HKG204: Artistic Expression

i am not really a crafty person on my own, but i do love doing crafts with and for the kids. today was just such a day. livie's been building on some art she and josh started a couple weeks ago, and the art is displayed on one of our living room walls. i decided that q should have his own section of the wall, too, and since he and i have been working on him learning shapes, colors, letters, and numbers, i figured his side of the wall should have a preschool-y theme. today, he and i made several "vehicles" using various shapes. q seems to be enjoying his wall and keeps asking me to add trucks to the train i made, but i do keep having to run interference to keep him from ripping them off the wall. waffle has been attacking them, too...the car already had an accident, got totaled, and had to be repaired with tape :-) i see, now, why many preschool materials are laminated ;-p

this afternoon, livie and i began beefing up her wall, too...turning it into a full-blown garden. she has big plans to add flowers, a tree, birds, and woodland creatures and bugs to her garden...i predict that in a few weeks, we won't see any more bare wall on her side!

q boycotted his nap again today...i think the end of naps is very, very near. the last three times he's skipped a nap, he has not been tired or cranky in the late afternoon...i think his body might be outgrowing the need for that mid-day rest. he's also been sleeping a little bit later in the morning at times...seeming to get all he needs from his nighttime rest. we shall see how this progresses.

this afternoon, livie had flamenco class. q and i just wandered around central/soho, got some fruits, and went to his favorite playground. he had a good time playing there and seemed to become enamored of a big girl...followed her all over with this dopey grin on his face. after she went home, he plunked himself down on a bench and began raiding the collection of fruit i just bought. while he was doing that, a group of six older teens/young twenties men came to the playground and climbed onto the carousel...they spent the next 10 minutes goofing off and being rather ridiculous (but funny). q seemed to be offended...asked me what they were doing while giving me angry eyebrows :-)

tomorrow's big adventure is the TOY LIBRARY...i can't wait to check this thing out!

taking a break from play time for a waffle kiss

looking ridiculously cute...he had just finished pulling his shirt up over his head/wearing it like a headband. i tried to get a picture of that, but he yanked it back down and i got this pic instead...still cute :-)

a couple weeks ago, we got waffle another brown mouse thinking he might give up on his burnt/hairless mouse. nope. no dice. here, i have put both next to him to snuggle him...note the difference in size/wear & tear. waffle REALLY loves his brown mousey!

livie's growing garden. the red shape at the top is a sign that announces this is olivia's garden...will have to go back over the letters with a sharpie since they don't show up in crayon very well.

q's wall in progress. i need to get another pic...the train has two more trucks on it, and it is now also carrying the alphabet. tomorrow, we will make a number train and a semi truck. if i can figure out how to make a tractor, we will do that, too...oh, and a helicopter...and a motorcycle :-)

HKG203: Bad Hair Day

today we changed things up with josh working from home and managing q and me going up to livie's school for a brief/informal group parent-teacher conference. the conference was all about the curriculum livie's teacher is using and about the class' progress so far. it was very interesting, and it also provided an opportunity to chat with some other moms.

i had decided to walk to the school since the weather was pretty nice, it's a beautiful walk, and school isn't too far away (2.5 km). it drizzled a bit on the way, and it was very humid as it always is, but i didn't think anything of it. i attended the conference, chatted, and went home. this evening, livie says to me "mommy, why was your hair so crazy at the coffee playdate today?" oops. i guess the drizzle and humidity rendered my hair a little crazy. i have long professed that it will be only a short time before olivia is scolding me about my choice of outfit and/or hair style. she is very, very girlie, and i am not girlie at all :-) i guess today was a sneak peak at life with my fashion consultant!

after the conference, q, josh, and i had lunch before it was time for josh to head into the office and q to head off for a nap attempt. the nap attempt was unsuccessful, so q and i spent time working with his jigos blocks set creating vehicles...we spent most of the day doing that. after we collected sissy in the afternoon, we also spent some time working on a fun art project before heading down to the playground for some outdoor time. the sunflower and dragon fly we created last week are now accompanied by a bumble bee. tomorrow, we will make some grass and flowers to "plant" in our growing wall garden. thank god for blue tack...it allows us to decorate the walls willy nilly without causing damage!

it was a great day...bad hair and all :-)

q working on his jigos masterpiece. i have been instructed not to take it apart...demolition is reserved for the quinnado.

no, we don't have enough pics of the waffle kitty sitting in the train set...we need more. given that waffle plunks himself down somewhere in/on/around the train set many times a day, we have tons of material to work with. i love this shot b/c waffle looks like he just got caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing.

livie decided to dance flamenco with the throw as a prop.

