Jalen and Max Perform Justin Bieber's Baby

Yuen Lui Photo Shoot

We've been taking the kids to Yuen Lui for yearly photo shoots since Jalen was one year old. In the age of prosumer digital cameras and iPhones, we always have a ton of pictures of the kids. However, these professionals still do the best job of bringing the best out of the kids. Jalen was especially enjoying the modeling.

Max is 2 years old!

Max turned 2 on Feb. 1, 2012. We took him for his wellness check up the next day and here are his stats: 28lb 10oz (50%) and 34 1/4" (50-75%). The doctor says he's growing great, in fact, his growth curve is increasing. Now that Max is 2, I know it's finally time to start making him give up the baby bottle. In fact, at the last check up, the doctor has already urged us to do it. I think I just really wanted to hang on to him being a baby a little longer. On the first night, Max asked for "nai nai" (milk in Chinese) and I distracted him and got him to sleep. The next night, we got him ready for bed in his PJ's, and he ran to Rick and said "good night Daddy" and then asked for "nai nai" again. When Rick said no, he started to cry and said "nai nai, nai nai" with tears coming down his face. It was so sad and funny to see. In the morning, when he asks for milk, we give it to him in a sippy cup and sometimes he looks at it and say "No!" But we don't relent, so we've been more or less bottle free for 1 week. One night last week, he woke up in the middle night and was really upset, so I broke down and gave him the bottle. Sigh, I will miss him being a baby although I'm looking forward to him being a little boy and watching his personality blossom.

Max's 2nd Birthday Party

For Max's 2nd birthday party I wanted another party outside of the home (no clean up before or after!). I also wanted a place where little Max could have fun and instead of only fun for Jalen and our friends' older kids. We had Dizzy's Tumble Bus over to our house for Jalen's 3rd birthday and they did a great job. I found out that they have a permanent location as well and it turned out to be a great choice. The place was fairly small so for the party we had the whole place to ourselves with 17 kids along with their parents. It felt really nice and intimate. We had 2 instructors there and they were really great at leading the kids at games and helping them tumble and bounce. They even tried to remember each child's name! Since Max's birthday is just a few weeks apart from Rylan's, we had a joint party since we also share many of the same friends. The adults had a good time catching up while the kids had a lot of fun as well!

Snowpocalypse 2012

This past week, the weather forecast predicted a record setting snow storm heading our way. On Sunday, Jan. 15, we got a few inches of snow with more promised on Monday. The kids' daycare closed early on Monday and I worked from home to be on the safe side. On Tuesday, there was still some snow on the ground but I made it into work via public transit no problem. Wednesday was supposed to be the big snow day and we got about 6 inches in Bellevue. It really wasn't that much snow but after that we got an ice storm on Thursday. Daycare was closed on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday! I worked from home all 3 days with both kids at home. We were pretty tired of being stuck at home for that long. Finally on Friday, we made it out of the house and went out for dinner. Yay!

Here are the boys all bundled up in their snow pants.

Max was not impressed with the snow. He was paralysed when we got outside.

Jalen was very enthusiastic. He jumped right in and made a snow angel.

Look at those real tears from Max from us making him sit on the snow.

Christmas 2011

Jalen and I spent many hours covering this entire gingerbread house with icing and candy. I had an ulterior motive, to get rid of all of the candy that has been sitting around since Valentine's Day (hence the candy hearts). It was so much fun spending time with Jalen this way. He even came up with the idea of using the white M&M's as gloves.

Here is Christmas morning and it was hard to get both kids look at the camera at the same time and smile. This is one of those moments where I wish I had the Microsoft "to the cloud" thing where you can swap out faces of the picture.


Jalen and Max playing with their new Christmas presents.

Sometimes Jalen pushes Max around in a laundry basket and plays choo choo. Max loves it and giggles while I brace for a bad crash.

The Darn Things Kids Say

I don't know when it happened but all of a sudden, Jalen is starting to say grown up sounding things:

• [after I made him waffle for breakfast] "Thank you for making me waffles mommy, they are the best waffles I've ever tasted!"
• [after I put on makeup to go out, he looks at me] "Your eyes look beautiful!"
• [on Christmas] Gracie says "I got the Cars 2 DVD from grandma!", Jalen says "yeah, we have the BLU-RAY!"
• [after I took a picture of the "birthday cake" he made me] "Thank you mommy for taking a picture of the cake so I can remember to make it for you every year".