Latest on the Kids

My blog posting has been very scarce lately, and I apologize. I have no excuse but to say that I've been lazy and mostly been on the iPad for my internet needs. It's very inconvenient to post on the iPad, plus I don't have any pictures on there..... :P
Anyway, Ellie has hit her 9 month mark, and Alden is turning 3 pretty soon. It's probably about time I wrote a little about their developments.

Ellie is just a fun-loving baby who laughs easily and loves her brother. She has started to crawl now, and she loves to climb up (or at least attempt to) the slide backwards. She loves to pull herself up, although she cannot crawl yet. She loves to "talk" and will talk back to you if you talk to her. She loves to show affection, and she will stroke Alden's cheeks, and sometimes go to extreme and pull his hair and pinch his face too. She will laugh and whatever and anything that Alden does. She also loves to eat, and always surprises me with eating a very large amount of food (sometimes more than Al, and almost as much as me). Her favorite food is probably plain rice, and she likes it more than bread. She can clap and stick her tongue out, and also smack her lips and click her tongue. She LOVES to dance, and dances to whatever music that's on. She sleeps through the night (almost every night), and will sleep for an average of 12 hours straight. She also loves to get into Alden's things (books and toys), and always wants to do whatever he is doing (sometimes Al gets frustrated, but he's really good with her and patient). She's been putting everything that comes in her way into her mouth, and does a pretty good job of vaccuming the floor (just kidding). She knows how to melt her daddy's heart, and a lot of times Joe is late to work because she stares into his eyes and "talks" to him. (Once she cried as he left the room, and he stayed 15 minutes extra even though he was already late to work.) Yesterday, my mom put her on a little riding thingy that looks like a car, and she was pushing herself forward!

Alden is a very good-natured kid, and yes, he is a kid now! He does so well with his little sister, and very protective and loving. I can even take a potty break and put him in charge of the baby. Whenever the baby cries, he says, "울지마 (don't cry), baby!" and "괜찮아 (It's okay)." And if he sees her putting stuff in her mouth or getting into things she's not supposed to, he pulls her hand out and says, "안돼요 (You can't)." He loves to play with her and entertain her, and a lot of times, he will do things to make her laugh, like jump or run or dance. He also likes to crawl beside her to keep her company (he taught her how to crawl by showing her how and saying, "Like this!"). They love to wrestle. A lot of times, Alden will stare at the baby and all of sudden say, "Baby's cute! And pretty too!" He loves to stroke her cheeks or pinch her cheeks, and also give her kisses and hugs. He is also very good at sharing his toys with her, and brings toys to her when she seems bored or unhappy. (He says, "Here, baby.")
As far as his reading skills go, I haven't had much time to teach him new words, but here and there, he will pick up new words, and recognize it in a book we read before going to bed. He's vocabulary has increased exponentially, both in English and Korean. He is speaking a lot more in Korean now, and that makes me very, very happy. I was worreid that he wouldn't learn Korean, but he says the most random things in Korean and surprise me now and then. We've been enjoying going to the park in the summer, and he has a few favorites (yellow slide, park slide, red slide, tree slide, train slide, etc. - different names for different playgrounds he goes to). He loves to make new friends at the playground and is very social. (He's always asking me to go to the playground to see his "friends.")  He also loves to take baths in my mom's room. Her tub is so big that it fits two floaties, so it's more like swimming. Al and Ellie sit in the floaties and play with toys. :)

Ouch!

We've been really enjoying going to the park lately. Alden LOVES the playgrounds at the parks (we have so many to choose from in Provo/Orem area), and he LOVES meeting new friends there. We went to a new park today (Scera Park in Orem), and 3 minutes into playing (he had gone on the slide like once), he was running and lost his step. As he fell, he flew forward, and where he landed was a metal bar that was supposed to be a step up to another slide. He hit his face really hard on the bar, and he immediately started crying and bleeding. He was bleeding pretty bad, and the face was swelling up quickly, so I told him we needed to go home to put ice on his face. He was crying so hard, but not because it hurt, but because he didn't want to go home... I kept offering him different things like ice cream, ice chips, nintendo, tv, etc., but he just refused to go home. He wanted to play more. Poor thing. I had to just pick him up and force him into the car to bring him back home. I put an ice pack on it for 15 minutes and gave him a popsicle. He had some tylenol, and I think it helped with the pain. I'm so proud of him for not complaining about the pain, not just once. What a trooper. I love my boy!!!

"I love yellow!"

