i am definitely an asian kid.  not that there was ever any doubt, but if you need proof…

i slurp my noodles.  slurping is considered bad etiquette in the U.S., but it is perfectly acceptable (and even encouraged) by my japanese peeps to make slurping noises when eating hot noodles.  wikipedia says so, so it must be true.  see, i’m just staying true to my asian roots.

i use chopsticks to eat.  everyone else eats with two chopsticks, but i’m so good at it that i only need one.  but for some reason, i can only get them to work with O-shaped cereal and certain foods (like chicken) that i can stab.  there must be a trick to eating edamame and noodles with chopsticks.  i’ll figure it out one of these days.

i hold a teacup properly.  mama and daddy always tell me to use two hands when i drink.  so i wrap my right hand around the cup and i put my left hand under the bottom of the cup for support.  nobody ever showed me how to do that.  it’s just in my blood — my asian blood.

i went to my very first easter egg hunt this weekend.  it was for kids age 2-12.  even though i’m below the minimum age limit, i had  no trouble getting in.  i wonder if mama had a fake ID made for me or if i just look older than my 18 months.  either way, i’m set for when i want to start hitting the club scene!

anyway, there was a no-grown-ups-allowed rule at the easter egg hunt, so mama was concerned about me getting trampled by the bigger kids.  but she was relieved to see that there was a special little area designated for 2-3 year-olds.  yay.  we were waiting for the countdown to begin, but then all of a sudden, parents started taking their kids inside the hunt zone and taking all the eggs!  what the heck?!  CHEATERS!!!  when the starting bell went off, mama lifted me into the hunt area (while she followed the rules and waited outside) and encouraged me to find eggs to put in my basket.  but there were NONE.  all the cheater parents and their kids already hoarded all of them.  hmph.  everyone who didn’t get an egg got a prize ticket instead, and i redeemed my ticket for bubbles.  yay!  i liked blowing bubbles with daddy way better than searching for stupid plastic eggs filled with candy that mama and daddy wouldn’t let me eat, anyway.

maddie shared her eggs with me so that i would have something to put in my basket.  mama made me put on my sunglasses before she took the picture because she didn’t want everyone to see my black eye.  (she photoshopped out the scrape on my face.)  and then maddie and i tried to pose for a photo together, but then easter bunny snuck up behind us!  maddie saw her and ran away, but i wasn’t quick enough.  bunny grabbed me — again!  what the heck?  first, she showed up at my gym a couple of weeks ago, and now she shows up at the egg hunt?  how did she know where i was gonna be?  she must be stalking me!

i’m not sure i want to go to another public egg hunt next year where the easter bunny will find me (and where there will be cheating parents and kids) again.  maybe i’ll just stay home and decorate eggs with mama and daddy.

there are a few more photos from the easter egg hunt (including hard evidence that bunny grabbed me again).  if you wanna see them, click here.

yeah, i got a beat down.  big ol’ shiner, and everything.   and this photo is nuthin’ — you shoulda see me two days ago right after it happened.  mama wouldn’t let me take a picture on that day because she didn’t want photos floating around just in case child protective services opened up an investigation against her.

so why am i laughing?  heh.  you shoulda seen the other guy.  besides, mama told me that scars are sexy.  what do you think?

ever since i was little, koda has taken care of me.  he protects me from strange dogs and people that i don’t know.  he cleans up all the food that i accidentally drop during mealtimes.  and when we’re out and about, he checks on me often to make sure i’m okay.

well, now that i’m as big as koda is (when we’re both standing), i have started to take care of him, too.  every evening when i wake up from my nap, i take him out somewhere.  first, i hold his collar and he “suits up” by stepping into his collar.  then, mama helps me fasten it around his neck.  sometimes we go to the dog park or ponds where he doesn’t need a leash.  but when we go for out walks, i  insist on holding the leash because i want to walk him by myself.  and then today, i saw mama furminating koda.  of course i stepped in and took over cuz i wanted to furminate him by myself.

koda and i take care of each other ‘cuz that’s what brothers do.  i can’t wait ’til my new baby arrives so i can walk him and furminate him, too!

mama and daddy have always thought that i have ADD/ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).  i cannot sit still.  some of my aunties used to say that i’m “just being a boy”, but mama and daddy have always said that my behavior is not normal.  even my doctor says that i am a “busy” kid.  for example:

• i got a bumbo when i was 3.5 months old.  i wouldn’t even sit still in that thing.  i didn’t know how to crawl back then, but i quickly (within a week or so) figured out how to lean forward and squirm my way out of the bumbo.
• most of my friends have their favorite shows that they like to watch on TV.  their parents even use the TV as a way to entertain them so that they can trim their hair/fingernails or feed them meals.  that doesn’t work for me because i won’t sit still — not even for elmo or thomas the tank engine, my favorite characters.
• i refuse to sit in a high hair.  when we go out to eat at restaurants, i use a booster chair with no straps or restraints so i can stand up often to stretch and move around.

