two days ago, sienna learned to pull herself up to a stand.  yesterday, she started army crawling.  i wonder what’s in store for today.  walking?

she’s the slowest crawler ever.  but still, my toys aren’t safe anymore.

part of my regular bedtime routine is taking a shower with dada.  he usually puts me to bed while mommy puts sienna to bed.  (that’s right, i said it.  sienna.  although, it comes out more like “c…n…uh”.)  anyway, even though i usually take showers, mommy still gives me baths once in awhile as a special treat.  tonight, i got an extra special treat — sienna and i took a bath together!

it’s fun having someone to play with in the bathtub.  sienna kept splashing me, so i started to squirt her with one of my squeeze toys.  don’t worry, i didn’t squirt her in the face.  at least, not while mommy was watching 😉  i just squirted the water right in front of her.

oh, and guess who finally learned to pulled herself up to stand?  in the bathtub… of all places.  what a safety hazard!  i guess she didn’t like the way i was washing her hair.

over the weekend, si-nano and i brought mommy and dada to allie’s 1st birthday party.   it used to be that i was  always one of the youngest kids at a birthday party, but today i was one of the oldest.  i guess i should have known that one year-olds hang out with other one year-olds.

we don’t know allie very well.  we only met her one time before at a wedding.  (i guess it’s true what they say about weddings being a great place to meet girls!)  but it was nice to see her again and i liked all the food that her daddy made 🙂  i don’t really know any of allie’s friends, either.  the only people i recognized at the party were logan and his baby mason.  no, we are not party crashers — dada and uncle john (allie’s daddy) are friends from grade school.

allie’s party was at gill memorial park.  the park is pretty close to our house, but i had never been there before.  how could i not have known about this place?  the playground was so fun!  not only do they have a zip bar, but also suspension bridges, and a kyden-sized rock climbing wall!  (and the facilities there are shockingly clean.  well, for a park bathroom, anyway.)

remember how i used to dislike unstable surfaces like jumpy houses and  suspension bridges?  those days are long gone.  as soon as i saw that bridge, i jumped onto it and all the way across it.  and when i got to the other side, i turned around and did it again.  and again.

thanks for introducing us to a fun park, allie.  i hope you had a fun first birthday.  and when you get older, i hope we can meet for playdates at that park!

i didn’t like it when si-nano carjacked my sports car.  that’s my fancy new motorized car.  and besides, it’s way more power than she can handle.   the cozy coupe is all hers, though.  i even take her cruising around the neighborhood in it.  but for some reason, she keeps veering off the road into the bushes.  mommy said that i am not pushing her straight, but i think si-nano is just a bad driver.  i tried to teach her how to “drive” (steer) like i do in my car, but she doesn’t get it.

in case you were wondering, si-nano is still alive.  for the past two days, mommy had to go into the office and was gone for about 13 hours each day.  she nursed si-nano right before she left and as soon as she got home, but what did si-nano do for the rest of the day?  well, she didn’t drink from her big bottle.  she didn’t drink from her little bottle.  she didn’t drink from her sippy cup.  we even tried apple juice, and she wouldn’t even drink that.  she’s smart enough to know that she gets veggies and fruit for lunch and dinner, so she held out for her solid meals.  and let me tell you… during those meals, she scarfed down her food and gobbled up everything in sight.  she grabbed at my plate and tried to eat my food too, but i’m too quick for her.  cookie monster wasn’t quite as fast when she got a hold of his cookie.

mommy is worried about what will happen to si-nano when mommy has to go on an overnight business trip.  i told mommy not to worry.  si-nano can store up milk when she knows that mommy is going to be away — you know, like a camel stores stores water.  her big cheeks have to be good for something, right?

what do brownies, cookies, my favorite books, iphone games, and thomas the train underwear have in common?  these are all things that mommy has used to bribe me to use the potty… unsuccessfully.

mommy and dada never pressured me to use the potty — they knew that i’ll be ready in my own time.  but they were a bit confused because i was so excited to use the potty when i was just 17 months old.  but after a few weeks, the novelty wore off.   i lost interest.  and by the time i was 22 months old, i was running away from the potty screaming.  and then a couple of months ago, i started telling mommy that i wanted to use the potty again.  so we’d go to the bathroom, i’d pretend to use the potty, then i’d pull my pants back up after just a minute or two.

a few weeks ago, i started hiding under the dining room table and going poo-poo under there.  when mommy and dada asked me if i needed to use the potty, i always said no.  and when i was done, i’d crawl out and announce that i went poo-poo so that someone would change my diaper.  that’s when mommy finally realized that all i need is a little bit of privacy to do my business.

