Since we had the first soccer coaching by Josh over a month ago, today was finally the second practice we could make it to.  There were a couple of rainy Sundays, and we had plans two Sundays in a roll afterward, then it was Josh’s family turn to have commitment the following twos.  We were looking forward to letting Logan play with soccer again today.  Unfortunately, it did not turn out well; Logan refused to participate as he wanted to play at the playground structures instead.  Stuart and I both took turns staying with him and trying to convince him to follow the coach’s instruction, and to play at the structures afterward. Logan basically spent the majority of time standing and watching; he only did a few kicks later on.  As a result, right after the practice ended, we packed up, said our goodbyes and took off to go home.  We initially planned to have a picnic lunch after the practice, but as Logan refused to follow instruction, we had to leave so he could not play at the structures as a consequence.  On the way home, Logan was making a constant whiny noise.  We were ignoring him, and had told him to use his words if he had something to say.  After awhile, out of the blue, Connor started yelling out “stop” repeatedly.  Instead of stop, he managed to pronoun “top” only, and he kept saying it with an upsetting tone.  I had to tell Logan that his whiny noise was upsetting Connor, so we then finally had some peace and quiet the remaining of the drive.  The rest of the day, Wii was also taken away from Logan as a result of his behavior in the morning.

     On Friday, the school had a day of fun celebration for the kids.  They were told to wear their school T-shirts for the day, so Connor had to wear Logan’s old T-shirt.  They had a bouncy house, face painting, and maybe other things too.  Logan told me that he jumped in the bouncy house with his friends.  He also did face painting as I saw some residual paints on his face; this was the first time he ever had it done.  According to the teacher, Connor was tempted but did not want to go inside the jumpy house initially.  But he finally agreed and had fun bouncing and sliding. 

   The past week the teacher had been telling me stories about Connor.  There was a new toddler in his classroom, Regan, that Connor seems to be fond with.  Since she has been there, the teacher notices that Connor has been more loving.  One day, he was holding Regan’s face by both hands and kissed her on the face, then he moved on to few other girls and did the same thing to them.  Then a couple of days ago, the teacher tried to tease Connor and asked him who his girlfriend is.  She randomly named some classmates and teachers, Connor kept saying “Nah” to each.  But when it came to Regan, Connor would pause and change to a “yea”.  The teacher said she did it three times with a bunch of names, but Connor repeated his yea only to Regan.  After she told me the story, she tried it again.  Connor was happily saying “nah” to many names, but when it came to Regan, he was in such a roll that he almost said nah, but changed to a soft “yea” and looked down grinning.  It was very cute.

    This morning I took Connor to attend Reese’s 1st birthday party at Pump It Up Jr.  I anticipated that Connor would not be interested to play with jumpy houses without Logan being there, and I was right.  He was in happy mood, but was shy when being greeted.  He did not want to play at the jumpy houses, even after climbing up and sliding down with me once.  He was just content playing with a little car; I did not mind that at all, so both of us were just happy hanging out together.  He did cry once when I asked him to share the car with Bailey.  Before the end of the playtime, Connor suddenly decided it was time to go; he went to the shoe racks and were able to bring back his and my shoes.  Nela and I were trying to take pictures of Penny and Connor together.  The two of them ended up thinking that it was a game as they both tried to sit down, but quickly popped up to run to me.  They had fun doing that, but neither of us could get any pictures of both of them together.  After we moved to the eating room, Connor was content sitting with the other kids, eating few bites of pizza along with some fruits.  As soon as he saw the cupcakes being passed around, he cleared his foods from his plate to mine to get ready for the cupcake.  He enjoyed the cake and ate half of it.

   We returned home and hung out with daddy for a little bit, then Connor and I took a nap together.  In the afternoon, it was Logan’s turn to go to his classmate Hankyu’s party at the Little Gym.  We played in the yard after nap and took a walk, then it was time for Logan and I to head out.  Logan did not have much hesitation before entering the gym, but instead of doing the group thing, he was having fun running around and climbing up and down on his own.  After just a short while, a few of his friends joined him doing their own things; I even heard Logan calling his friends once and twice to ask them to join too.  The instructor had to re-direct them back to the group a few times, but Logan remained doing his own thing.  I had a couple of talks with him, even suggested leaving if he continued not participating, but Logan told me he wanted to stay.  I also had the mother of the birthday boy giving Logan’s name to the instructors so they could call him by name to return to the group.  Later on, Logan did find one of the activities interesting that he waited in line for it.  However as Logan was not as assertive as his friends, he kept remaining at the end of the long line, so he eventually lost his interest and returned to the sideline to play.  Toward the end, he did finally participate with the rest of the kids.  He sat with his buddy Rohan during the eating time, and had a blast playing with him while eating.  It was finally not pizza at this kind of parties, so I enjoyed my dinner there while chatting with some mothers too. 

   We came home just in time to play with Connor for a little bit before their bath and bedtime.

     Stuart and I took a day off on Tuesday to celebrate his birthday.  After dropping off the kids, we went to play tennis.  We had fun playing as usual, and we played for a long time, an hour and a half.  I was defeated by 1:6 and 4:6.  I was so exhausted, but we still wanted to make the most out of the day.  So after we showered, we ran an errand at the bank before driving off to the Gilroy outlets for some shopping.  We bought something for all of us, and I ended up buying more for myself than the birthday boy.  By the time we returned home, we were so tired that we had to take a nap before picking up the boys.  It was a nice day off together.

    Stuart had to work late last night, from 8:30pm until past 2am.  With the short amount of sleep, Stuart was quite tired today, but we managed to celebrate his birthday with the boys after work.  We ordered in something Stuart liked for dinner, Japanese foods, and we had his favorite ice cream cake afterward.  The boys were so excited that they barely could sit still to finish the dinner.  Connor ate all of his share yet Logan enjoyed the Oreo cookies more than the cake. 

     We finally decided that it is time to say goodbye to Stuart’s comfy reclining couch that he owned for 10 years.  In addition to that, we wanted to give the family room a new look.  Throughout the past couple of months, we slowly made the changes; we added recessed lightings, painted the room, shopped for a new couch, and made some personalized art works for the wall.  The project is close to complete now.  We chose a bolder color for the wall, and we are still contemplating if we should re-paint with a softer one.  Stuart also needs to hang the TV on the wall.  So far, we are happy with the remodeling job.

    The boys did notice the changes we made over time.  They especially love the new couch, love sitting and crawling on it.