We just got back from church retreat. It's nice to take a pause for some quiet reflection.. especially since these moments come so rarely and fleetingly these days. On our way to retreat, we stopped for BBQ at Aptos Street BBQ. Good ribs and brisket, but the tri tip and smoked chicken weren't remarkable. Kai and Sora enjoyed the live music.. Sora was waving her hands to the groove.
A big plate of BBQ requires Thomas the Train to accompany it.
Kai was sick this past week, so even though his church friends were around, he was a little grumpy and clingy the entire weekend. Hopefully this will improve before we leave for our big trip next weekend. Even so, Kai had a good time hanging out with his friends, namely Evelyn. :P
(Toddler) Thug Life
I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago, but Nik took some awesome pictures of Kai and Evelyn at church the other day. :)
BFFs
Sora did well as can be expected.. in fact, Sora loves worship. But sleeping in one room with an infant and toddler can be tricky, and on Saturday morning, Sora woke up at 5:30 AM and decided that she didn't want to sleep anymore, so I ended up taking her on a walk around the retreat grounds while Nik stayed behind with Kai.
Mesmerized once worship starts
The kids allowed us a little bit of time to ourselves and we found out that our baby monitor worked in range with the meeting hall. So on Saturday evening, while the kids slept, we managed to make it out and enjoy the full moon sans kids.
We're still working on unpacking and getting settled into our new house. Our next door neighbors have a brick pizza oven in their backyard and hosted a neighborhood block party last week (how cool is that??). We had a good time getting to know more people.. although I'm sure we'll have problems keeping everyone's names straight.
So we've finally moved into our new house. Of course that doesn't mean that we've unpacked yet.. we're still (in part) living out of boxes and things are strewn all over the floor. The move was chaotic but we got it all done with a little help from our family, Kai's daycare (it's impossible to get anything done with him around) and movers. We even were able to clean out Boise for the Wrights.
Boxes in the hallway
Where's the counter top?
All this chaos requires a little extra liquid "refreshment"
Bye bye Boise..
We're settling into our new home: a bunch of our neighbors have already introduced themselves to us and the living room has been designated as the kids' play area.
.. hello Rock Canyon!
A bottle of wine and nice note to welcome us.. thanks to the previous owners!
First meal in our new home: banh mi!
Living room (AKA kids' disaster area)
Surprisingly, Kai has settled in nicely to the new house. Prior to the move, we had constantly referred to the new house as "Mia's house" (Kai had met the previous owners' daughter) and Kai excitedly thought the house would come with Mia's yellow cat and big dog. Although he might have been disappointed that the cat and dog did not come with the house, Kai has taken all the changes in stride and refers to Rock Canyon as "Kai-Kai new house." Kai enjoys the playset in the backyard and we're hoping he'll make friends with some of the kids in the neighborhood in the future.
"I got this, Baba."
We'll miss Boise, and our old neighbors and neighborhood.. we already miss having Safeway, Target, Sprouts and Trader Joe's all in proximity. We'll also miss Beyond Learning and Miss Karen. We were so happy with the pictures they took for us last time that we sent him the daycare with the camera again. Even though he doesn't realize it, I'm sure he'll miss his daycare, teachers and classmates. For Kai's last day at Beyond Learning, I brought little toys and kettle corn for the kids so they could have a going away party for Kai. We've staked out a new daycare near our new home, but he won't start until at least October. Fortunately, Nik's Mom has returned from Portland and is once again helping us out with the kids.
Nap time!
Hangin' out
Nom, nom, kettle corn!
"Thank you, lao shi!"
Like I mentioned, between babysitting and packing, we've had a lot of help from David, Matthew, Chris and my parents lately, I don't know how we'd survive without having family nearby and we're thankful to have them.
We're busily preparing for the big move next week. Matthew came by today to help with some of the packing and we got a number of our closets boxed up. We still have a lot to go, but at least we're getting somewhere. It's undoubtedly a fire hazard, but the boxes are piled up in the hallway for now.
A little R&R after a busy day
We have to move all of our stuff over to the new house and get our old house move-in ready for the Wrights, and as if that wasn't enough, we also need to continue planning our big trip to Greece.
The other day, I dropped Kai off at daycare with a camera so his teachers could help take pictures of him at school. He still cries and fights so much when we drop him off, so it's interesting to see that he does in fact seem to be having a great time with his friends at daycare. I'm a little nervous about Kai transitioning into a new daycare, but I'm sure he'll adapt and hopefully he'll find another bestie (I'm certain he'll miss Evelyn!) to latch on to.
The teachers also took videos of Kai and his schoolmates in action. This video is long, but it's amusing because you can see just how much Kai follows Evelyn's every move.
The other day, Kai was really grumpy at home, so I stole a page out of Yukari's book and made some homemade play dough with Kai. Nik helped Kai make Thomas, Percy, Toby and Emily engines.
Use your imagination!
Kai wanted Sora to play peek-a-boo with him in the blinds the other day, so Nik helped hold Sora up by the blinds. Sora will undoubtedly become Kai's little shadow once she starts walking.