HKG202: Monday Madness

today was a super busy and fun day. q had gymnastics this morning and did great for 3/4 of the class. at the end of class, he refused to participate in the circuit they had going and threw enough of a fit that he had to go into a timeout...that was the beginning of a cry fest that lasted until we were about a quarter of the way home. this turned out to be very embarrassing b/c while we were still in class, the fit seemed to draw more attention than i would have expected.

q's gymnastics class has gotten much larger and is now attended by more parents than helpers, but i haven't found it to be super social yet. i am probably over thinking and over analyzing this, but i seem to get a lot of looks and comments about q...questions about why he's still in a diaper and head shakes at his antics/tantrums. i feel like i need to put him and me in matching t-shirts that say something to the effect of I AM TWO/HE'S TWO to explain that he's perfectly within his "rights" to act like a two-year-old. he is easily a head taller than 3/4 of his gymnastics class and is head and shoulders taller than the rest of the class, and as such, i guess it probably looks like he does not belong in this particular class. it also is very likely that he is the oldest kid in the class (it's a class for kids 24 to 36 months), but i still think he's WELL within the range to be in the class despite his size.

livie also had a great time in her class with far less drama. while she was in gymnastics, q was busy playing with some other kids that were either waiting for older siblings in livie's class or waiting to start a soccer class. q was befriended by a little boy who is almost five, and listening to the conversation between the two was hilarious. the older boy was patient, but also a little frustrated that he couldn't get q to play with him as he directed. at one point, i heard him say to quinn "quinn, are you really listening?" as q totally squealed over the top of what the boy was saying to him and ran off to do his own thing. q is definitely becoming much more interested in interacting with other children, but he most definitely is not at the level of an almost-five-year-old.

after livie's gymnastics class, we ran to the grocery store and then to a small park. the park is really too small for the kids to really enjoy themselves...this is the old park with old equipment, but it's right next to the grocery store and is a good place to let them let off some steam after enduring the grocery store. today, the park doubled as a pet store. we met three super friendly dogs...a golden, a yellow lab, and a corgi. the corgi was the sweetest. she bounded over to the kids as fast as her little legs would allow, stood still for about two seconds worth of ear scratches, and then promptly flopped over for belly scratches. she was ADORABLE. q kept telling us she was a baby sookie. good lord do we miss living with dogs...we love our waffle kitty very, very much, and we really appreciate his cog qualities, but we still miss our dogs.

the kids had a blast going up the slide and pretending they needed to be rescued or were falling.

blurry pic of q having fun on one of the spring-y things. it turns out that a moving piece of equipment plus a crappy cell phone camera = lousy picture of a cute boy :-)

blurry pic of a silly sissy. she's all about the goofy faces for pics now...well, it's either goofy faces or a painfully cheesey fake smile.

HKG200 & 201: Weekend Roundup

we had a great weekend. josh returned to hong kong on saturday morning feeling a little bit rested. to try to get back on hong kong time, he stayed up for the day, and we got out to do a few things. we went to victoria's park and then to lunch and to do a little toy shopping. everything was cool until it was time to leave the toy store...without a coveted train. let's just say that that particular toy shop is now in time out...or we in time out from it. in the afternoon, i got my hair cut and ran a few errands before dinner while josh got the kids down to our building playground.

sunday started out nice and slow. just before lunch, josh took the kids to see the new 3-D smurfs movie and then to get lunch....they had a blast. livie reports that smurfette is her favorite. quinn was unable to tell me who his favorite smurf was, but he did report liking the movie. while josh and the kids were out, i finished a book i was reading, ate a leisurely lunch, and then headed out to try to get a workout at the YWCA. strangely enough, the gym is open only to hotel guests on sunday (the garden view YWCA is attached to the nitty gritty YWCA where we take classes and stuff). instead of a gym workout, i just walked around central for a couple hours and did a couple of errands before heading home.

this coming week will be our usual level of busy and fun with a couple of extra things to do. on tuesday, i have an informal parent-teacher conference at livie's school, and on thursday, q and i will FINALLY visit the much coveted toy room at the central library. it turns out you have to book this place at least 24 hours in advance, but it works best to book 4 or 5 days in advance if you want a morning session. i am hoping that it's as good as i think it is. i am sure q will think it's awesome simply to play with someone else's toys.

livie has really begun to zoom across the monkey bars, now. she is enjoying her YWCA gymnastics class, but i am eager to get her back into a more rigorous and challenging gymnastics program; i know she would enjoy learning more on the uneven parallel bars, horse, and parallel bars...she definitely has the upper-body strength to apply to those apparatuses.

all that monkey prowess resulted in a rather nasty blister-y issue on livie's palm. OUCH!

