this is how sienna has been learning her colors.

she must not be very good at it because daddy makes her practice all the time — like, all day long.

right after we made this video, daddy asked sienna for a red m&m and she gave him a green one. i think it was just an unlucky guess. daddy now thinks that sienna is color blind.

sienna usually calls me “kai-kai”, sometimes, just “kai”. i always tell her “i not kai-kai”.  that’s not my name, and i don’t like it.  the other day, i got so mad that i pushed the chair she was sitting in.  mommy edited out that part of the video because she didn’t want there to be evidence of my violent tendencies.

i used to think that sienna was asking for my friend kai-kai (her boyfriend), so i would tell her that he was at his home.  but then mommy explained to me that sienna was trying to say my name, but she can’t because she’s just a baby.

for weeks, i’ve been trying to teach sienna to say my name properly. she can say “kai” and she can say “den”. but she won’t put them together.  sometimes, when you ask her what my name is, she’ll say “mama” or “dada”.  she must have seen this video that i made when i was baby kyden.  she thinks she’s so funny.

we got the keys to our new house 2 months ago, but we haven’t moved in yet.  we don’t want our house to get lonely, so we go and visit it every weekend.  (mommy also goes there about one time during the week to accept a package delivery.)  it’s been fun exploring the local restaurants and finding new places to eat.  my favorite is “the bi bim bap place” (mix & eat bob’s house).  we’ve eaten there or picked up food to-go at least 3 times already.

our new house is over 5 miles from the freeway.  originally, we were reluctant to buy a house so far away from the freeway, but it’s a quick and easy drive.  and the road is lined with hundreds of cherry blossom trees, which mommy thinks are sooo pretty.  i don’t really care about the blossoms, but i hope they grow lots of cherries.  yummy!

usually, when we go to the new house, i show sienna how to play with all the new toys we have there.  (mommy stashed most of the toys we got for christmas at the new house.  she did it so we wouldn’t lose all the little pieces before we moved, but as an unexpected result, it also makes us super excited to go visit the new house!)  sometimes, cousin zoey comes over to hang out with us.  when she does, she and i run WILD in our big empty house.  sienna does her best to keep up with us and tries not to get trampled.

when we got to the house today, sienna was ready to pass out.  mommy suggested driving around for a few minutes until sienna fell asleep, but daddy had a better idea — let her take first nap in her new room!  what do you think of sienna’s room?  we are going for a minimalistic look.  and like auntie cindy commented, it’s completely child-proofed 😀

since sienna was sleeping, i was free to help mommy and daddy do stuff around the house.  as much as i like playing with our new toys, i like working around the house.  so far, i’ve painted the accent wall above our fireplace.  i’ve touched up the scuff marks in gung-gung’s room.  i’ve taken out the trash.  i’ve stuck felt pads onto the legs of our furniture so it won’t scratch our wood floors.  and i sweep the floors every time we go there.  next time we visit the house, i am going to help mommy finish assembling the tv stand so i can stick felt pads on the bottom.

i love going to our new house, and i keep talking about how much i want to live there.  mommy and daddy said we are going to move within the month.  but they said that last month, too.

i had my last day of school last week.  so until we move to our new house (and i start going to my new school), i get to stay home with miss denise and sienna.  i thought i was going to just kick back and enjoy my time off — like spring break — but mommy clearly has something different in mind.  last night, she gave me a pop quiz.

mommy’s phone ran out of memory just as i was saying who i’m going to marry. bummer, huh? i guess you’ll just have to wait and see 😉

how do you think i did on my pop quiz? i’m pretty sure i aced it.

nolan and camille live at the end of our cul de sac, just a few doors down from us.  nolan is 9 months younger than me, and camille is 8 months younger than sienna.  they are our best friends in the neighborhood.

today was camille’s birthday party.  a lot her friends and family came over, and she had a jumpy house for all the kids to play in.  as we walked over to their house, i was carrying camille’s present.  but as soon as i saw the jumpy house, i gave the present to daddy and made a beeline for the inflatable.  surprisingly, sienna did too.  mommy and daddy didn’t let us go into the jumpy house right away.  we had to go into the house to say hi to everyone, drop off the gift, and wish camille a happy birthday.  so we did all that, and then we got to jumping.

