when you think of winter sports, you think of ice skating and snowboarding, right?  not us.  this winter, sienna played her 1st session of soccer, and i played my 3rd session of basketball.

remember when i first started playing basketball and i couldn’t dribble?  i still can’t.  after a few bounces, the ball gets away from me (which is actually an improvement from when i first started).  but give me a break — the sessions are only 4 weeks long (which means 4 total classes) and only one of those classes is focused on dribbling.  so i’ve had exactly 3 days of dribbling practice in my life.  same goes for shooting.  but at least i can make a shot once in awhile.  like on this video.  (don’t tell anyone, but the shot i took right before this one was an air ball.)  the best part of my basketball game is my defense.  i am good at “shuffle shuffle shuffle defense!” (stretching out my arms and shuffling laterally).  sometimes, i guard mommy and daddy while they’re walking around the house or the store or wherever.  they don’t like it because i’m always in their way.  duh.  that’s the point.  told you i was good at it.

i really like basketball, but i’m not sure if i’m going to get to play again next session.  i already do karate and swimming year-round, and i really want to sign up for tee-ball and tennis in the spring.  mommy says that there are not enough days in the week for all of my activities.

during the winter session, sienna took her first mommy & me soccer class.  in that class, they didn’t play real scrimmages, they just did silly games with the coach to learn some basic skills.  sienna says she liked it but she didn’t always seem to be into it.  she especially disliked one of the games that they played on the last day of class.  the coach pretended to be a pinata.  the kids were supposed to kick a soccer ball to hit the coach, and if they hit him, he threw “candy” (colored discs) into the air.  sienna refused to kick the coach.  that game really upset her.

sienna isn’t very good at dribbling a soccer ball.  i think the slick surface of the gym floor made ball control a challenge.  she really wants to play again next session, and since it’ll be springtime, the class will be held out on the grassy field.  mommy thinks that will help her with ball control.  i just think that’ll make her more tired.  i don’t like playing soccer outdoors because the grass makes the ball go shorter distances when you kick it and the sun makes me all hot and sweaty.

have you ever heard of zula patrol?  no?  me neither.  at least, not until matthew invited us to go see zula patrol at the de anza planetarium.

to prepare for the show, we watched a couple of episodes of zula patrol.   it’s a cartoon about some aliens and their adventures in space.  they teach you about planets and solar science.  it’s okay.  we never really got into it.

but the show at the planetarium was really cool.  it was our first time in a planetarium.  the seats are big and comfy and they recline way back.   and the coolest part is that the show was projected on the dome-shaped ceiling!  i enjoyed the ~20 minute show, but sienna couldn’t sit still for that long.  plus, she didn’t like the dark truder, the “bad guy”.

after the show, the ceiling turned into the night sky as the moon and stars were projected onto the domed ceiling.  a man told some corny jokes and taught us about some constellations.  that was okay.  i bet the older kids enjoyed it.  i just thought it was cool that they had a grown up version of my twilight turtle.

the best part of the evening was running around (and around and around) with our friends after the show.  and after that, dinner at galleria!  it was just like old times. 🙂

a couple of weeks ago, mommy noticed a lump about the size of a small grape on koda’s chest.  it didn’t seem to be bothering him but we figured we should get it checked out.  just in case.

so today, koda went to see dr. laura.  she examined the lump and then extracted some samples.  koda was so good and stayed very still while dr. laura stuck a needle in him.  twice.

after dr. laura examined the samples, she determined that it was mostly fatty tissue in there.  that’s good news.  that means that the lump is a harmless lipoma, just like we thought.

all this time we wondered how koda stayed so skinny.  now we know.  he stores all his fat in a lump in his chest — just like i do with my neck rolls and sienna does with her chipmunk cheeks!

when i was 6 months old,  i had my first sleepover.  but at that time, logan was only 9 days old and didn’t sleep much.  he wasn’t very good company.

this weekend, i had my first real sleepover.  kai-kai came and spent the afternoon with us, had dinner with us, and then spent the night.  his mommy (auntie victoria) stayed too, so i guess you could say that mommy also had a sleepover. 🙂

after dinner, kai-kai and i washed up for bed, and then we crawled into the tent that daddy pitched for us.  i had never slept in a tent before, so i was very excited to go camping.  you’ve heard of car camping?  this was loft camping.

