Disney appetizer and Dim Sum Sunday

We received an offer a couple months back from FedEx or our Visa card, I can't remember, but it was for Disney On Ice tickets. They were giving us a chance to 'BUY EARLY', which is funny, I fairly certain those shows don't sell out......ever. Anyways, I went ahead and confirmed with wifey and bought some tickets. We've never been to any type of kids show like this, and it would be a good pre-cursor to the D-world trip we will be taking in a few weeks. I hate Ticketmaster, and their website is pretty awful, but I ordered the tickets anyways. My wife hates it, but generally I pick things based on price. Highest price == BEST. So, thats what I bought, it said 'Rink-side' so I figured we'd go for that, and let the kids get a better view. We make our way downtown and get parked, its not too terribly busy, and we head into the Forum. We ask one of the ladies where our section is and she points us down a long stairway. We walk down and find the next lady, because we can't seem to find our seats. I initially thought we might be in the wrong section, but the usher flashed up down to her and took us down to the floor. When they said 'Rink Side' they weren't kidding. We literally sat on the floor, less than a foot from the ice. I was happy at this point, because I knew the characters would be right in our faces, and the kids would get a really good view. Matt was pretty mesmerized with it all, and enjoyed it. Ying on the other hand got scared during the first dance number, which was all the villains skating around. She started crying and wifey had to take her back behind our seats and let her calm down and talk to her a bit. After Minnie came out she was fine, so I'm hoping she won't freak out when we get to the parks and see the characters up close.  

Lighting wasn't so great, but you get the idea. She loved the ears, but they are kinda too big for her, :P

This weekend was pretty relaxed, and we hit up our new Chinese place for some Dim Sum. I wasn't sure how the kids would do with this, but they seemed to like it. Ying is pretty easy, if its not fried, she will likely try it out. She ate very well, and was asking for more things randomly. Waiters would run by with plates of things and ask if we wanted to try . We usually say yes, and our table its pretty full with random dishes by the time we leave. 

I was really surprised with Matt. The first thing they dropped off was some fried calamari. Usually when I get calamari is sort of like sliced rings, but these were pretty big, and appeared to be a small whole squid/octopus, or maybe it was just the tentacles. Either way, I told Matt what it was, and pulled off some of the batter so he could see the tentacles and suction cups. This is where being 3 years old kicks in, he basically said 'Oh, ok' and ate it. I was pretty amazed, as he is usually a bit picky. Now, it was fried and delicious, so I'm sure that helped, but he even asked for seconds. He did not care so much for the steamed dishes.

We sat right in front of the lobster/crab tank, so much of his meal was spent pointing at it and saying "Whats that in there daddy?"

Lastly, another 'being 3 years old' event. 

When she sleeps in her car seat, she always looks like a sniper has taken her out. This is her sleeping on her Disney Princess Something-that-makes-noise.

Mooncakes and Roombas

I'm a big geek, so of course I bought a Roomba a while back. Then I bought another one, :) For a really long time I didn't bother running them because toys were usually EVERYWHERE in the morning, or we didn't want to hear them whirring around. Lately we have kept up with the toy explosions, and everyday Matt asks to turn on the Roombas. The strange thing is, he is sort of terrified of them. He won't turn them on, and the floor turns to hot lava which he can't stay on, so he spends a lot of time on the couch or in a chair yelling at them to clean. Still, the last several days he has asked to turn them on. Ying couldn't care less, she will go over and unplug them and hit the start buttons and co-exists with them. They bump into her and she doesn't really pay any attention to them at all. Of course today as soon as we walk in the house "LETS TURN ON ROOMBA!". So as I write this, there are two of the guys running the downstairs gambit that is our house. They actually work for what I wanted them, which was dog hair that gathered along the perimeter of the rooms.

Last Friday we went to a new Chinese place for dinner. I mainly wanted to see if the had dim sum, which they do, but they only serve it until about 3:30pm. Real Chinese places have 2 menus. A menu for the Americans, which is all the general sweet and sour fried rice basics. In my opinion its usually pretty boring food for the most part. Most of the time you have to ask for the second menu, and if the place is REALLY hardcore, the menu is in Mandarin, in which case I'm screwed, :)  Anyways, we sat down, and I had on a t-shirt that I got in China that is a very well known propaganda poster-boy for Chinese communism. Oh yea, and we also had a Chinese kid with us. Either way they waiter brought us out both menus. I was pretty happy about it. The food was good, and wifey even ventured past 'chicken fried rice' and got Bacon/Raisin/Cucumber/Pineapple fried rice.

It was pretty interesting, and the kids seemed to like it ok. 

We also hit up the Asian market to get some moon cakes. This was the first time we were going to officially observe the Moon Festival, and we figured the kids would love to do it. We bought the cakes, which they had tons to choose from. I was surprised how nice looking the packaging and cakes were.

