over the long weekend, i had another date with my girl maddie at the children’s discovery museum.  now that we’re both card-carrying members, i think that CDM is going to become a frequent rendezvous spot for us.  even though i’m a regular there, something different grabs my attention every time.  yesterday, it was the art studio.  actually, it was maddie that wanted to get creative, and i didn’t want her to go into the studio without me.  (you know, with all those other boys in there.)

i was so excited about my dough sculpture, that i fell out of my seat — literally!  really, that’s how i got the bruise on my cheek and the bump on my head.  no, really.  that’s mama’s story and she’s sticking to it.  so you can call off child protective services.

today, i had my regular (every tuesday) workout at the little gym.  of all the gyms that i’ve tried out, this one is my favorite.  compared to others, this class is more focused on a real physical workout.  pull-ups, back flips, tumbling…  i still need a spotter for most of the activities, but i was able to hang from the uneven bars by myself today!  i need to stay fit if i’m gonna impress the girlies, right?  so i signed up for an annual membership.

so, that’s a lot of memberships that i have, right?  but wait, there’s more.  i am currently a card-carrying member at all these places:

• children’s discovery museum:  to get some culture and nurture my creative talents
• almaden valley athletic club:  to get my cardio workout in the pool
• the little gym:  to do my strength straining and get hubbed out like governor schwarzenegger
• the tech:  to get my geek on (actually, mama is a member, but i get to go with her for free!)

i’m a renaissance man in the making.  now if i could only get a season pass to disneyland…

i never got a chance to meet them, but some of the coolest old ladies in my family were born on double days — august 8 (8/8), september 9 (9/9), october 10 (10/10).  double days… get it?

po-po (grandma quon) was born on september 9.  she went to heaven before i was born, but i often hear about what a wonderful person she was and how much she would have loved me and cousin zoey.  and even though she’s not around, we all still think about her often.

so, on po-po’s birthday weekend, the quon clan came together to honor and remember her.  hi po-po!  we love you! plus, it was a just good excuse to go out for a yummy lunch and for gung-gung to see both of his grandkids together 🙂

cousin zoey is growing up so fast.  she is walking and talking like a real little girl!  she looks just like her mommy, auntie alyssa.  and everyone says that i look like daddy.  so i guess that means that the quon genes aren’t very strong?

happy 11 month birthday to me 🙂

things i like:

• standing up, unsupported
• clapping (i can even multi-task — clap while standing!)
• signing “i’m #1!” (daddy thinks i’m pointing)
• waving
• “redecorating” the house (bringing mama’s knee-high boots up the stairs, sliding mama’s iphone across the floor into the kitchen, taking gung-gung’s exercise gear from his room to the living room)
• rowing (rocking back and forth) on mama while we sing “row row row your boat”
• drinking out of a straw
• working out at the gym (i did assisted pull-ups at the little gym this week!)
• watching koda play with his friends
• tugging on koda’s ears and turning them inside out
• feeding myself finger foods (and smearing them all over my face, and rubbing them in my hair, and feeding them to koda…)
• ramming my ride-on cars into people’s shins
• riding on my ride-on cars (finally learned how to ride on them instead of walking behind them)
• playing with the pop-up sink drains in the bathtub and sinks
• dancing (i’m really just standing in place and bouncing, but auntie jill says that it counts, since that’s how most grown-up men dance :P)

things i don’t like:

• staying still (i have to be moving around ALL the time.  and as i get faster and faster, it makes it hard and harder for anyone to photograph me!)
• when mama tells me “NO” in her i’m-not-playing voice
• walking (i take 1-2 steps, then faceplant)

i knew that today was going to be my last swim lesson (for this summer session, anyway) and i wanted to make the most of it.  daddy thought that i didn’t want to swim because i kept climbing out of the pool, but i was just practicing.  i swam to the wall, climbed out of the pool (which i was not able to do by myself at the beginning of summer), and then “dived” back in.  and then i did it again.  and again.  and again.  i think i did that about seven times.  i’m not really sure though because i can’t count that high.

but somehow, i managed to spend enough time in the water to demonstrate my excellent swimming skills and graduate from swim school!  i am an o-fish-al pollywog!  (it says so on my graduation ribbon 🙂 )

my o-fish-al swim movie is below, but if you are interested in seeing my practice footage, you can see that here.

i always have fun shopping with mama.  even though we usually just go to the grocery store, i like to sit in the shopping cart and wave at all the other people there.  they always wave back and do funny things to make me giggle.  grocery store people are so friendly 🙂

but yesterday, mama took me shoe shopping.  mama picked out a pair for me and then helped me walk around the store to see if they were comfy.  they weren’t… at all.  my feet want to be free!  i immediately tried to pull off the shoes, but they didn’t budge.  i tried to kick them off,  but that didn’t work either.  velcro is some powerful stuff.

mama helped me free my feet (whew!) and then told me that i could pick whatever shoes i wanted. and that’s when the fun began.

i crawled over to a display of shoes and selected a pair of pink and white pumas.  i then spotted some pink and white onesies embroidered with pretty butterflies, so i slid the shoebox across the store to get them.  cute outfit, right?  but i wasn’t done yet!  mama taught me that no outfit is complete without a coordinated bib, so i crawled around the corner to find those.  (mama took the shoes out of the box for the photo, but i did the rest all by myself!)

mama thinks that i want to be a cross-dresser, but i just want my little sister to be well-dressed.  i know, you’re thinking “WHAT LITTLE SISTER???”, right?  yeah, mama and daddy said the same thing.  oh well.  a kid can dream.

