Mama's birthday

She wanted to dig into eating the cake right away so bad. When we asked her who's birthday today, she told us it's her birthday. As we told her it's mama's birthday, she asked "Why? How about my birthday?".

The magic candle was such a teaser, provided way too much fun of blowing it off over and over again. She was screaming "What?" and giggling at it everytime the candle lit up magically after we blew it off.

We had such a quite time reading magazines at B&N while she's asleep in the stroller for an hour. During the dinner, she's enjoying drinking the sparkling juice from a wine glass and eating ribs.

My sunshine

Little Cook

Elle has been obsessed with helping us cooking lately. When it's cooking time, she'd grab her lil' yellow chair, put it next to us and stand on it with her toy spatula in one hand, watching eagerly at what we cook and begging us to let her help out.

It's been a while ago we let her helping out in the kitchen. When she'd like to have macaroni (a.k.a "hello") for lunch, she'd happily drop a couple handfuls of macaroni into the boiling water pot. She loves cooking instant noodles for all of us. The most challenge by far is making chinese pancake. She'd help droping the batter into the pan and I'll quickly swirl it into a round shape. This morning, she helped making mango pudding, stiring and pouring milk into the pot.

Holiday parade

Sea of people flocked to downtown watching the holiday parade. We spent almost an hour in traffic congestion and looking for parking. I'm glad we made it. As first we're standing shoulder to shoulder in the midst of the crowd. As we moved along down to the street, we're surprise to find some space to sit down enjoying the parade itself. The most exciting moment for Elle must be getting the candies thrown by the people in the parade. Surprisingly we stayed till the end of the parade.
After the parade, we walked to Irving's market getting a bite. Elle enjoyed her hot chocolate topped with lots of marshmallow.
The most wonderful surprise during our visit to the Santa House was there's hardly any waiting in line at all. The best of it was even Mrs. Claus was there too. Elle had been talking about wanting to see Santa Claus for presents and candies for a couple of days. When the time finally came, she held on her dada for dear life. Mrs. Claus was very nice to ask them to sit on her chair chatting with Santa. It's funny to watch her just sit there and stared at Santa Claus. When she got off, she came to me asking "Where's my present?". Guess what happenned next? She walked to the corner where lots of presents wrapped beautifully as props and wanted to pick one for herself.
Elle conked out as we're on the way home. The weather was so nice that we decided to hang out at B&N, wishfully thinking that Elle would still asleep. The moment we put her into the stroller, she's awake with eyes wide open. No luck for some peaceful and quite time.

Feet

She requested taking pictures of her feet during bath time.

Drawing

Soak up the sun

This weekend was ridiculously warm at this time of year. We hung out at the park, on the beach enjoying the outdoor while we could.

30 months old

Dear Elle,

The highlight of the past month was your outrageous talk-backs. When you call for mama, if dada answers to you instead, you'd bark at dada saying "NOT YOU!". One day mama kept nagging at your ears about a thing has broken, you turned your head towards mama barking "OKAY! OKAY! STOP TALKING! I'M FIXING IT!". Oh, the other night while you were begging mama for more orange juice, dada chanted "NO" at the side to mess with you and guess what, you were agitated and barked at dada saying, "YOU NOT SPEAK FOR ME! I TALK TO MAMA!". Gosh! We're so shocked. A little spankings may do some good to teach you about RESPECT.
Now you're obsessed with Mickey, Goofy, princess and Tinkerbell, not so much of Barney anymore. Almost every night at bedtime, you want to talk about the animals in your "Bungle Jungle". Well, we have no idea what's the "bungle" means, but it rhymes perfectly with the jungle. You'd tell us what animals you have in your "Bungle Jungle", make the animals' noises, and even want us to make a song out of it. Talking about singing, you'd sing about everything, picking a random word and you could sing the whole jingle bells with that one word. You even make up a song out of nowhere: "Jingle bell, jingle bell, baby naughty girl..".
It's really fun to peek at you "reading" during the potty time. You put the book on your legs, pointing finger at the words, seriously "reading" out loud line by line as if you really can read. Whenever you find us peeking and smiling at stuff you do, you'd immediately cover up your face and bury into your chest shyly. What a precious thing you're.

Mama always read out loud your daily activity sheet about how you're doing in daycare during the car ride home. You must have memorized everything mama said since all of a sudden you blurt out "Busy, happy, talkative and excellent" all day long. You'd even point at the characters on a book telling mama which one is busy, happy, talkative and excellent. Whenever mama tells you I'm afraid of something, you'd assure mama saying "Don't worry. It's not scary." Mama asked do you afraid of scary, you replied proudly, "No! I love scary.".
It's hard for you to take "NO" for an answer. When you offer thing to us, you'd ask nicely "You want it?". After a few rejections, you'd change into a forceful tone saying, "You WANT it? YOU WANT IT!!!!!".

When you got a boo boo, a candy seems to be the best remedy. You look so silly saying "I feel all better now." with tears still hanging on the cheeks while chewing the candy. Your obsession with bandage really gets on my nerve now. Any tiny bites, cuts or nothing requires a bandage fix. Otherwise, you'd cry till the whole world collapses.
You call the BIG calculator your "computer" and get hours of fun pressing the buttons on the calculator until it shows an "E" and a "M" letters on the screen. You call the coffee stir stick "ROW BOAT" and you love rowing with it in the tub as you're singing along the song "Row Row Row your boat". After you brush you teeth, you'd let out a breath telling us "I 香香". You'd love to share your food with mama by saying "你一口我一口". You call the photo prints "flash card" and we'd go over the "flash card" together to jog your memories of our family back home.
love,
mama