Holiday Staycation

I took three weeks off during December, combined with company shut down in the last week. I ended up spending a lot of time at home to be with Max and Renee. The grand parents took a break visiting China. It was time well spent for me, as I learned a lot about Max.

A funny thing happen about Max that I thought I should write down. He grew a bad habit of biting his lower lip, to an extent it seemed that I could see the upper teeth all the time. For several months, we tried different things to correct him but couldn't.

And guess what changed all that.

He got a cold and had stuffy nose for a week. As a result, he had to use his mouth to breathe. At the end of that cold, he forgot about biting his lips.

Renee had her dance recital. The whole class had only one boy. The rest dressed up as beauty. Renee also had a music concert at school, and she was very good. I don't have any pictures though, because I took the video.

During the break, I took Max to visit the place where I work. There were holiday decorations around the floor, and Max liked this one the most.

Renee had an intensive swimming training, one every weekday. The new teacher pushed her through her fear, such that when she went back to her old teacher after New Year, she got so much better. She can swim under water for 5 seconds now! We are all very happy how this turned out. We took Max to swim lessons too, but between his fever and my cough, it is on hold for the moment.

What is a Christmas without the Santa. Renee is finally not afraid of Santa anymore and she took very nice pictures. Max is another story. See for yourself.

It must be a parent thing. I just think these two kids are so cute when they are dressed up and walk around.

We finally had some good weather, and we visited central park. Here Renee was crying in my arm after falling off the swing because she let go to brush her hair. Opps.

We set up a small Christmas tree this year. It seems to work out better than big ones, because the kids can see the whole tree and play with the decorations. Of course, we took some pictures.

We took some cute pictures.

We took some funny ones, especially those when Max was laughing so hard he fell back into the tree.

And.... Merry Christmas!!!

Max' communication and Renee's Disney trip

This month is Max' month of communication. He can understand pretty much everything that we say now, and repeats pretty much everything we say as well.

If I have not mentioned before, Max has also built a very good sleeping habit, many thanks to mom and grandmother's sleep training. I still remember his crying in the bed during the training period. Now putting him to bed is really easy. He takes a nap around 9:30 am and 1:30 pm, depending on his sleep during the night. All you need to do is to pick him up, go through simple routine like wash his face with warm water and say 'nite nite' to all the doors, and he will go to the bed and lie down. Occasionally he does not want to take nap. He will play in the bed with the blanket and stuff Otter that he calls "You you". So if he is still babbling and playing after 20 minutes for the morning nap, he can come out and play, and have a longer afternoon nap. As far as I know, he never misses afternoon naps. The sleep at night is also very easy.

The only thing is that he likes to get up early in the morning to sleep with his mom. He will keep crying until she picks him up. Maybe we can still sleep train him, but we don't have the heart anymore considering how easy he is to put to bed, especially comparing to his sister.

Renee is getting better at expressing herself. But sometimes she still gets frustrated too early and start crying before she can say a word. I try to stick to the routine that her teacher is using, which is to hold her, let her quiet down, and ask her to say what she needs. Although half of the time, I can guess what she wants already. I just don't think crying and coughing is a good way to make requests.

Max is happy all the time. Well, not quite, as you can see in this picture. He can be as stubborn as his sister if he wants something. But he is also very curious and that makes it easy to distract him.

Yes! We went to Disneyland for the Thanksgiving weekend. We only met Pluto on the main street. Later people from work told us that to meet the characters we need to just hang out on the main street instead of going for the rides. In a hindsight, that is not such a bad idea considering we only hit three rides per day between napping, restroom and eating, hanging.

Renee used to be scared of big animals, real or fake. It is nice to see that she enjoy their company now.

We took Renee to visit Tinker Bell when Max was taking the afternoon nap. I think she was much happier to see this fairy than the Tinker Bell herself. Of course, after waiting in the line for over an hour, any fairy will make them happy.

As I mentioned before, Renee is very much into prince and princesses. She actually knows the name of some of the princes! Here are her favorite character: Beauty and Beast. She couldn't get enough of them.

We visited the aunt and grandma, who made a huge turkey.

While taking Max out for a walk, I discovered that he understood the concept of taking picture. He will stand to let me take a picture, come to take a look, then stand back to take another one. When I asked him to step backwards, though, he didn't understand. Instead, he pointed his finger at my index finger to urge me hurry up.

Pumpkins!

Both kids are picking up new tricks during the last month, and had a blast during the Halloween weekend.

Renee tried to learn about the mechanics of chop sticks. She can use fork with no problem now. She still holds forks and spoons like a baby.  Of course, her favorite utensils are still the pair that she was born with.

With Renee (and the mom) busy with dancing, ice skating and swimming lessons, we finally felt sorry enough for Max and signed him up for myGym. This is the "separation time", where the parents stay as far as the kids allow them. Max was so into the toys that he never realized that I was not by his side. I guess I should buy more toys for him?

Max has no problem eating, drinking, sleeping, which are always fun to watch. I still don't understand how these two can be so different.

This is the first one that Renee made with his mom.

Max loves running around in the house. He sometimes will walk with hands behind his back, mimicking the grandpa. Sometimes he will spin for fun. He also loves running between two rooms with me chasing after him. He started blabbering with words recently.

Pumpkin patch is a must-go event for the kids. Renee loves the pony rides.

This is the second one that I made with her. I enjoyed it as much as she did.  Next year, I think I am going to do more.

Renee is very into fairy and princess lately. So she decided to be the tinker bell this year. She enjoyed trick-or-treat much more this year. She will run into the store that with the sign (pumpkin in front of the store for Stanford shopping mall) and call "trick or treat!"

We are still not sure how much Max gets this, because at certain point he refused to go on. We had to put his in the cart and push him from one store to the next. I thought that was one sad trick-or-treater.