Alphabet

Mumbling a string of alphabets while putting the alphabet magnet onto the board one by one. None of the alphabet she uttered matched with the alphabet magnet she put on. Priceless.

CNY ~ mandarin oranges

Year of Ox ~ 2009

Happy Chinese New Year!

I'm so out of my wit of making Elle stay still to take some CNY picture. The magic lollipop always works; however, everytime I take it away from her trying to take a few shots without the lollipop, she starts wailing and screaming with tears spilling like a running faucet. Well, a friend always say lollipop is Elle's trademark. I say, that's what get the job done.

A week before CNY, I started making CNY cookies and goodies to get into the CNY spirit. Baking brings back memories of good old times with the family. It's a tradition that we always got into a baking frenzy in preparation for the CNY.

CNY Eve

We invited a bunch of friends over to celebrate CNY together with us. Elle's face lit up with curiousity the moment our little apartment filled up with people. It's utterly cute of her calling them "fren fren". On the other hand, it's funny that she was so clingy to us for a long period of time given that she's in her own house. Probably she needed time to take in the presence of the crowd, which is an unusual scene in our house. We finally got our hands free once she settled down with her lil' friends playing inside her room. It's amusing to watch the kids attending to the same toy together. When one's playing the shaking moo, the rest were also down on their knees, all squeeze together, watching the moo shaking. While Alysha was inside the jumperoo, Azman and Elle was playing with the toys attached to the jumperoo as well. Oh boy, the kids even tried to do a lion dance underneath the blanket. Seeing them crawling on four with the blanket covered over their head was hilariously funny.

It's wonderful to have y'all with us, bringing yummilicious desserts to share, and a good time in good company. Thanks Dini & Tajul for the ang pow!

Weeee..ee

We have never thought of sledding inside the house can be such a fun exciting thrill ride. The awful, single digits weather have us stuck inside home for days. Elle pulled out the sled we stored away and wanted us to play along with her. She was squealing in joy while we're pulling her along the hallway between her room and living room. The real fun began when she wanted to switch role, having us sit inside the sled and she became the one who's pulling. Oh boy, it's an extreme workout of moving the sled forward with our arms, making it looked like as if she's doing all the hard work of pulling us. But it's all worthwhile. Rounds and rounds of giggles echoing in the house and her face was brighten up with big smiles. Priceless.

Let's bake

Elle has finally recovered from some evil stomach bug. It started on Sunday night at bedtime. Out of a sudden, she awoke and puked all over her crib. Her face turned white with puke pouring out of her mouth like the Niagara fall. During that night, we kept bolting awake by the awful puking noises coming out from her room. She threw up thrice at that night and that was by far the biggest puke messes we had dealt with ever before. The bathtub was filled with mountains of puked mattress pads and outfits. The next day when we thought she was getting better, she puked again during bedtime, followed by puking at dinner in the following day. Thank godness the puking business finally stopped there. Aside from loss of appetite, she's no doubt on the mend now.

Whenever we're making dinner or washing dishes in the kitchen, Elle would squeeze herself between us and the sink or the stove, pushing us away from what we're doing at that moment. Sometimes, she'd settle down by herself pulling pots and pans out from the cabinet one by one, arranging them on the floor, banging them and then putting them back. Today, she dug out some baking cups and spoons, which kept her busy for a very long time while we're making dinner. She's simply lovely at this stage of pretend/imaginative play.

Freecycle

We got a bunch of books and toys from generous people on the freecycle network. Elle loves them, especially the LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set. She carrys it with her most of the time like her little sing-along player, singing and dancing with it. She calls it her froggy.

Queen of bows

She insists mama putting all the bows on her hair. She calls hair bows "美美".

A kiss to the froggy prince

This mischievous one must be either a fickle minded baby or a real teaser:

mama: "Baby, you want to sing?"
elle: "Star!!" [make star gesture]
mama: "Okay. Twinkle twinkle little star..."
elle: "NO NO! Baa!!" [shake her hand vigorously]
mama: "No more twinkle star? Baa baa?"
elle: "Yes. Baa baa." [nod her head seriously]
mama: "Baa baa black sheep have you any..."
elle: "NO NO! Star!!"
mama: "Star!? No Baa Baa?"
elle: "Yes! Star!" [nod her head]
mama: "Twinkle twinkle..."
elle: "No NO! Baa!" [smile sheepishly]

Art expression

Turning my back for a mere couple of minutes, my lil' artist had gone wild making art on her hands instead of on the paper. I pointed my fingers at every stroke on her hands questioning her "What is this?" and she looked into my eyes innocently saying "This?..". All of the sudden, she blurted out, "This's.... TATTOO!". Her response really caught me off-guard. Where's on earth did she learn the word "Tattoo" from? The other day, she kept saying "Awesome! Awesome!", cracking us up.