we knew it was going to be a bad idea to let sienna sleep in the tent with us, especially because (1) i am a very active sleeper and (2) sienna has a really hard time falling asleep when there are distractions.  but she threw a fit when mommy suggested that she should sleep in her own bed, so into the tent she came.  (it was no accident that i was in the middle between kai-kai and sienna.)  the three of us were giggly and wiggly for awhile, but we eventually quieted down and started to fall asleep.

mommy and auntie were downstairs watching “apocalytpo“, a movie that mommy described as the most graphically violent movie that she’d ever seen.  and i thought that mommies watched chick flicks when they hang out together.  i had fallen asleep, and everything was fine.  that is, until i accidentally rolled over onto sienna’s pillow.  (i wasn’t kidding when i said that i was an active sleeper.)  sienna forcefully moved my head off her pillow by head-butting me really hard.  twice.  i cried.

daddy took sienna out of the tent and put her into her bed, but she was hysterical and would not calm down.  she promised to be nice, so she got one more chance to sleep in the tent with us boys.  but guess what.  she blew it and landed herself back into her own bed.  the two strike rule is in full effect in our house.

kai-kai and i learned from sienna’s example, and we were on our best behavior.  we settled down quickly and didn’t make a sound.  we went straight to sleep and didn’t leave the tent the entire night.

we had a really fun time hanging out and we hope that kai-kai and auntie victoria can sleep over again soon.  next time, mommy is going to pick the movie, though.

i think it’s kind of odd when people are into music that is before their time. like, if mommy or daddy liked doo-wop, that would be weird because they weren’t around in the 50’s and 60’s when that music was popular.

well, sienna and i have a new favorite song. sienna calls it “my mermaid song”. you might know it as “part of that world” from “the little mermaid” movie (which we’ve never seen). the movie came out in 1989, 20 years before we were born. i guess that makes us kind of odd.

remember when i said that sienna could sing in tune? i was wrong. so very wrong.

we’ve been eating beets since we were babies (mommy used to make pureed beets for us), but we don’t eat them very often anymore.  so when we found them on our dinner plates tonight, we weren’t very excited. they looked spicy.  red things are usually spicy, right? mommy promised us that they wouldn’t be spicy, so we ate them. reluctantly.

then mommy took a photo of our beet-dyed tongues, and that was SO cool. beets suddenly became very exciting.

mommy took the photo of sienna, but mine is a selfie.

what do you think?  daddy says we look like rabid animals. i say vampires.

now, we want to eat beets all the time!

when we first moved to san ramon, one of the things that we missed was all the kid activities that used to be so (relatively) close to home.  we were no longer near the children’s discovery museum, or happy hallow, or gilroy gardens, or theatres/arenas that hosted performances like “sesame street live”.  but we’re settled in our new house now, and we love it.  we still go out to do fun things sometimes, but we really enjoy just hanging out at our house and in our neighborhood.

don’t worry.  we have not become recluses.  we still see our friends.  like last weekend, isaac came over to our house and we rode our bikes to the park and played there all afternoon.  we stayed close to home and hung out with friends this weekend, too.

on saturday, maddie and malia came to hang out with us.  yup, me and three girls.  now i know how sienna feels all the time when she plays with me and my buddies.  sienna and malia mostly played doll house, but maddie and i had fun with my garbage truck and i taught her a game that i invented using the fake money from my cash register.

and then on sunday, i had my first playdate with a friend from school.  jero lives in our neighborhood, so mommy and i walked over to his house while daddy was putting sienna down for a nap.  jero has a bunch of movies, so he asked me which one i wanted to see.  mommy was hoping that we’d pick “frozen” (which is not out on DVD yet), but we decided on the one that jero said had a garbage robot and another robot that shoots.  how could a boy say no to that?  can you guess what movie that is?  “wall-e”.  sooo exciting.

yes, it was so exciting that we watched about 5 minutes of it and then got bored and went to play.  ava came over to play with us, too.  she is a girl from school who lives a couple of doors down from jero.  one of the reasons why we chose the school that sienna and i are currently going to is so that we would make friends who live close to us.  the plan is working!   also, jero will be in my transitional-K class next year.  and the following year, ava will join us in our kindergarten class.  too bad my girlfriend maria lives on the other side of our community and will be going to a different school than us. 🙁

last week, sienna started swimming by herself in the yellow starfish class.  and guess what.  she passed the level today!  we were all so surprised because she only got 2 circles marked off last week.  so that means she must have completed the other 5-6 skills today.

