Another masterpiece ...

Ryan's latest masterpiece...that he wrote by himself with no help.

He spelled my name right this time.
Why does he only like me "a little bit"?!
The rest -  I can't quite decipher it but I THINK he is saying that I count "good" since I can count to 100 and I love how he always converts 100 to look like eyes.

Another milestone

I forgot to mention that Lauren reached a milestone. Crawling at 8 months old!! It is so exciting to watch her develop. Did I mention that she is also very clingy? She craves attention from people, especially mommy and daddy. But since mommy and daddy can't be next to her all the time, she starts crying and then she continues crying while she starts crawling to us, following us around everywhere we go. It's a crawl and cry fest every day. But this is where Ryan comes in handy. We just sit her next to Ryan and then she is content for a while. He is the next best thing to mommy and daddy.

But putting Lauren next to Ryan is not always the best idea, when all Lauren wants to do is destroy whatever Ryan is working on, like an elaborate building made of blocks or his mousetrap game setup. Ryan always says, "Mommy, can you put Lauren away?" Before she could crawl this wasn't really a problem because I could just separate her from Ryan just enough so Ryan can play with his toys in peace. But now Lauren will crawl over to Ryan's toy and try to knock everything over but Ryan will block her with his leg and then Lauren will SHRIEK at the top of her lungs at him. Poor Ryan!! Don't let the cuteness fool you...

Where did all the pacifiers go??

OK. So, the most important item for Lauren besides her food is her pacifier for nap/bed time. And the unthinkable happened last night where ALL our pacifiers went missing!! The flailing and screaming happened for at least 20 minutes. Now, unlike her brother, who was generally content with any material thing we gave him, Lauren, on the other hand, is very particular. She MUST have the Learning Curve brand Soothie paci plus she MUST not have it hanging on a pacifier leash. Despite her daddy having gone numerous times to the store just to get her new pacifiers, somehow they have all disappeared. I am pretty sure that if we cleaned out our place we would find at least 10 lying around somewhere, but WHERE? Luckily we found one today in the car under the seat. Both mommy and daddy jump for joy whenever we find a pacifier. Is that pathetic or what? LOL.

Thankful for family...

I just had to write a quick entry so that I can look back and remember this.

Chang is so funny! For Valentine's day, he made this dinner. It looks like a steak, huh? But its layers of rosegui and pamucheem on top. And dwenjangjeegeh on the side. So creative and good.

And yesterday, we all went out to celebrate my birthday at a nice restaurant, Vic Stewart in Walnut Creek....WITH both kids. Nice restaurants + kids is always a scary thought. Imagine Ryan and Lauren throwing a screaming fit while prim and proper dinner guests stare you down for ruining their meal (and I wouldn't blame them). I imagined this and was prepared throughout the meal to grab a screaming kid and sprint out of the restaurant at any moment. But we can all breathe a sigh of relief because this didn't happen. Ryan got to enjoy his first Shirley Temple while we kept Lauren busy munching on bread.

We especially enjoyed our peaceful drive back to Santa Clara listening to the theme song from Inception on repeat. Ryan enjoys music and likes to point out all the instruments that are playing in a song ... this is why I REALLY want to take him to a symphony. I think he will love it so I must plan this soon. And why was our drive peaceful?? Because Lauren was sleeping. Peaceful car rides are a rarity with Lauren.*Sigh*

But do you know what really made my day. Ryan's birthday card to me!! Yes, he spelled my name wrong. And why is he using my first name instead of mommy? I have no idea. But seriously, I am going to treasure this forever.

 

Initially, I was afraid this might have been a picture of me (haha) ... but he says this is a picture of a silly sun.

Ryan keeps his word...

Ryan did say "AhnYoungHaSehYoh" at church. FINALLY!!

Funny thing is he did this also with potty training:

Although he was potty trained in the day, he still wet his pull ups at night. But one morning when taking off his wet pull up he said "Mommy, I will not pee in my pull ups again" and then he stopped peeing in his pull ups at night.

A New Year and lots to look forward to...

Where does the time go? Seriously, once you have kids, the days are jam packed!

Lauren is growing up to be such a sweet little girl with the most endearing qualities. She loves company and loves to be held. She will automatically smile whenever mommy, or daddy, or big brother enter the room. Oh yes, she has LOTS of moments where she turns into a screaming little monster...but from looking at her pictures you would never know.

On her 8 month birthday...

She developed her fine motor skills so much faster than Ryan...ever since 6 or 7 months she has been eyeing the smallest particles and the tiniest crumbs on our carpet...unfortunately, to eat it! She wants to eat adult food all the time instead of her baby food. She still doesn't roll over but she is starting to crawl. She is also excellent at doing situps...and I see this is probably due to the fact that she doesn't roll over. She will do her famous V shaped pilates move by trying to sit up from a laying down position without rolling over. Toys are generally wasted on her ... she is more interested in juice boxes, storage bins, and food. But the cutest thing she does is tilt her head to the side to smile at you .... ahhh... it just melts our heart!!

Now on to the older brother ... and I must say, Ryan is an excellent older brother to Lauren. He puts up with all her crazy antics like pulling his hair, scratching his face, destroying his legos, etc. Just excellent.

Also, Ryan has been having many epiphanies lately...

Epiphany #1: He has realized (with the assistance of a globe that he got last Christmas) that he is just a little speck in this big universe and that he lives in California which is a state in North America and that there are lots of other places like Australia, China, etc. He likes to see all the other countries on the globe and asks questions like:

"Are there people in Russia?"
"My friend's mommy and daddy went to China. Remember that time you left me with halmoni (grandma) by myself ... did you go to China too?" [Apparently, he thinks you can go to China in just a couple hours]
"Kangaroos live in Australia. Do kangaroos live in Russia?"

For some reason, he always likes to talk about Russia, Australia, and China.


Epiphany #2: He figured out how to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on the keyboard by himself through trial and error. He shocked me with this one.

Epiphany #3: He understands the concept of languages and has started asking how to say things in various languages. We can thank "Dora the Explorer" for teaching him Spanish and "Ni Hao Kai Lan" for teaching him Chinese. He probably knows Korean the least because both mommy and daddy are horribly inadequate in the subject. I was sure he didn't even know how to say "Hello" in Korean because every time we made him bow and say "AhnYoungHaSehYoh" at church he would never do it. But yesterday he told me: "I know how to say hi in korean. It's AhnYoungHaSehYoh." So, he knew this whole time and he is purposely refusing to say it. The upside is that he says he will say it from now on. Well, we shall see if this is true at church tomorrow.

This month some of the things we did include visiting California Academy of Sciences, which was way cool. We attended a baby shower and 2 birthday parties and also had a short weekend trip to LA.

Here is a clip from a birthday party ...

And here is Lauren and Ryan being silly. I need to figure out how to flip this video.