Party all night

Lately, both of the kids have been sleeping terribly. Our good little sleeper, Kai, now cries and yells whenever we try to put him down at nighttime. And we were so hopeful when Sora slept through the night in Hawaii, but lately she's been horrible. We've been trying to be more consistent with ensuring that she naps adequately throughout the day, because sometimes overtiredness can cause poor nighttime rest. Fingers crossed that it works, because we're exhausted.

Position not sanctioned by AAP, but we're trying whatever works.

Nonetheless, the kids have been progressing forward. Kai now strings together simple sentences and is learning words as quickly as we can say them.

Kai knows the word, "rainbow," and is fascinated by them.

"Ba Ba shoe!"

It's amazing to watch Kai figure things out. The other day, we mentioned Brownie (my mom's pet dog) and he said, "doggie, wo-wo-wo-wo, fish, Po Po, Gung Gung, Matt-Matt," naming all the people and things that he associated with my parents' house.

Action shot at Po Po and Gung Gung's house

He's also (finally) not crying through the entirety of church nursery time and seems to be making friends with some of the kids at church (other than Evelyn).

We've been working on potty training and although it seems unlikely that we'll be able to train him so early, he's peed twice in the potty (sounds like a big whoop, but a big deal in mommy-world).

Sora has a growing awareness of the world around her, although that mostly means that she spends her day watching her big brother who is running around, screaming.

Sora: "I did not sign up for this."

Unfortunately for us, she also seemingly has stranger anxiety, which seems improbable since she's only four months old. That makes things difficult for us since she doesn't usually do well with anybody but me, Nik or Nik's mom holding her.

A rare moment with Gung Gung

We went to Norris' first birthday party this past weekend. It was great seeing friends and catching up. Best of all for Kai, they had a bird show and Kai was absolutely transfixed by the parrots. Kai certainly loves animals. He's also figured out Chubs and Skinnay's names and likes to give them treats, feeding them little bits of hay.

Our burgeoning photographer

Luckily for us, the runny nose and low-grade fever that I mentioned during the last post didn't turn out to be much. By the next day, the fever was just a memory, although not before Sora caught what Kai had had. Sora still has a little bit of a runny nose and cough, though it's nothing like the last virus that had floored us all.

Since everyone's feeling better, some choice daddy-daughter bonding time

One of the big joys of having children is watching them figure out the world. Kai is always figuring out new ways to play, the other day, he was playing with the colander on his head, much to everyone's amusement.

We made the mistake of showing Kai the pictures that we take on the camera and so now whenever Kai sees the camera he says, "cheese!" and tries to grab the camera so he can look at the pictures (he especially likes to see the pictures of turtles and ducks). Nik also taught Kai how to take pictures on the camera and looking at the shots that Kai took, he certainly is taking after his papa, the sensitive artist. :)

With the mild California weather, spring is now upon us and Kai loves picking the flowers and playing with the dandelions.

Kai's become quite the little boss, and he will direct me, Nik or grandma to sit next to him by looking at us, patting the seat while saying, "ch-chair?" and nodding his head. Also, whenever he sees Sora drooling, he'll point at her and say, "wa-ter!" until one of us wipes her chin clean (he figured out how to say water during our Hawaii trip, I honestly was a little sad that some of his baby talk, like "wa wa", seems to be going away).

Kai's vocabulary and language comprehension continues to grow and grow.. he's starting to string together words into simple phrases like, "bye bye bay-be!" or "baba shoe".

Kai continues to be the doting older brother, insisting that we put Sora down in her chair so he can see or touch her, hugging her (watching a toddler hug an infant can be scary), wiping her face (also scary), giving his toys to her and now, wanting to hold her. The other day, Kai saw Nik holding Sora and said, "hold?" and then Kai held Sora while sitting in Nik's lap.

Tiger mama says, "All good Asian kids must play piano!" j/k :P

I took Sora to her four month well child pedi visit yesterday. I can't believe our little girl is already four months old! Sora's hitting her milestones, pushing up while on her tummy and grabbing for objects, though we still haven't got her sleep quite figured out. Some nights are better than others, but last night definitely wasn't one of those nights. I'm hoping that she'll get better when she gets over the virus, but we'll see.

"What're you lookin' at?"

"Hehe.. I kept my parents up all night."

Uh oh!

