It’s been a while…

It’s been a while since I’ve reported on Alden’s developments, so I’m going to take some time while he takes a nap to tell everyone how grown he is now.

Just three months ago, he was practicing taking steps, and now he owns the floor! He runs around the house like a maniac, and never slows down to even walk! He likes to chase after people, and he’ll push me and ask me to run away so he can chase after me. He hasn’t quite learned to look at where he’s stepping, so trips over a lot, but he stands back up and starts running again right away!

We were starting to worry because Alden’s speaking has regressed since a few months ago, but it’s slowly picking back up. We think he’s taking longer because he’s trying to process two languages at a time, but he’s doing an awesome job at learning both Korean and English. He understands most of Korean (well, at least what he needs to understand anyway), and a lot of English when daddy talks to him. One thing, though, is that he’s learned to nod and shake his head, and he’ll do that instead of asking for things or when I try to encourage him to say a certain word. For example, he’ll point at a book and say, “이거,” which means ‘this’ in English, and when I try to get him to say “book” by repeating the words, he just keeps nodding his head and doesn’t understand why mommy will keep asking him the same question. Ha ha. Sometime when he doesn’t understand the question, he’ll just nod his head anyway, hoping that he’ll get what he wants, and it’s so cute. Joe sometimes uses that toward his advantage and asks Alden questions like, “Do you love daddy the most?” “Is daddy your favorite?” “So when mommy asks you the same question, you’ll say yes to just make her happy even tho daddy’s actually your favorite?”  Ha ha.

Alden loves to explore and examine things. He especially loves to take things out of or put things in bags, boxes, compartments, cracks, etc. He’ll shove his magnets under the fridge, take out his blocks from the bag, open mommy’s wallet and take everything out and put some things back, etc. He’s also learned to buckle up his high chair on his own, so always buckles himself and asks people to unbuckle it so he can put it back in.

We’ve put a hold on trying to potty train him because he keeps having irregular bowel movements, plus dirty diapers don’t seem to bug him at all! We’ll see how that goes….

He’s also getting really good at giving out kisses, and pretty generously too, when he’s in the right mood. Sometimes he gives me kisses without being prompted, and that makes my day!! :D  The video below is him practicing giving kisses to people. lol.

Christmas in a Nutshell

We had a lot of fun during Christmas, Alden especially. He got so many toys that Joe and I decided he wasn’t going to get any more toys until his next birthday… only to find another toy sitting in the family room, given by our parents’ friend… lol. I’m putting up a series of pictures that’ll explain what we’ve been up to.

 

Eat at Chen’s Noodles with family 

Watch lots of Pororo with grandpa
 

Kissed Aunt Yearim. :D

Play with boxes more than the toys

Play with Sophie in the ball pit
 

Open more presents

Play with more boxes

Dress up to go to church

Watch more Pororo

Reorganize the kitchen cabinets
 

It was a good Christmas, we got to spend a lot of time with family. We can’t wait for the next one already!

Trips to the Bean Museum

BYU has this great museum, filled with animals. We like to go there to walk around and look at different animals. :) Alden’s favorite part of the museum is the stairs. lol. He’s been really into practicing going up and down the stairs lately.

He also likes to chase after bigger kids and run after them. I think it makes him feel older.

 

You can see his victory wound on his forehead that he got from running into one of the exhibits at the museum forever ago. It stayed on his forehead for quite some time, maybe more than a month. We’re planning to go back this afternoon. We haven’t been back for a while, being sick and all, but hopefully Alden’ll get more out of this trip than the last. :)

Cute Cousins

I kept reminding myself to post something on the blog before December was over so I could at least say that I did something in December... But it's already January, and January is already 1/4 way over... lol. Anyway, I thought I'd post these pictures of Alden and Sophie from Thanksgiving break. They're so cute together, and there is definately family resemblance there...

funny face

Would you believe this cutie pie face could turn like this??

Praying baby

Ok, I know that this is the third entry of the day, but I had to tell everyone this fact. Alden learned how to pray sometime ago, and he can now put his hands together. (We’re still working on the kneeling and closing the eyes). He doesn’t usually wait and have his hands gathered for the whole prayer, but he can tell when a prayer is about to begin in sacrament meetings now. Before we even tell him that they’ll be saying a prayer, he puts his hands together after the opening/closing and the sacrament hymns. He even puts his hands together after the bread has passed without being told because he knows that they’ll now bless the water. It’s so neat! :D and he’s so cute!!

I don’t have a picture to go with this entry so I’ll just put a random picture.

Alden, getting into the cupboards in the kitchen.

Using the chopsticks to pick up his food. :D True Korean baby.

Cutest Yoda

Alden was Yoda for Halloween as you could probably guess from his birthday present. We tried it on one day and took some pictures. He’s really enjoying his time, isn’t he? For Halloween, Joe dressed up as a Jedi (Yearim and I made a Jedi costume for him), and I dressed up as Princess Leia. I had to go to the DI to look for the material, and I think it turned out really well. When we went trick or treating, he wasn’t in a very good mood and was really tired. We had to keep him awake for the trick-or-treating because that was the only excuse we had to get candy for ourselves. lol. We first drove up to a neighborhood with bigger houses to check out what they had. We were less than disappointed when half of the houses turned out to be empty. Alden liked pushing the doorbell, so we went to about 5 houses. Then we decided to go to our own neighborhood, in our ward boundaries. It was a big success because many people knew me as I was growing up and were very happy to see our family, especially the little Yoda. He was very popular and we even got extra candy for the “parents.” Joe’s favorite was the bishop’s house. He gave us an airhead. lol. It was actually my first time going trick-or-treating, and it was a lot of fun. I just wish it could’ve been warmer!