everyone says that 1st birthday parties are for grown ups — not for the kids. supposedly, 1 year olds are too little to remember or enjoy their own parties. mommy disagreed. the birthday parties that she planned for me and sienna were for us and our friends, and there was fun stuff planned for us kids to do. but mommy got it wrong.

i’m only 3 years old, but i’ve been to a lot of 1st birthday parties. off the top of my head, i can think of 16. at almost all of those parties, there were way more adults than kids (and i’m not just talking about parents), and there wasn’t really any kiddie entertainment.

today was mason’s 1st birthday party, and his was no different. there were a lot of grown ups and plenty of yummy food (real grown up food, not kid food!), but nothing really planned for us kids to do. i’m not complaining though — logan, chloe, and i made our own fun by running around the community center and sword-fighting with the serving spoons. sienna tried to keep up with us, but she wasn’t fast enough 😛 oh, and there were cute cupcakes and cake pops that auntie cheryl and uncle greg made to go with the sock monkey theme. themed desserts seem to be a mandatory requirement for 1st birthday parties. daddy said i could have one bite of the cupcake. i licked off half the frosting and was getting ready to take my one bite, but daddy said i was done. wth? he said i could have one bite. he didn’t say anything about licks. hmph.

anyway, happy birthday mason! sorry you didn’t get to join in on our sword fighting. i guess everyone is right — 1 year olds are too young to have fun at their own parties.

today, mommy got the official readout from the speech assessment that i had last month.  along with a comprehensive writeup by the speech pathologist, she got my scores from the standardized test i that i was given (preschool language scale, fourth edition).  the test measured auditory comprehension (understanding negatives in sentences, understanding spatial concepts, understanding time sequence, etc.) and expressive communication (completing analogies, responding to “why” questions by giving a reason, using “-er” ending to indicate “one who…”, etc.).  specific skills addressed were memory and attention span, logical thinking, grammar, vocab, and sensory discrimination.

this is the classification of scores:

131 and above:  upper extreme
116-130:  above average
85-115:  average
70-84:  below average
69 and below:  lower extreme

i got a score of 134, which is the 99th percentile.  the speech pathologist said that i am amazing (and not qualified for special education).  i guess my sister is not the only uh-mazing one around here 😉

all summer long, i was asking mommy when we would be going to another sharks game. she said that the next season would start in the fall. but then fall came and went, and there were no sharks games.

last october/november, i went through a phase where i just could not stop talking. i would propose different topics to discuss with anyone who would talk to me. this is a conversation that i had with mommy in early november 2012 (2.5 months ago).

this is also how i accidentally outed daddy for taking me to the donut store every morning on our way to school. i don’t eat any of the donuts, i only buy them for daddy. that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

anyway, the hockey season is finally back. the players and the owners must have come to an agreement — maybe they decided to share their donuts. our season tickets were delivered yesterday, and i have been begging to go to a game ever since. game on! and GO SHARKS GO!

sienna is one and a half years old today!

things shes like:

• being silly.  sienna has such a great sense of humor for a little girl.  she especially likes to make us laugh by pulling her sleeve over her hand to show us that her hand has disappeared.  we ask in feigned surprise “oh no!  where did your hand go?”  and then she pulls out her hand and giggles 😀
• music.  every time she hears music, she starts bopping her head and dancing around.
• using the potty.  she is doing so great going pee-pee on the potty.  not as good with the poo-poo, but nobody is complaining.  after all, she is only 18 months old!  after using the potty, she likes to wave bye-bye to her pee/poo as it flushes away down the toilet.  daddy tried to buy her pull ups today, but the smallest size is 2T-3T, which is the size that i wear.  way too big for sienna!
• drawing.  she holds a crayon properly, and she is very deliberate with the strokes.  she doesn’t scribble wildly like kids her age usually do.
• brushing her teeth.  she always insists on brushing her teeth after mommy gives her her bedtime feeding.  one time, mommy accidentally brushed her teeth before nursing her, and sienna insisted on brushing her teeth again!
• the big bath tub.  she stopped using the baby tub, and she loves her newfound freedom to move around from one end of the tub to the other.
• hitting.  she hits people for fun.  most of the time, i don’t mind because i know she’s not trying to hurt me.  but sometimes, i’m just not in the mood.
• doing anything that i’m doing.  that includes playing playing board games (or walking across the top of the board while my games are progress), blowing her nose, playing trains, climbing up my step stool, etc.