We went outside after dinner and let the kids take the box out and get it ready to eat. I wasn't sure Matt would go for the cakes, he is a little picky, and especially since Chinese 'deserts' are not really sweet compared to ours. We got them unwrapped, and as you can see they are pretty big. Packed full of calories too, per the label. Each cake was 6 servings at 202 calories each serving! They are quite heavy and dense. Both of the monkeys seemed to like them though.

They had a blast, it was dark, they had treats, and ran around acting goofy. Afterwards we went upstairs and got pajama'd and attempted to read Chang'e and Hou Yi, a cute traditional story about the moon. Neither of the, wanted to sit through it really, and it lacked in pictures, so we zipped through it and put them to bed. Maybe next year, :P

Lastly, because I can, here is a pre-school morning with daddy, its business casual day.

Note the pinky finger, its all about etiquette with pancake-on-a-stick. 

Crazy Kids

I know this will sound bias since I work at FedEx, but I LOVE to see our planes flying in the air. It just seems cool to me. Our complex is under a regular air route I guess because they are flying over all day. Thats my plug for work I suppose.

We may have a problem with stuffed animals. Part of that starts with Mom and Dad. I maintain its mainly Mom, and not me, but she will probably disagree. Matt and Ying both have a TON of these things. Matt always had a little bear blanket that he slept with as a baby/toddler. He used to require it to sleep, but not so much these days. He doesn't seem to have a clear favorite any longer, it fluctuates throughout the day. Usually the only one he 'needs' is the one single animal that is at the grandparents house or in the car. He keeps up with his inventory pretty well. Within the last couple of weeks he has started filling his bed at night with these critters. He used to wander into our room in the mornings with a few(2-5) friends that he had been sleeping with, but not any more. His entire entourage of plushie goodness has to come with him now.

The last few days the above is what rolls into our bedroom. Its a little creepy too, because the wheel has an eerie squeak when he is coming to our room. He was initially wanting to transplant them all into our bed to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, but we talked him into just leaving them in the party wagon. Ying usually just drags in her Minnie Mouse or her newly acquired Hello Kitty frog, Keroppi Hasunoue.


This:

This is the worlds greatest dog. My wife will be happy I said that. Kyla is EXTREMELY patient with the kids. She doesn't get enough attention from us any more, due to chasing the kids. The kids freaking love her though. The other dog, Mishka, simply comes inside and hides from them, as she is a little older, and doesn't want to deal with all the 'love' that the kids want to give her. The kids are constantly messing with Kyla. Matt loves to chase her around the house with the baby stroller, or the laundry basket. He falls down laughing hysterically when she is barking and takes the basket/stroller from him.  On top of all that, our yard guy, and pest control people are terrified of her because she has a very mean bark and is fairly protective of the house/yard area, although we've never seen her nip/bite anyone.

Yin and Yang AKA Matt and Ying

Our kids are crazy. There, I said it. Nothing in particular set that off, its just the case a lot of the time, :P

We had a good week, and a good holiday weekend. Friday night after Chinese class Matt specifically asked to go to Cracker Barrel. We have no idea why. We don't go there very often, and they don't have anything he LOVES to eat, not that we could think of. I tried to get him to wait until Saturday morning and told him we could do breakfast, but he was quite set on dinner. "No, lets go now." I didn't want to waste one of my 'eat terrible food' meals there, but he never asks for anything in the way of food, so we went. It was nice, he and sister were pretty good, and since I had blown my calorie count for the day we even went to Dairy Queen afterwards!(I sound like a woman, great)

Saturday we went to the Botanic Gardens for the first time, and both kids LOVED it. They have the typical flower/plant/tree areas of course, and the kids were ok with that, running around and having fun. There is a Japanese garden that has a big pond with Koi in it. They REALLY liked the fish, and when the fish see you come up to certain areas of the pond they will swarm because they think you have food. I was extremely worried that one of them would fall in. Well, let me clarify that. I was worried Ying would fall in, and I was worried Matt would simply get in on his own. The gardens also has an area called "The Big Backyard" which is several areas for the kids to play in. There were some slides, and some little play houses, and instruments to bang on, so of course the kids were all about it. There is even a little area by a pond that 'rains' every 30 minutes or so. Thunder and lightning noises play for a few seconds and then the misters and sprinklers spray for a couple of minutes. Matt was running around wild, and laid doing at one point, I guess to get the full impact of the rain. Ying had her ear plugs in, and was a little more cautious about it. She would get in for a second, and then run back out to the perimeter and watch. For dinner we left and hit up TGIF for dinner. The kids were absolutely exhausted, I LOVE when they look tired. There were some power naps taken on the way to Fridays, but when presented with food they were ready to go. Matt immediately was excied seeing where we were. He is like a little tour guide, pointing out EVERYTHING we drive past. "Thats Walgreens, the car wash place is over there, my doctor is over there." He has his mother's sense of direction, as I can barely find my way out of the neighborhood.

