What's going on here??

This morning, Nik and I woke up with a start. Last night, we had gone over the visit the Kongs to visit Baby Noe. On the way home, Sora fell asleep in the carseat. Thinking that she would wake up on her own soon enough, we left her in the carseat, put Kai to bed and both went to sleep. It was 5 am and I woke up freaked out because Sora didn't wake up at all last night. Nik and I rushed off to her room and there she was, peacefully sleeping in her carseat. Of course, the commotion of us running off to her room woke her up, but then she nursed and fell asleep again. At 8 am this morning, Nik walked out of our bedroom and everyone was still sleeping.

Where is everybody?

And to top it off, Kai has always napped in a carseat or in the stroller. I think it started off since as an infant he always napped in the swing. Today, he actually napped in his bed.

What is going on here??

Baby steps

Sora is finally starting to progress forward! After weeks of drooling, we felt two nubby teeth on bottom half of her gum line. Our little girl is growing up.. I'll miss her gummy smile. :D

She's also starting to take steps forward. Before, even though we held her standing upright, she would just stand there.. but now, she's starting to take wobbly steps forward. I'm sure she'll be running after Kai before we know it.

Not yet walking and already causing trouble

The exciting news of the week is that we finally closed on our new house! After some delays and mishaps (courtesy of Bank of America), we signed the papers and are the proud owners of a new house. We don't actually move until mid-August because the previous owners are still living there, but we need to start packing now because August will undoubtedly be crazy. We brought Kai and Sora with us to the title company for the document signing and they were obviously not as excited as Nik and me.

"Titles and escrow are booooring..."

Although we're excited about moving, I've mentioned before that we'll miss having the Shaws nearby and Kai will certainly miss Evelyn. On Friday, Kai and Evelyn were basically wearing the same outfit. And today at church, Abby joined in on the fun.

Twins!

Running amok

We'll also miss our awesome neighbors; Darla and the kids were chin-sitting and left us a bowl of plums upon our return from So Cal. Kai loves them, although he likes to take two bites, say, "no eat seed!" and then he proceeds to grab a new plum.

With Grandma Udom away, we've been visiting my parents' house a lot. Kai likes visiting Matthew's closet to play with his old Legos and today he found an old golf club that he was using as a walking stick.

When the Matty's away, the Kai will play.

My mom also managed to get a decent, albeit blurry, full family picture (it's been a while since we've taken one of those).

Kids say the darndest things

Part of the reason why I post here is not only to share adorable pictures of our kids, but also to help augment my memory. Undoubtedly, I would not remember a lot of the things that happen day to day if I didn't have a place to process it, synthesize it and write it out. So here's a picture-less post (mostly for my own sake).

For weeks, Kai has been adding "yao shi" to everything he was saying, "Baba, yao shi," "water, yao shi," and so forth.. seemingly using the phrase in lieu of "please." I had no idea what he meant until just a week ago, it finally occurred to me that he was saying "lao shi," Mandarin for "teacher." So I suppose that he has picked up a little bit of Mandarin from his Mandarin-speaking daycare after all (even though he has no idea what he's saying). :P

Also, today Sora discovered her voice. Usually she vocalizes mostly with high-pitched, excited screeches, but today she had a lot of fun just making sounds, like "aaaah." I think she may end up speaking earlier than Kai.

La-la-land

We haven't gone down to So Cal since way back when.. the last time we went down Kai wasn't even one yet and Sora was just a tiny cluster of cells. So this past weekend was a long overdue visit to see some of our good friends down south.

We drove down on Friday morning and arrived in LA just in time for rush hour traffic and were quickly reminded of why we would never ever want to live in Southern California. Fortunately, the kids were relatively well behaved for the majority of the drive, they slept most of the time and we only had to stop twice: the first time at McDonald's and the second time at a park in LA.

I'm lovin' it

When we arrived at Jorge and Lauren's house Kai and Sora were immediately greeted by their two dogs, and Kai was obsessed with the dogs. Undoubtedly, Kai takes after his papa.. because even though Kai isn't crazy about swimming pools, he loved the jacuzzi (must be something about the heat).

Charlie gets up close and personal with Sora

Since Sora and Viviana are almost the same age and size, they were fascinated by one another.

"Nice to meet you, Viviana. Let me grab your head."