for the past week or two, i have been practicing my new favorite word.  mama.  mama.  mama. that’s what i say all day long.  mama. when i say it to daddy, he responds “da da”.  when i say it to mommy, she responds, “yes, baby?”  it warms her heart.

and just when mommy thought she couldn’t love me more, guess what else i have been doing for the past week.  i have been… SLEEPING… say it with me… THROUGH… THE… NIGHT!!!  i didn’t mention it sooner because i didn’t want to jinx myself, but yup, i’m finally sleeping through the night (~8:30pm to ~7:00am).

it started last week when mommy came home from dallas.  at first, she thought that she was just so tired that she just didn’t hear me when i woke up.  but after a week, i think it’s official 🙂

mommy is so happy that she almost doesn’t mind that i am starting to move on from mama to dada.  (i’m actually trying to say “koda”, but don’t tell daddy that!)

last week, koda taught himself a new trick — he learned to scale our 6 ft. fence all by himself!  i couldn’t let the dog outdo me, so i taught myself some new tricks, too.  i’ve just been waiting for the chance to show off my new skills.  tonight was the night.

for some strange reason, mommy decided to put tonight’s dinner drink in a regular cup instead of my usual sippy cup.  she held the straw up to my lips, expecting me to chew on the straw or just play with it (like i did when i first started using my sippy cup).  but to her surprise, i drank my juice like a pro.  that’s right — i sucked!  mommy was so amazed because  nobody had ever shown me how to use a straw before.  she was celebrating by cheering and clapping…  so i started clapping, too!

WHOA!!!  now everyone was really excited and causing a commotion.  i had been practicing clapping for many weeks and was unsuccessful up until tonight.  mommy and daddy were sooo happy that i finally got the hang of it.  i was happy, too —  so happy, that i clapped throughout the rest of my dinner 🙂

that’s two new tricks for me in one night.  okay koda… show me what ya’ got!

for many months, mommy thought i was like the cheerleader from heroes who didn’t feel pain.  i was constantly doing things like diving off the couch and conking my head, slamming my fingers in the dresser drawer, or biting my fingers until i broke the skin.  mommy let me do these things in hopes that i would learn.  but i never learned — i just did ’em again and again.  so then mommy began to think that i was just dumb.  that was the running theory for a long time.

but lately, there’s a new theory forming in my household…

• i love ramming my new truck into things — especially people’s shins
• when someone yelps “ow!” it makes me giggle
• when grown-ups help me stack the people from my sillytown toy, i immediately swat them down so the sillypeople come tumbling to the ground
• it sends me into hysterics when mommy bites my fingers with her teeth (although fake biting does nothing for me)
• i dismembered by stuffed duckie

so what do you think this says about me?

my buddy matthew turned 1 today.  happy birthday matthew!

i had been looking forward to his party for a long time because he was planning to have a dol, and i had never been to one before.  for this special occasion, i got dressed up in my collared shirt and argyle sweater vest.  and during lunch time, i even wore my formal bib 🙂  mommy and daddy said that i looked like a country club kid.  they must have been sooo proud of me dressed up all proper-looking and chewing with my mouth open 😀

matthew wore his special korean outfit and performed a traditional fortune telling ritual.  he picked the ball, dropped it, and then picked up the hammer.  so what’s the ruling?  does that mean he’s going to be an athlete (maybe not a very good one, since he dropped the ball), or will he be a builder?  or maybe he will become a builder after his pro athletic career is over.

there was also a balloon man at matthew’s party!  he made the most amazing balloon creations i have ever seen.  there were princesses, flying dragons, winnie-the-poohs holding baby rattles (that actually rattled), and all kinds of fancy things.  but all i wanted was a koda 🙂  i love balloon-koda, but real koda is not so much a fan.

i don’t think that balloon man is a korean tradition, but even if he is, i don’t care — i want him for my birthday party.  and now that i think about it, i want to do the fortune telling thing, too.  i’m definitely going to secure my future by choosing the wad of cash.  although… would a roll of bills mean that i’ll be rich, or will i just be a frequent patron at a gentlemen’s club?  or maybe both…

sorry, no photos of me with the birthday boy.  the grown-ups wanted to take a group shot of all us kids today, but matthew and i raced away from the paprazzi!

for the past few months, i’ve been feeding myself magic puffs.  mommy and daddy have been reluctant to give me other finger foods because they knew what a huge mess i would make.  but now that i have demonstrated improvement in my fine motor skills (like high fiving and waving), they decided to let me try to eat more things by myself.  cool, huh?

it’s way more fun to feed myself than have someone else feed me!  here are some of my thoughts about self-feeding:

1. i can stuff way more than one spoonful of food into my mouth all at once.
2. even though i usually show clear signs of right-handedness, i eat with my left hand just as much as my right.  i am an equal opportunity face-stuffer.
3. meal times take 2x longer than they used to.  mommy and daddy think i’m a slow eater, but i’m really just stalling so that i can stay up later at night.  (my bedtime has recently shifted back an hour to 8:30pm.)
4. i know i’m not supposed to eat oatmeal with my hands, but i put it all over my face because i heard that it’s good for my skin.
5. mommy and daddy think that i accidentally drop food on the ground because i’m uncoordinated.  gung-gung says it’s the rule of thirds: 1/3 of my food lands on the ground, 1/3 ends up on me or somewhere in my chair, and 1/3 actually ends up in my mouth.  but i’ll let you in on a secret — i drop food on purpose because i like sharing my food with koda.
6. it’s not cool to take pictures of someone stuffing their face and chewing their food.  it’s just not cute.  just saying…