today, isaac had a party to celebrate his (belated) birthday and break in his new house.  two parties in one.  cool!

since it was a special occasion, ees-nano (that’s “sienna” in kydenese) knew that she had to accessorize.  when she was just a few days old, auntie barbara taught her that accessories make the look and that she must accessorize any time she is entertaining visitors or going out.  good thing that she has more than a dozen headbands and hair clips in a variety of colors.  most of them were gifts from auntie barbara, of course.

so as mommy was strapping ess-nano into her car seat, i pinked a pink bow hair clip for her to wear with her outfit.  mommy tried to trick me into choosing a purple flower clip or a fuchsia ribbon clip, but those didn’t match.  gimme a break.  i know my colors.

anyway, we made it to isaac’s new house.  he has a whole room just for his toys!  he also has a lot of really great friends that i had fun playing with.  we played with his big train set, leaptop, xylophone, and a funny-looking potato.  (the potato had feet, eyes, a hat, but only one ear — no wonder his glasses wouldn’t stay on).  i also found a sheet of stickers and decided to accessorize myself… and the stuffed dog that was hanging out in the playroom.

happy birthday issac, and congrats on your big bad beautiful house!

last month, i wrote that hanging with friends is one of my favorite iphone apps.  that was an understatement.  i am addicted.

every morning when i wake up, i run to mommy and dada’s room yelling “words?”  (i call it “words” because i get to guess words and make words.)  and all day long, i grab any phone i can get my hands on and look for the hanging with friends app.

at first, mommy would tell me what letter to guess, and i would press it.  that was fun.  but back then, she was only playing with a few friends, and we’d quickly run out of words to guess.  so mommy got dada and gung-gung to start playing too.  now, there’s always someone in the house for me to play words with.  (gung-gung is addicted too.)  and now, i’ve gotten good enough to play by myself.  my success rate was about 14% at last check.  you probably think that i’m just getting lucky, but i assure you that it’s pure skill.

mommy is worried about me and is trying to get me to cut back.  she even password-protected the app on her iphone.  not a problem — i quickly figured out that i can launch another “with friends” app and navigate to my game from there.  mommy says that i am a words-aholic. i don’t know what that means, but i bet i can guess the right letters to make the word!

here’s a video of me playing “words” from a few weeks ago. if you wanna play with me, find mommy (christiQT) on hanging with friends 🙂

i used to hear mommy joke with dada about having baby sister sleep with her forever.  except i don’t think she was joking.  dada didn’t think she was joking either.  so about a month ago, dada decided that it was time to set up the co-sleeper.  finally.  baby sister was over 5 months old, so it was about time.

then a couple of days ago, mommy fed baby at 1am just before she went to bed. just like always.  but instead of putting baby in the co-sleeper, mommy but baby to sleep in her crib!  you’d think that mommy would finally get a good night’s sleep, right?  wrong.  mommy couldn’t sleep.  she knew that she would have to get up every 3 hours to feed baby, and she was worried that she wouldn’t hear her when she woke up (even though she was in the next room and the baby monitor was on).  so mommy half-slept while she waited for baby to wake up.  she waited… and waited… and kept waiting.  she barely slept all night because she kept thinking that baby was going to wake up any minute.  but baby sister slept til 7:30am!  well, that’s mommy’s story.  the rest of us think that mommy just doesn’t know how to sleep without a baby right next to her.

the next night, mommy washed both of baby’s crib sheets.  and she accidentally forgot to dry them.  yeah, right.  so baby sister had to sleep in the co-sleeper that night.

last night, baby sister was back in her crib.  she was on her way to sleeping through the night, and mommy was facing another whole night by herself.  well, dada was with her, but you know what i mean.  i didn’t want mommy to be lonely, so at 4:00am i ran toward her room calling “mama?  mama?”.  she happily carried me back to my room and laid down with me in my race car bed.  i just laid there in silence with my eyes wide open.  after 30 minutes, mommy brought me to her room and let me sleep with her and dada.  she said that she was worried that baby was going to wake up, cry, and disturb dada.  but i know the truth — she just wanted to cuddle with me because she was having separation anxiety.