Here is how our meal worked, and pretty much, this is how EVERY meal works. Matt gets chicken strips, and Ying gets a hamburger. She hates fried foods. Matt won't try anything new, exclaiming "I don't like it!" before he even tastes it. Ying will try just about anything. Matt we have to ration his chicken to make sure he eats some vegetables or whatever side he has. Ying, we have to ration the vegetables and make her eat the protein. Robyn got a tomato and mozzarella side and Ying went crazy for that. We had to bargain bites of the burger for bites of tomato. Her meal came with oranges, but as soon as the guy brought them out I snagged them because thats all she would want. I suppose its kind of retarded, I feel like we are making her eat bad sometimes, because she would happily eat fruit/vegetables all day and never touch anything else.

As much as they are opposites on food, the same thing for sleeping. Ying will go to bed at 7:30pm every night if we put her down. Matt on the other hand stays up, and up, and up. Its driving is mad. Last night I told him he could come downstairs and watch Dr.Who with me while I did some treadmill time. He said "I don't like Dr. Who, lets watch netflix Blues Clues.", to which I told him that this was mommy and daddy tv time, and Dr. Who was the show. He laid on the couch with Robyn and went to sleep about 9pm, which is usually about as early as he turns in. The treadmill rhythm may have helped, or maybe the show was boring, but he went to sleep. Ying usually wakes up every day by 8am if we aren't getting up earlier. The strange thing about her, she still will not get out of her bed after naptime or in the morning. We aren't sure why, and its not due to the fact that she can't get out. If we open her door, she is all smiles, and "Hey!" and jumps right out. Even seeing us open the door doesn't have have anything to do with it, we open their doors when we wake up in the morning, and let them wake up on their own. Ying will usually come strolling in with her stuff cat, all smiles and "HEY!". Yesterday she was crying and I went in to get her and she was freaking out and point to her pants and saying "POTTY POTTY". She apparently had a very little accident and was upset, but she still wouldn't get out of her bed. Matt tends to sleep in, and will get up randomly and has no issues opening his door. This morning he came and got in bed with us at 5:30am, lol.

Random awesome thing

Robyn asked the kids which car they wanted to take this morning, and of course they picked the sports car. So when we left the neighborhood I floored it for them. They looked at each other and both started smiling and then cheering. It was awesome to see them looking at each other for confirmation that this was fun/exciting, lol.

And the pics

We uploaded a ton of Birthday pics to the flickr site. Even got some of our Build-a-bear pictures in there. It was strange, when we got there Ying immediately ran to the Hello Kitty section of the store and started going through those. She ended up with the Hello Kitty Frog.





Just a few, here is the whole load, http://www.flickr.com/photos/44829320@N07/

The Birthday Event

Today is Ying's 3rd birthday. We had her birthday party yesterday at Pump-it-up. The kids had an extremely good time. Matt of course hit the ground running and did everything he could for the whole hour. Ying was a little more reserved initially, but her cousins drug her around the area and she started getting into it. By the end she was going through the obstacle course by herself pretty well. I have not put the pics on the computer yet, so nothing to post here, :( I should get some put up tomorrow hopefully. We had about 40 people at the party yesterday, pizza and cake after the playtime was nice, and she got tons of presents. She was very into that, and Matt was exceptionally good during the process. I was afraid he may not behave when he saw all the presents he wasn't getting, but he was excited and acted great. I talked with him about it before the party to let him know these were sister's presents, and she would be opening them all, but when we got home they were all going to get to roll around on the ground and play with everything.

Today is her actual birthday, we didn't even take her presents to the party yesterday because we knew she would have enough to do with the guests gifts. Robyn has started the tradition of doing a Build-a-bear on their actual birthdays. So we have done that with Matt a couple of times, and now Ying will be going today for her first time. I'm sure she will love it, afterwards we will go home and do the cake/gifts thing.

Other news! Ying and I went to our local elementary school Friday to get started on her speech therapy. They attempted a hearing test, which we had already had about 6 of at the ENT. They weren't able to get the headphones to stay on her, and she got bored. The lady looked at me and just said "She can hear right?", and I assured her that she could, lol. There were 2 therapists there, and one of them seemed to be Chinese. I didn't ask, but she did make reference to the fact that Ying looked like she was 'northern Chinese' so I just assumed she probably was. I love filling out forms for Ying BTW. Its so easy, most of it I get to leave blank because we don't know anything about her birth, or early developmental stages. :P The evaluation didn't take long, and they wanted to review the formal evaluation that we had already done, because it would meet the requirements that they needed to start scheduling regular sessions. The main instructor was very surprised how receptive she was to them, and seemed a bit amazed that she had picked up as mush of the language as she has. We should start doing 2 times a week for about an hour a day when we start. I'm hoping this will get us on the right track and provide us with some exercises we can do with her to help move the process along.

I will try to post the B-Day adventure pics tomorrow, :P