last night, we went to pick up dinner and then headed over to visit auntie char and uncle ed.  when we got to their house, i got two very exciting surprises.  for one thing, we got to eat burritos for dinner.  yum!  at first, mama was sharing her burrito with me, but i kept spitting it out.  she was shocked that i didn’t like it, until she realized that there was HOT salsa in her burrito.  she was trying to set my tongue on fire!  so daddy had to share his (mild) burrito with me, and that made everyone happy.  every but daddy, that is.

and the second surprise…  baby greyson!  when uncle ed first brought him out, i was terrified.  i didn’t even want to look at him.  mama thought i might have been scared because i had never seen a baby so young (11 days old).  but then she remembered that i had met logan when he was only one week old, and he even came over for a sleepover!  but i was so young back then that i barely remember it.

the truth is, when we arrived at baby greyson’s house, i was very hungry.  and when i saw him, i got upset because i thought i was going to have to share my burrito with him.  mama and daddy always make me share my things with other kids, especially when they’re smaller than me.  but once i finished eating, i was much happier.  i followed baby greyson all around his house.  when he went into his room to play in his swing, i followed him in there and didn’t take my eyes off of him.  when his swing stopped moving, i rocked it for him.  and when he fell asleep, i just stood outside his door and watched him sleep.

what seemed like just a few minutes later, baby greyson woke up to eat.  babies sure don’t sleep for very long.  after he ate, auntie char put him down in his bassinet.  but the bassinet was too tall, so i couldn’t see him!  so i walked all around the house calling him: “baby?  baby?  baby?”  he didn’t answer me.  i guess he was sleeping.

when we were getting ready to leave, mama picked me up so i could say bye to baby greyson.  i blew kisses to him and reached out towards him.  mama thought i was trying to give him a hug, but i was actually trying to pick him up so we could bring him home.  isn’t that how kids get little brothers? the whole way home, all night last night, and even this morning, i’ve been looking for him.  “baby?  baby?  baby?”  he’s still not answering me.

on friday night, edison hosted a playdate.  chloe and i went to his house and ate his food and played with his toys.  and OMG, he has so many toys and books!  no wonder he is always smiling and in such a great mood.  i was having such a blast playing that i didn’t want to eat at all.  i just wanted to play play play.  edison is such a good host, and he is really good at sharing.  but that could have something to do with the fact that both chloe and i are bigger than him and can run faster 😛

one of my favorite things at edison’s house is an awesome lounge chair that is just my size.  it is so much more comfortable to sit and read in his chair than in my hard plastic booster seat or activity table.  for almost a month, mama has been promising me a kyden-sized chair, but i still don’t have one!  so when we got home from edison’s house, i made her order one right away.  she says that she didn’t end up ordering the one that she had originally planned, but got one that i’ll like even better!  it’s supposed to be delivered on tuesday, so i guess we’ll see.

saturday was auntie ann’s birthday.  i didn’t think that grown-ups had birthday parties because i’ve only ever been to kid parties.  but edison and uncle newton threw a surprise birthday lunch for auntie ann!  how nice of them, huh?  and nice for mama and daddy, too.  i guess they need playdates and birthday parties for themselves and their old friends once in awhile.  see, so don’t believe it when mama and daddy say that my social calendar rules their lives.  sometimes i have to chaperone their playdates, too!

thank you to edison for hosting a weekend of playdates for the whole family!  (and to auntie ann: thanks for taking these photos.  hope you had an awesome birthday.)

i graduated from my “birds” (that’s what they call us 10-19 month olds) gym class today.  we reviewed all of the skills we learned during this session, and we all received ribbons.  hooray for all of us little birdies!  some of my favorite things we did in gym class were forward rolls on the high beam, hanging from the uneven bars, and back flipping through the air.  fun stuff!  i had so much fun in gym class that i convinced mama to sign me up for the next session.  i can’t wait.

so, with all of the moves that i learned in gym class, you’d think i’d be a daredevil on the playground, right?  me too!  well, i love playing on the slides, but that’s about it.  i hate that giant spider web rope thingy.  when other kids climb on it, it makes the entire web shake like an earthquake.  and i still hate swings.

