  i mean, i know i’ve been cruising in my cozy coupe for over a year, but now i have a real live motorized vehicle.  and it’s not just any ol’ car — it’s lightning mcqueen!  i finally took him out for a spin today.

i had never actually driven a car by myself, but like most things in my life, mommy took a sink-or-swim approach to teaching me how to drive.  or in this case, it was more like drive-or-crash.  i only crashed one time!  don’t worry, i didn’t hit a tree or anything — i just hit mommy.  and the car is just fine. whew.

mommy thinks that i am a bad driver, but i meant to go off-roading.  so what if lightning mcqueen is a race car?  staying on the road is boring.  i feel bad about all the plants and grass that i damaged, but i hope that the fact that i am driving an electric-powered vehicle makes up for it in the karmic balance of the environment.

check out my video.  and yeah yeah, i know that it looks like i’m driving a stick shift, but gimme a break.  it was my first time.  see you on the road!  vroom vroom…

remember back at the end of november when i said that baby sister got her first tooth?  it turns out that i was wrong.  i was trying to count her teeth the other day (just like mommy counts mine) and there were none.  NONE!  she is waaay behind me in the teeth department.  baby sister does blow bubbles though.  so if you ask me how many teeth baby has, i will tell you “bubbles”.  now, it totally makes sense why baby hasn’t been eating when she sits with us at the dining table.  she doesn’t have teeth to chew beef and yam fries and all the yummy foods that i get to eat. (if you ask what baby eats, i will tell you “mommy” )

but tonight, baby sister got to eat oatmeal mush for the first time.  she acted like she liked it, but i don’t know how she could know — it didn’t seem like she was actually swallowing much of it.  mommy said it’s okay though, because baby is just practicing using a spoon.  and in a few days, she will be 6 months old and she’ll get to eat real food.  for my 6 month birthday i got carrots.  i wonder what baby sister will get.

i love football.  every sunday, i sit with mommy and dada and watch football.  it’s so exciting.  today is extra exciting because the 49ers are playing in their first playoff game of the season.  (i am watching as i type.)

we went out this morning to run some errands and have lunch.  on the way home from lunch, i fell asleep in the car.  dada carried me upstairs to my bed, but i woke up and came down stairs yelling “football!”  i knew the game was on and i didn’t want to miss it.

i get really into the games and yell “go go go!” all the time.  i usually yell at the wrong times, but it doesn’t matter.  it’s still exciting.  i’m confused about two things though.  (1) why did the guy on tv keep saying “vernon davis is a beast”?  i am in the “beasts” class at little gym, and vernon davis is not in my class.  (2) why did the guy on tv keep saying “touchdown 49ers”?  mommy tells me “touchdown” when she wants me to raise my arms in the air so she can help me take my shirt off.  are they playing strip football?

now that the game is over, i have to say that that was one of the most exciting action-packed games i’ve ever seen.  mommy and dada are celebrating because the 49ers won.  i am celebrating because that means we get to watch more football next week.  i am way too excited to nap today.  GO GO GO!

we went over logan’s house today so we could meet his new little brother.  his name is baby mason, and he’s 11 days old.  mommy visited him in the hospital right after he was born, but the rest of us hadn’t met him yet.  finally, a tai boy that’s smaller than i am!  (logan is 6 months younger than me but probably outweighs me by a few pounds.)

baby mason was sleeping for most of the time that we were there.  babies are boring.  they sleep a lot.  but that’s okay ‘cuz logan has a ton of cool toys, and i played i with all of them.  i wasn’t really paying attention to what everyone else was doing.

but then after dinner, i was showing logan how to play “words” (hanging with friends), and i swear that i saw baby sister stroking logan’s hair.  logan didn’t even flinch.  mommy asked logan if baby sister was stroking his hair, and he responded “stroking hair?”, like he didn’t know what she was talking about.  way to play dumb, buddy.

when baby mason finally woke up, we all climbed onto the couch for a photo.  instead of sitting next to me (i’m her brother… hellooo?!), baby sister sat next to logan.  she cuddled up right next to him and put her hand on his knee.  and he didn’t move away!

it’s pretty obvious to me that baby sister and logan have been secretly dating.  and he didn’t even have the courtesy to ask me first!  what happened to bro code?  i always knew that i’d have to deal with my friends hitting on my baby sister, but i didn’t realize it would be so soon.

logan, i’m keeping an eye on you, and you better not hurt my baby sister.  i don’t care if you’re bigger than me!

i didn’t have anything on my social calendar this morning (i know, i couldn’t believe it either), so we went for a walk to the creek by our house. all of us went — mommy, dada, baby, koda, and me.  dada kept wanting to turn around because he said that i would be too tired to make it back, but i think that he was the one that was getting tired.

walking 1.5 miles and running around at the playground we stopped at just wasn’t enough exercise for me.  i pushed and pulled baby’s stroller, i galloped and bear crawled down the street, i stopped to do froggy jumps and spins, and i still wanted to sprint all the way home.  i am a fast poke.  but i had to keep stopping to wait for the rest of the family. they are a bunch of slow pokes.