mama and i recently started playing a new game where i balance dog on my head.  he usually falls off after 5-8 seconds (‘cuz i start shaking my head), but i set a 29 second record the other day!  (well, not really 29 seconds, but long enough for mama to count to 29 really fast.)  what a fun game!  mama says it’s good sitting-still practice, but i dunno what she’s talking about.

lately, mama has started to suspect that i not only have ADHD but also OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).  she used to think that i just like being clean, but it has gone beyond that.  if i fall down while walking outside, i clean my hands and pants with a wipe.  while creating an art project, i wash my hands several times.  at home, i would wash my hands 100 times a day if i could reach the sink by myself!

during meals, i clean my hands several times.  i wipe my mouth with a napkin after drinking.  if a piece of food falls off my plate, i give it to mama so she can throw it away (or if i think nobody is looking, i give it to koda).  i wipe down the table after i finish eating.  and the other day after lunch, i grabbed a plastic bag from under the sink, collected all the trash (used napkins, food scraps, etc.) from the table and then threw the bag in the garbage can.  nobody has ever shown me how to do that — i just don’t like seeing trash lying around.

and it’s not just that i’m a clean guy, i have to have everything just so.  if the sliding door to my closet is cracked open, i close it all the way.  when i go up or down the stairs in our house, i close the safety gate behind me.  when i’m done with a tupperware container, i firmly close the lid.  when i walk through a doorway, i always make sure to close the the door behind me.  and if that door doesn’t close (because of a doorstop or because it’s just plain stuck), i get really upset.

i dunno why mama thinks that i have disorders.  i am just a normal active kid, and i spend my energy being orderly — not disorderly!  you’d think that mama and daddy would be happy about that, right?  can someone please explain that to them?

mama gets to have her GNO’s (girls’ nights out) and daddy gets his GNO’s (guys’ nights out), so it’s only fair that  i get to have my BDO’s, right?  today’s boys’ day out was at emma prusch farm park with edison, logan, and matthew.  omg, i can’t believe i have never been there before.  it’s a huge park that has a playground, picnic tables, an orchard, and even some old farm equipment to climb on.  but there’s a real farm in there, too!  there were chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese in the small animal area.  (i gave some chicken scratch to a rooster, and i clapped for it when it ate the food.)  and in the nearby barn, there were sheep, pigs, cows, and more roosters.  i even saw a peacock hanging out outside of the barn.

the roosters at this park are very aggressive and they have some serious attitude.  they strut around like they own the place.  mama says that they do own the place since the park is their home.  yeah, yeah… technicalities.  i think my friends were a little intimidated by the roosters with all that ‘tude, but not me.  i chased them all around — i think they were scared of me.

after we were done checking out the barn animals (and i was done terrorizing the roosters), we headed over to the playground.  the sign said it was for ages 5-12, but i played in there anyway.  i swung on the swing with mama — i hated it less than before, but i’m still not a fan.  i had a blast going down the slide though — big kid slides are the best!  i think daddy is over the age limit, but he played in the playground, too.

the boys and i could have stayed at the farm/park all day, but we got really hungry, and nobody thought to bring food for us.  hmph.  so we all went out to eat in japantown and stuffed ourselves silly.  well, i did, at least.  i ate so much that auntie cheryl asked me if i was training for a career in competitive eating 😛

what a fun BDO we had!  thanks for organzing, edison. hope we can do it again soon!  (click here for more BDO pics.)

i went to a party at the little gym yesterday.  they called it a “spring fling”, but it must have been an easter party because the easter bunny was there.  i’m not sure why though, cuz mama says easter is not for two more weeks.  but all the kids were standing in line to see bunny, so i lined up too.  when it was my turn, i waved to bunny then ran off with her entire basket of eggs.  when i went back to return the basket (mama said i had to), bunny grabbed me.  i screamed and ran away.  isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when strangers grab you?  i know that she just wanted to take a picture with me, but sheesh!  i just met her.

aside from the easter bunny, there was a guy playing the guitar (i had fun dancing to the music), lots of food, drinks, and easter candy. daddy ate nestle eggs and mama ate laffy taffy, but they only let me eat oranges.  hmph.  that doesn’t seem fair, does it?

the party was for all little gym members, so the gym equipment was setup for kids of all ages.  i got to try out lots of super fun big kid apparatuses:

• climbing the rock wall
• jumping off the foam block and swinging on the rings
• balancing on the inclined high beam
• and my favorite… climbing the steep incline with a rope, then sliding down the other side!

i wonder if the easter bunny is going to try to grab me again when easter really comes later this month.  why is there an easter bunny anyway?  bunnies don’t lay eggs.