i’ve never liked swings.  i mean, i loved my baby swing, but playground swings have never been my thing.  i have tried them out several times, but those things are terrifying!  mama thought that months of gym class would have helped me overcome my fear of swings, so we went to the playground today.  kiddie swing?  hated it.  so as a test, mama let me sit on her lap while she swung on the big kid swing.  i hated that too!

i need professional help.  what could have caused this intense and irrational fear of swings?  i must have had some traumatic experience that i’ve blocked from my memory.  can anyone think of any swinging incidents that i had in my childhood?  please let me know.  thanks.

mama went away on a business trip again and so it was just me and daddy holding the fort.  i don’t really know what a fort is, but daddy kept telling me to hold all sorts of things for him this week.  he’s a big boy, i don’t know why i have to do all the heavy lifting!

one of the things that mama always says is that daddy can’t dress me in a color coordinated outfit.  daddy may be color-blind, but one day this week he not only dressed me in a color coordinated outfit, but i matched my sippy cup too!

all week mama has been gone and i’ve been trying to find out where she has been.  i would look in all the usual places, but she wasn’t around.  i think that she has been playing hide and seek with me and forgot that she was hiding.  still, i kept looking for her.  i thought maybe she was hiding in a new place, so i started to look in new places.  so far, i have not found her in any cabinets.  i’d open a door, crawl in and ask mama if she was in there.

mama usually takes care of dinner for me, so eating with daddy has been quite a treat.  mama usually makes me yummy things like organic pasta or organic meatballs with steamed vegetables.  all of this yummy healthy living has been the staple of my diet.  while mama has been gone, though, daddy has been in charge of feeding me dinner.  i heard mama say feed him whatever you eat, and he really is!

i ate a burrito the first night, but it was so spicy that i tried to take my tongue out to let it cool off from all the heat.  the second night we had sliders.  i don’t know why daddy called them sliders, they didn’t slide anywhere.  in fact, they looked just like mini burgers.  daddy used organic ingredients in the sliders, he even got me organic ketchup!  i *LOVED* my first cheeseburger.  we didn’t have real cheese around, so daddy chopped up some of my string cheese to make cheeseburgers.  it was delicious.

i miss mama though, i hope she comes back from hiding in texas.  i can’t find texas yet, but i’m sure it’s gotta be in this house somewhere!

i once heard auntie cheryl say that she exists purely for the entertainment value that she provides for uncle greg (her husband) and mama (her bff). and it’s true that over the years, they have laughed at with her a lot. mama says she’s so much fun because she can laugh at herself, too.  auntie cheryl, i know just how you feel! when auntie mimi was visiting over the holidays, she said that she used to think that stay-at-home moms would get bored hanging out with their kids all day. but after spending a couple of days with me, she realized just how entertaining we really are.

lately, mama and daddy seem to be laughing at with me a lot. sometimes they know they shouldn’t be laughing because i’m doing something that they don’t want to encourage, but they can’t help it. i’m just that funny! and sometimes, i do things that aren’t really funny at all, but they laugh out of amazement because they have no idea where i learned it from. (i’ll tell you a secret — i learn from mimicking them!) here are some of my latest tricks:

• moonwalking and crawling backwards
• wiping down the table, floor, and my face (in that order) with a paper towel
• covering my eyes to play peek-a-boo with the animals in my peek-a-moo book
• hitting myself on the forehead with the palm of my hand to sign “omg!”
• opening my mouth and saying “blaaah” to let food fall out of my mouth
• kissing mama all over her face
• converting my activity table into a lounge chair
• feeding cookie monster his fake cookie
• giving koda the distance-down hand signal
• climbing in and out of my cozy coupe dukes-of-hazard style (through the window)
• patting my diaper (in the crotch area) before and after going poop
• getting a tissue to wipe and blow my own nose when i have boogers
• dragging my booster chair to the window so i can sit and read in the sunlight
• taking off my shoes as soon as i get into the car

see, auntie cheryl?  nobody is laughing at us, they are just amazed at how funny and smart we are 🙂

we’re only a couple of weeks into 2011 and i’ve already been so productive. just think how much funnier i’ll be in the months to come!

