i have been looking forward to my birthday for a long time.  for the past few months, when someone would ask how old i am, i’d tell them “i’m 2.  be 3 in october.”  it’s finally october.  and now i’m 3!

mama took the day off to spend my birthday with me.  i wanted waffles for breakfast, so she made waffles for me.  and then off to the doctor we went.  (a trip to the doctor???  what kind of birthday present is that?)

i stood on the scale to get weighed, and i stood against the wall to get measured.  i am 37 inches tall (36 %ile) and weigh 30 lbs. (31 %ile).  once i got into the exam room i recognized the bucket scale.  i told mama that that was for little boys (holding my hands close together to show “little”), but i didn’t use it because i am a big boy.  i also had my blood pressure taken for the first time.  the doctor said i didn’t need any immunizations, but flu S-H-O-T’s were available if i wanted one.  mama asked me if i wanted a flu shot.  she said it would prevent me from getting sick. can you believe that i said yes???  i didn’t cry at all.  i really am a big boy.

after the shot, my arm got really sore.  i complained to mama that my arm hurt.  my eyes were watery and i looked at mama like “why would you do this to me on my birthday”?  she felt terrible.

after that, mama said we could go anywhere i wanted — the zoo, the aquarium, the discovery museum, anywhere.  i wanted to go to costco. “anywhere but coscto”, mama added.  our plan was to stop home, grab a camera, and then head out for the day.  when we got home, i saw some presents waiting for me.  (they were from friends who gave me gifts last week, but i was waiting until today to open them.)  i opened my presents and then insisted on playing with my new toys!  that killed the rest of the morning.

when we finally got going again, we headed to the park for a picnic lunch.  we had a picnic in the park — just me and mama.  i love having mommy and kyden time without everyone else.  after our picnic, we played in the playground for a short while, but it was SO HOT and the sun made a lot of the playground structure too hot to play on.  i ran around a little bit, though.  check out the photo.  who says that you can’t be in two places at once — i can be in 6!

after playing for a little while, we got outta there and went out for froyo.  i like froyo.  white (plain) froyo is my favorite.  whenever we get froyo, i get to have one gummy bear on top.  today, i got 3.  cuz i’m 3!

happy birthday to me 🙂

happy birthday to me

i am 3 years old. here’s what i’ve been up to these days.

daily schedule:

my daily schedule hasn’t changed much since my last update.  however, mama noticed that when she and dada play volleyball together, miss denise has be in bed and asleep by 9:00pm.  so now, dada is trying to get me to bed earlier, too.  this is a new thing.  we’ll see how it goes.

things i’m good at:

• spelling my name.  nobody taught me.  i just kept seeing my name written on a lot of my things, so one day i announced “K-Y-D-E-N spells kyden!”  now, i do it all the time.  i especially like typing my name on computers, tablets, and phones.
• manners.  i am pretty good at saying “may i please” and “thank you”.
• going potty by myself.  i can go potty, wash my hands, and do everything all by myself.  (expect when i go poo-poo, a grown up insists on helping me wipe.)

things i’m working on:

• staying in my bed all night.  lately, i’ve been getting up in the middle of the night and asking mama to come to bed with me.  sometimes she does.  but when she’s too tired, i get to crawl in bed with mama and dada.  last night, mama told me to back to my room.  i was not happy about it — i even cried — but i did.  i went back to my room and went back to sleep.  could be a fluke, but could be a turning point!
• going to gym class by myself.  now that i’m 3, mama and dada don’t go into class with me anymore.  lately, i’ve been crying and not wanting to go into the gym, but once i’m in there, everything is fine.
• grammar.  i’m getting better at it every day, but sometimes i still say things like “what you said?” and use “my” instead of “i” or “me”.

things i do that make mama and dada unhappy:

i’m pretty much over my terrible 2’s, so i’m generally a pretty good kid.  (either that, or mama and dada have just gotten used to my terribleness :P)  i still push sienna and grab toys away from her once in awhile, but she’s used to it.  so when she doesn’t cry about it, nobody notices, and i get away with it.  heh heh heh.

things i do that make people smile/laugh:

i am a funny kid.  everyone says so.  i’m not trying to be funny, i guess i just say funny things.  i actually don’t think they’re all that funny, but for some reason, other people do.

