Spring Break

Right in that moment ya' know she was thinkin' her Daddy was the BEST.

Mmmm, Mmmm, I love jello.

I've been working these last couple weeks, but the girlies still had some fun on their spring break.  A couple sleepovers, playdates, museum, swimming, saw Rango, dance lessons, piano lessons, tons of screen time and this weekend we're heading to Scienceworld and the Zoo with Penny and girls.  Visiting with friends while we're there.  However...Jia hasn't been away from home since she came home...and she really, really likes her crib!  We've been trying all week to get her to sleep in the pack and play or in our bed.  Nope.  No way.  She wants her crib.  She has screamed longer than we can take it and won the battle.  The new game plan for the weekend is to get her as tired as possible and keep her up late and cross all of our fingers and toes and hope for sleep.  I'm not sure the other patrons of the hotel are going to like having us as neighbors. 

Miss Jia has a lot of new words, hugs, gentle, toys, play, run.  The other night in the sleep struggles she said "I stay up".  She had a dinner with Lili and Fei's at Gramma's and when we went to pick them up she said "Jia go home".  She calls herself 'Gigi' now.  I'm not sure where that came from but it's super cute and we're all saying it now.  The other day I found her at the top of the piano (tall grand), yikes!  Eric said she climbed up there again yesterday.  She's also figured out she can pull the oven door down and climb on that.  The stool in the bathroom gets carted around the house now too, so nothing is safe from her on the counter or island anymore.  She gets on the rocker and just gets it rocking back in forth like a wild child.  We are constantly chasing her now, she loves to run, great game.  She's soooo different than the first two.

We took Isabel and Lacie for a walk yesterday and I attempted using a back carrier with Jia.  Ug.  I told Eric to pass it on, I won't ever use it with her again.  It felt like she was doing acrobatics in it.  Throwing herself from side to side, standing on the bar and jumping, kicking my back the whole time.  Wow, this kid has energy to burn.  She walks too slow still so we'll have to go back to using the stroller.  I was hoping the back carrier would work for hiking when we camp. 

Speaking of camping, it's time to start gearing up.  We've had a couple nice days here.  I booked the Victoria Day long weekend.  Our first trip will be May 8th and then the Easter weekend after that.  Lili and Fei are sooooo excited and are talking about camping constantly now.  We're done our job right if they're that excited.  They so badly want to introduce Jia to all of the joys.

New bikes!

Jia call helmets 'hamas'.

There isn't anything more fun then running freely outside!

Lili on her new cruiser!

Fei on her new to her bike all girlified up!

She can't reach the pedals but she loved it anyways.

All ready for our 1st ride of the year, except Jia had to ride with Eric in the gasp 'baby' seat.

We're not sure how much she liked it, but she squaked when we stopped moving.

We went out on our first bike ride of the year.  It's still too cold and our hands and noses were freezing but we just had to let the girls ride their new bikes :)  Now the baby is napping and the girls and I are under blankets watching tv.

Jia Pooed on the potty!!

Everybody dance a conga line singing 'Jia poo pooed on the potty!  Jia poo pooed on the potty!'.  Pretty exciting stuff I'll tell ya'.  Fun times around our place. 

Ok, so she understands what to do on the toilet but can't tell us she has to go yet and is no where near getting her clothes off and can't reach the toilet from the stool.  Not sure how this will work out. 

Lili never pooped in diapers (we got her at 9mo, potty trained), she rubbed her tummy and we sat her on her on the toilet, she asked for underwear just before her 2nd Birthday and was dry just like that.  Clearly Eric and I held her back on that one.

Fei was a whole different story.  We won't talk about potty training her, lets just say it took many years and was quite the trial. 

So, I've started showing Jia the potty sign language and we're saying 'potty' a lot in the hopes she'll pick up that word.  She is soooo stinkin' proud of herself and especially excited to be allowed to grab the toilet paper!

Emily Carr at the Museum

The new Emily Carr statue.

Kids weren't thrilled about seeing John Lennon's car but we were.

Fake rubberised scat, how cool.  Fei didn't enjoy the poo and was reminded again about being a scientist and saying 'oh how intesresting'.  Jia is looking at 'rats', she gets excited when she has the words for things when we're out and says them loudly, so she's sitting there yelling 'rat, rat, rat, see, rat, Jia touch rat'.

More rats, well they weren't rats, but she thought they were.

Jia thought the scat was pretty cool.

Here Jia is telling everyone that the 'teeth, sharp, ow'. 

Poor Lili had to stay here with Jia for quite a while, she didn't want to leave whatever that thing is.

