Mason is 18 months old

Happy 18 month birthday to Mason!

Things he likes

• Dada: he's definitely more attached to dada than to mama. if he's tired or upset, he looks for dada - not mama. that's perfectly fine with me. mama is mine.
• Dancing and music: whenever he hears music, he starts to dance. he's perfecting the running man. If mama or dada get a video, I'll post it. He often asks mama or dada to turn on the radio near our play area. If you start to sing Itsy Bitsy spider, he'll start doing the hand gestures.
• Playing with water: it's become a regular thing where he'll come home from daycare with a completely different outfit because he gets all wet playing with water
• Books: he's developed an interest in books and reading. At home, he'll grab a book and walk over to mama or dada saying, "Bah. Bah." And he has his favorite books too. If you try to read him a book that he doesn't want to read, he'll let you know it. His favorite books include: Dear Zoo, Deep Sea Dive and Moo Baa LaLaLa.
• Having something in his hand: it could be anything...shoes, a toy, a blanket, cotton ball, puff balls (usually from my classroom). He gets really upset if you try to take it out of his hand too.
• Climbing: He climbs on everything. In fact, Mr. Dennis, his little gym teacher, said that he's got good climbing skills.
• Bubbles: He's started trying to blow them on his own. The problem is that he ends up putting the wand to close to his lips or he tries to eat the wand.
• Balls: He's pretty good a throwing smaller balls that fit in his hand
• His thumb: He still sucks it. If you ask him to take his thumb out of his mouth, he'll do it. But then he'll smile and just pop it right back in.
• Eating as soon as he gets to day care: He's pretty consistent with his routine. Walk in, wash hands, and sit down at the table to have a snack.
• Pointing out things like planes, dogs and birds
• Napping: he finally figured out that naps are awesome. He is now consistently taking 1 nap/day that generally lasts about 2 hours. 
• Legs: usually dada's. If he doesn't want dada to leave, he'll grab onto his leg and not let go. When dada is doing dishes, he'll run over and hide behind his legs. He also likes to run between dada's legs.
• Following me where I go, eating whatever I eat and wanting to do whatever I do.

Things he doesn't like

• Strangers: he still has stranger anxiety. If we're with him, he won't cry. But he also won't go to them. He'll hide behind mama or dada's leg.
• Separation: he's fine at day care, as long as you follow the routine. If you try to leave him with anybody but his day care teachers, mama or dada, he cries. And he can cry for a long time. In fact, he'll constantly look for mama or dada if we go someplace new because he's worried that they're going to leave him.
• Words or talking: he has a few words that he uses like bu-buh (bubbles), ba (ball), bye-bye, dis (this), and ma (more). he's babbling a lot more now. but he still primarily communicates like a cave man.
• Rides: he's not a fan of amusement park rides, not even the tame ones like the choo-choo train where he's sitting on or next to dada.

Mason the rock star

Mason used to look like a mad scientist or an adorable little girl. Now he looks like a rock star!

 

Can you see the resemblance? In case you don't know who the rock star is, it's Keith Urban. As I mentioned in my previous post, Mason got his first haircut on Sunday. How'd he do? Fantastic! Here's a before photo:

And here's a during photo:

His hair is definitely shorter, but it's still pretty long. Dada decided to give him a rocker look instead of shorter cut like mine. He says, "Mason is a his own person and deserves a style all his own." 

Everyone at school was stunned to see Mason with shorter hair. Ms. Kim said all the teachers gasped when they saw Mason. Ms. Trinh, his primary care giver, said he looks like a Korean rock star. Even the girls at his class think his new do is hot! (Faces blurred to protect the innocent.)

Rock on, Mason!

THE haircut

Ever since mama noticed that Mason has curls in his hair, she's been reluctant to cut it. At first it was cute, then it was fun to play with his hair. Not everyone liked his long hair. Po-po used to always ask mama when she was planning to cut his hair. Eventually she and other people got tired of asking. They just figured Mason's hair would be long forever.