mama and daddy have always encouraged me to develop problem-solving skills.  like when my ball rolls into a place that i cannot reach… or when i get stuffed inside of a laundry basket…  instead of answering my cries for help, they let me figure out how to fix it on my own.  like when daddy put child-proof latches on all my cabinets and drawers, i learned out how to “solve” that problem so that i could open them.  well today, i gave them yet another example that i’ve learned to fix problems on my own.

i had another playdate with maddie today.  this time we stayed local and went to the chidren’s discovery museum.  and as all CDM-regulars know, the art room in the wonder cabinet doesn’t open until 11:00am, one hour after the rest of the place. but i can’t tell time yet, so i headed over there at 10:45.  mama said to me: “do you see the sign that says ‘CLOSED’? that means we can’t go in yet. pretty soon, baby.”  well, since the sign was the problem (according to mama), i took the sign off the door and went right on in.  everyone laughed.  i dunno what was so funny — i was just fixing the problem like mama and daddy would have wanted me to.  the art room staff said i was sooo smart and sooo cute, so they let me in 15 minutes early.  problem solved.

today, we got to make sculptures with packing peanuts. these were no ordinary packing peanuts, though — when i squished them on the wet sponge, they started to melt and stuck together like glue!  i made a masterpiece.  mama called it abstract art.  then, mama helped me made a sculpture of koda.  the boy sitting next to me saw it and asked his daddy to help him make one, too.  copycat.  he didn’t like his koda sculpture though, so when his dad asked him to pose for a picture with it, he took mine!  what’s worse?  being a copycat, or taking credit for my artwork?!

oh well, i didn’t care that much anyway, so i let him keep it.  i have a real koda at home who doesn’t melt when he gets wet.

i finally figured it out.  “texas” is just another word for “phone”!

whenever daddy tells me that mama is in texas, i search for her all over the place.  but no matter how hard i look, i can never find her.  when i woke up yesterday, i didn’t see her.  daddy said she was in texas.  but later that morning, i heard her inside of miss denise’s phone.  i even got to talk to her for a little bit 🙂

miss denise took this picture of me with her phone, for mama.  i guess it makes sense that mama could see it since she was inside the phone.  i thought that she would come out in time to take me and koda out for our evening stroll, but she didn’t.  she didn’t feed me dinner or put me to bed either.  i guess she got stuck inside there.

when i woke up this morning, again, no mama.  daddy said that she was still in texas.  so when miss denise came over, i looked for mama in her phone, but i couldn’t find her.  a little while later gung-gung’s phone rang, and next thing i knew, i heard mama talking.  i was very very confused.  how did mama get from miss denise’s phone to gung-gung’s phone?

all that thinking made me so tired that i had to take a nap.  when i woke up, mama came to get me out of my crib.  she made me a snack, then we went on our evening stroll with koda.  everything was back to normal.

i still don’t get how mama gets in and out of all those little mobile phones, but at least i know that the next time she goes to texas, i’ll be able to find her inside one of the phones inside our house!

i had such a traumatic day today.  i went to the doctor for my 18-month checkup, and i recognized the place as soon as we arrived.  but i was tricked!  instead of my regular nurse, i was greeted by a different nurse who was really young and really pretty.  (i guess my regular nurse was on vacation or out sick or something.)  i thought that since my regular nurse wasn’t there, i could get away clean, without getting stabbed by needles.  but as soon as mama laid me down on the exam table with the crinkly paper, i knew that the pretty nurse had it in for me.  here are my stats:

• weight: 23 lbs. 8 oz. (19 %ile)
• height: 32.5 inches (56 %ile)
• head circumference: 48.5 cm. (70 %ile)

mama couldn’t believe that i only gained ~1 lb. in three months, so i adjusted the scale again, just to be sure.  my height and weight are pretty much stable, but my head sure is getting big!

after taking my measurements, the pretty nurse left the room.  whew!  all done, right?  i kept trying to leave, but mama wouldn’t let my put my pants or shoes back on.  i knew there was something fishy going on, so i tried to hack into my doctor’s computer to see what was in store for me.

then the doctor came in.  he was just doing his usual checkup (ears, tummy, etc.), but i sobbed uncontrollably.  i knew the needles were coming.  even after he had finished, i couldn’t stop crying.  he was trying to have a conversation with mama, but she could barely hear him because i was wailing in her ear.  she was holding me tight, but i couldn’t stop shaking.

when the doctor left the room, i calmed down for a moment.  but then the pretty nurse came back in with a needle.  i knew it!!!  i started sobbing and shaking again.  i didn’t feel the needle go into my arm, so i looked to see what was going on.  but then the nurse reached toward my arm again, and i started screaming again.  it turned out that she was just putting on a band-aid.  oh.  that’s it? i felt sort of silly and stopped crying immediately.  the thought of the needle was 100 times scarier than the injection itself.

i only got one shot today (and it was supposedly an “easy” one), but it was the most emotionally traumatic doctor’s visit of my whole life.  good thing i don’t have another appointment for 6 more months.