i jumped around like a monkey with the rest of the kids.  sienna was the littlest kid in the jumpy house and she doesn’t know how to jump, so i thought she’s be scared.  plus, when daddy took sienna into the bounce house at super franks (when we went for isaac’s party), she was not a fan.  but today, she loved it.  she ran around and fell down a lot, but what she loved the most was chasing after the soccer ball.  that’s right, jumpy house + soccer ball = endless entertainment.  who knew?  i’m going to have to remember that for sienna’s next birthday party.

sienna and i had a lot of fun at camille’s party, and it was so convenient that it was just a few steps away from our house.  happy birthday camille!  (she’s not in this picture because she fell asleep during her party.)

we sure are going to miss nolan and camille when we move.  hopefully, we’ll make more friends our age when we move to our new house 🙂

you’ve heard of 30 minute meals, right?  we don’t do a lot of of meal planning around here, so we eat 30 minute meals all the time.  it usually goes something like this:

mommy:  what do you want to eat for dinner?

sienna:  cheese!

me:  noodles and pasta.

mommy usually makes whatever i ask for, and then adds some other things from the fridge to make a balanced meal.

koda gets 30 minute meals, too.  that is sort of a recent thing.  now that sienna get his food, it would take about 30 minutes for her to fill his bowl by herself.  do you remember when i first started getting food for koda?  i used to like to make koda wait.  unlike me, sienna asks for help so that she can make bigger scoops.  where’s the fun in that?

remember our new house?  daddy said that we would be living in it by now, so i gave a 30-day notice to my school at the end of january.  yesterday was my last day.  for my farewell celebration, mommy baked organic banana blueberry muffins for me to share with my friends at school.  not cupcakes, like a normal mom would make.  muffins.  organic muffins.  made with whole wheat.  how embarrassing.  but it actually turned out to be pretty great because the muffins were delicious and everybody loved them.  even my friend who is a super picky eater gobbled his up.  (note: my best school friend, jason, is not in the photo because he left early that day.  my teacher is not in the picture either.  she left to go have a baby 15 minutes before the photo was taken!)

well, guess what.  we haven’t moved yet.  it has been 6+ weeks since we got the keys to our new house, and we are not even close.   mommy and daddy took forever getting it painted and fixing up the little things that needed repair.  and then after it was painted, mommy decided that she didn’t like one of the colors, so we painted it again.

so now, no more excuses.  the house is pretty much ready for us.  we’re just not ready for it, yet.  we have so much stuff to pack that just thinking about it makes me tired.  every time mommy goes to the new house she brings something with her — a couple of jackets, a box of toys, our dining table…  she hopes that that strategy will help her avoid having to pack.  but at that rate, we won’t be moved until i start high school.  we’re at the point now where we can’t really move much else because our big things are things we use every day.  and the stuff that we don’t use every day doesn’t really need to be moved, ever.

i think we should just move our beds and the rest of our furniture and start living in our new house.  my guess is that we’ll be there by the end of the month.  we’ll just leave behind all the boxes of stuff (which have been unopened for years) and all the clothes and baby gear that we’ve outgrown.  they’ll be included as a free gift when we sell or rent our our current house 😀

it’s been awhile since i’ve given a sleep update.  sienna is sleeping pretty well on most nights.  she goes to bed around 9:00pm.  since she is not nursing at nighttime anymore, mommy doesn’t always have to be the one to put her to bed.  as long as she has minnie mouse and her two blankets, she’s fine.

sienna wakes up around 6:00am every day.  mommy gets sienna out of bed, brings her into her bed, and then nurses her.  that used to be enough to get sienna to go back to sleep for a little while, but not anymore.  i think that mommy isn’t making much milk these days, so there isn’t enough to fill sienna’s tummy.  mommy can sometimes stall sienna for about 30 minutes, but after that, sienna insists on going downstairs to eat breakfast.

i used to wake up at 6:00am every morning, too.  but now, i can sleep ’til 7:30 or 8:30am.  mommy is really looking forward to the day when sienna can sleep in that late because that means she will get to sleep in, too!

i am a really good sleeper.  at nighttime, i don’t need someone to stay with me until i fall asleep anymore.  i haven’t needed that for a few months, actually.  mommy or daddy can leave my room while i’m still wide awake, and i will just lie in bed until i fall asleep — as long as they leave my door open.  on some afternoons, i will even go up to my room by myself (reluctantly), and lay down and take a nap.

