Life with our favorite 3 1/2 year old!

Noah is 3 ½ now!  Now that he is older, it is so great to be able to have mini conversations with him and to watch him grow into this amazing little person.  Hands down, his favorite activity is puzzles.  He is amazingly adept and fast at putting them together (he has his daddy’s engineer-brain for sure).  He can do a 50 piece puzzle with little to no help (although it is more fun for him if we do them with him)!!  Noah also likes playing games on the iphone, playing with cars/planes, coloring, painting and making cars out of play-doh.  He is very organized/neat for his age (and for being a boy) and is good about keeping his room clean and toys organized. He is in swimming lessons now and is doing really great.  Dad likes to use Noah as a human cannonball/projectile to soak Mom (so much for keeping my hair and makeup in tact).  Noah loves every second of this game!

Since he was a toddler, Noah has always been a little shy.  He would talk all day and night about wanting to see his friends but then when we got the kids together for playdates, he would be Mr. Shy Guy and play mostly by himself.  Over the past few months, it has been great to see him start to come out of his shell and play more with his friends!

Noah has such a big love in his heart for his family and close friends.  He loves all four of his grandparents so much and has a special bond with each of them.  He asks to see/call them on the phone regularly. He often gets upset when I come to pick him up from Pao Pao’s house (even telling me to “go back to work!”) because he doesn’t want to stop playing with Pao Pao.  Dad is definitely the “fun dad” and is his favorite playmate.  Mom is most requested for bedtime snuggles, back rubs and booktime (or anytime he doesn’t feel well). Aunt Renee, Lucy (her dog) and Al are top listers on his nightly prayer list.

He is doing really great at potty training and is pretty much trained (except for overnight).  Yay!! We have been using little matchbox cars as rewards and call them “poo poo cars”.  This method has worked well except for when he used the potty at pre-school and asked for a poo poo car and the teachers ran around frantically to find him a “purple car”.  Hilarious.

Noah is so sweet with his little sister and loves to play with her.  For as rough as he can be with his friends sometimes, he is amazingly gentle with her.  Just yesterday, he told us he wanted to be her “best friend.”  Our hearts exploded at the cuteness of that statement.  He can be so sweet sometimes.  When we were in California, I caught Noah in his bed reading “Goodnight Moon” to Minnie Mouse, saying prayers with her and tucking his blanket around her.  Then once Minnie was tucked in, he shut the bedroom door softly behind him (as if not to wake her up) and proceeded to run around the condo.  He cracks us up on a daily basis.

Pictures to come soon!

Callison is six months old!

Our sweet "Callie girl" is six months old today! She is such a sweetheart and rewards us with the very biggest smiles all the time!  One of her favorite things to do is to stand up on our legs and dance to music.  We hold her up by her arms and she will wiggle around happily and give us her best "cheerleader face" (Huge open mouth smile!) Adorable. 

Callie loves to lay down and grab her toes.  She is very flexible and can actually put her toes in her mouth.  She is a very oral baby and likes her paci and to suck on teething toys.  We are still waiting for that first tooth, but expect it will be soon as she is a little drool monster right now.  She soaks several bibs a day!

She is very good a picking up toys with her little fingers and has a blast spinning round and round in her exersaucer.  Big brother enjoys helping her go for a ride and she will squack at him happily like she is asking him to go faster, faster!  too cute.  Speaking of squacking, one of her nicknames is "our little dinosaur".  She will make the loudest squacking noises that sound just like what you would imagine a dinosaur to make.  She is gonna be a talker, we think. 

Another cute thing about Callie is that she loves the camera.  This is good because her mother is obsessed with taking adorable photos of her and we do mini-photo shoots often.  She smiles so big for the camera and looks right into the lens.  Our mini supermodel.
 
Callie's six month appointment is next week and her Pao Pao and I have been doing all we can to encourage her to increase her feedings both in quanity and frequency to get her weight up a bit.  Unfortunately for me, she has gotten to the point where she now refuses to nurse at all (unless she is half asleep in the middle of the night) so I am pumping a lot more and we are giving her breastmilk in bottles. She won't nurse, but she will down a 5oz bottle happily. Our silly girl.  But it is worth the shift if she will start eating more.  Since I was already pumping at work, it isn't that much different, but now I have to make the time to pump at night, in the morning and on weekends and which is hard when our lives are already so hectic. sigh.  We gave her a little bit of rice cereal this weekend and she did great!  On to the world of first foods!! :)

On a final note, one of the biggest things we noticed this month was how much Callie ADORES her big brother!  She loves to play with him and just watch everything he does.  (We try to distract her from watching when she catches him being naughty)  But seriously, she would just stare at him all day with stars in her eyes if she could.  Noah is very gentle with her and loves to sit with her and hold her hand.  If they are both in the car and we are unloading the kids, he will say we can get sissy out first.  If she isn't in the car yet, he will sometimes cry and tell us that we have to "go get sissy!!" It is sweet how he looks out for her.