• i hold the door open and say “come on in!”… even when it’s not my house.
• when sienna wakes up from a nap:  “sienna, did you have a nice nap?”
• when i am not included in the conversation:  “what you talking about?”  “i want to talk about that.”
• “i love you so so much.”  some of my friends have learned to say this phrase to their parents just prior to asking for something.  i haven’t learned that trick yet.
• when mama leaves for volleyball:  “i don’t want you to go.  i want you to stay here forever.”
• when sienna wears a dress:  “sienna looks nice.” 🙂
• “cool!”,  “wow!”,  “nice!”, and/or  “whoa!”  my aunties and uncles think i’m a well-trained gift-opener, but i nobody taught me to say those things.

favorite indoor activities:

• playing ball.  i know, i’m not supposed to throw or kick balls inside the house, but i do.
• taking photos.  what can i say?  it’s in my blood.
• pretending to cook using stuff on the kitchen counter than i’m not supposed to play with.

favorite outdoor activities:

• playing at the park.
• riding my cozy coupe with the floor panel removed.  i power it with my feet, apparently like fred flinstone.  i don’t know who that is, but that’s what mama says.
• soccer.  i’m playing soccer again this session, and i’m getting a lot better at dribbling.

favorite book:  big blue book of beginner books.  it has six stories.  my favorites are “the best nest” and “go, dog.  go!”.  i don’t like “are you my mother?” because it makes me sad.

favorite song:  i love music — i especially like watching live bands.  i like playing instruments and i love to sing.  lately, my favorites have been the birthday song (i even sing “happy birthday” to myself)!  i also like singing “down by the station” and “baa baa black sheep”.

favorite mobile app:  i’ve been using the tablets and phones less and less lately.  i think mama has me on a 12-step program.

favorite foods that i’m only allowed one bite of:   animal cookies.  they’re the new chocolate bunnies.

favorite characters: thomas the train.  i was so over him for awhile, but i have a recently renewed interest.  (nobody knows why.)  and of course, mickey and his clubhouse friends.

favorite animal: lions

my buddy zachary had a birthday party today.  his birthday was actually a month ago, but super late celebrations seem to be the in thing these days.  this is the 4th party that i’ve been to this year where the party was held more than 4 weeks after the kid’s actual birthday.

zachary’s party was dinosaur themed, so i thought we were going to see real dinosaurs.  we didn’t.  instead, there was a magician who put on a show for us!  dada thought the magician looked like mad moxxi from borderlands.  mama didn’t know what moxxi looked like, but she thought she was dressed more like an adult entertainer than a child entertainer, especially with that lace bustier.  i don’t know about all that, but i thought she was awesome.

after the magic show, the magician made balloon animals for us.  i wanted a cow.  the magician tried to jedi-mind-trick me into asking for something else, but i insisted.  so she made me a cow.  an orange one.  only, it didn’t look like a cow at all.  it looked just like zachary’s brown horse.  when i popped my cow just a few minutes later, it really was an accident.  really.

after everyone got a balloon animal, the magician painted on everyone’s faces.  i still don’t get why people want paint on their faces, so i asked for a train on my arm.  it was such a great train painting — it had tracks and sparkly smoke and shading and everything!

sienna wasn’t really into the magic show or balloon twisting or face painting.  while i was doing all that stuff with the big kids, she just hung out and played the mini piano, mowed the lawn, and ate lunch.  she missed out on all the fun!  i can’t wait until she’s old enough to do cool stuff with me and my friends.  on second thought, maybe i won’t want her tagging along.

happy birthday zachary!  cool magic dinosaur party 😉

for the past few days, i have been preparing for my birthday by singing happy birthday to myself. my birthday is not until monday, but today, my family came over to sing with me!