We read a book titled "yellow" before bed. Alden's favorite color is yellow, and he kept saying, "I love yellow!" the book goes like this.

"I wave good-bye to the bus driver. The school bus is yellow.
Grandpa hangs up my raincoat. My raincoat is yellow."

Anyway, you get the point. The next page says,

"I eat a banana. The banana peel is...."

I paused, hoping that Alden would recognize the word, or more, the pattern. He yells out, "Yummy!"

Next page. "We feel the warm sun. The sun is..." "Sunny!"
Next page. "Grandpa feeds the ducklings. The ducklings are..." "Eating!"
Next page. "grandpa counts the chicks. The chicks are..." "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve!"

Ha ha ha. He is just awesome.

Another funny story. We always take our shoes off in the house, and Alden always forgets to take his shoes off when we go inside. Today, we were in the garage and wanted to go to the back patio. He sits down next to the steps and starts taking his sandals off.

"oh, that's okay, you don't have to take them off. We'll just be quick going to the back."
"oh. This way?" (pointing towards the open garage door)
"No, through the house."
"oh... (with a perplexed look on his face) That's funny."

I guess I'm supposed to be consistent about the rules on wearing shoes in the house. Lol. Everyday, I learn something too.

Okay, baby?

Today as we were trying to fall asleep for our nap on my bed, Ellie was in a really good mood and kept squealing and laughing. I was trying really hard to get Alden to fall asleep but he was having a hard time relaxing and falling asleep. Finally, he turned over to Ellie and said, "Baby! We need to quiet. Mommy, Daddy, Alden asll sleeping, okay? That's not loud. We need to quiet, okay?" ha ha ha. I was trying so hard to stop myself from laughing out loud....

Time out!

Today, I was trying to put Alden down for a nap, and we were lying down on my bed. I was pretending to be asleep so that Alden would be able to fall asleep. He was getting really bored and started talking to himself. He put up both hands in front of him and started to make them fight each other. After a few seconds and after he had counted, "One, two, three, four, five," he yelled, "Time out!" Then he put one of his hands away from the other one for a few seconds. Then he said, "Done? Yes." Then made his hands play with each other again. (repeat 5 times). Ha ha ha ha.


Here's a picture of the Father's Day card Alden made for Joe. One side has a picture of Joe that Alden drew (with glasses in orange) and things he likes to do with dad (I asked Alden what he enjoyed doing with Joe). On the other side, he wrote DADY in blue, and ANLDE (he ran out of room and had to write in N beteween the A and L) in orange. He also drew his own face in orange. :)

Carnival!

We were planning a trip to Bountiful and asked Laura what they'd be up to so Alden can play with Sophie. Laura said that they were gonna go to a parade and a carnival at West Valley City, so we invited ourselves to the carnival. Alden had never been to a carnival or an amusement park (well, that he remembers. We went to Everland in Korea when he was 8 months old) so I really wanted to take him. They had tons of kiddie rides that Sophie and Alden loved. Laura's cousins Nicole and Josh were there with their three boys, so the kids went around on the rides together. Alden had so much fun and was so excited to go on different rides. After an hour or so in the sun, however, all the adults were hot and tired, so we called it a day and left the carnival.

Alden doesn't look very excited in this picture, but he was, I promise! :D

Ellie enjoyed the view and the warm weather.

This was a pretty bumpy ride, and the kids loved it.

After that, we decided to drop by the DI we saw on our way into the park, and found tons of books for really cheap. We found a lot of Dr. Seuss books and Arthur books and got them for only 33 cents each! :D

Then we visided Joe's dad, and he taught Joe how to change the oil in our car. We also had a nice visit with Joe's grandparents, and went to Joe's mom's ward BBQ. While we were at Joe's dad's house, Alden was singing, "A! L! D! E! N! Alden!" Ha ha ha.

Sparklers. :D

Joe is so funny....

I don't know about anybody else, but I think Joe is the funniest guy on the planet. It's one of the reasons why I'm married to him. Ha ha.

So the other day, I was feeling sick and didn't have much of an appetite. My mom offer to babysit and told Joe to take me out to eat. I wasn't really feeling up to eating anything so Joe was trying to figure out what I would want to eat.

He darted naming off a whole bunch of food like, "Chinese? Italian? Mexican? All you can eat pizza?" Then he said, "do you want some pho?" I didn't answer so he said, "what about some dough? Rye? Or me?" so it was then that I realized that he was going off the music scale... He continued, "how about some 소 (soh-cow)? Latte? Tea?"

Ha ha ha. I love Joe... And happy Father's Day!