emolychan

thanksgiving playground in chinatown mya loved the big slide & climbing up the wooden structure to go down a twirly slide. nice challenge jackson went down a slide for the first time met carlton's cat mochi for the first time and i think this was the first time she had real first contact with a cat! loved playing with him and kept making excuses to go see him "mommy, i'm hot." (it was cold outside where mochi was).. (touches her.. not hot).. oh.. are you saying you want to see mochi? (nods) ahh so cute. she kept smiling at him when mochi was reserved and then kept sticking her fist out like we taught her so that he would come. near the end she kept trying to lift him and hug him too mya's been into bringing coloring books at school and she really does take to art!! we brought like a pre-cursor sewing craft where you have to lace up an elephant together and she did it mostly by herself!! so cool mya got really upset at a boy who pushed her at the playground and...

 OCT-NOV 2023 jackson 22% height 8% weight at his 2y checkup! forming 3-4 word sentences loves to share and insists that you take something and forces it on you even if you dont want it back to mommy phase! only cries for me when he's sad. loves holding my hand for everything and doesn't let go. a lot of times he'll even put my hand to his head for extra comfort or reassurance loves to roar at people runs and gives hugs to people even if he's sometimes shy current fav phrase "BLOW YOUR HOUSE" (big bad wolf / three little pigs) getting better at walking and not being in the stroller. mya loves to hold his hand and is a great leader! a jokester. likes to say NO to use and GO AWAY as a joke cuz he knows it incites a reaction had to lie with him one night b/c he was overstimulated from having visitors over before bedtime. he was just going "hahahaha. hehehehe." as if to joke with me and get me to laugh.. went on for at least a good 5-10 minutes and then ...

 jackson got our first smooch. after he kisses me, he always says "DADDY TURN" so we keep switching off lol its too cute loves to give hugs and kisses loves to play peekaboo says 'poop' when he wants to poop calls bigger things "big one" loves the baa baa black sheep song and calls all sheep ba ba black sheep lol "what the!" "hold on tight" plays really well with chloe! they just take turns laughing plays really well with mya (when she's not mad at him) and good at mimicking noises and actions jackson is patient and a really good listener. as long as mya uses a friendly tone, he usually agrees. otherwise when she's mean he gets really mad and says NO and points and everything walks confidently by himself up and down stairs, though, if he sees me, he asks to be carried. he still asks to be carried a lot consistent with eating 2 applesauce pouches in the morning noodles and dumplings are his fav! finally eating grapes now and doesn...

 jackson we all looked at the full moon outside the window once and carlo asked, "isn't it pretty? pretty." jackson that night was close to bedtime so he unfortunately only was able to look at the moon for a couple of minutes, but in the entirety of those minutes, he just stared and pointed and the moon in awe and kept saying "moon. moon." when carlo took him away to go to bed he was whining and crying for the moon. apparently when he woke up the first thing he said was, "moon." when i saw him come out of the moon that morning, his first word to me was, "pitty." i was like.. "pitty?.." and he kept repeating and i had no idea what he meant. he walked directly to my room to the window and said, "pitty. moon. moon." SO CUUUTE HE WAS STILL LOOKING AND THINKING OF THE MOON. it wasn't there, so he said "bye bye". i like how he says bye bye really confidently knows "unicorn" now (vs horse) loves to randoml...

 jackson starting to gain confidence in coming down stairs. always calls for someone to hold his hand but i try to remind him to sit and move down and he usually listens still loves books loves to go outside and walk around LOVES putting on shoes and giving other people's shoes to them loves yogurt & frozen berries doesn't eat tomatoes or grapes (maybe it's a texture thing) loves to run around, sometimes does this thing where he walks like an old man with 2 hands behind him and slightly stooped lol LOVES the garbage truck and insists to go outside when he hears the truck likes to color starting to try to jump (does the motion but unable to jump) can spin and a lot of times spins for a long time til he's super dizzy lol 'boops' carlo on command and loves to run for hugs with his arms outstretched adores the stroller. if he sees it, he insists on sitting in it by pointing still my big emotions boy loves to scream! does excited loud squeals when he sees mya...

 jackson getting better at enunciating his words confidently said "horsey" when he saw unicorns on mya's pjs seems to love horses lol. there's this one pic of mya on a horse and he literally will hold it for 10-15 mins just saying "horsey" and staring at it said "it's mya!" when he saw a pic of mya still loves bananas! he hasn't gotten sick of them since birth can clap, show us his feet, nose, eyes, mouth, butt, ears finally says 'mommy' swam for the first time at calvin's house not scared of fireworks after copying daddy and just saying 'boom' and smiling after it goes off got RSV :( mommy is still the go to person for comfort but he has more daddy time lately, esp morning cuddles and going to bed routine loves books! specifically pointing at animals and cars. he knows most animals in the books in both chinese/english (he points correctly most of the time when we say both!) "bookabookabook" one of my fav anima...