Right now, one Kai's favorite things to say is, "uh oh!" If he drops something or if he sees something fall down, he immediately says, "uh oh!" And guess who else likes to say "uh oh"? Of course.. his favorite gal pal, Evelyn. Kai had a mall play date with Evelyn a couple of weeks back and I forgot to post this pic. He was super-excited when he got to hold her hand and he was gripping her hand so tightly that she eventually pulled her hand away (rejected!).

Nik and I had a "sorta" date night, after we put Kai to sleep, we left him at home with grandma and took Sora with us in the new car (we got a Mazda 6!) to see a movie at the drive-in. Definitely an interesting experience that we want to try again when the kids are older.

We met up with a number of Sora's future BFF's this past week, I'm looking forward to when Kayla and Zadie get bigger, so everyone can play together. :)

The weather was beautiful on Saturday and we ventured up the peninsula for the 1st birthday party of our friend's daughter. So many kids running around; Kai loved the bulgogi and had three (!) cake pops. We then drove up to SF to meet Yvonne, Justin and Zadie at Golden Gate Park. Walking around takes a long time with a toddler in tow, but Kai had a blast and loved picking flowers and watching the birds and dogs.

Kai loves his sister and watching them interact is such a joy, although Kai still doesn't quite understand the concept of being gentle.

Sora: "Parents, why are you letting him sit in my chair?"

Our little Sora is quite the socialite and conversationalist. She's always cooing and squealing, and she's content and happy at large social gatherings. We've also observed this odd phenomena where she'll cry when she's in the house and will immediately quiet down as soon as we take her outside. We're working on regimenting Sora's sleep patterns.. though sleeping through the night at this point in time seems like an impossible dream.

Anyway, after an awesome week of everyone being well and Kai being cheerful and energetic, guess who had a slight fever and runny nose this morning? That's right.. Kai! Uh oh! It feels like Kai has been continually sick this entire winter. As tempting as it is to hunker down and not let Kai out at all, I know it's impossible and I tell myself that this will bolster up his immune system so he won't get sick as much in the future.

Sick yet again (anyone noticing a pattern here?)

Sorry for the long silence. Right after returning from Hawaii, Kai, Sora and I were sick yet again. As it has been, it all started off with Kai getting a cough and fever, then it progressed to Sora, then me, and lastly Nik's mom. But needless to say, this past while has been stressful and miserable as Kai and Sora (and I) have been sick and extra cranky. Poor Nik! Everyone is finally starting to feel better and Kai is returning to his cheerful and easy-to-feed self.

Feeling sick and out of it

Having Nik's mom around has been great. Sometimes we just need an extra pair of arms to hold Sora or an extra playmate for Kai. Since these past few days have been particularly tough, we've been especially grateful for her help. We've moved Sora back into our room since Nik's mom is now sleeping in the office. We haven't quite figured out the logistics of how the kids will sleep in the same room, but that's the eventual goal; unfortunately, some of the kids' normal sleep routines had been disrupted by this bout of illness, so we also have to work on training them back.

Kai's vocabulary continues to grow and surprise us.. the other day he pointed to the refrigerator and said, "ma-net!" Sometimes it's difficult to interpret "Kai-speak", but I think we've now reached the stage where we need to be cautious about what we say around him since you never know what he may hear and repeat back to us.

Sora smiles more than ever these days, she now grasps at objects and can hold up her head during tummy time (though she still hates it).

Kai loves hanging out with Sora and will sometimes try to swat us away if we get too close to him and his sister.

Bonus picture from our Hawaii trip :)

A hui hou

We came back from Hawaii this past Sunday. Though we managed to get out and see quite a few sites, a lot of time was spent in the condo, just chilling with the kids. Kai loved stacking or arranging his matchbox cars in various configurations.

And Kai absolutely dotes upon Sora, so whenever he saw her lying nearby, he would try to get as close to her as possible.

There was also plenty of time for R & R.

Passed out on papa's back

But backing up a bit.. on Friday, we had an unpleasant surprise when we found out that our rental car had a flat tire, but we managed to get it repaired with relative ease on Saturday morning and then spent a rainy afternoon visiting the Ala Moana Shopping Center. We then headed off to Chinatown to eat French dip banh mih at a Vietnamese fusion restaurant.. hipster central, but pretty tasty. We also saw some lion dancing in honor of the upcoming Chinese New Year, unfortunately the loud cymbals and lion costumes scared Kai.

I commented to Nik that before we had kids, we would always try to catch the sunset on our Hawaiian vacations, but now it seemed that with the kids, we watched a lot of sunrises instead. So on Saturday evening, we hustled out the door with the kids and tried to watch the sunset. Unfortunately, the colors weren't spectacular that evening, but we still managed to get a few good pictures. :)

Before heading off to the airport on Sunday, we made one last stop to Rainbow Drive-In and Waiola.