so we’re hitting the potty again.  and now when i go, mommy waits for me right outside the door.  (and even though she’s on the other side of the door, i still feel like she can see me.  i think mommy has x-ray vision.)  when i’m done, i get sooo excited and i tell everyone “pee-pee [or poo-poo] potty!”.  and then the best part of going in the potty is that i get to flush the toilet 😀

we’ll see how the next few days goes…

remember my first boys’ day when grandma set up a fancy display for me and dressed me up in a traditional japanese outfit?  that was fun.

well today is girls’ day, also known as the japanese doll festival “hina-matsuri”.  si-nano didn’t get an elaborate display set up for her, but grandma and grandpa came to visit and brought her a special outfit to wear.  the outfit was handmade made by our great-grandmother.  how cool!   auntie barbara wore it when she was a baby, too.  it’s a good thing that si-nano has so much hair.  otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to wear that vegas-showgirl-esque head piece.  i mean, hair accessory.

happy girls’ day to si-nano and all my girls 🙂

si-nano, sorry for photobombing your photo shoot.  i just couldn’t  resist.

si-nano had another head scan today.  i like going to her head appointments because we always do fun things afterward.  on the way there, mommy asked me where i wanted to go — the zoo (junior museum and zoo) or the park (rinconada).  i replied “doctor first.  then zoo.  then park.”  mommy had planned for us to go to only one of those places, but she was so charmed by my response that she agreed to both.

as planned, i fell asleep in the car on the way to the doctor’s office.  gung-gung did too.  we stayed in the car while mommy took si-nano in for her head scan.  when i woke up from my 15 minute nap, i was very upset.  i was tired and cranky, mommy and baby were gone, and i was soaking wet.  yes, wet.  the leak-proof valve was missing from my drinking cup, so all of my juice had dribbled out of my cup and soaked into my jeans while i napped.  good thing mommy learned her lesson from the great barfing incident and packed me a change of clothes, right?  NO!!!  MOMMY DIDN’T HAVE EXTRA PANTS FOR ME!  so after si-nano’s appointment, we set out on a hunt for pants.

when we finally made it to the zoo, auntie judy was waiting there for us.  she wanted to see the zoo animals, but i wasn’t all that interested in them this time.  i just wanted to operate the kid-powered machine and look at the bugs.  auntie judy sure  knows a lot about bugs.  she is so smart.  we stayed at the museum until the lights went off.

after we got kicked out of the zoo (we were the last ones in there), we walked to the park.  of course, i ran straight for the slides.  my new pants must be frictionless because i flew down those slides sooo fast!  we also played on the swings.  auntie judy pushed me while mommy swung with si-nano.  si-nano LOVES the swings.  and the highlight of the evening… the zip-bar!  imagine a set of monkey bars, but in place of the bars there’s a handle that you hold while you zip across to the other side.  OMG, funnest playground activity EVER!

i’m so glad that we got to go to the zoo and the park.  why choose just one when you can have it all?

oh, and if you’re wondering, si-nano’s scan showed that her parallelogram-shaped head is getting more round!  no helmet needed.  and no more head scans 🙂  so to all of you who have been making fun of mommy for working so hard to prevent si-nano from sleeping on the flat side of her head… pbbblllt!

oh no!  if si-nano has no more head scans, does that mean no more trips to the zoo or park?

auntie barbara is taking some time off before she starts her new job, and she wants to travel the world. how fun! she said that i get to pick where to go.

first, she told me to look at a map and point to any place. i pointed to greenland. she didn’t like that. so i tried again and picked angola. she didn’t like that either. so she made it multiple choice instead.

my bags are packed. when do we leave?

si-nano (i’m getting better at saying baby sister’s name!) is on a hunger strike.

she has never really had to drink from a bottle.  there have been a few times when mommy wasn’t home, and she drank 1-2 oz., but that’s about it.  so she obviously knows how.  she just doesn’t like it.  well, mommy is going to be away for two days next week, so si-nano is going to have to learn to like the bottle… or starve.  to get si-nano more used to it, we have been trying to bottle-feed her for the past couple of days.  she wants nothing to do with it.

she won’t take the bottle in the morning, so she goes hungry.  you’d think that she’d be hungry enough to take it at lunchtime, right?  wrong.  and by that time, she is so pissed that she won’t even eat her lunch (oatmeal and mushed fruits/veggies).  she won’t take the bottle in the evening, either.  and last night, she didn’t even eat her dinner (more oatmeal and mushed fruits/veggies).  mealtimes used to be nice and relaxing.  now, they’re loud and stressful because si-nano throws a screaming fit through the whole thing.  it takes me so long to eat now — i have to cover my ears, so my hands aren’t free to feed myself.

i don’t know what her problem is.  when i was a baby, i had no problem taking an occasional bottle when mommy wasn’t home.  i didn’t love it, but food is food.  i think that it would be better to give up on bottle-training and just let si-nano starve next week.  it’ll only be for two days.  and she’s starving now, so what’s the difference?

everyone thinks that si-nano is on a hunger strike in protest of the bottle.  but maybe she just gave up bottles for lent.