things she doesn’t like:

• sharing mommy.  she gets very upset when mommy holds another baby or if someone else (including me) sits on her lap.
• riding in the bike seat or going sledding facing forward.  daddy’s theory is that she wants to be able to see mommy.  daddy is going to try riding with sienna to see if she will like that better.

for greyson’s 2nd birthday, he invited us (and logan and mason) to tahoe for a 4-day snow weekend.  COOLEST BIRTHDAY PARTY EVER.

sienna and i started gathering snow clothes a week in advance, which meant that we had a whole week to talk about and get excited for our trip.  we were very confused about the “tahoe” part though, because the last time we checked, tahoe was for playing at the beach.  but mommy and daddy were right.  there was snow in tahoe.  lots!  we played out in the snow in the day time, and we played inside the house at night.  every night, we played board games (connect four was a surprise hit with the kids), played with trains, drew with crayons, and ran around like wild chickens.  and there was so much yummy food that auntie char and uncle ed brought — we ate pretty much all weekend long, non-stop.

people have been asking if we loved the snow.  yes and no.  i loved it.  sienna, not so much.  well, she liked it for short periods of time.

on friday, we went to adventure mountain.  it was a good sledding spot for little kids and big kids, too.  $20 per car, but no per-person lift ticket fees because there are no lifts.  that means that we got to ride up the mountain on the sled while our mommies and daddies pulled us.  over and over again.  going up the hill was almost as fun as sledding down 🙂  oh what fun it is to ride on a one-mommy/daddy open sleigh.  hey!  

i went sledding with logan and greyson while sienna and mason slept in the car.  sledding was fun.  i didn’t even get scared when mommy and i crashed twice on the first run.  she doesn’t know how to steer a sled, so we high-sided up the ice wall on the right.  and then again on the left.  bad mommy.

when sienna eventually woke up, i wanted to take her sledding.  as first, she flopped around and refused to sit on the sled.  we eventually figured out that she wanted to ride down facing mommy.  when we did that, she loved it.  she was grinning the whole way down and said “whoa” when we hit the little jump at the end.  and daddy thinks that sienna feels more comfortable when she can see mommy.  (remember, she didn’t like having her back to mommy on the bike ride, either).  i just think she just wanted to ride down the hill backwards 😉  check out the video that uncle ed took of us!

on saturday and sunday, we just played in the snow.  before our trip, all i could talk about was building a snowman, but i never got around to it during our trip.  i didn’t ride the sled or the snow bike down the ramp outside of our house, either.  i found something way more fun — playing fort!  uncle greg built us an awesome fort with tunnels and everything.  we played in there and threw lots of snowballs at our aunties and uncles.  sienna only threw 2-3 snowballs, and i don’t think mason played in the snow at all.  but greyson, logan, and i threw more than our share.  i’m pretty sure we beat the grown ups 50-0.  not that we were keeping score or anything 😉

we had so much fun in the snow, and we can’t wait to go again.  here are a few photos that some of the grown ups took.  i hope to get a hold of more.

happy birthday greyson.  thanks for inviting us to the coolest birthday party of all time!

a couple of weeks ago, i wrote about how sienna started asking to use the potty.  but as soon as she started sleeping through the night, she stopped going.  so we thought that the whole thing was just a fluke.  but for the past week, sienna has been using the potty successfully 5+ times each day.  and it’s not like anyone ever pressures her or even encourages her to go — we just help her when she tells us that she needs to go.