We go to the museum fairly often and usually have season passes so we see this guy a lot, it was Jia's 1st time meeting the Wooly Mammoth and she wanted to go pet and touch him in the worst way.  Eric had to catch her, she was climbing up!

Lili is going to do a segment about Emily Carr in school so we went to the BC Museum since they have a display on her.  We weren't impressed with the Emily display.  Seems to me there is so much more they could have done, and we've certainly seen better displays of her work before.  It was deceiving, the bulk of the paintings weren't 'by her' but 'of her' by two other artists.  What was great though, was that after the small Emily display there was a wonderful natural species of BC.  The kids had a blast in there.  There were lots of dead critters to look at and tons of interesting things in jar.  Ok, yes, most of it was revolting to me, but I'm getting good at encouraging learning, and saying 'oh, how interesting' instead of 'ew, gross, are you kidding me, who the hell wants to see that?!'.  We met friends there and the girls all had fun exploring the old part of the museum.  Jia loved walking around and touching everything.  She was really thrilled about the Wooly Mammoth and was quite insistent that she wanted to touch him.  Crazy, he's HUGE, you'd think it would be more normal to try to avoid animals that big!  We go fairly often so the big girls are pretty comfortable there.  It was Jia's 1st visit.  We got another pass, it's always a nice place to go for a walk on a rainy day.

Jia's hat

Jia asked for a hat the other day.  No idea why.  Eric was only making a trip to the dump, she's pretty stylin' for that! 

Lili's Disney trip.

1st morning, Lili's B-day and there was Minnie right away!

It was a Mardi Gras weekend and the characters were in costume.

Fresh Mickey beinets and fresh mint juleps, yum.

Lili joined in with the Princess Tiana cavalade!

Now what?!

Lili's 9th Birthday party.

Cake decorating contest.  The cake was awesome.

Another Magical Disney moment.

Gun...too heavy...at least she could reach it this trip!

Angry Bird while waiting to visit Pixie Hollow, with Rosetta and Tinkerbell.

Tried to take a shortcut to Fantasyland and found Captain Hook!  It's was a thrill to find Characters we haven't met before.

Eric packed us ponchos which were fabulous for the Grizzly run ride!

Koda had fun playing in Lili's hair but he was admonished by his Disney helper and he quickly fixed her hair for her.  Koda is one of Lili's favorite characters so it was pretty cool for him to take the time to play with her.

Hair all fixed.

Meet Duffy the Disney Bear.

Can you see how quiet it is there?!

Too bright...can't look.

I know a lot of people seemed shocked that I'd take only one kid to Disneyland but really it was fabulous.  Lili and I had a great time, one on one for days was simply awesome.  Jia and Fei did fine at home with Eric.  They were both excited to see  us when we got home.  I was a bit worried that Jia would play strange with me, but she didn't at all. 

It was hot at Disney!  We weren't expecting that.  It was off season so it was really quiet there.  No issues re: line ups.  The longest lines we did was to see Rapunzel which was about 20mins.  If Lili thought the line would be long she'd play Angry Bird on my phone.  She thought anything longer than walking right on the ride was a long wait.  She's ALL about the rides!  No interest in the entertainment stuff unless is happened right in front of us.  She enjoyed the characters, but they weren't very important to her.  I wanted her to direct the trip so she was having to make a lot of decisions on our last day there when it came time for dinner she melted a bit and demanded I decide :)  We met the newest Disney character, Duffy the Disney Bear.  He's Mickey's teddy bear, that Minnie made for him.  The store right next to where we met him had bears for sale and Lili bought one.  That was her only shopping!  A trip to Disney with NO shopping!  Wild.  We did all of DL in two days and CAL in one day.  After that we just re-did the big rides that Lili liked.   We found a few hidden Mickeys, they're easier to find without the crowds.  We didn't go near the Princess Fantasy Fair.  I took 130 pics, so it was a bit tough to pick a few for here.  Lili mastered California Screamin and we went on it three times.  She was just tall enough to ride everything there.

You just know that my trip next year with Fei will be very different.  She'll shop every store, see the shows and skip most of the rides!

Lili was a lovely travel companion.  The park opened at 9 and we got there late every day, closed at 8 and we were usually out of there by 5 or 6 every day.  It was so quite we just didn't need to stay in there all day.   The hotel was great, they even had fresh baked cookies, fruit and water in the lobby every night for bedtime snack.  I'm missing those cookies!

Jia peed on the potty!!!

I know I need to post about the Disney trip....I'll get to that soon.

