Early Birds

Some perfect days, when the boys are well, Mom would think she could have another baby. But, in reality, they do get sick, they do cry for mommy at night, and they do get up earlier than the birds!

*** Alvin's Update ***

1. He is eating much better now (knocking on wood). Somehow he decided to switch from North Beach diet (eating only carbohydrate foods) to meat lover diet! Works for us!
2. He still loves to sing and talk. Often time it is a hassle for the daycare teachers and us. In school, he sings during their lunch nap and keeps everyone awake. At home, he sings and dances by Mason's bedroom door.
3. He can write many letters now and start to memorize the spelling of some simple words.

*** Mason's Update ***

1. He finally has his first tooth pop up, with the second one coming up soon.
2. He finally figured out how to crawl! He can crawl pretty fast right now, especially when he wants to "share" his big brother's toy, or when he looks for mom in the kitchen. He often crawls into the kitchen, blowing bubbles from his mouth and nose, with tears running down - just to show mom how much he wants to be held.
3. He finally sleeps in his own room! And the parents can finally fight for their TV shows at night!
4. He finally can feed himself! Mason learned a trick to pick up rice pops. Because rice pops are too little to pick up, he would lick his fingers all over to give them enough moisture first. Then, he smash his big fat palms on the rice pops, and everything would just stick to his palms. That really works for him!

Spring has finally arrived! I think only the groundhogs like winter otherwise they won't always predict long winter! Everyone else just enjoys outdoors so much!

Forwarding Rolling and Spelling

The video describes all.

Two boys, two personalities

Our boys have totally different personalities - one is too quiet and the other is too demanding. If we combine them together and divide by 2, they will be perfect!

From the back, you don't think they are even related. They just love their own world!

But, from the front, you know they got the same parents!

Mason is always acting he is the commander of the house. Maybe he will be - only because he has the big-built body!

This video truly assembles Mason's personalities as you will see. He has never lacked of expressions to tell us what he wants, his dissatisfaction with the parents, etc. Quite a character!

Little Pupil

Alvin just started his first learning class (I mean real academic class) yesterday - "Phonics Adventures" class. This class is supposed to build foundation for recognizing, writing and comprehending letters, sounds and words.

Since Alvin loves learning so much and the parents are getting lazy nowadays, we thought we would give him a try for this class which is normally offered to preschoolers. Ms Ani did an assessment on Alvin's knowledge and she was very happy to tell us that Alvin is ready for it!

New Year Resolution

I started this entry 3 weeks ago and finally I have the time to finish it up. You know how busy we are and that is why the New Year Resolution is in place.

Our New Year Resolution is all about train, train and train, so we (the parents) can lessen our stress.

1) Train Alvin to go to potty: we have success to some degree - Alvin knows the concept of peeing in the toilet but he would only tell us when he is "in the mood". Of course, he is not that much in the training mood in the daycare. Sigh...

2) Train Alvin to sleep on his own: Alvin had been spoiled ever since the grandparents came to help us. Either Dad or Mom had to sleep with him and he would use every excuse (e.g. I need to pee, or my skin is itchy, or I have running nose) not to sleep until 11pm. For that reason, the parents didn't even have time on their own. One day, Mom was all stressed out and she took the liberty of letting Alvin to time out facing the wall for more than 2 hours. Poor Alvin, who had never seen Mom being so mad, quietly standing in the corner of our bedroom and didn't even dare to cry. The best part is, from then on, he sleeps on his own. No more co-sleeping! That works for me, haha..

3) Train Alvin to try new foods: Alvin is a picky eater, period. The parents spent most of the time trying to encourage him to eat more variety but without any success. He would go on for a month eating very little. After taking Chinese herbal medicine and giving him more water and letting him exercise more, he is doing much better now (crossing our fingers!). There were some good days that we even worried that he ate too much! Isn't that wonderful?

4) Train Mason to sleep on his own: Mason's sleeping habit wasn't any better. He would wake up every 1 hour at night crying to be held. Between Alvin and Mason, Mom only got 5 hours sleep at night, and it was for several months straight. With success in training Alvin, Mom made the announce one day to train Mason ("cold turkey" method to let him cry out). That was a huge success!!! He now sleeps through the night for straight 10-11 hours. Our routine for Mason is to take a warm bath, drink up the milk bottle, read several books (for him, it is more biting down the books than reading books) and sing a bedtime melody. He would snooze off within one minute!

5) Train Mason to crawl: we are still in the process of training him to crawl. He now knows how to swim using arms and legs, does some backward crawling. We hope within a month, he can master the skill!

6) Train Alvin to brush his teeth: Don't remember how many times we got mad bites just to wipe his teeth and gum. But, there is always a bitter part and then a sweeter part of everything. Now, Alvin loves to brush his own teeth, for extended minutes! He would carry his stool (very heavy wooden stool) to the bathroom, stand up in front of the mirror, turn on the faucet to fill his cup, then dip in his toothbrush and brush his teeth in and out!

Hope you will find this entry to be helpful, not disturbing (by our "cruel" ways of training our boys). :)

Happy New Year everyone!

Winter Lights

Finally, we got a break from the freezing temperature over the Christmas long weekend. It was a perfect time for Alvin to see the Winter Lights in Brookside Gardens. Many credits should go to Dad's crazy GPS, who directed us to Brookside Gardens from the dark narrow back roads to its back door thus we didn't even need to wait for 2 hours in line. Hooray!!!

We were humbled by the spectacular light display by the first glance! There were thousands thousands lights brought the garden into a winter wonderland! There were animals, flowers, grapes, snows, rainfall, moon, rainbow and lighted gazebos everywhere. It was quite an experience for the parents, not even mention Alvin was stunned.

First, we visited the train display. Alvin spent quite sometime there.

Dad tried his best to capture the pictures below without a tripod. He did a decent job.

Here is the rainfall with clouds and rainbow in the sky. When Alvin walked under it, he held down his head and closed his eyes because he thought it was really raining.

So romantic.

The Rose Garden was full of roses like this!

The bug light tunnel was a hit for everyone.

Happy Holidays

Our warmest Season's Greeting to all of you and your family. We hope you find this year to be blessing and precious.

Year 2008 is also a remarkable year for our family as we welcomed baby Mason in May. He is now 7 months old and has gained 16 more pounds to his birth weight. Overall, he is a very good baby, eats well, plays well, smiles like a bright sunshine, and ONLY wakes up parents 10 times at night. What can we complain?! Mason admires his brother Alvin very much, his eyes follow Alvin's every move and nothing else can satisfy him more than his brother's present.

Being the older brother, Alvin has shown nothing but loves and cares to his little brother. He helps with Mason's diaper change and he often hands out tissues for Mason when he sees his brother crying. He shares his toys with Mason and entertains Mason when parents are busy. As sweet as he can be, Alvin also started to show his personalities at his "Trouble Two" age –smart and stubborn. He refuses to eat and sleep only because he needs to play with his US Map puzzles the 101 times, or, he wants to finish listening to his "ABC Music and Me" CD, or, he hasn't read through all his story books from the library, or he hasn't practiced enough vocabularies for the day. Parents should not discourage their children from learning but the exhausted parents had no choice but put him on bench - no books, no music, no talking. Aren't we terrible?

The two brothers have drained our energy completely but we still cherish every moment with them. As the holidays are coming, we are especially thankful to have them in our life. They are our loves our whole world.

Our family wishes you and your love ones happy holidays!

Alvin, Mason Hope & Yuelun