it wasn’t a big party — just the tanakas (grandma, grandpa, uncle randy) and the quons (cousin zoey, uncle jamie, auntie alyssa). i’m not having a big birthday party this year because i’m going to celebrate with mickey at disneyland next weekend. we had lunch, i opened my presents (not in that order), and i had a nice afternoon hanging out with everyone.  i had so much fun playing with cousin zoey — our parents were so impressed at how well we played together.

mama asked me what kind of cake i wanted for my birthday, and i said “purple”. so mama made lemon blueberry cupcakes with blueberry cream cheese frosting. they were only kind of purplish, but very yummy.  yup, i got my own cupcake (a healthy version, of course), and i got to blow out my candles.  1… 2… 3 candles.  because i’m turning 3!

i am going to be 3 next week, so it’s time for me to leave my terrible 2’s behind.  and actually, mama says that my terrible 2’s didn’t really last very long.  but it could be that it just became a way of life and that everyone got used to it 😛

so goodbye terrible 2’s. hello super clingy 3’s.  yes, that’s a thing.  and it should be pretty self-explanatory.  yes, i’ve always been a mama’s boy, but i’ve recently taken “clingy” to a whole new level.

i think it started in june when mama went to texas.  i cried for hours each night that she was gone because i wanted mama and she wasn’t there.  and then in july, i started getting very upset and crying real tears when i had to get ready for school.  it’s not that i don’t like school (i have a great time once i get there), i just want to stay home with mama.  and then in august, mama went to play volleyball a few times, and i cried every time she left.  i wanted dada to play, not mama — that way mama could stay home with me.

for the past few weeks, i’ve also been insisting that mama put me to bed at night and that she lie down in my bed with me.  and when i wake up in the middle of the night (which i’ve been doing every night, lately) i wake mama up and ask her to come with me to my room and come into my bed.  sometimes she does.  sometimes she is too tired, so she lets me crawl into bed with her and dada.  (score 1 for kyden!)

and after a couple of great weeks in my new funny bugs gym class, i’ve started crying before class and begging mama to come into the gym with me.  but just like at school, i have a great time in class once i get past the tears.  tonight, i even got a special award for being the best listener in gym class!

see, i’m not a terrible at all.  just super clingy. we all hope that this phase passes just as quickly as my terrible 2’s did.

i bet you don’t know how significant the refrigerator is in a kid’s life.  until recently (maybe a month ago?) i wasn’t strong enough to open the refrigerator door my myself.  now i can.  this was an important milestone that gave me a whole new sense of independence.  for mama and dada, this is a blessing and a curse.  they like that i can now get my drink from the fridge by myself and put it back when i’m done.  i don’t always have to ask someone for help when i’m thirsty.  (of course, they have to remember to put it in the special spot on the door where i can reach.)  but this also means that i have access to other things in the refrigerator.  so far, i can only reach the very bottom of the door where we keep heavy things like jugs of milk, so i haven’t gotten into any trouble… yet.  but every day, i see how much father i can reach.  i’m going to be able to get into the cheese drawer very very soon.  and after that, i’ll be able to reach things that i can make a real mess with — like eggs!

sienna is not strong like me, so she cannot open the refrigerator.  in fact, she used to be able to walk right under the refrigerator door.  until today, that is.  mama conked her in the head with the door this morning.  sienna must have had a growth spurt overnight!  so what does this big milestone mean for sienna?  i dunno… i guess it means that she’s 30 inches tall 😛

things she likes:

• signing.  mama never taught sienna to sign like she did with me.  but last month, i showed her “more” and “all done”, and sienna picked it up almost immediately.  seriously, i only showed her a few times, and now she signs all the time!
• eating with utensils.  she gets so excited when food actually makes it from her plate to her fork to her mouth!
• shoes.  14 months old and she already has a shoe fetish.  she doesn’t like to wear them.  she just likes to play with them.  she carries them around the house and sometimes gives them to mama and dada.  i wonder if that’s her way of saying that she wants to go out.
• water.  she likes putting her hands into streams of running water, splashing in koda’s water bowl, and she likes baths so much that she’s always trying to crawl into the tub — before the water is ready, and even after she’s gotten out and all dried off.
• my step stools.  she’s always climbing on my kitchen step stool it so she can she play with things on the counter, and she likes to use my bathroom step stool as a chair.
• accessorizing.  when she sees a hair clip, headband, or sunglasses, she always tries to put them on her head.
• sleeping in her crib.  thank goodness her anti-crib phase only lasted a couple of week.  now, she goes to sleep so quickly and without a fuss.
• picking things up off the floor and handing them to people.  this comes in really handy.  for one thing, she usually picks up lint, crumbs of food, or other things that don’t belong on the floor.  if i could teach her to throw them into the garbage can, we would never have to vacuum again.  once in awhile, she finds things that aren’t trash.  like the other day, she found a rubber cap for a laptop trackpoint mouse.  (i think auntie mimi will be happy about this because she lost hers at our house last month!)
• slides.  she loves slides.  when we go to the park, she could play on the slide all day long.  she still falls backward and conks her head, so mama still helps her hold her head up on her way down the slide.

things she doesn’t like:

• not getting her way.  i know what you’re thinking — all babies like to get their way.  but sienna is not your average baby.  she is particularly strong-willed, and even without words, she makes her will known.
• sharing mama.  when i sit on mama’s lap, she gets upset and wedges her way in between mama and me.  (she learned that trick from me.)
• napping in her crib.  i don’t get it.  she sleeps so well in her crib at nighttime.  but during the day, she doesn’t like to nap in her crib.  she’ll nap anywhere else (even in the middle of the floor), but doesn’t like to nap in her crib.
• wearing shoes.  if her shoes are on when she gets into the car, they’re usually off by the time we get to our destination.

sienna spent most of her day yesterday at lucile packard children’s hospital (LPCH).  she had already planned to be there in the afternoon for monitoring of her kidney issues.  but after all the excitement about her food allergies last week, she squeezed her way in for a last-minute appointment in their allergy clinic.

when sienna arrived, a nurse weighed and measured her.  she’s 19 lbs. 9 oz. (11 %ile) and 29.9 inches (48 %ile).  the nurse also took her blood pressure, heart rate, and O2 saturation levels (all within normal range).   sienna sat there so calmly while she was being stretched, cuffed, and clipped.  all the nurses who walked by stopped to comment on how good sienna was.  she’s used to it because she goes through this every time she goes to LPCH, which has been pretty often lately.

so then sienna was off to see the allergist.  mama is very confused by all the information that she has been reading on the internet, so she talked with the doctor for a long time.  bottom line is that the allergy tests only tell you how likely you are to react to an allergen, and they give no indication about how severe the reaction will be.  that is true of both the blood tests and the skin tests.  the only reliable way to test for a food allergy is to do an oral food challenge.  sienna may do that next month, but for now, she just did the skin prick test.

so a nurse came in a poked sienna with like 20 different needles and then wrote all over her with a ballpoint pen.  i bet that’s how cosmetic companies test their products on animals.  within seconds, the patch of eczema on her cheek turned bright red.  two of the pricks also turned into big red welts.  guess which ones.  egg?  no.  peanut?  no.  cedar and cockroach!!!  this is very confusing.

sienna had a HIGH reaction to cedar.  i guess that explains why her eyes and cheek turned red when she took a nap on koda’s cedar-filled bed.  and cockroaches?  COCKROACHES?  she cannot eat cockroaches???  the doctor explained that even being around cockroaches could cause her to break out into a rash or have respiratory problems.  her reaction to the cockroach allergen was off-the-charts HIGH, so i guess i might get to use that epi pen one of these days after all.

so now, we don’t think that sienna has any “traditional” food allergies, but there is still a good chance that certain foods are causing her eczema flare ups.  mama is starting her on an elimination diet:  no egg, wheat, or oats for 2 weeks.  we’ll see if that clears up her eczema.  if it does, then she’ll add those foods back one by one, and see what happens.  (i think mama forgot about her upcoming business trip to new jersey.  i hope dada remembers what foods to avoid.)