at our swim school, you get to ring the bell whenever you pass a level, so sienna got to do that today.  it was her first time.  it took her a couple of tries, but she finally made the bell ring, and everyone cheered for her.

now she’s a green dolphin just like me.  mommy has always said that sienna would catch up with me and my swimming skills soon, but nobody thought it would actually happen.  (i’m a pretty good swimmer, you know.)  but it looks like it might happen sooner than later.  i was so excited because i thought that sienna was going to be joining my class, but it turns out that she will stay in her current class because it spans yellow and green levels.  it’s probably for the best, because sienna seems to be pretty fond of her instructor, mr. jacob.  (yup, she kissed his hand again, today.)

i just finished up a one-month trial of karate classes.  i didn’t need the full month, though —  i was hooked after just one class.  even though it’s really expensive, i really like it, so mommy and daddy agreed to sign me up.  tonight was my first official class and i got to wear my new karate uniform.  kiai!  (i would have spelled that “kee-yah!” but i just learned that the word is actually “kiai” and it means “energetic yell”.)

even though i call it “karate”, the dojo i go to actually teaches a style of martial arts called kajukenbo.  it’s a hybrid of  KA(rate), JU(do/jitsu), KEN(po), and BO(xing).  get it?  KA-JU-KEN-BO.  kajukenbo!  cool huh?  this style was developed by five martial art masters in their respective arts and was founded in hawaii.

i love karate because i get to learn how to do kicks and blocks (and hopefully, i’ll learn punches soon!).  mommy and daddy love it because it reinforces respect and discipline.  the dojo also uses the one merit badge system in which we focus on a different virtue every 2-3 weeks.  so far, we’ve studied CONFIDENCE, and INTEGRITY.  tonight, COURTESY was introduced.  generally, mommy and daddy love these teachings, but they think i might be taking the CONFIDENCE thing a little too far.  like, the other day when mommy was carrying a plate of food from the stove to the dining table, i offered to help.  mommy said it was too heavy for me and that i might drop it.  i told her that i wanted to try and that i had confidence that i could do it.  so obviously, she had to let me try.  and guess what.  i believed in myself, and i did it!  that’s what confidence is all about.

i like karate so much that i even practice my skills every day.  sienna “practices” too.  she can’t wait to start doing karate, but she has to wait one more year until she’s old enough.  i wonder if i can be a black bet before then. 😛

the webMD website lists these as age-appropriate chores.

chores for children ages 2 to 3

• put toys away
• fill pet’s food dish
• put clothes in hamper
• wipe up spills
• dust
• pile books and magazines

chores for children ages 4 to 5

any of the above chores, plus:

• make their bed
• empty wastebaskets
• bring in mail or newspaper
• clear table
• pull weeds, if you have a garden
• use hand-held vacuum to pick up crumbs
• water flowers
• unload utensils from dishwasher
• wash plastic dishes at sink
• fix bowl of cereal

sienna and i do a lot of these chores, plus the following:

• transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer and start the dryer
• sort clean laundry
• fold towels (i do this, but sienna doesn’t.  i also fold other items, but those usually end up getting refolded.)
• put away our own folded clothes in our drawers (i do this, but sienna doesn’t yet.  i think she should start.)
• set the table for meals with appropriate tableware and utensils for the whole family
• pull in empty trash bins from the curb to the backyard (i do this, but sienna still needs help because she is too little)’
• furminating koda
• filling koda’s water bowl (i do this, not sienna.  she’s not strong enough to carry the 2-liter bottle full of water from the sink to koda’s water bowl)

and that doesn’t even count the chores that we help with but cannot do on our own, like vacuuming, cleaning the wood floor, etc.  yesterday, we added a new chore to the list:

• pick up koda’s poo from the backyard

we eagerly offered to pick up poo yesterday.  we had never done it before, but we’d watched mommy and daddy do it enough times that we knew how.   mommy and daddy were so surprised because it’s something that they had never asked us to do before.

now, i think it’s time that we start talking about earning an allowance.