HKG199: Fun Friday

we had a great friday...it was a fun and drama-free day.

quinn thoroughly enjoyed his lego class and seemed to especially enjoy that there was another child in the class today. livie had a great day at school. we had a fun afternoon working on art projects, building with legos, and helping q match up shapes before having an early pizza dinner and then going out for a frozen yogurt treat. it was a great day!

waffle and livie take a break from creating (livie) and interrupting creation (waffle)

livie made this sign and asked me to put it up where josh can see it as soon as he gets home tomorrow.

livie's trying to work on her sign, but waffle wants to make sure that he is not being ignored. he not only laid in the middle of livie's art project, but he also laid right in the middle of a pile of uncomfortable legos to make sure we were not ignoring him. this cat cracks me up!

after creating a lego monster and then destroying it, livie is tuckered out.

q boycotted his nap again today and as a result was once again playing liquid baby by late afternoon. i am wondering if this is the end of naps...?

waffle making sure that livie cannot continue coloring without first petting him.

q is very single minded...he loves, loves, loves trains...and only wants to build trains with his legos.

HKG198: Mouse Power

today was a super low key, but fun day.

i have gotten into the habit of putting a list of thomas videos on youtube on my computer for quinn to occupy him while i tackle chores or take a shower. the system has been only semi working since he always wants to see a video that is showing in the sidebar instead of the video that is playing or is queued to play.

since he wants to see a different video every minute or so, we have been trying to teach q how to use the computer mouse, and today it clicked. he had a ball picking all of his own train videos. q's new found mouse prowess was great except that it was tough to lure him off of the computer. i ended up disconnecting the wireless modem and pretending the computer was broken...weak, yes, but i didn't want to have to tackle him/sit on him to get his shoes on.

i am not sure what my strategy will be here on out...i probably will use the same status update/timer i use when we are at the playground to end computer sessions...i just give the kids a verbal update on how much longer we have to do whatever we are doing, set a timer on my cell phone, and then when the alarm goes off, it's time to change gears. it works well with q about 70% of the time. tomorrow, we have the added distraction (and bonus) of lego class, so it shouldn't be too hard to lure him out of the house.

other than helping my 2yo turn into a computer geek, the day was pretty quiet. we had a minor bus issue with afternoon dropoff today, and i hope to have it ironed out by morning. i tell ya, my heart cannot withstand anymore of these crazy surprises with my kids.

q and i were downstairs early today...about five minutes before the earliest time we've seen livie dropped off so far, which means we were downstairs 10 minutes before the dropoff time we were given the first week of school. we stood around for just about five minutes and were positioned so that we were looking down the hill that livie's bus would be coming up. all of a sudden, i hear livie's little voice shouting MOMMY from behind me. i whirl around to see livie and her bus mother walking down our street...i stuttered and sputtered and finally squeaked out "where's the bus?!!?". it was all the way up the hill...i don't know how long it had been there...over five minutes as i had not seen it drive by. that means that the bus got livie to our building almost 15 minutes earlier than the dropoff time i was told by the bus company the first week of school. arrgh...i hope to have this ironed out tomorrow.

here, q is nice and clear while the rest of the scene is blurry. we hope to get a "real" camera soon.

it's hard to get good action shots with a crappy cell phone camera, but i like this clear pic of livie's little face.

livie and i worked on this dragon fly...tomorrow, we will put him up on the wall to keep the sunflower company.

q boycotted his nap today, and as a result, he was pretty sleepy right before dinner.

HKG197: Food Faux Pas

today, i almost accidentally exposed a child with a severe peanut allergy to peanuts. fortunately, i learned of the child's allergy just in time and got my kids away from this child. that is the first and last time i give my kids a peanut-related food item outside our home...that was scary and could have ended so badly.

other than this major food faux pas, our day was pretty low key. q and i kept it quiet at home and at the playground before nap, and then the kids just had some quiet play at home after sissy came home and before it was time to go to flamenco class.

q's lego class has changed days, so i am not sure what he and i will do tomorrow, but i hope to get us out for some fun and a change of scenery.

boys playing with trains. q's language skills are getting better all the time...i overheard him telling waffle to go get the mouse before i snapped this pic. q had thrown waffle's mouse in an attempt to lure him out of the train tracks.

q is really into legos these days and dumped out his entire collection this morning. our living room was a minefield for a while, but at the end of our play time, quinn enthusiastically helped clean up.