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.

     It has been a long time since we have been up to the city.  Both Michelle and I got tickets to the Aquarium of the Bay, so we made plans for our families to go up together today.  We left the house slightly behind schedule, and made it to the parking lot at Pier 39 just after 10am.  I was so excited once we stepped out and saw the Fisherman’s Wharfs, and it was a beautiful sunny day there. The Kaos joined us shortly after at the aquarium.  The kids (Mckayla, Marcus and Connor) were fascinated with the fishes as soon as we entered, Logan might be a bit less interested than the others.  The huge tanks of jelly fishes and the long underwater tunnel did catch everyone’s attentions.  It was very cool to have sharks, stingrays and huge schools of fishes swimming all around us.  Connor was a bit scared, so he wanted me to carry him through most of the tunnel, but he kept smiling when I pointed things out to him.  On the upper level, the kids may not have enjoyed the tide pools as much.  Logan touched one of the starfish, but I did not find out how he felt about it.  Connor did not want to touch any of the creatures, but he was intrigued standing by the pool and watched.  Logan, for some reasons, started being a bit grumpy at the end of the exhibit; he was crossing his arms while we walked. 

    We were hungry after the aquarium, so we found a restaurant with a good view to have lunch.  Logan was even more grumpy then when we got to the table; he did not want to sit down and said that he did not want to eat lunch.  Stuart had to take him out for a talk while the rest of us ordered our foods.  The foods arrived quickly and they were delicious.  Logan did come back to a somewhat better mood and enjoyed the meal with all of us.  After lunch, we took a walk at Pier 39, checked out a few stores and did a quick boat watching.  I wanted to take the boys to see the Golden Bridge, and so we said goodbyes to the Kaos as they were leaving to go to the Ferry Buildings.  By the time we got out of the busy garage building, Connor had already passed out sleeping.  So by then, we decided to head home instead.  Logan fell asleep shortly after too.  After getting gas for the car, we accidentally entered the freeway to cross the bay bridge, we ended up having a drive through the entire bay area this morning.  As Stuart and I both lived in the east bay for some time in our pasts, we had a nice little reminiscing chat while driving home.

     By the time we arrived home, both boys slept for a little over an hour and were rejuvenated.  We spent a little time at home, changed into shorts, and headed out to a local park to let the boys do some running and playing at the structures.  We also had a picnic snack there in the shade which was very nice and relaxing.  While the boys were snacking, Stuart and I were throwing a football to each other for awhile.  At one point, we stopped to look at the boys.  They were talking to each other, smiling, pointing to things and using the fingers to count, then laughing.  We wished we knew what they were talking about.  We stopped by the grocery store on the way home to pick up some essentials, and by then, Stuart and I were tired.  We planned to move up the evening schedule to put the kids down early, but one of the neighbors ended up stopping by to play and chat with us in the front yard for awhile.  The kids finally went to bed a bit later than usual.  Stuart and I are both exhausted now and enjoying putting our legs up to relax after this long packed day.

     It was a hot day today.  We had considered going to a Children’s faire or a children’s art show this morning, but last minute, we decided against both of them.  We needed to run an errand and exchanged the library books, so we did those instead in the morning.  Rohan’s mom called me to ask for a get together, so I suggested them joining us at a local park after nap at 4:30pm.  By then, it was still very hot, so we invited them to our house to play instead.  Logan was excited; he said “Rohan is my friend”, and he wanted to show him his toys.  The two big boys played well together, and Connor followed them in everything they did.  All three of them went around the house a lot, chasing each other.  They had a blast, and I had a good chat with Vrinda too.  We stopped for a snack which they enjoyed, then resumed playing.  We decided to invite them to stay for dinner with us, and Logan was happy about that.  We ordered in some foods and we had a good meal.  Toward the evening, Connor must have been tired and became upset easier when he could not get a toy from the big boys.  After playing some more, it was finally close to bedtime that we said goodbyes to our guests and started our bedtime routine.