well right now, we are in tahoe for a 4-day weekend.  (i’ll give a full recap of the weekend later, but i just have to pause to tell you how amazing my sister is.)  during the long drive up, sienna said “poo-poo” (which really just means that she has to use the potty) 5 minutes after we had made a pit stop for me.  we didn’t stop for her.  and during the weekend, we have been out playing in the snow all bundled up like eskimos, and not taking sienna to the potty.  plus, we are in an unfamiliar place, and not keeping to our regular routines.  i thought for sure that all of those things would make sienna forget about using the potty for the weekend, and maybe forever.  well, not forever, but maybe for another year or so.  but not so.

sienna has been using the potty successfully all weekend (so far).  all the grown-ups are amazed.  i am amazed too, but mostly because i can’t figure out how she pees, since she doesn’t have a penis.  where does the pee come from???  anyway, i think it’s official — my 17-month old sister is potty training herself.

i take some of the credit for sienna’s self-potty-training — she has been watching me do it for a long time, and she always wants to copy me.  so it makes sense, right?  but there’s something else that i noticed this weekend that is also pretty amazing.  sienna holds a crayon in proper writing position.  what?!  crazy, right?   i don’t even hold a crayon properly yet, so i have no idea where she learned that from.

oh, and look closely at the photo.  did you notice that sienna is left-handed?  she definitely gets that from me 😀

sometime last week, we all wanted to go biking.  sienna and i changed into our long-sleeved shirts and put on our socks and shoes.  mommy pulled our bikes pulled out of the garage and then helped us put on our jackets, gloves, and helmets.  30 minutes later, we were finally ready to go biking.  we ran outside, super excited… and it was raining 🙁

over the weekend, we finally got to go biking.  hooray!  mommy had to raise the seat and handle bars on my bike.  a LOT.  either i’m growing, or my bike shrank when it was sitting out on the rain the other day.

i had a blast riding around, as usual.  i raced against mommy and sienna, and guess who won.  i did.  of course.  sienna was not a fan of biking.  she kept trying to squirm out of the bike seat and turn around to face mommy.   sienna was much happier once she was off the bike.  at least she got to break in the new helmet that she got for christmas and the warm puffy jacket that she got for our upcoming snow trip.  (i think she looks like a snowman in that jacket because it’s so big on her!)

mommy thinks that sienna didn’t like the bike ride because she was tired and wanted to be held.  i think she wanted to nurse.  it seems like sienna always wants to nurse.  she even learned how to say “nurse” so she can beg mommy for it.  mommy tries to say no, but sienna literally pulls mommy’s shirt off.  mommy gets frustrated sometimes, so i often remind her “when i was baby kyden, sometimes i nurse”.  sienna, i got your back 😉

i stopped wearing diapers during the day time last march.  i guess you could say that that’s when i was potty trained, but it was a long process.  i almost never had accidents when we were out and about, but i often had accidents when i was at school or at home.  accidents, happen.  they happened at least once a week, and sometimes it was many times a day.  everyone was really frustrated because they knew that i wasn’t having accidents — i knew when i needed to pee, and i could obviously hold it long enough to make it to the potty.  mommy eventually came up with a theory that i only had “accidents” in places where i had a change of clothes immediately available.  it made sense, since everyone knows how much i hate being wet or dirty.  so what to do?

one of my uncles suggested that if i had an “accident”, i should stay in my pee-soaked clothes for 30 minutes before i got to change.  mommy vetoed that idea.

and then one of my aunties suggested that mommy throw away my pee-soaked clothes if i had an “accident”.  mommy was willing to try that.

so that’s our current deal.  if i pee in my pants, mommy will throw away my clothes.  i’m not really all that attached to my underwear or pants, so the threat of losing them doesn’t really bother me.  my real incentive to stay dry is that i don’t want to have to walk around without pants and let everyone see me half naked.

it has been a month now, and i’ve only had one accident — and it really was an accident.  i was getting on the potty but i couldn’t get my pants off in time.  i am doing pretty great overall — i go to the potty on my own without being reminded.  but i do need to work on not waiting until the very last minute before heading to the bathroom.