i had finally gotten the image of the floating warthog head out of my mind, when it got replaced with something worse — a floating shark head! i’m not talking about a little shark head made out of paper, stuck between the pages of a book. i’m talking a GINORMOUS 20′ tall shark head. when we arrived at the shark tank the other day, the shark head was breathing fire and its eyes were glowing red! i screamed in terror and tried to wriggle my way out of daddy’s arms so that i could run away, but he held me tight. and he just kept walking down the stairs closer and closer and closer to the horrifying shark head. and THEN… the shark head started levitating!!! i jumped into mama’s arms and pleaded with her to take me home, but she just kept telling me that the shark head wasn’t scary. YES… IT… WAS!!!

but once the shark head was raised all the way into the ceiling, and the lights in the arena came back on, it wasn’t so bad. sharkhead and i actually became friends, and i even waved to him a few times. but, i did glance over at him every few seconds just to make sure he wasn’t going to levitate over to our section and eat me.

everything was going fine and i no longer felt that my life was in danger… until the 3rd period when sharkie came into our section and sat down right in front of me. my heartbeat quickened and i felt a wave of panic coming on, but i’m not sure why. and then sharkie tried to eat me! suddenly, all the traumatic memories came rushing back. sharkie had tried to eat me before! but that was almost a year ago. and this time, i was dressed just like him. you wouldn’t think he would eat one of his own kind, right? but apparently cannibalism is alive and well at the shark tank.

mama says that she tried to fight him off but that sharkie overpowered her. but auntie judy (who was sitting on the other side of the arena) had a different story to tell. she says that mama fed me to sharkie!!! mama says that there’s no way that auntie judy could see that far. so i just don’t know what to believe. all i know, is that i do NOT… LIKE… SHARKS. can you blame me?

sierra is like the big sis i’ll never have.  she lives in southern california, so i don’t see her very often.  and because she lives so far away, i didn’t get to go to her 1st or 2nd birthday parties.  actually, now that i think about it, i didn’t get to go to her 1st birthday party because i wasn’t born yet.  and i didn’t get to go to her 2nd one because it was the same day as my red egg and ginger party.  but guess what!  she had her 3rd birthday party up here in norcal, and i got to join in on the fun 🙂

we partied at u-me playplace.  i had been there before, but not in the special party-only area.  the party area has crawling tubes, a giant trampoline, climbing bars, and lots of other cool stuff to play with.  we also played fun games that i never played before, like freeze dance and duck duck goose.  duck duck goose was fun.  when i was the goose, i tagged logan and ran away from him fast!  he couldn’t catch me.  thanks uncle greg, for the tip about picking on someone smaller than me!

after play time, we went into the party room and ate lunch and cake.  mama was playing with other kids, and even held another baby, but i didn’t mind.  i was busy eating aram sandwiches and fruit salad.  yum!  besides, there were balloons to play with and music to dance to.  when michael jackson came on, i even started moonwalking!  auntie jo thought it was sooo funny.

happy birthday to sierra.  thanks for having your party in norcal this year!  (more party pics here.)

i went to go see the doctor for my 15-month checkup today. here are my stats.

• weight: 22 lbs. 5 oz. (19 %ile)
• height: 31.5 inches (61 %ile)
• head circumference: 47.2 cm. (50 %ile)

doc is happy with my growth. even though i am underweight (based on the stats), i seem to have settled into a stable spot on the growth curve. doc says that i’m going to be 5’10” and skinny. i know what you’re thinking — mama and daddy don’t believe it either.

doc agreed with mama and daddy’s assessment that i’m a lefty. he told them not to try to force me into right-handedness cuz lefties have competitive advantages in sports — mean hooks in bowling and a reverse spin in tennis.  he had daddy at “bowling”.