For now, the big news of the day is that JIA PEED ON THE POTTY!!

She showed some interest in the toilet this morning and I suggested Fei show her the little potty seat.  While Lili and I were getting ready for our bath, Fei put Jia on the toilet about six times.  She was pretty excited and managed to pee on the floor but not in the potty.  After her bath she wanted back on the potty but peed on the floor again when we took her off.  Then tonight when we were getting her ready for bed she pointed to the potty, Eric put her on and she peed!!  There was lots of hooting and hollering, Lili and Fei came running and we all threw our arms in the air and 'Yahooed'!  Then the big girls called Gramma for her, she was pretty excited to talk on the phone.  So cute.  A one time fluke for a 14mo. old?  or are we potty training now?  She really truely is our bonus baby!

Lili's family B-day and blowing kisses.

Celebrating Lili's 9th Birthday before we leave for Disneyland.  How can that little kid be 9?!

What an awesome group photo!

Jia and Grampa blowing kisses together.

Mmmmwhaaaa!

So cute!

Jia gets a haircut!

It's hard to keep those clips in!

Gotta' do something about those long bangs!

She wasn't too sure about this, Lili got hers cut first and then held the baby for her first cut.

And then Dad had to help too, oh those cheeks!

Way too short, but cute anyways.

Jia just loves going to the girls dance class!

Ok, so the 'hair thing' with girls...grow it out or bangs?  We were leaning towards growing Jia's hair out, she is semi-tolerant of the hair do-dads but she does yank them out as soon as she is bored.  So, bangs it is.  Eric took the girls in for trims after school.  Jia's new bangs were suppossed to be at her eyebrows, yikes.  Lili was suppossed to get two inches off, she lost at least 8"!!   Time to seek out a new hair dresser for the girls.  It's taken a couple days to adjust to Jia's new look, I'm thinking she's adorable again.  Hey, we've weathered enough bad haircuts to know that this too shall pass.  Lili is liking how light her head is feeling between the thinning and giant trim. 

So, tonight we're doing a family Birthday party for Lili.  She's so excited about that.  We got her mostly Disney themed gifts.  Minnie shirts, Cars bubblebath, a new bikini for the trip, capris and shirt for the trip, gum and munchies for the trip and the special gift is a Micky charm that was mine at her age, I had it cleaned and had a loop saudered on so it can go on a necklace, then I bought a silver chain for him.  He turned out fabulously.  I can't wait for her to see him!  I was planning to give it to her in Disneyland on her Birthday when we're at her Birthday party with Micky and Minnie but Eric and Fei want her to have it tonight. 

Tomorrow night is Hanna's 8th Birthday, Fei is thrilled that for a couple days, Lili, Fei and Hanna will all be 8.  Then on Sat. Eric, Fei and Jia are taking Lili and I to the ferry!  This trip came up really fast.  We're packed and ready to go!!  So exciting. 

Eric took Jia in yesterday for her blood work, only took us four months to get on doing them.  She was a trooper.  They got blood from her arm, she was very interested in what was happening and cried a bit when the needle went in and was fine once it was out.  Now today Mr. is home trying to get stool and urine samples from her.  Nifty urine bag that attaches to her.   I don't think he's too thrilled about putting the bag on her today.  Fingers crossed it all works out on the first attempt. 

We did go out last Sat. night, to see the Chinese Spectacular Dance show (Anna's dance school recital).  It was great to see Anna.  The girls enjoyed getting out.  We met friends for dinner first at Crystal Jade, which is still the kids favorite place to eat Chinese food. 

Jia is getting new words daily.  So much fun.  The other night at bed time she announced "night night" to all of us.  She's added milk, gentle, stairs, uh-oh, clap and look in the last couple days.  This morning I was holding the rats and she got so excited that they were out that she was frantically repeating 'Jia touch rats!, Jia touch rats'.  So, so, so cute.   She's 14mo. now.  She's figured out climbing up on things and it's clear we aren't going to be able to stop her so for now we work on her doing things as safe as possible.  We are constantly telling her to sit on her bum.  Which she does when you tell her.  We call her monkey paws, she is into everything!  Thankfully after her one night being awake all night she went right back to the normal routine and is again sleeping through the night.  Phew. 

Eric and I are tired.  This 3rd kid makes us tired.  Could be that we're older, could be that she's busier, which ever it is, we're tired. 

We're all definitly feeling better.  Jia's nose is still running.  The rest of us are still coughing.  I can't wait for all of us to be healthy again.  Lili is worried that something will go wrong and we won't get to go on our trip.  I'm pretty certain we're mostly done being sick.