We've been eating out a lot lately since Nik and I have less free time these days.. today we ordered deep dish pizza which Kai gobbled up and Sora worked on a piece of garlic bread (undoubtedly, second child syndrome).
"Nom nom."
These days, when Kai wakes up, he groggily gets out of bed and walks out of his room carrying his doggie and panda (my old panda bear from back in the day). He sits them down on the floor saying, "Doggie sit here. Panda sit here," and then sits next to them.
"Baba sit here."
He also loves "Mama robe," and immediately buries his face in my robe whenever he sees me wearing it. Maybe he subconsciously still remembers those nights as an infant when he fell asleep in my arms.
This past weekend, we went out to lunch with our church friends and Kai was literally butting heads with Evelyn under the table. The photo looks incriminating, but the video makes it clear that there was no actual hanky panky going on. :P
We went to the Fremont Festival of the Arts with Uncle Matthew this past weekend, enjoying the festival season while it lasts. Kai isn't quite old enough for the carnival rides.. next year, perhaps.
Making art at the Kaiser booth
We also ventured out to the National Night Out yesterday evening. Nice to meet some of the neighbors, find out more about community resources and meet our local first responders. Kai enjoyed the ice cream social and balloon animals. We also got to see an old time police car and fire truck (although Kai was too starstruck to take pictures with either of them).
Today, I took both of the kids out to the park. Kai had a lot of fun on the teeter-totter and slide, and then ran out into the field to chase the Canadian geese.
Oh! And one more thing.. a big thing, in fact. Sora has been sleeping through the night for the past couple of nights. She still wakes up around 4 or 5 am, but that's a major improvement from waking up every three hours. Good job, little girl! :)
Today is Grandma Udom's birthday.. in celebration of this occasion, Nik had Kai sing a special happy birthday song:
We're still missing Grandma Udom, but fortunately, our family has been pitching in to help with the kids.
This things Po Po does to get a smile out of the kids...
Assembling a craft project with Uncle David
Nik and I have been busy, so I have a huge backlog of pictures to post. Also, Kai and Sora are ridiculously cute and photogenic, it's hard not to have a whole bunch of pictures to post. ;)
Rewinding the clock backwards a couple of weeks...
We've been to a number of summer celebrations, including Tak and Akiko's baby shower and Bonnie's birthday. Unfortunately, we were so busy wrangling the kids that we didn't manage to get any pictures from either of those events. We also went to two birthday celebrations on one day. Kai had fun playing with his church friends at Emma's party and OD'ed on cake: he exclusively ate blue and purple frosting.. by the time we showed up at Reese's party he wasn't even interested in eating cake anymore. Spoiled!
Imaginary play: the kids are "selling" food to Drew :)
"Kai-Kai eat purple."
After two birthday parties, Nik KO'ed in the car. Okay, so I know I shouldn't be taking pictures while driving, but I couldn't resist...
We've also been busy visiting with various friends. We had the Valley Crew over for dinner the other day, Kai had fun, but was feeling a bit territorial and was perturbed that Evelyn, Everest, Nolan and Norris were playing with his toys. Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures. We also attempted (but failed) to do some outreach and it ended up just being a play date with the Shaws (have I mentioned how much we're going to miss living by these guys?).
We also visited the Kongs and met Noe for the first time.
We've also been busy out doing everyday things with the kids. We had to take Kai to a doctor's appointment the other day and he did really well, even though the nurse had to put drops in his eyes multiple times.
The double-wide Costco shopping cart is perfect for the kids and Kai and Sora love sitting next to each other.
But honestly, we've been spending most of our time at home these days. The kids love to spend time outside. One of Kai's favorite activities is sitting at the bus stop, watching the cars go by.
And today, we loaded both kids into the bike trailer for a ride while I ran beside them. Kai had lots of fun and surprisingly, Sora did not freak out. Kai wanted to try out biking himself afterward, so we pulled the glide bike out of the garage for him to ride. He loved it!
Kai is still impressing us day to day. He's constantly picking up new words and phrases, and we're at the phase that Nik and I need to watch what we say around him these days because we never know what he'll repeat back to us. He is also obsessed with stickers and will do anything for a sticker. He's also back to hamming it for the camera.. I love it!
Peek-a-boo under the table
Proudly modeling his stickers
Unfortunately Sora did not start sleeping through the night after my last post, so we're continuing to work on sleep training. We're letting her cry a little more than before because in order to preserve my sanity, I need to stop waking up every three hours in the middle of the night to feed her. She's still working on eating solids and she loves eating Cheerios (although she drops them 75% of the time).
"I love bread!"
Eating Cheerios requires intense concentration
"Get in mah belly, Cheerio!"
Sora flails and squeals with excitement when she sees something that makes her happy. Amusingly, opening the refrigerator door seems to elicit that reaction every time. Also, seeing her reflection...
... and of course, Kai-Kai! Those two love each other...
Kai joined Sora on the ground while she was doing her tummy time
