Happy 2nd Birthday Meliya

Meliya just turned two years old.  We had a fun time celebrating in our courtyard of our complex with some of the neighborhood kids.  Some of them we invited, some of them just turned up.  We go outside to the courtyard often, so we recognized all of them that showed up.  We also shared the birthday party with another two year old who is one day older than Meliya.

We also had a friend do some face painting. Meliya really liked it and was quite sad when it started to fade.

Right now, Ye-Ye and Nai-Nai are visiting.  Meliya is growing up fast. Her favorite foods are crackers and cheese (like mama). She also really likes olives, eggs, and nuts. She enjoys saying the words "egg" and "money" a lot, but also is enjoying saying the word "no." She likes going outside still, and is really good at figuring out things.  She really likes her sticker books She also likes doing the prenatal workout video with mama.

Here are some pictures:

Fishing and Mailboxes

Here are some updates on Meliya:

Meliya is pretty good with her hands, and can figure out things pretty fast. One thing she really enjoyed was fishing at the park. Basically, you pay a little to get a plastic pole and fish out plastic fish. You have to return all the fish. Meliya really enjoyed it.












Also, as mentioned before, she likes to play with keys and mailboxes. Alvin asked the key maker near our house for some useless keys, and he gave Alvin 6 of them. We gave them to Meliya. One day, Meliya was with her friend, and he used one of the keys and realized he could open one of the milk boxes (basically these boxes get fresh milk delivered everyday). The look on Meliya and her friend's faces was priceless. It looked like they finally, after 2 months of hard work at opening the boxes, they finally succeeded. We haven't open the box since, out of respect for the owner.







Here are some more pics of Meliya. She was tilting her head because Alvin's flash was sideways.

iPlay Play

Every Wednesday, I take Meliya to iPlay (an activity center for kids 0-5 years old), in order to go to story time. During that time, the staff will read a book in English and in Chinese. The kids can also play in the fun area before or after, or in the case of Meliya, during. Meliya has never sat through all of story time.  Today, she didn't even sit through one page of story time.  She always wants to run out to go play.

Below are some pictures of her playing.    She enjoys strolling around the place, is good at figuring out rings, although in the picture this one is all messed up. She also really likes music, so she likes riding this giraffe while playing music from the buttons.   She always wants to collect all the stray balls outside of the ball pit and put them back.

BUT, her all time favorite... she likes to play with the lockers and keys.  When she enters iPlay, she signs the word for "keys," and then will play with a key and locker for half an hour.  Every once in a while, while she is in the activity center, she will run out to the lobby to play with the lockers.  These days, I take her at least once a day to the courtyard of our apartment complex, put her in front of the mailboxes, gives her a set of keys, and then she will play with it for hours.  Today, she clocked in two hours of key and mailbox time.  She has also started a trend.  I know of at least 3 other kids who are now into keys and locks because of the influence of Meliya. 

Bike Helmets

The weather has been really great, so lately we have been taking Meliya out by bike. When she was one, she received a bike helmet, and so we went to buy a kid seat. Initially she wasn't that into biking, but by the third time, she really liked it.

 Yet it was too cold for the last 4 months to go biking with a baby. So this last month, when the weather got better, we started biking again. We also bought helmets for ourselves, and twice took Meliya and her friend Serenity on the bike with us (since both Alvin and I have kid bike seats.) Meliya is now crazy about biking.  She even likes it more than walking.  She will even run up to other people's bikes, and signal that she wants to ride on it.  One time she ran up to a local's person's bike with kid seat, and while signalling that she wanted to ride it, knocked it over in front of the owner.  Oops.

March in a Flash

March started off with Meliya walking. She was getting really close to walking before, but she wouldn't take the steps independently. So I took her to this activity center, and she was crawling around, and then all of a sudden she walked to the manager, who she really likes. The whole center started clapping for her, which really excites her, and so she started walking more. I told Alvin to meet us at the center after work so he could see her. It was a good thing he was able to watch her a little, because for the next two days at home and elsewhere, she wouldn't walk. So on the third day, we took her back to the activity center and then she started walking again. After that, she hasn't stopped walking. Now she still walks with her arms out, but she can walk pretty fast and hasn't really taken a tumble at all.
 At the end of the month, we had an Easter party.  Alvin and I dyed some eggs and invited kids around Meliya's age over for an Easter egg hunt.  We were supposed to do the hunt outside, but there was a sand storm outside, so we ended up having the hunt in our living room.

Most of the kids were too young to understand what was happening.  The oldest kid, a boy a couple months older than Meliya, was the only one that got the gist.  One of the kids just found the egg, with the shells, and started eating it.  Eventually there was egg shells, egg white, and egg yolk all over the place.   You can see in the picture one kid eating the egg.  You can also see Meliya looking like she is stealing the other girl's basket.  After reviewing the film, we see that Meliya was actually unloading her eggs in the other girl's basket, but after Meliya had no more eggs, she then took the other girl's basket.  The other girl did not mind as she was trying to figure out how to eat eggs without eating all the shells.

Still, it was a fun time.  Some of the moms have hinted that it was so fun and the kids would like to do it again.  I guess Easter egg hunts don't have to be limited to Easter time.  One of the moms even suggested that next time at her house she will boil the eggs, put stickers on them, and then we can have another hunt.

February in a Flash

After we left Los Angeles, we flew to Thailand to try to get there in time to see some friends. We had also planned to take a week of vacation in Phuket with Alvin's parents.

We spent almost everyday going to the pool. During our vacation time, we went to the pool two or three times a day. Meliya really loved it. After we got home, she had some major breakdowns if she couldn't go outside right after every meal, and also renewed her love for bathing in the bathtub.

During the vacation time, we saw a baby elephant. If you buy bananas from the owner, you could feed the elephant and even pet him. Meliya and I decided to do it together, but we both did not like it when he put his trunk around my neck. It was itchy.

Also, we went to the beach. Alvin's parents really enjoyed their time with Meliya and loved helping her walk around and helping her up and down the stairs. Meliya was getting really close to walking by herself, but she never took the steps while we were in Thailand.

January in a Flash

Oh dear, well the months have just gone by.  I will try to do a month by month update in a week.

In January, I was done with school and spent more time at home.  I guess the big news was that we bought an upright piano.  Alvin has been looking on a Chinese ebay site to look for second hand pianos.  Finally, he found one that fit for us.  It was only 7 years old, and according to the owner, wasn't used that much.

We hired professional movers, 4 guys, that helped move the piano.  Meliya took to the piano right away.  Everyday, she comes by to "practice," esp. if we are trying to play.

Also, at the end of the month, I received the  sad news that my grandma was not doing so well. My parents gave me the news and so our whole family flew to Los Angeles to attend my grandmother's funeral (as we were leaving for the states, we found out she passed away).

We were only able to stay 9 days in the states.  We were able to have a family reunion with my side of the family, celebrate and remember the memories of my grandma, and also Meliya was able to play with many of her cousins.  The sad part was that Meliya had roseola (an infant virus that has 3 days fever and then a rash for 3 days).  Those 3 days, Meliya was acting terribly cranky, and she pretty much stayed at Alvin's parent's house sleeping, except on the day of the funeral where she spent a lot of time in the car sleeping as we traveled from event to event.

After a long whirlwind of a trip, we packed up to go on our already scheduled annual trip to Thailand.  Come back and read about it in a couple of days.