doc also diagnosed me as being a very “busy” kid.  i think that’s the medical term for “always on the move, checking out every corner of the room, curiously opening every cabinet and drawer, crawling into every little space that you can fit in…”  i never thought much of it when my aunties called me “busy”, but since that’s the doc’s professional opinion, i guess it must be true. he warned mama and daddy to be very careful with me because i will start getting into even more things that i already do.  mama and daddy said that that’s not impossible.  oh, i’ll show ’em.

while i was taking a break from all the exploring, i sat on mama’s lap to get a drink of water. then all of a sudden, the room started shaking and mama covered my head. what the heck? EARRRRRTHQUAAAAAKE!!! (4.1 centered in san jose.)

that should have been my first clue that it was going to be a bad day. sure enough, i got prodded and poked, i had pointy things stuck into my ear, and just when i thought it was all over, the nurse came back to stick needles in me! but at least i got 2 really cool snoopy band-aids on my thigh. mama says they’re the same band-aids that i get every time — i don’t know why i never noticed them before.

mama volunteers with pound puppy rescue to save puppies from starvation, disease, abuse, and lots of other bad stuff.  koda was even one of rescue puppies that mama and daddy fostered!  so you’d think that mama would be caring and compassionate towards all furry creatures, right?  wrong.

mama started a 365 project for 2011 in which she has to take (and post) a photograph every day.  (can you believe that she posted a photo of koda before posting one of ME?!)  this week, the theme is “blue”.  so mama decided to photograph my (blue) cookie monster flying through the pretty (blue) sky.

so we went outside to take some pictures.  at first, it was hilarious to see cookie monster flying.  but cookie monster is not a cat, and he wasn’t landing on his feet.   he was landing eyeballs first!  mama was hurting cookie monster!  so i got really upset.

so i did what any kid in my position would do.  i rescued cookie monster and put a stop to the monster abuse.  i held him, and i hugged him, and i told him that i wouldn’t let anyone hurt him ever again.  and then i helped him eat the cookie that he was holding in his hand.

yay!  one monster saved.  and as an added bonus, mama posted a photo of me holding cookie monster as her photo for today.

i’ve been sleeping through the night (10-11 hours) pretty well for the past 5 months now.  but once in awhile, i wake up in the middle of the night, stand up, let out a blood-curdling scream, then go right back to sleep after a minute or two.  mama and daddy figured i must be having a night terror or a nightmare or something.  i know what you’re thinking.  what could a 15 month old kid be having nightmares about, right?  well, i’ll tell you.  headless warthogs.

i love to ree-ree-ree (translation: read) books that are interactive.  they have textures to touch, flaps to open, and 3-D things that pop up!  well, my current favorite book is the alphabet book by matthew van fleet.  each letter of the alphabet is represented by a safari animal.  the (A)lligator has a green scaly tail.  the (B)ees have bristly yellow bodies.  the (C)ougars have scratchy pink tongues that feel like sandpaper.  you get the idea.  well, the wet wadding (W)arthog has a head that “shake shake shake”s when i push and pull the tab on the side of the page.  but before i figured out how to pull the tab, i tried to make his head shake by grabbing it with my hand.  and his head fell off!

mama told me that i broke the warthog 🙁  i gave her the saddest puppy dog eyes i could, but she didn’t fix it.  she told daddy she was trying to teach me a lesson about being more gentle.  for more than a week, the warthog’s head was just floating between the pages of the book.  now, that wouldn’t be so bad if i didn’t read that book 2+ times a day!  everytime, i read it, i had to see that headless warthog and its floating head staring at me.

then one day, i opened the book to the (W) page, and the warthog’s head jumped right out and attacked me!  don’t laugh!  i’m not joking — it landed right into my lap.  i SCREAMED in horror and buried my face in mama’s shirt.

mama immediately took me, the book, and the warthog’s head downstairs to glue it back together.  it’s all fixed now.  i now try to be gentler with my books and i have since learned to pull the tab to make the warthog’s head shake.  but that doesn’t mean that the headless warthog doesn’t still haunt me in my dreams.