She had her first real giggle fest today.  She has made lots of happy loud noises before but we wouldn't really call them laughing.  But today Noah started playing hide and seek with her and she started giggling non-stop!

We are so in love with our little miss.  Can't wait to see what is in store for the next few months! I'm a little behind on blogging, so below are a few pictures from the past two months!

Our sweet Callie girl (5 months)

cutest. bunny. ever.

Loves her gymini!

Our kids love their Pao Pao!

All dressed up for Gong Gong's birthday party!



Callie loves her big brother SO much! He is very sweet and gentle with her.



Our flexible girl can grab her toes and pull them into her mouth!

First solid food was a success (Rice Cereal)!

open wide Callie girl! (she loves to give me the tight lip shut down)

She can roll both ways now! Our little girl is on the move!





Callie's favorite book is her "crinkle book!"



If this shirt said "midnight"on it, it would be perfect.  She is our little "Rock Star"

 

Our little dancer loves to bounce around in the jumperoo

Giggling with big brother on her six month birthday!

Fun with Family and Friends in California!

My parents, Noah, Callison and I recently headed down to Los Angeles and San Francisco to visit family and close friends.  Daddy had a ton of deadlines at work and is taking a prepartory class for his Professional Engineering exam so he couldn't make the trip.  This was the last trip we do without daddy.  He was dearly missed the entire time.  Wes has the magic touch with Noah.  Noah listens best to him out of all of us and seems to always be on best behavior when daddy is around.

The kids did relatively well on all three flights (ANC to LAX, LAX to SFO and SFO to ANC). Callie was a dream and super delightful, smiling and flirting with all the passengers on the plane.  I love traveling with babies this age.  Noah was pretty good also and he enjoyed his sticker books and Mickey Mouse coloring activity books.  He put his seatbelt on all by himself and  loved the take-off and landing when the plane zooms fast down the runway!  However on the way home, our flight was delayed and we had literally no layover in Seattle (i.e. a chance for him to run and get out some energy) So he did get antsy several times on the flight back to Anchorage and at one point Noah even reached over and pulled the headphones off the passenger's head who was seated in front of him!  The guy was not impressed. I was mortified. This was one flight where I couldn't wait to get off the plane and swore to never travel without dad again.

Noah is still potty training and did suprisingly well the entire trip but he is scared of public restrooms and is utterly and completely terrified of the airplane bathroom.  After Noah had a meltdown in the airport restroom, crying that he wanted to "use the potty at home!", a woman came up to me and asked if she could give Noah something.  Unsure, but curious, I said ok.  She handed him a bag from the gift shop and in it was a little stuffed puppy toy.  She told Noah she hoped the puppy would bring him comfort during his travels.  Noah and I thanked her profusely and I made a mental note that the next time I see a mom struggling in the airport with two kiddos, I am going to pay it forward.

This was a whirlwind trip where we got to spend time visiting my mom's family and my dad's family in Los Angeles.  We got to meet the beautiful new Ella (my cousin Mark's daughter who is one month older than Callie) and spend Super Bowl with all my cousins/relatives on my dad's side of the family.  Very fun filled day!  The next day, we drove up to Anaheim for a few days and Noah got to meet Goofy, Mickey, Minnie, Pluto and a bunch of other characters at a few of the "character dining" restaurants.  All the characters came around to each table and signed Noah's little book and posed for pictures.  Unfortunately for me, my camera battery died right before we had "dinner with Goofy" so I had to rely on my iphone which isn't as good. Mommy fail.

In San Francisco, I met up with my very dear college friends Christina and Danielle for dinner at this great Italian restaurant.  We didn't have the kids so it was really nice to just catch up and have a girls' dinner out without any distractions.  The next day, we met up with Danielle, her three kiddos and her parents at the Discovery Bay Kids Museum and had a blast!  The highlight was meeting her sweet daughter Madison who is just a few months younger than Callie.  We had fun taking pics of the baby girls together in their matching hair bows and catching up while the boys explored the hands-on kids exhibits.  The weather was super sunny and warm which was perfect since there was this great outdoor park/playground there.  Later that night, we had a great visit with my cousin Albert who is a doctor now and is doing so great!  Wonderful to catch up with him.

On Friday we went to visit our very good and long-time family friend, Christine, who is recovering from several surgeries and brain cancer/lymphoma.  She is an amazing woman and it was a joy seeing her again.  She has been through so much the past 18 years healthwise and her endless courage and strength are such an inspriation.  It was wonderful to have Noah and Callie meet her.  Later that night we had dinner at our condo with Tim, Helene, her gorgeous and sweet daughter Janae and my godfather.  Janae and Callie had a lot of fun playing together.  Great night!

