I'm 19 Months Old Today!

I'm just a cool cruiser at 19 months!

What I'm Really Into These Days:

* Building towers of blocks (Thanks, Nicholas & Aiden, for my bag of colorful blocks!)..I'm getting pretty good at building tall towers already!

* Climbing up play structures and sliding down all by myself!

* Milk from a bottle vs. a sippy cup...(When I ask for milk, if Mommy or Daddy give it to me in a sippy cup, I just say "No"....If that's all they give me, I throw it on the floor.  Now, seriously, how can you deny this face??)

* Brown and white rice

* Bananas, Clementine mandarin oranges, plums

* Books (I love my pop-up books, Dr. Seuss board books, and the Little People books.)

* Animals (live or stuffed...I love going to the zoo, naming all my stuffed animals and magnets, saying animal noises, and playing with dogs.)

--- Here I am checking out Kaliko, the reformed house dog at Uncle Jay's house...

and here I am with the goats at the petting zoo...

* Drumming and hitting everything in the house (including Mommy & Daddy)

* Refrigerator magnets (Mommy and Daddy have been collecting them from places we visit.)

* Watching cartoons (Mommy says "Uh-oh!") - - "Muppets" (I ask for "Muh" and point to the computer so Daddy can play Muppets on You Tube for me) and "Thomas the Train" ("Tuh Tuh" -- "chugga chugga chugga") movies (Thanks for the DVD for Xmas!)

* Climbing down stairs (going backwards on my tummy of course...)

 ... and climbing up stairs.

* Talking all time (maybe 25 words by now, one of my favorite ones being "OH!" when I'm super excited!)

* Sucking on my hands and toys and things (Mommy's not sure why I'm doing this again, since I haven't done this since I was teething).  Just yesterday, she saw me chewing something and asked what I had in my mouth...I told her, "Book," and pointed to the corner of the page I chewed off my board book.  She said I wasn't supposed to eat the book, and I just shook my head and told her, "No, no, no!"

* Wearing socks (yup, I'm Daddy's boy!)...and making Mommy put hers on too, since everyone always looks cooler in funky socks.

Things I'm SO Over:

* Poi

* Chicken

I was eating these things for months and months......Don't they realize that I'm a big boy now!  Show me some more sophisticated foods (except nothing that has a lot of color in it or is a vegetable, please)!

Besides our ongoing house improvements (currently extending and fixing the wrap-around lanai/deck - you've got to see the pulley system and harness Stewart is using to safely work 30 feet off the ground!), Mommy is currently researching things like potty training, home loans, preschools, and teaching full-time vs. part-time next year, while Daddy is doing more running than biking these days, training for the Swamp Romp next month.

We went to visit Baby Michaela tonight.  She was born before 8 am this morning, and is a healthy 7 pounds, which surprised Aunty Miya because she's a small gal herself, and older brother Taiga was only 4 1/2 pounds when he was born preterm like me.  I tried to show off for the baby by being silly and goofy, playing hide-and-go-seek with the curtain in the room.  I wasn't quite sure about the tiny little baby, but she is pretty cute.  Congratulations, Miya, Junji, and Taiga!

We went to visit Aunty Miya and Taiga today because Aunty Miya is going to have a baby tomorrow morning.  She is scheduled to have her c-section early Monday morning, and she was already having contractions early this morning.  We took a picture of her big tummy.  I had fun playing with Taiga and his cars, as it's been weeks since we've seen each other.  Good luck Aunty Miya, and we'll see you with the new baby girl tomorrow!

Book Challenge

Mommy's friend Teresa had this on her blog for a Book Challenge:

Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your blog along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
Aunty Teresa said that she found this challenge from Rosemary, on Rosemary's Blog Spot. 

This is what Aunty Teresa posted on her blog:
The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux.

"Go," said the conductor.
But I didn't want to go, for besides the overcrowded compartments of Europeans and Americans there were the compartments of Kurds, Turks, Iranians, and Afghans who slept on top of each other and cooked stews between their berths over dangerously flaring kerosene stoves.

The ferry moved off, hooting into the black lake.

(I love the last sentence!)

So, here's what Mommy found in the book closest to her computer:

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

When he came back, he promised her, things would be different.  He'd work full-time, find a real place to live, and lead a less haphazard life.  

He took his climbing gear to the Wilderness Exchange on San Pablo Avenue, a place where much of his disposable income had vanished in the years since he'd become a devoted climber.  It was only a four-minute drive to the shop from his storage space, but Mortenson remembers the passage as indelibly as a cross-country road trip.  "I felt like I was driving away from a life I'd led ever since I'd come to California," he says.  He left with almost fifteen hundred dollars more in his pocket.

Guess I better start reading more than just my Dr. Seuss books!

Gung Hee Fat Choy!

This afternoon, we went to Chinatown to check out the Chinese New Year festivities.  They blocked the whole street, and there were vendors with crafts, food, t-shirts, and music.  We stood in the crowds to watch the 2 hour long parade.  There were dragon dances, lion dances, lots of firecrackers, martial arts exhibitions, a Narcissus Queen, and a Ronald McDonald. Mommy says she's not sure what Ronald McDonald has to do with Chinese New Year.  Perhaps he's a Chinese one.   Mommy wanted to buy a t-shirt for her mommy because this is her year, the Year of the Ox (but she couldn't find one that she would wear, so she decided on something else instead).  I loved all the bright colors of the costumes.  But, my favorite part was when I got to get down and play at the playground nearby.  It was so crowded though that we couldn't see the whole block party on the other side of the street, and we didn't want to wait in line for food for dinner.  Mommy was tired of carrying me (and I only wanted her to carry me, not Daddy), so we just ended up going to get take-out from a neighborhood Chinese restaurant instead. 

                 Playing the drums at Uncle Jay & Aunty Shelly's
                       Little monkeys enjoying bananas
                 Chase and Jas playing with Kaliko's dog toys

Aunty Steph (Happy Birthday by the way!), Uncle Mike, Aunty Jane, Jake, and Jas flew back to Seattle today.  I had fun playing with my cousins Jake and Jaslynn.  They were here for a few weeks, but we didn't get to see each other as much as we wanted since I was sick for a week with that nasty virus, and we had tenting and construction on our house.  Mommy laughs because she's the one that made Aunty Steph move to Seattle, and then she left, and now I'm growing up in Hawai'i, and they're still in Seattle and only get to visit once a year!  Hopefully, one day, we'll all be in the same state and we'll get to play with each other more often!  I really like having a boy cousin to look up to.  I'm sure we'll play again when I visit Seattle in a couple of months.

My First Rodeo Party

Tonight, Mommy and Daddy let me stay up past my bedtime for the second night in a row, so that we could help Auntie Jennifer celebrate her birthday.  Jennifer and Mommy know each other from MDA, but actually their dads knew each other and their brothers played sports together when they were younger (Hawai'i is just small like that).  Auntie Jen always has a themed birthday party.  Last year, it was Olympics, and this year it was cowboys and cowgirls.  I wore my rodeo shirt, and Mommy and Daddy tried to find their best cowboy looking shirts.  I enjoyed looking at the cat at their place and checking out the cool water fountain.  Mommy laughed at me because I started copying her by picking my teeth just like she was doing.  I guess that's just what cowboys and cowgirls do on the pasture.