see, mommy told everyone that baby and i were conspiring to keep her from sleeping through the night.  but actually, we are trying to gently wean her away from holding a baby while she sleeps.  we are sleep training mommy 🙂

remember my friend greyson?  it seemed like just yesterday that he was a newborn and i was looking for him all over his house, calling “baby?  baby?  baby?”.  well guess what.  he is one year old already!  gosh, babies grow up so fast 😛

dada was very excited about greyson’s birthday party.  i have never seen him so excited to go to one of my friends’ parties before.  at first i thought it was because greyson is my half-and-half brother, but then i figured out the real reason — it was a dim sum party!  dada loves dim sum.

this was my first dim sum party, so i didn’t know what to expect.  there was assigned seating and a pre-ordered menu.  there were centerpieces on each table, individually wrapped gifts for all the kids, and three (that’s right, THREE) cakes — all in the badtz-maru theme.  fancy, huh?  i didn’t know who badtz-maru was, but baby sister told me that he’s a friend of hello kitty, her bobble-headed cat.

there were mostly grown ups at the party, but some of my friends were there, too.  i was trying to get to know ellie better since i don’t get many opportunities to spend time with her, but she was more interested in hanging out with baby sister.  oh well.  i heard that she has a boyfriend anyway.

cool dim sum party, greyson.  hope you had a happy birthday.  and thanks for the cool presents!

since i was such a good boy yesterday at baby’s head scan appointment, mommy said we could go to the zoo (palo alto junior museum & zoo) afterwards. i was so excited that i asked “zoo?” over and over again during the entire drive there.  luckily, the zoo is only a couple of miles away from the head scan place.

well, we pulled into the parking lot… just as it was closing.  i got all excited about the zoo for nothing!  luckily, there was a nearby park where i got to play on the slides for a little while, but i was still sooo mad.  i asked “zoo” the whole way home.  mommy felt so bad about it that we went all the way back to the zoo today.  yay!

even though all the museum and zoo exhibits were the same as the last time we went there, i still had a blast.  i watched some new animals that i didn’t really look at last time — like bats and raccoon and a turtle.  and then we went back inside the museum and i checked out a lot of the creepy crawly insects.  and then i pretended to be a spider and climbed around the web.  how fun.  bugs are cool 🙂

baby sister stayed in the special area designated for babies.  she played with some of the toys in there, but she mostly just rolled around.  while i was pretending to be a spider crawling on the web, baby sister was pretending to be a caterpillar sitting in the cocoon.

baby sister had a follow-up appointment today to check out her flat head.  just like last time, she had to wear a do-rag.  and just like last time, she looked funny.  but today, baby sister started crying as soon as mommy laid her down in the magic box.  i don’t know why.  she didn’t cry at all last time.

there wasn’t much change in baby’s head measurements between last month and today (numbers are marginally better).  she is in the grey area between normal and needing helmet therapy.  everything we were told made it seem like a helmet would be cosmetic only (like braces for her skull) and that her mild case of flat-headedness won’t cause problems with her vision or jaw alignment.  but still, they want to continue to monitor her and have her scanned again next month.

i don’t get it.  there wasn’t any significant change in the past month, and there’s no reason to think that things would suddenly get worse next month, right?  and it has already been determined that any treatment would be cosmetic only, which also means all costs are out-of-pocket.  and baby sister definitely doesn’t like being scanned — i think that’s obvious from the photo.  so, for all those reasons, mommy is thinking of not bringing baby sister back.  but then auntie ann (who is a pediatric physical therapist) told mommy that she should continue to have baby sister monitored just in case.  what do you think she should do?

personally, i think baby sister should go back because the head scanning place is really close to the palo alto junior museum and zoo.  scan for baby means zoo for me 🙂

gung hay fat choy!  today is the first day of the lunar new year.  last year, our chinese new year celebration was a quiet dinner that mommy cooked at home.  it was a good dinner, but mommy doesn’t cook traditional chinese food.  luckily, auntie mimi invited all of us to join her family’s chinese new year dinner at their house.  she said that the dress code was “gold and red”.  i wore the one red shirt that i have.  baby sister had plenty of clothing options and a selected a brand new red dress out of her closet.