My parents (especially my mom) were so amazingly helpful the entire time with the kids.  I am truly spoiled by the amount of help they give us with the kids all the time. During this trip, Noah loved the opportunity to sleep with his Pao Pao and begged her to sleep with him almost every night.  Poor Gong Gong almost got the boot when Noah asked to sleep "just Pao Pao, not Gong Gong".  I think my mom actually considered his request for a few seconds, but thankfully there weren't any other beds for Gong Gong to go to and my mom held strong.  hahaha.  My dad jokes he is being replaced by a younger, cuter guy.

Fun in the sun!

Callie met her cousin Ella for the first time!  Ella is one month older than Callie and my cousin Mark's daughter.

Noah loves to play with the iphone/ipad. Ryan was nice to show Noah and Jack (his son) all the cool kid apps and games on there!

Erica and Callison



Callie and Ashley



Me and my Mickey fan

Breakfast with Mickey & Friends! Mickey signed his autograph book

Pluto came over to say hi!

Callie liked playing with Stitch

Noah wanted to give Daisy a high five!

I was so excited to meet up with my dear friend Danielle and her new baby girl, Madison!

my little scientist at the Discovery Bay Musuem. they had little lab coats for the kids to wear!



The boys had fun with all the hands on exhibits





We had fun taking pics of our baby girls together



matching flower headbands were a must



We had some laughs trying to get both girls looking forward at the same time.  Danielle, this is for you!

the weather was so perfect this day! I think Callie is a sun girl just like her momma.

My cousin Albert and Callie



More fun in the park! Can you tell that I have been deprived of warm weather for five months?



My good friend Helene - we have been friends since we were babies!

 

Helene, her beautiful daugher Janae and Callie girl



Christmas 2011

This first Christmas as a family of four was so much fun! We relaxed, visted with family and friends, but most of all, we loved sharing some of our favorite Christmas traditions (and starting some new ones) with Noah and Callie! One of Noah's favorite traditions was to wear his new Christmas jammies all day on Christmas Day (he put them on Christmas Eve night and begged us to let him wear them all day Christmas and again on Christmas night!) Noah was really excited about Christmas this year and was a little heartbroken when we took the tree down on New Year's Day.  He has asked me several times to, "please put the tree back."  Our poor lil guy has to wait a whole year now. He loved opening all his Christmas presents and would marvel at each one and note who "got it for you".  Callie enjoyed all the lights and attention and gave her biggest smiles out to everyone.  Here are some of our favorite pics from the holidays!

Noah's 1st Christmas program at his pre-school.  He was a little shy, but did great!

Noah was focused on ringing his jingle bell

Wrapping a toy to donate for the school charity drive

Noah had fun playing hockey with Nathen and Aiden on Saturday morning.  Nathen is getting in a good stretch before he takes his posiiton as goalie!

Noah wasn't very intersted in putting his skates on, but liked holding the hockey stick.

This pic cracks me up.  Dad is ready to go play and Noah is ready for a nap.

Santa had a small surprise for Noah in the mailbox at Grandma/Grandpa's house almost every day! What a fun Christmas tradition!

 

Grandma and Noah



Al, Auntie Renee and Callie Girl

My silly family on Christmas Eve.  Noah wanted to take the picture "this way".  hahaha.

Callie's first Christmas!! The little flower headband was enormous on her, but I couldn't resist!

Pao Pao and Miss Callie

Christmas Eve Church Service - Noah loved all the songs and singing Silent Night by candlelight

Noah was so excited to unwrap this Disney truck trailer from Auntie Renee!

Putting food (oatmeal and sprinkles) for Santa's reindeer out on the driveway

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

   

It was a WHITE Christmas in Alaska!  We had tons and tons of snow this year!



Noah was really into the tree this year.  He loved to play with all the ornaments and turn on the lights!

Mickey Sticker Book from Aiden and Nathen!

Musical seahorse from Callie's Great Aunt and Uncle Reimer!

The Jeep!!!  Counting the days until summer!

Christmas morning smiles

Loot from Santa!

Every year Jan, Renee and I get matching Christmas socks from Santa. 
Santa was not aware that rainbows are also "gay pride" colors.  Too funny!

Callie loves her Auntie Nee

Grandma Jan and Callie

I love snuggling cheek to cheek with my sweet girl

These Cars Look-and-Find books are Noah's favorite books.  Callie looks pretty interested too!

Our Happy Girl

Lazy Christmas Morning

Gong Gong and Callie



Noah got a model car that looks exactly like Gong Gong's car!



Noah's Disney Cars toy collection is growing! 
 If you don't have Disney stock, I suggest you all buy some before the "Planes" movie comes out.

Daddy and Callie (she loves standing on her feet like this)

our sweet girl is drooling tons... we will be looking for her first tooth in the next few months.