Hot, hot, hot!

Thus far, the open door sleep policy has been a success! We've had three nights of relatively calm sleep and although Sora still wakes up in the middle of the night, that's much better than having both Kai and Sora waking up in the middle of the night.

Backing up a bit.. last week I met up with Judy and Katie for a play date at the park. It was a bit hot, but Kai loved playing in the sand and as a bonus, they had a train play structure which Kai loved.

We celebrated a belated Father's Day with my dad and Nik at Outback Steakhouse the Monday after. That's definitely the way to go.. way less crowded and crazy.

All the hot weather that we've had lately means that it's great weather for grilling and eating outdoors; we had burgers and grilled veggies last week and of course, "Kai-Kai help."

We find random ways to pass time with the kids.. did you know that Safeway gives our free cookies and balloons to kids? :)

"Free tastes delicious."

 Kai now "prays" at church..

.. and our church also had a pool party this past Sunday. It was Sora's first pool experience and she did really well! Kai was in the pool briefly, but he spent most of his time hanging out poolside, eating snacks.

In spite of the hot weather, I did some baking yesterday.. I needed to make cookies for our neighbors and of course, Kai had to do some quality control.

We also met up will Greg, Ali and Parker at Happy Hollow yesterday. It was good to see them, although it was difficult to catch up while having the kiddos in tow.

"Nice to meet you, Uncle Greg."

Kai seemed to enjoy the park more this time and was fixated on seeing the monkeys. He really enjoyed to long, steep slide at the Crooked House and went down four times! He also seemed to do better with the animals in the petting zoo this time, although he wasn't quite up to letting them eat out of his hand yet.

"Baby monkey..."

Goat says, "maa!"

Even though we're excited about the new house, we'll certainly miss our current house. Kai just got used to his current daycare and now smiles at Miss Karen, his teacher, when we drop him off. I know we'll also miss living so close to the Shaws, and Kai will certainly miss his favorite gal, Evelyn.

And one more picture of Kai and Sora being adorable. Kai is such a great big brother!

Whew! It's been a busy week!

Big boy bed

So in addition to Sora's usual nighttime wakings, lately we've had to face a new problem: Kai could now climb out of his crib. We discovered this one night when Kai unexpectedly started crying out in the middle of the night. When Nik went in to check on him, he found Kai stuck hanging off the side of his crib, crying. We tried removed the front railing from the crib, but Kai no longer wanted to sleep there. Faced with this prospect, we were forced to have Kai graduate to sleeping in a "big boy bed": the twin-sized mattress on the floor of his room. The problem with this is that Kai could now roam around freely which led to even more nighttime shenanigans. We tried solving this problem by closing the door to his room; this was a complete disaster, with almost two hours of wailing, "Mama, mama!" and unending parental guilt. After some internet research (what did parents do before the internet?), tonight, we decided to try leaving the door to Kai's room open and telling him that he needed to stay on and sleep on his mattress, otherwise we would close the door. So far, it seems to have worked.. but who knows, we may wake up in the middle of the night with Kai trying to climb into our bed.

Fingers crossed!

Happy Father's Day!

Wishing Nik his third (!) Father's Day. Kai remains a papa's boy and oftentimes, if Kai doesn't want "Kai-Kai do it," he'll demand that "baba do it."

I took the kids to the library again this past week and we just so happened to be there during the monthly Reading to Rover event: essentially a time when kids can meet-and-greet super calm and gentle service dogs. Although Kai was apprehensive at first, once he warmed up to the dogs, he absolutely loved it!

"I like the library.."

".. where else can I read new books and pet doggies?"

After seemingly months and months of endless drooling, one of Kai's molars in the back is finally cutting through. Hopefully this means that the other molars will also be soon on their way and we can finally pack Kai's drool bibs away once and for all. Sora still has no teeth to speak of. She's gotten quite good at sitting up, though she still wobbles a bit and may topple over on occasion. She still doesn't roll onto her tummy and hates tummy time.. perhaps she'll bypass crawling and go straight to walking?

Propped up with the Boppy

Sora: "Look ma, no Boppy!"

I gave Kai the camera to play with the other day and ended up with a bunch of pictures of Sora's feet and his lap. Although Kai understands that he needs to push the button to take a picture, he doesn't yet understand that he needs to aim the camera at the subject.

By Kai U.

Kai: "Look at these great pictures, Sora.."

".. don't take the camera away!"

Since the kids and I have been sick, we haven't been able to visit my parents' house lately so it was nice to visit my parents and Matthew today, although Sora was super-cranky by the evening.

And a couple more pictures.. no narrative required. :)

Big news!

We have some big news to share: one of our offers to purchase a house was accepted! In case you didn't already know, Nik and I have been shopping for a house since the beginning of the year. With us, two kids and grandma around, it's been a bit tight living in our little three bedroom house (at least, by my Western living standards). So we've been regularly scanning online real estate listings, scheduling home tours and trekking out to open houses every weekend, and placing offers that seemed to get promptly (and heartbreakingly) rebuffed. The Bay Area real estate market is absolutely insane, so it's a relief to finally have an accepted offer (even though it's costing us a small fortune).

Home sweet home

This week has been hot, hot, hot. It's only June, so this is undoubtedly a preview of the hot summer to come. We did make it out to the park one day, we made it out the door by 9 am and by 10 am it was already getting hot. Kai had lots of fun checking out the Canadian geese in the park.