Well, his hair has gotten so long that:
1. To keep it from getting matted to his boogers, mama or dada have to put it up in a pony tail at the top of his head. This also helps him see.
2. His daycare teacher combs his hair into pigtails like this:

3. People, including family members, often mistake him for a girl. Grandma, grandpa and uncle mike didn't recognize Mason when they saw this picture. They thought this was some cute little girl! OMG!
4. I ask mama if I can have pigtails like Mason. To which mama replies that my hair isn't long enough. I feel a double standard. How come Mason gets to grow his hair long and do fun things with it and I can't? What's up with that?! 

Won't everyone be shocked when they find out what mama and dada did to Mason tonight?!  Oh boy, I didn't realize how late it was. I better go to bed now before mama and dada find out I'm not sleeping.  Good night!

Best Birthday Party Ever

My girl Adrienne had her 4th birthday party at William Land Park in Sacramento today. It was the best party ever! Not only was there a jumpy house, but there were lots of super cool things to do at this park.

For starters, the picnic site was across the street from Funderland. Funderland is an amusement park similar to Gilroy Gardens, except instead of an entrance fee you buy tickets for rides. Everyone needs a ticket, even adults. While we were eating lunch, I saw some of the rides. To drop not so subtle hints, I'd excitedly exclaim things like, "Look a train!" or "Mama, I see an airplane!" or "Look, there's the train again!" I was hoping the grown-ups at the table would get the hint and take us over there after lunch.

But when it looked like no one was picking up my hints, us kids (Adrienne and Maddy) headed back to the jumpy house after lunch. Luckily Uncle Clint has great party planning skills. While we were in the jumpy house, he came over to our table and handed out tickets for pony rides and Funderland! It didn't take much convincing to get us out of the jumpy house.

With tickets in hand, we headed toward the pony rides. I've ridden faux horses on the carousel, but I've never been on a real horse before! Mason and I got in line for the pony ride. None of us were sure whether Mason would like it, but we figured we'd let him try it anyway. We each got to pick our ponies. I chose Rocky, and Mason got Candy. Don't we look cute on our ponies?

And guess what? Mason didn't cry at all. He did great! In fact, he liked it so much that he waved bye-bye to his pony after the ride. If you don't believe me, you can see for yourself.



After the pony rides, we went to Funderland. I rode the Red Baron by myself, Crazy Cups with Maddy and dada, and Buggy Ride with dada (instead of the Log Run). I'm not sure if Maddy and I are good ride buddies. She kept saying, "Faster, faster!" while I was saying, "Too fast, too fast!" It's not cool to lose your lunch in front of a chick. I made dada cross his arms so that I could be the driver. I did a great job! No crashing!

Dada took Mason on the world's fastest carousel. Needless to say, he did not like it at all. When we looked over there, he'd either be trying to get off the horse and into dada's arms or frantically signing "All done! All done!" He enjoyed watching the rides and sitting in the Photo-Op car a lot more than he liked riding on them.

To top it all off, Uncle Clint rented a cotton candy machine. I got to eat cotton candy for the first time ever! I really liked it, but mama made me share it with her. I suppose I should be happy about that since Mason didn't get to have any.

I had such a great time at the party, that I told mama I wanted to have my next birthday party there. She didn't think that was such a great idea because it's so far away. Oh well, I really hope we get to go back again soon.

Happy Birthday Adrienne! Thanks for inviting us to the best birthday party ever!

Gyming Update

At the end of each season, there's a show that we put on to demonstrate all the stuff we learn during the season. Unlike normal class, mamas and dadas (and other guests) can come into the gym area. And at the end of the show, we all get medals.  Here's a short video of my intro:



Now that we've started the summer season, my class is much smaller. And my buddies, Kyden and Matthew have switched to a different gym. Apparently, I'm still too young to go to this gym. I miss seeing them in class, but we still meet up for dinner afterwards. The early report on this new gym is that it's pretty hard core and not as fun as Little Gym. Mama and dada say that the jury's still out on whether we'll switch gyms yet in September.

The other gym update is that Mason's started class too. He's using my make-up classes to see if he'll like it before committing to a full season. It took a while for him to warm up to the class. He cried for about 15 minutes and tried to bolt for the door several times. He's one of the older kids in the class; most of the other kids are still crawling and only a couple are walking. Once he warmed up, he seemed to have a good time. Mama says his favorite parts were the balls, bubbles and getting the stamp at the end.