mya/jackson are so good at mimicking! sometimes i can't tell who's talking because they sound the same. one month into daycare, jackson doesn't even turn back and walks in by himself at dropoff. mya still gets sad but no tears anymore. she loves daycare though, i think she obviously just misses us when we drop her off. apparently carlo says she wants to stay at school longer when we go pick her up (most of her friends are still there and she's usually working on something!) first daycare friend bday party at the park. she takes barely any time to warm up now and jumps straight into playgrounds!! taking care of two of them is much easier now. they tend to entertain each other and mya is better at accommodating him nowadays and sometimes jackson either does his own thing or is into listening to mya.. like the other day, mya was reading to jackson and they both just laugh and jackson babbles on as if he understands. or they just work silently next to each other on somethin...

WAOW! after 2 months of being at home with carlo doing most of the legwork in terms of day care, they finally started school again! Mya did much better than I thought. I'm always overly realistic so I always expect the worst (hey, can't be disappointed if you go in expecting it, right?) - imagined that she might cry a lot even before leaving the house and saying she doesn't want to go, fighting/crying getting in the car seat.. but none of that! The weeks leading up school, she seemed really excited (esp when we were packing the bags with supplies off their check list), just that she would be nervous. But I think the few days leading up to school she was expressing that she was sad and missed her old school ;/ the first day, she was actually fine and said that she had fun at school when we picked her up. The second day she was teary and sad :/ Wednesday was probably the worst and after that she was still a bit sad but no crying. probably just thinking about her old school an...

MYA can tell she was adapting to the move, crying 1-2x a night which generally stopped after about 2 weeks expresses when she's mad or nervous when meeting new people "ill be a little nervous" "I didnt like them and i was a little scared" getting better at expressing her feelings "im getting angry!!" "this is making me angrier!!" met my immediate family for the first time and got comfortable within 2-3 hours kept sticking to me first the first 1-2 hours but then started getting comfortable and walking away from me to play with toys learned how to climb up and down from bunk bed within 1 day really into helping daddy while cooking lately and building furniture referred to my mom a couple of times as "your mom" (should call her popo) and then called my sister "monica" (should call her yiyi) new fav: gave her pouches again bc jackson eats pouches and she doesn't want to miss out, pomelo general favs: i think oranges &...

 jackson says "get down" when he wants to go to the stairs pulls hand to lead me to go to stairs to practice going down the stairs loves going up and down the stairs goes down stairs with both feet instead of walking one at a time shy when people look at him, only says "bye bye" and waves when no one is looking total of 4 teeth at the top front, 2 on the bottom, 2 molars and now 1 more molar coming out pretty much only eats carbs (rice, noodles, bread), loves dumplings/chinese food fav fruit def banana (spits a lot of fruit and generally food out), started recently going for strawberries muk dak? (what's that?) met bao bao (medium sized dog) for the first time. gets nervous and scared when its close but otherwise, kept pointing to it and saying "what's that?" met cousin chloe for the 2nd time but really interacted lol kept looking/pointing at her loves balls, stairs, and playing with poker chips when over at chloe's house and playing with her t...

MYA!! she's now 4. low key actual birthday.. she wanted a dinosaur cake (so we got her a wegman's whipped cream frosting cake and bought dinosaur cake toppers) and chick-fil-a (her birthday "tradition" 2 years in a row now). she did say specifically that she wanted to eat it at home, though i think she's also at the age where she kind of knows that birthday = party but she's also not the personality that would actually enjoy being the center of attention at a party. maybe next year!! over the weekend, we celebrated by going to the children's museum, where she had a BLAST and could probably literally spend ALL day there (if it weren't for jackson being so young and needing a nap in the middle of the day..) we also went to one of her favorite playgrounds (angel playground) after not going for like at least 2 months due to winter. it's so nice seeing her run around on her own.. such a contrast from when she first got here and always needed us to be RI...

 OH MY GOSH, i still can't believe Mya is already turning 4 next month! we look at old pics constantly and always marvel at how full her hair has grown and how she's shot up in terms of length this year. as for Jackson, sometimes I marvel at how the year really flew by and he's officially a toddler.. and he'll already almost be 18 months old by the time we move back home. things -- COVID finally hit our household after 3 years!! mya new fav doll is her cat we got her for xmas seriously prob still going thru a growth spurt. requests for milk and eating more meat than usual again. will eat a whole banana as well (thankfully she thinks of that as a treat) still shy when around other people and it's funny bc she'll tell me after like "a boy said hi to me" and i ask "did you say hi back?" and she says no loves to share food with jackson but only sometimes likes to share her toys. makes sure they're in small pieces for him and usually checks wi...