after a 15 minute lunch break, it was time for sienna’s ultrasound.  slime, scan, turn.  repeat.  and repeat again.  she squirmed around a lot toward the end, but she eventually got through it.  after that, she was off to her urology appointment.

sienna’s day at LPCH ended on a high note.  her kidneys are normal-sized and her kidney collecting systems are normal-sized.  i guess she “grew into” her kidneys just like everyone said she would.  sienna has been officially released from the care of her urologist.  hooray!

so that was sienna’s day trip to LPCH.  i can think of better ways to spend a day than by being cuffed, pricked, and a slimed by half a dozen different nurses and doctors, but at least there was good news.  sienna was able to cross a doctor off of her list of specialists that are monitoring her.

a couple of weeks ago, sienna got a blood test to see what see was a allergic to.  i joked that she was allergic to food, but it turns out that it’s not a joke.  she IS allergic to food!

wheat allergy:  MODERATE.  egg allergy:  MODERATE.  peanut allergy:  HIGH.  milk allergy:  negative.  (a bunch of other common allergens were also tested, but those came back negative too.)

these results are confusing because we are pretty sure that sienna is allergic to milk.  her skin turns red wherever milk touches her.  but the test came back negative.

and wheat?  how can you be allergic to wheat?  there is wheat in everything!  she eats lots of stuff made with wheat, and while that might explain the random red splotches around her mouth, she’s never had any other (respiratory, GI, etc.) reaction to it.

well, the doctor said that the blood test only tells part of the story.  one way to confirm her allergies is to do an oral food challenge.  i know, it sounds like a food network show, but it’s not.  basically she would sit in a controlled hospital environment and eat the food that is suspected to cause a reaction.  she would eat small amounts of the food at regular intervals while under constant supervision and monitoring (heart rate?).  it’s a 4 hour ordeal, and you can only test one food at a time.  and the next available opening is not for another month.

in the mean time, we got an epi pen.  since sienna’s peanut allergy is HIGH, it’s better to be safe than sorry.  and now we have a month to decide what food we want to test during the food challenge.  test wheat?  what if it causes a mild skin reaction, but nothing serious?  same question about milk.  should sienna keep eating the offending foods while managing her skin issues?

i think we should experiment on sienna at home.  we have 2 epi pens (which cost $100 each after insurance), so we might as well use them, right?  we can’t let good epinephrine go to waste.  mama got a little nauseated just thinking about having to stab sienna with that big needle.  but i’ve been practicing.  there is a big plastic hypodermic needle in my toy medical kit, and it looks a lot like the epi pen.  if sienna ever needs to be stabbed, i’m the kid for the job.  (look at the photo!  i’m ready!)

it used to be that too much tv-watching/gaming was a bad thing because too much time sitting = not enough time exercising = fat kids.  well, dada would disagree.  dada watches tv more than anyone in the whole world, and he’s not a fat kid.  well, i hardly watch any tv, but i have to admit that i have a tablet addiction.  it’s a good thing that mama plays with tablets for a living and that we have 7 of them at home.  i like to watch videos on youtube (mickey mouse clubhouse, kipper, and videos of me and sienna), but i mostly play learning games.  check out this video.

everyone seems so impressed that i can spell my name, but that’s old news. i was doing that months ago. but check me out invoking the virtual keyboard and using the done/enter button appropriately. do i know my way around a tablet, or what? 😉

i know what you’re thinking.  too much screen time = not enough exercise = fat kyden, right?  no way.  i stay active.  i walk to the park.  i ride my bike.  i swim.  i go to gym class.  i even started playing soccer again this week.  i am going to escape my fat kid fate.  or so i thought.

a recent study has shown a stronger link between childhood obesity and “high” screen time than low exercise.  crazy, right?  it doesn’t make sense to me either.  but i guess i can stop exercising, since i’m doomed to be fat anyway.  mama actually thinks that i should decrease my tablet usage.  but dada doesn’t think my screen time is actually all that “high”.  i knew dada would be on my side!