Sora and I are slowly recovering from our bout of hand, foot and mouth disease. Sora was actually doing better than me, but then she just got a bug from Kai, and now she and Kai are both coughing.

"Just let me sleep, mom."

Selfie with the sickie

This has been a crazy week, with all the illness in the house and having our offer accepted. But we're grateful for all that we have and we're mostly thankful for the fact that in spite of illness, our two kiddos still manage to be awesome.

Hands, feet and mouth.. oh my!

Yesterday, I noticed a teeny blister on my middle finger, I thought nothing of it until I also noticed a blister on thumb and big toe. I showed Nik and his response was, "meh," until I noticed that I also had some sores in my mouth.. blisters on my hands and feet, and in my mouth equals hand foot and mouth disease. Nik contends that I only gave him 2/3 of the information that he needed to make a diagnosis and that hand foot and mouth disease is not an emergency. :P Unfortunately, Sora has not escaped unscathed.. she has been cranky today and has a few little blisters on her feet. So far, everyone else seems to be doing okay and I'm trying hard to ensure that it stays that way.

This past weekend was jam packed with social activities (which may be how Sora and I got sick :/). On Friday, we went to small group as usual. I'm happy to say that Kai is finally doing better during small group babysitting and during church nursery. Sora still hangs out with us during the Bible study and demolished our study outline.

On Saturday, I took the kids to the library and while Sora snoozed, Kai gorged himself on a buffet of books. We haven't taken him to the library recently and I think he's finally realized that the library has a purpose beyond just being a fun place to run around. When we went to check out the books, Kai insisted that, "Kai-Kai do it!" He says that all the time, nowadays.. toddlers.

I then took the kids out to Annie and Quincy's baby shower luau.. quite the adventure since I went on my own with both of the kids. Fortunately, our church friends and Holly came to the rescue, and I managed to survive.

On Sunday we took the kids to church as usual and then while Nik went off to work, I headed to Fremont with the kids.

Helping herself to a bagel at church

Kai is developing a sense a humor and has become quite the entertainer/comedian. One of his new shticks is pretending to fall and saying, "Kai-Kai fall!" He was doing this at my parents' house trying to get my mom's attention while she was on the phone saying, "Kai-Kai fall, Po Po!" over and over.

"Kai-Kai funny!"

 
Sora finally discovered her toes just a little bit ago and loves to suck on them when she gets chance.

We've also been (a lot) less stringent with Sora's solid food feeding protocol, just this week, she had bagel, tofu and BBQ pork.

Sneaking a sip from big brother's sippy cup

Meat!

Watching Kai and Sora interact continues to be awesome, Kai remains the bossy, yet protective and doting big brother while Sora watches Kai's every move.

And just one more...

Cutie Kai

Nice!

When we used to take Kai to the soft play area at the mall, we had to work really hard to keep him corralled in the play area, but it seems that he's finally figured out how to stay in the play area and he's also learned to make friends with the other kids.

Amusingly, Kai has also started to say, "nice!" when he's happy or pleased with something. He must have picked that one up from Nik.

Like father, like son

Nik added li hing powder to Kai's rice the other day.. Kai loved it!

I took the kids to Costco yesterday and Kai really enjoyed having Sora sitting next to him in the double-wide shopping cart.

Sora still wakes up a lot during the night, so we've been trying to do some night training. Since Sora still sleeps in our room, we end up moving out to the couch in the family room when she's crying. I'm not sure if we're making progress yet (two hours of crying and screaming the other night) and Nik and I are debating whether or not we should throw in the towel.

Kicked out of our own room

Why doesn't she sleep like this during the night?

We're also still working on making sure Sora spends adequate time on her tummy. Watching Nik play video games this morning seemed to keep Sora on her tummy for longer than usual. :P

This past weekend was a busy one for us as we saw a lot of friends and family. On Saturday, we went to Jen and Lezra's baby shower.

Spiderman/Marvel family plus Sailor Moon

We also celebrated my mom's birthday and although I'm not sure if Kai understands the concept of "birthday" yet, he certainly understands the concept of "birthday cake". He was fascinated as we put candles on my mom's cake and lit the candles. He even knows how to blow out the candles now (which made lighting the candles tricky).

Happy birthday, Po Po!

On Sunday Kai also played with Milo, Luca and Juliette while we hung out with their parents. Kai had so much fun in Juliette's sand box that we may need to make one of our own. :)

Kai loves his little sister and Sora is fascinated by her big brother. Kai still attempts to hold or hug Sora, although Sora gets a little freaked out when this happens.

Kai: "Hug baby?"

Sora isn't feeling the love

Kai requires supervision when holding Sora...

... otherwise, this happens.

Since Sora started solids, Kai also likes to try to feed her. While we love the fact that he wants to help his sister, we have to make sure he doesn't end up gagging her with a spoon. Also, since Sora has been teething, she now puts everything in her mouth and ever the bossy older brother, Kai likes to say, "no, baby eat!"

Kai gave Sora a strawberry to eat. She liked it!

We love watching our kids play. Kai is always finding fun and novel ways to play with things and it's so much fun to watch Kai and Sora play with each other.

Kai with "David Totoro" :)

Exersaucer fun!