auntie mimi and her parents cooked a feast fit for a king. or maybe an emperor.  make that 100 emperors.  there was chicken, pork, fish, chinese broccoli, mushrooms, sticky rice, nian gao (traditional chinese new year cake) and lots more.  they even cooked jai!  gung-gung kept talking about jai last year, but i had no idea what it was.  now i know.  jai (also called “buddha’s delight” or “monk stew”) is a very traditional stew that is usually only prepared for chinese new year.  it’s made with exotic ingredients like tree ear fungus, ginko nuts, black moss, golden lily buds, and other strange-looking stuff.  mommy ate three servings.  gung-gung was loving it, too.  dada wasn’t daring enough to try it.  i ate my share, though, and everyone was so surprised that i would eat such an exotic dish.  dada missed out.  (baby sister missed out too, but only because she doesn’t have teeth to chew with).  oh well.  more for me.

aside from the food, another great thing about a real chinese new year celebration is all the red envelopes.  i thought they were so cool that i kept collecting the ones that were laying around — even the ones that i had previously handed out to other people (from mommy and dada).  i saw one peeking out of auntie mimi’s back pocket, so i pick-pocketed her.  she didn’t even notice 😉  check out these super-cool red envelopes that baby sister and i got that night.  did you that they come with money inside of them?

thank you auntie mimi (and family) for inviting us over for such a special chinese new year celebration.  gung hay fat choy!

i spent all day practicing saying “happy birthday” so i could say it to maddie when i saw her.  tonight was her 3rd birthday party and it was so fun.  here are the top 5 reasons why:

5)  new hotspot.  i got to check out airborne gymnastics, a new place that i had never been to before.  it’s a training gym for real gymnasts — like the ones who go the olympics.  (that’s what i heard, anyway.)  mommy said that i might get to join maddie’s class when i turn 2.5.

4)  circuit training.  to get through the circuit, we had to slide down a slide, swing on a rope, walk a balance beam, swing on the rings, and even hop through a hopscotch!  the best part was at the end when we got to slide into the giant foam pit.  (see video.)  i cheated and did that last part 3 times 🙂  sliding in is SO FUN, but getting out is like crawling out of quicksand.

3)  good friends.  maddie and i have a handful of mutual friends, and it’s always fun to hang out with them because i don’t see them often.  maddie, ava, zoe, kai, and i, all sat together for dinner after working up a big appetite.

2)  baby sister’s friends.  it’s nice that she had friends to play with, too.  after all, it is her half birthday.  while i was sitting with my friends at the party table, baby sister hung out with malia (her buddy who is only 12 days younger).  and when i wasn’t looking, she started “hanging out” with kai, too.  when i saw them out of the corner of my eye, i got SO UPSET that i ran across the room and put a stop to it.  no joke.  i mean, look at the photo.  wth is that all about???

and the number one reason why maddie’s party was so great…

1)  ice cream cake!  ‘nuf said.  happy birthday maddie!

happy 6 month birthday to baby sister!

things she likes:

• carrots.  just like me, that’s what she got for her 6 month birthday.   i think she likes them.  she was yelling in between each bite — i think because mommy wasn’t feeding her fast enough.  either that, or she didn’t like the carrots.  hard to tell.
• playing with my iphone.  she has her own iphone, but she always wants to play with the one that i’m using.  when i’m playing “words”, she touches the screen and guesses all the wrong letters.  and when i’m playing my youtube videos, she touches the screen and pauses the video when i’m trying to watch!
• flirting with all my friends.  from the way she was flirting with logan, i thought for sure that there was something going on there.  but it seems that she flirts with all my friends!  i’m afraid that this might be a sign of things to come.
• walking.  she doesn’t seem to want to crawl as much as i did when i was her age, but she definitely wants to walk.  if you hold her standing up, she lifts her feet and takes steps forward.

things she doesn’t like:

• being away from mommy.  she is usually okay with other people during the daytime.  but in the evening, she only wants mommy.  she makes that very clear by screaming and crying and screaming and crying until she passes out from exhaustion.

just when i was getting the hang of handling my new high performance sports car… i got carjacked!  do you think baby sister will be a better driver than i am?