We then headed over to Tanioka's for some tasty take-out poke and fried chicken. On Sunday afternoon, the line was absolutely insane, but it moved quickly.

The flight back went smoothly; Kai behaved himself and Sora was asleep almost the entire time. All in all, the trip went quite smoothly although it was, as David put it was a true "family vacation". We're grateful for David's help and this trip certainly wouldn't have gone as well without his help. We're sad that our little vacation is over, but we'll certainly be back again.

Nik's mom is back with us and I want to wish everyone a happy Chinese New Year, but I'll write more about that another time.

"Welcome back, Grandma Ben!"

Aloha, baby!

Writing from our condo in Waikiki. We're on the 30th story of the building and you can see Diamond Head and the turquoise blue ocean in the distance. In the mornings, we have a beautiful view of the sunrise. Thus far, we've had a surprisingly smooth trip. We brought David along to help us with childcare and it's been working out well. It took a little while for him to adjust to the rigors of babysitting, but I think that he's getting the hang of it.

Panorama of a sunrise from our condo

Our condo has one bedroom and a common area with a sofa bed. David sleeps on the sofa bed while Nik, Kai, Sora and I are all sleeping in the bedroom. Originally, I thought that this might be a recipe for disaster with all four of us in one room, but the nights have been amazingly quiet. The hum of the air conditioning unit is loud and keeps Sora practically sleeping through the night, Kai has been behaving himself as well; we plan on investing in a white noise machine when we get home. ;)

We arrived on Monday. On the way to Honolulu, Sora slept most of the flight and flying is one of the rare times that we allow Kai some tablet screen time, so he was also well-behaved. Once we arrived, we got a late lunch of udon--delicious, but difficult with eat with two cranky, jet-lagged kids. We tried to get out to the beach, but Kai was getting tired and cranky, so we had to cut our beach time short.

The next day we started off at with a trip to the pool. We got poke for lunch and then got shave ice at our favorite spot on Oahu.. Kai was also a fan (must be in the genes). :) We then drove to the Pali Lookout and then on to Pearl Harbor. Kai loved following around the wild chickens at the Pali Lookout.

Kai loves his shave ice

Kai and Sora tolerated the visit to Pearl Harbor well enough, though it was difficult to pay attention to the exhibits with the kids in tow. Kai wasn't interested in any of the displays, but had a blast running around, chasing pigeons and enjoyed the boat ride to the USS Arizona memorial.

The sunken USS Arizona

We met with our friends Kelly and Lee for dinner at a bowling alley. We skipped the fine dining prix fixe meal, in favor of some tasty fried chicken and ox tail soup, but it's an interesting concept: fine dining at a bowling alley.

On Wednesday, we drove up to the North Shore, stopping for for some take-out Hawaiian food along the way.. absolutely delicious Kahlua pig and haupia (Kai loved it all), though nobody was really fond of the poi. We also stopped at the famous Matsumoto's Shave Ice since we were nearby.. unfortunately, it doesn't really live up to the hype as the ice is relatively coarsely shaved and the flavors are just syrupy with no distinctive taste.

There was high surf advisory, so we contented ourselves to just watch the waves, while Kai played in the sand at Waimea Bay. We then went to Turtle Bay where the waves were calm and we could actually get in the water.

Chillin' at Turtle Bay

We had a "fancy" dinner on our way back from the North Shore and luckily for us, Sora slept through the entire meal.

A sleeping baby equals happy parents

Yesterday we visited to the Honolulu Zoo with the kids while David hiked up Diamond Head. The gibbons were putting on quite the show, swinging around and howling back and forth to one another. We also saw lemurs, a tiger, elephants, giraffes and zebras, but Kai's favorite (by far) were the turtles. :P We had a picnic lunch of onigiris and musubis, while Kai ran around the small playground on the zoo grounds. Kai loved the Spam musubi.. apparently, Kai seems to love all Hawaiian foods. :P It was an exciting day and on the way home, Kai completely knocked out while sitting up in the stroller.

Today was more low-key and we dedicated the day to going to the beach and had a lot of fun playing in the sand and surf.

Sora on the beach

Father of the Year :)

We're heading back home in just a few days and it's hard to believe that our little vacation is almost over. :( Sad to be going home so soon, but we'll be back!