We stayed over for the night and the next day was a flurry of social activity. We started off with breakfast with Jorge, Lauren and Viviana.

Kai: "Lemme show you babies how it's done."

We then met Linda, Damon and Elizabeth for an excursion to the park. Kai had fun playing with Elizabeth's toys.

Elizabeth was already down for her nap by this time

For lunch, we met up with Jennifer and Ethan. Kai chowed down on pizza, while Sora and Ethan became friends.

We then drove out to Sabrina and Kane's house and met up with the UCLA girls. Kai was transfixed by Thomas the Tank Engine on TV while we caught up with one another. We admired Kane's plumeria forest in the backyard and once it was dark, Jo and Tom set up their telescope in the backyard so we could see the planets (you could see the rings on Saturn.. really cool!).

We spent the night at Jo and Tom's and after breakfast with Jo, we drove up to LA to meet Brian for lunch. On the way up, we made a quick stop at Yogurtland.

Making himself at home on Jo's couch while watching TV

And after lunch we had even more treats, because we (of course) had to make our requisite stop at Blockheads.

Sora's making a grab for it...

Sora's first taste of Blockheads

And although it was a bit chaotic, we saw more friends at Pearl and Simon's house as they were helping Pearl and Simon pack up and get ready for the movers that were arriving the next day.

"Uh Mason.. you're in my personal space bubble."

We spent the night at Brian's and on Monday, had Italian ice and ramen for lunch.

After lunch, we drove out to meet Dana, Yop and Eli. Eli and Kai are close in age, so when they first met, it was a bit rocky (sharing can be problematic with toddlers), but by the end of the visit they were good friends and were having a blast together on the slide.

Eli practicing his doctor skills on Sora

After dinner with Dana, Yop and Eli, we made the long drive up home. We got home at 2 am and although it was exhausting and we got stuck in a patch of construction traffic, it was worth it to have the kids sleeping for most of the drive.

Also.. just wanted to note a few things about Kai. He's basically a little parrot at this point and repeats back a lot of the things that we say these days. He also understands a lot and the things that he says sometimes surprise and amaze us. The other day, he said, "Thanks mama, I appreciate." It's still difficult to understand him at times, but he is so excited when we do understand him.. he usually will smile widely and say, "yesh!"

Hanging out at the 'Row

The other night, Nik went to a retirement party for one of his co-workers at Santana Row. While Nik was out to dinner, I took care of the kids and Kai ran around the little green space at the 'Row. Kai contented himself to eating his pouch while watching some of the bigger kids play football. He even got a mini cupcake as a treat since he was behaving so well.

International man of mystery

"All done!"

Kai can now cover quite a bit of distance while walking (although he does get tired and request, "Baba or Mama hold Kai-Kai"). Yesterday was a busy day: in the morning, Nik and Kai walked to the elementary school across the street. Kai is getting quite adept at climbing around on the play structures.

We're getting ready for our big international trip to Greece this fall, so we had Sora take passport pictures and submitted her passport application at the post office in the afternoon.

Juxtaposed next to big brother's passport photo

This past week, Nik and I have been furiously working on getting everything together to close escrow for our new house. It's been a frustrating and drawn out process and all I can say is this: do not get your home mortgage from Bank of America. Fortunately, it seems like we'll close some time next week. After Sora's passport appointment was our final walk through, and we spent some time in the area familiarizing ourselves with the local library branch and park where Kai continued his climbing practice.

Kai's enjoying playing with his new digital camera, although he hasn't quite figured out how to frame his shots yet.

It's fun watching Kai start to engage in imaginary play. Sometimes when he's drawing, we'll ask him what he's drawing and he'll reply saying "train" or "panda" (even though his scribbles look nothing like what he says it's supposed to be). Yesterday, he built a Mega Blok tower taller than himself and then started building a "tractor" with the bloks. He was so proud after he was finished!

"Cheese, tractor!"

We think that Sora may bypass crawling entirely and just go straight to cruising and walking. We'll see, she's pretty strong and can support herself while standing, although she immediately loses her balance when she tries to take a step.

Matthew's been over a lot lately helping with the kids. Kai loves playing with Uncle Matt-Matt.

Dance party!

Even though our family has been pitching in to help Nik and I care for the kids, the kids certainly miss Grandma Udom. Sora was laughing and smiling so wide when she saw grandma on Skype today!