i still wear a pull-up at night.  and every morning when i get up, it is very wet and full.  mommy’s theory is that i know i’m wearing a pull up, so i just pee in it when i wake up.  it’s easier than getting out of my warm bed and then stumbling to the potty when i’m still half-asleep.  we’ll tackle that problem another day.

a week ago, we launched operation kitty cat in hopes of getting sienna to sleep through the night, in her own bed.  i already wrote about the first night and the 1 hour and 45 minute ordeal.  on the second night, sienna woke up in the middle of the night, as expected.  mommy spent only 30 minutes repeating the cycle of (1) calming sienna down so she’d stop crying, (2) putting sienna back in her own bed, (3) singing/talking to soothe her to sleep, (4) waiting for sienna to doze off (waiting father and farther each time until she was eventually outside of her room).  after mommy got back into bed, sienna cried for 4-5 more minutes, and then fell back to sleep.  after a couple of days, we realized that no matter how long mommy or daddy stayed with sienna, she always cried when they left.  and then she’d fall asleep.  so really, this operation was more about sleep training mommy and daddy.

and then there was a little bit of a setback because sienna got sick.  so over the weekend, mommy or daddy slept in her room so they could comfort her when she wasn’t feeling well.  they also wanted to be able to check if she had a fever so they could give her tylenol, if needed.  but after that short setback, each night got a little bit better with fewer wakings and less crying.  and then last night…  sienna slept through the whole night in her own bed!  yes, she woke up a cried for a couple of minutes, but she quickly went back to sleep on her own.  i hope i’m not jinxing it by writing this post.  and i hope it wasn’t just a fluke.

speaking of flukes…  right after we launched operation kitty cat, sienna started asking to use the potty.  she’s only 17 months old, so we thought it surely must have been a fluke.  but for the next 4 days, she continued to use the potty successfully.  so cool, right?  we were all so amazed and so proud of her!

today was a different story, though.  sienna kept saying that she needed to use the potty, so i’d pull down the little training seat, position the step stool for her to climb on, and wait for her outside the bathroom just like mommy and daddy used to do for me.  (mommy helped, too.)  but this happened 5 or 6 times, and sienna never went pee-pee or poo-poo in the potty today.  oh well.

so for a few days, sienna was potty-training herself but not sleeping through the night.  and now, she is sleeping through the night (fingers crossed) but not using the potty.  i guess you can’t have it all.  but we’re not complaining.  changing a few diapers during the day is a not a bad trade off for some peace and quiet at nighttime.  now, we’ll all sleep better around here.  even koda.  (poor koda’s bed is near sienna’s room, so he had been moving down to the other end of the hallway to sleep at night.)

if you know me at all, you know i ask a lot of questions.  you know, like about penises and stuff.

today, i noticed that gung-gung was wearing a ring.  and then i remembered that mommy wears a ring too.  so of course, i asked about it.  mommy explained that when people love each other, they get married.  and when they get married, they wear rings as a symbol of their love.  i asked mommy who else wears a ring.  and who else?  and who else?  and who else?  mommy named every person that i know (that she could think of off the top of her head) that wears a ring.  that took a really long time.

when daddy came home from work, i saw that he was wearing a ring too.  mommy reminded me that people get married and wear rings because they love each other.  and then she asked me who i thought daddy was married to.  i think it’s uncle jamie.  am i right?

i told mommy that i love her.  but she explained that marriage is different.  after boys and girls grow up, then they fall in love, and then they can marry each other.  (we didn’t get into a discussion on same sex marriage, but i am way ahead of her on that.  after all, i already thought that daddy was married to a man.)

since i was the only one who wasn’t wearing a ring, i was feeling left out.  mommy took off her gold hoop earring and let me wear it on my finger for a little while.  i like it.  i held my hand out to admire it, and i even looked in the mirror to see what i look like wearing it.  i guess sienna felt left out too because she kept trying to grab it from me.

i want to get married so i can wear a ring all the time.  if i still love sienna when i grow up, can i marry her?