mommy can’t wait until sienna is as good of a sleeper as i am.  when i was 2 1/4 years old, i was sleeping in until 7:00am.  but maybe that’s because i was going to sleep at 10:00pm.  i think i will try to get sienna to stay up an extra hour with me.  maybe that will shift her sleep schedule and let everyone start getting more sleep around here.

mommy always says that playdates are more for mommies than for us kids.  i think that was true when i was baby kyden, but not anymore.  i like playing with my friends.  i ask about them all the time and i even ask to see them sometimes.

when the weather was warmer, edison used to meet me and sienna at the park every week.  but since it’s been cold and rainy lately, we haven’t seen him as much.  so today, we went over to edison’s house for a playdate.

i like going to edison’s house because he has so many fun toys to play with.  we played for hours (inside and outside) and then ate a yummy dinner that auntie ann cooked for us.  we could have called it a night at that point, and it would have been a pretty good playdate.  but it got better.

after dinner, we got to use the “mixer for making cookies” (stand mixer).  we mixed together flour, cream of tartar, salt, oil, water, and food coloring…  guess what we made.  sounds like bread, right?  wrong.  we made play-doh!

edison, sienna, and i each got our own station with a big ball of blue-green play-doh, a rolling pin, cookie cutters, molds, cars, trains, and even a birthday candle.  sienna and i made pretend cookies and cakes and we decorated them with real spices (like coriander and mint) and real candy sprinkles in fun colors and shapes.  edison preferred to make a mountain with his play-doh and drive his trains all over it.

but wait, there’s more.  after all the play-doh fun, we moved the party to the mini indoor play structure.  we all played on it, but sienna loved loved LOVED the slide.  climb, slide, run back, repeat — she was in a continuous loop.  she went on that slide dozens of times and would have stayed there all night long if we let her.

we had a great time playing at edison’s house.  it was like one of those toddler cooking classes + art studio time at the children’s discovery museum + open play at studio grow, all rolled into one.  edison can charge admission for playdates at his house.  i would buy a lifetime membership!

things she likes:

• piggy back rides.  she “holds tight” around mama’s or daddy’s neck and hangs on — they don’t even have to hold her up!
• filling koda’s bowl with food.  sometimes she only gets a few pieces of kibble in the scoop, and sometimes she spills a lot on the floor.  sienna and i alternate scoops so that it doesn’t take 15 minutes to fill koda’s bowl.
• playing fetch with koda.  sienna can’t throw the ball very far, but she seems to like it anyway.  i think it’s more fun for her than it is for koda.
• elmo, minnie mouse, and mickey mouse.  she calls them by name and gets so excited when she sees them in books, on boxes, on tv, or anywhere.
• my mickey mouse clubhouse CD.  as soon as she hears the first words of the song, she starts rocking out.  i’m going to have to make a video of it some time.  it’s so cute.
• pronouncing final consonants.  i used to make fun of her for saying “meel” instead of “milk”, “daw” instead of “dog”, and stuff like that.  she is getting so much better at saying words correctly.
• oranges, apples, and cheese.  those are the snacks that she always asks for.  she also loves almond butter, and i’m sure she would ask for that if she knew how.
• nursing.  she is down to one time a day (first thing in the morning) but she still asks for it often.
• wearing hair accessories.  i think she actually likes wearing them, but i bet it helps that i always tell her “you look so pretty!” whenever she puts on a headband or hair clip.
• fire.  she likes to (and asks to) burn logs in our fireplace.  on spare the air days, she settles for lighting candles.
• pushing buttons.  buttons run the world.  they open elevators.  dry our clothes.  make smoothies.  wash our dishes.  the list goes on.
• being carried.  this started a couple of weeks ago when sienna had the flu.  she was really needy and clingy and wanted to be carried everywhere.  but now, she’s healthy and feeling fine but still wants to be carried ALL THE TIME.

things she doesn’t like:

• being spoon-fed.  she always insists on feeding herself.
• sharing mommy.  i figured it out.  i used to think that sienna didn’t like it when mommy worked on her computer.  or when someone else (like me) sat on mommy’s lap.  but sienna just doesn’t like to share mommy with anyone or anything.  ever.