Snow storm

A snow storm dumped about 16 inches of snow on Kalamazoo overnight. We have to bring out the big shovel we bought in year 2004 during a snow storm as crazy as this one, digging out the car from piles of snow. Elle had quite a workout helping dada shoveling the snow.

Our balcony's almost buried in snow. We tried to make a snowman in the balcony which I never thought it would be so hard. It's impossible to roll the snow into a ball without enough moisture in the snow. Elle enjoyed playing with the icesicle hanging from the roof.

20 months old

Dear Elle,

It has been an amazing fill-in-the-blanks month. Mama was surprise of your ability to recite the words in your first baby book SMILE. We have a blast reciting it out loud and here's how we go:

mama: "Look at the birdie.."
you: "Come On!"
mama: "Say.."
you: "Cheese!"
mama: "A laugh, a..."
you: "Giggle"
mama: "Even a little grin will.."
you: "DO!"

You're a singing bird, sing your heart out accompanying with hand gestures. You sing in spur of the moment, whenever you like, anywhere and everywhere. Your sweet notes simply make our heart sing. Your favorite is "ABC Song". You turn "Baa Baa Black Sheep" into "Baa Baa Baby". When you are singing "Twinkle twinkle little star", you open and close hands like they are a twinkling star, and bring hands up above head to form the shape of a diamond.

Love climbing up and down the stairs all by yourself and get angry whenever we try to hold your hands. However, when we walk down the street, you'd insist tucking one hand into dada's and another to mama's. Mama was so amused by what you have done to the drawstring on mama's pant. You hold it tightly with one hand, saying "COME!", and then pull mama to follow you around the house.

Those lil' pet peeves of yours are getting on our nerves. You scream and whine when you socks are not staying on in perfect shape. You keep getting off the hair clip, yelling "Hair! Hair!" wanting us to put it back perfectly gazillion time a day that dada has threatened to cut off your bangs if you whine one more time.

We finally got you a chair and you love every bit of it, carrying it around, climbing up and down, and reading on it. When you find us sitting on your chair, you'd quickly come over yelling "No! No!" and pushing us off the chair. Could you imagine how surprise we were when you started offering us your chair all of a sudden? You say "SIT SIT" and even hold our hands begging us with your magic word "Please". The moment we sit on it, immediately you run to the back of the chair and start pushing us yelling "Down! Down!". You giggle in victory when we get off the chair and then you'd do it over and over again. What a lil' teaser you are!


You're getting more and more apprehend of what we say. When you agree, you'd nod your head saying "Yes" or "OK". When we say "kiss", you'd either lean you cheek against ours waiting for a peck or you'd give us a smooch on our lip, sometime even with a little bit of tongue. We get the best belly laughs out of you when we're blowing raspberries on your belly, which you never seem to get enough of. Three molars broke through, two on the bottom and one on top, and that might explain the bad days we had.

Last week, mama and dada went to a movie (Benjamin Button) for the first time ever since you were born. Throughout the movie, mama could relate you to the Benjamin baby who is born as an 80-years-old man until he achieves real infancy at the end of his life. Mama would not have felt so much love of a parent to their kid, the laughters that make our heart sing and the tears that make our heart ache, if we had not have you. You're the best thing that ever happened in our life.

Love you,
Mama

2009

First day of year 2009, we captured a few family moments at Kal-Haven trail head, making memories of a new chapter of year 2009.

Elle must have worn out terribly the night before, she woke up just before noon time. She has already started making trouble on the first day of a new year. While we're shopping at Target, she was pulling a hair clip from a rack that the whole rack collapsed and fell off to the floor, with merchandise scattering all over. The loud thump made us become the spotlight in the store and I could feel people questioning what kind of a mother I am letting the kid making such a mess. A staff came over offering help. I apologized for the accident, pointed at Elle and told her it's all my baby's fault, which amused her so much. Oh well, this naughty baby needs some discipline.