Days of The Dragon

We went to the zoo on Saturday and it was pretty empty, which was really nice. We got to spend as much time as we wanted at each exhibit, the penguins, jaguars, jellyfish, and flamingos were the big hits this time!

He was really interested in how some of the jellyfish can sting you, and I had to explain how it worked several times on the car ride home. He was fascinated when I told him that his uncle had been stung by jellyfish when he was a little boy.

The Jaguars, which are usually being lazy, were giving a good show! The lemurs were also eating and jumping a lot, which Parker really liked – it was the perfect opportunity for his first evolution lesson – they have thumbs like us, daddy!

Well, Parker An just turned three years old! Hard to believe it has already been over 2 1/2 years since he joined my family.

The week before, my aunt and uncle from Seattle were in, we had fun visiting with them, and got to have a little Chanukah celebration. We went to our annual holiday gift exchange with friends.

In the run up to his 3rd birthday, we were very busy. I took a few extra days off work and we kind of celebrated for several days in a row! The end of Chanukah also overlapped this time, and we celebrated that with some new books and Parker An getting to help light the menorah.

I took Parker to his second movie, The Princess and The Frog, which was good…but I think a little slow paced for Mr. Parker – he was pretty good, but not glued to the screen like when I took him to see Ponyo. I highly recommend the movie to people, though, quite good! We also did some shopping that day and of course played at home a lot. We visited the Children’s Museum of Cleveland the day after the movie. It’s a museum of sorts, but to most adults it probably just seems like a big play area – but, it really can teach kids a lot about how the world around them works, if the right approach is taken. We stopped at a yummy Swiss bakery on the way home and got freshly baked soft pretzels which were fabulous! We did some shopping that day, too. We had dinner with grandma and grandpa that night, and Parker slept very well, let me tell you

Saturday, I did some prep for the birthday party, and that included some shopping and picking up the cake for his birthday. We did a lot of cleaning and lots of playing – we napped on the couch together, and watched some TV.

Sunday was the party, and it was loud, really loud. It was fun, too, though. Parker enjoyed it a lot, and he loves his gifts. After the party we went to dinner at his favorite place on earth, the Japanese hibachi place – we both got salmon. Here are a bunch of pictures from the children’s museum, the party, playing at home, etc…all taken over the last week.

Some developmental info on my very big boy

• Has been completely toilet trained for about 8 weeks or so – not a single accident – day or night – this kid was EASY to toilet train
• Speaks amazingly well – he can easily carry on a complete, thoughtful conversation with an adult. In fact, he has better pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and manners than your average Wal-Mart patron
• Is beginning to understand addition and subtraction
• Loves to make people laugh – his little sense of humor has really blossomed in the last month or so – is very interested in the mechanics of what makes things funny
• Has entire phone conversations that are somehow completely coherent – he’s been doing this for a while, but it’s really picked up in the last couple of weeks
• Pretend play is becoming more common, vivid, creative, and natural, loves to be chased or to chase others
• Continues to have a memory that is creepy accurate!
• Realizes that boys and girls exist in animals, too…and that grandma’s dog has a vagina, not a penis – and, is not quite sure how she manages to pee
• Is almost 30 pounds – still wears many 2T clothes, especially pants
• Is beginning to take more of an interest in books
• Recognizes letters and numbers, knows that some words start with certain letters
• Has started singing a lot, and repeating bits of dialog – like the intro to the British TV show Merlin, which we both love (I download it from a British site)
• Has a fierce independent streak, but can usually be reasoned with pretty quickly
• Has learned sword fighting and jousting from Merlin, and loves them
• So much more!

Museum Pictures

A dinosaur sculpture made of sand

Playing in the dinosaur expedition area

Some scenes from the farm

The giant water table – it was about 15 feet long and 6 feet wide

Playing grocery store

Driving the life-size commuter bus

Home Pictures

Painting at home

A “picnic” at home

Party Day Pictures

Helmets are recommended when playing guitar?

Funny face!

His hibachi chef cake – did I mention he is obsessed with being a hibachi chef?

Presents!

At the Japanese steak house with some cousins

A little late, you think? And, one paltry picture? Yep, I’m just too busy with holiday stuff to do much blogging at the mo’. Parker and his cousins on Thanksgiving day.

Parker comes into my room to sleep with me last night at like 1 AM. While trying to fall back to sleep, we have this conversation out of nowhere:

P: Daddy, I feel like pizza.

Me: Ok, it’s time to sleep, goodnight.

P: I’m a pepperoni pizza, do you want to eat me?

Me: (dawning on me that he’s pretending to BE pizza, not that he wants pizza to eat) – no, I don’t like pepperoni.

P: Me, too. I don’t like pepperoni. I’m a cheese pizza.

Me: ok, with mushrooms, maybe?

P: Yeah! with mushrooms and just cheese. that’s yummy?

he was sleeping five minutes later after a bit more unrelated conversation about his new fish.

A long overdue post with a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Parker An will be three at the end of next month – he’s been exclusively using the toilet and wearing only underwear for the last two weeks – not a single accident! He’s very proud of himself, and I’m proud of him, too. He was very easy to transition, took maybe a couple days to go from diapers to underwear. Odd as it may seem, it actually makes me a little sad. Of any of the major milestones in the first few years of life (giving up the bottle, crawling, talking, walking), this one for me is the hardest. There’s just something about laying your kid down to change him that keeps him baby-like in my mind. He’s also getting the hang of his Like-a-Bike Jumper, he won’t be riding on the bike with me next spring, he’ll be next to me on his own bike.

Dinosaur Train – it’s a new show on PBS. It’s fun and teaches some cool stuff about dinosaurs and evolution of life over the last 100 million years or so. I was home yesterday and watching with Parker and the episode focused on adoption. There is a family of pterodactyls that has adopted a tyrannosaurus when it was just an egg. They take the tyrannosaur to meet others of its species, to see what they are like. While not completely analogous to trans-cultural adoption, it struck some very similar notes.

I made challah again, yesterday, for Thanksgiving. Today I’m at my parents’ home, and helped my mom make stuffing and put the turkey in. The rest of the family is going to be arriving in the next few hours.

Vietnamese is going pretty well. I am starting to get a little better at understanding spoken Vietnamese, especially in certain movies or TV shows.

Chanukah is coming up, we’re excited about that. Just got our holiday photo cards to mail out ordered this week. I’m done with all my holiday shopping, except for my sister and for Parker.

There’s more, but I’ve not been in the mood for writing too much recently.