We went down to southern CA over the weekend to help celebrate Grandma’s 70th birthday.  I was so traumatized after our last drive back that I was worried about the long drive again.  Fortunately it went well this time.  Stuart did such an awesome job that it only took 5 hours of driving time for both trips.  We drove down on Saturday morning; both kids had 2 naps each and we stopped once to have lunch.  During the drive, Logan was content looking outside and having snacks.  I ended up showing him videos only the last hour.  Connor was happy just hanging out when he was not sleeping. 

     We got to the grandparents’ house at a great time in the afternoon.  We spent the rest of the day playing with grandparents.  Logan and even Connor warmed up to grandparents relatively quickly.  The next day, Sunday, we played some more with the grandparents and had a stroll at a local park, then the evening we all met up at Proud Bird to have a birthday dinner for Grandma.  We had a wonderful meal with grandparents, Andrew, Julie, Trevor and Jake.  We then headed home to have birthday cake to wrap up the celebration.  The cousins got a chance to spend a little time together to bond.  It was a great evening.

     Besides spending times with grandparents on the last day, Monday, we went for another stroll at the local park since Logan loved climbing on the rocks.  In the afternoon, the weather was decent so we decided to go to Manhattan beach.  It was fun walking on the pier, then hang out on the sands.  This was the first time for Connor at the beach and he had a good time watching all the happenings.  Logan enjoyed watching the waves, chasing the pigeons, making sand castles and kicking up the sands.

     We drove back home after dinner on Monday.  Logan and Connor both fell asleep shortly after we started.  Logan woke up 3 hours later and got upset when I denied his request for videos.  But he did calm down quickly with the offer of snacks.  The rest of the way he was content just holding my hand and staring at the darkness.  Stuart finally decided to stop once at Gilroy to get some gas.  Connor woke up by the light at the gas station, but he stayed up just enough to have a bowel movement .  We got home at 1am and all of us were happy the drive ended.  After hanging out for a bit and saying hi to Scottie, Stuart and I did the bedtime routine for the kids and everyone went to bed soundly afterward.  Click here to look at some of our photos from this fun trip.

     On Monday morning, Logan was extra chatty during the drive to school.  It was a wet day, so Logan told me “it is raining…drive slowly mommy…drive careful”.  Later on, he suddenly said “Bye bye school, let’s go home”.  Then he went on to say “owie…owie in tummy…go home…go lay down”.  He sounded cheery so I knew that he was not sick.  This would be the first time he tried to talk me out of going to school. After that, he changed the topic, he said “monster in my chair…mommy, help get the monster!”.  He made me laughed.

     When we got to school, he changed to a grumpy face.  He did not want me to leave.  I tried to offer him cheerios, trains or even to help his teachers (his favorite thing to do recently), but he declined all of them.  He held his arms across his chest and said “No way!” with a pouty lip.  The teacher finally had to intervened so I could leave with any tears being shredded.  This is what I have to go through most of the times when I drop Logan off.  For some reasons, Stuart often has an easier time when it is his turn.

  Logan had attended a couple of birthday recently.  It was Bailey’s 1st birthday party at Pump It Up Junior last Sunday where only Logan and I attended, and yesterday was Brandon’s 5th Birthday at the Silver Creek Sports Complex.  For Brandon’s party all of us were there to help celebrate. 

  Both of these places have inflatable jump houses.  It is strange but Logan has never liked to jump in them, or may be he is just scared of them, but either way he does not seem interested.  He would rather run around the outside of them.  Last week, he told me that “I will watch” rather than going inside.  When we arrived at Brandon’s party yesterday, Mckayla and Jesselyn were excited to see Logan; they tried to take him into the big jump house, but Logan just gently declined their invite.  Even with Daddy inside the jumper, Logan still would rather come sit with Connor and I.  When we moved on to the open soccer field, Logan had a good time kicking some balls and playing with the noodles.  He however only would play with daddy and seemed too shy to play with others.  We need to figure out how to help him become more social…maybe it means we need to stop babying him as much.  That will be tough for us.

  Connor learned how to sit just in time.  He was sitting up with me during the entire playtime.  He got to sit with his friends Marcus and Ellie, and he enjoyed watching the big kids running around.  These days Logan enjoys group snacks more than before; he actually now eats some of the foods at parties. 

     Yesterday was Chinese New Year.  One of the traditions is to have a nice family dinner on New Year’s Eve to welcome the new year together.  So we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant on Wednesday night; Julie and Ashlyn came to join us too.  We were able to be there before the crowd arrived.  The dinner was great, and we all managed to eat well and have a conversation.  All three kids stayed in their seats almost the entire time and ate their dinners.  This was the first time Connor sat in his booster seat at a restaurant.  He had a lot of fun just looking around at the people while eating his oatmeal.  Ashlyn seemed to enjoy herself as well…Stuart thinks she’s warming up to him, as he received a few smiles this time and she provided happy bleets to all.

     This morning when we woke up, Connor was still sleeping and I noticed that his arms were out of his swaddle.  He seemed so comfortable sleeping with both of his arms up by his head.  I guess Connor figured that the New Year is a good time to make a change, so I let him sleep without swaddling tonight.  We will see how good of a sleep he will have!