"Open house"

We have been house hunting for so long that Evan thinks open houses are part of the weekend routine. The other day Nathan was explaining to Evan how it's the weekend therefore no school, and Evan immediately replies "open house!"

Sometimes when we visit a friend's, Evan also thinks it's an open house.

Heart attack

Yesterday morning James and I almost had a heart attack when Evan started running around the house yelling what sounded like "what the ***". In the end it was Nathan who clarified for us that he was looking for a favorite toy and was really saying "where the truck?"

Evan turns 2

For Evan's 2nd birthday, instead of having a party we decided to go away for the weekend. James and I had been wanting to check out Mendocino and neighboring town Fort Bragg for a while now, which is famous for their Skunk Train. Given how much Evan likes trains we thought it would be a prefect way to celebrate his birthday.

The train ride itself took up most of Saturday. Evan was a bit scared of the steam engine at first since it could get quite loud, but quickly got used to it once we boarded the train. Highlight of the trip for him was probably going through a tunnel (it was almost completely pitch black). The entire train ride was 4 hrs total, with on stop in the middle for lunch break. It's a pretty long time for a 2 year old to sit still, so a few times we let him walk around a bit himself. He loved dashing between the carts, including jumping over the connectors that actually move as the train's moving. The more I say "dangerous", the more he seems to get a kick out of it. On the whole train there's one car that's open. That's the most popular car since it was a pretty nice day. Any chance Evan got he would run towards that car. I guess that's his favorite as well, probably because they had railing in the middle of the car that is the perfect height for him to use as monkey bars.

After the train ride we stop by the beach for a bit. Both boys enjoyed walking up and down the sand dunes. After an early dinner of pizza and ice-cream, we headed back to the Holiday Inn Express to go for a swim. James intentionally picked that hotel for the pool. Evan has been obsessed about going swimming ever since he got a taste of it a few weeks ago at James' company picnic. So this time his wish was granted. His notion of swimming is to climb in the pool, sit on the steps (near the entrance), splash around a couple of times, get out, and repeat. This particular pool had a hot tub next to it. So Evan was even busier running between the two pools and trying to decide which one to go into next. James and I had to each guard one to make sure he doesn't get in too deep.

Overall a great trip for the whole family, and I think Evan enjoyed it :) We stuck to the train theme for his birthday presents as well. He got many Thomas train track accessories to go with the basic set we have. His favorite is the mine shaft that Nana gave him. It's great because it's both a tunnel and a slide! He loves his train tracks and can plays with so much now we don't bother putting them away anymore.

On a side note, one valuable lesson we learned is never leave a freshly baked cake in the baking pan over night. It ends up impossible to take out. We had wanted to make Evan a "train" cake and thought we were smart by baking the cake the night before, only to find out the next day that there's no way that cake is coming out of the pan whole. So we ending up frosting it in the pan (sort of like a pie). Sorry Evan... next year we'll have a proper cake!

Scared

Ever since we went to see Fourth of July fireworks, Evan has become easily startled. He's scared of a lot of things now that he didn't used to be afraid of, including many children's TV shows. According to James, this happened a few days ago when I wasn't home.

Nathan wanted to watch "Toy Story 2" so James put the DVD on for him. Evan was watching too. As the credits started the standard Disney castle logo comes up, which was okay for Evan except it's quickly followed by the animated fireworks. That completely freaked him out and took James significant effort to calm him down.

Yesterday James told me that incident and we all had a good laugh including Evan himself. Nathan thought it was so funny he asked James to repeat the story several times.

都在家

Evan is developing a sense of family and togetherness. In the evenings / weekends when everybody is home. He would often say:

"Evan home, daddy home, mama home, 哥哥home... 都在家!" (everybody home)

"My"

One word that E has mastered, thanks to big brother N, is "my".

When getting ready for bed, he likes to claim a spot by saying "my side".

When playing with Thomas, he often claims his favorite blocks by going "my train".

When it's feeding time, it's usually "my milk" and "my chair".

Sarah also told me a funny story that happened at the park the other day. Evan was wanting to go on the swings but they were all taken. So he patiently waits close by for a swing to free up, the whole time he was uttering to himself "my turn, my turn, my turn...".

I guess he's all set to start day care!

Reunited

A few weeks ago while we were at Nina and Michael's house, Evan did something that caught everybody by surprise. We were hanging out in the backyard and suddenly realized we haven't heard Evan for a while. I went to look for him inside the house, and after checking all the usual spots (behind doors, inside closets), I found him lying in the empty crib in Nina & Michael's master bedroom. I was shocked at first that he managed to climb up by himself, and then touched by the sight. This used to be the boys' crib, but Evan probably hadn't slept in it since he was 1. So it's almost impossible for him to remember, but he looked so comfortable and content in there, as if he knew this used to be his "happy place". Maybe it's the winnie the pooh crib bumper or feel of the mattress that felt familiar. We all gathered around and watched him roll around the crib for a while. He loved the attention, as usual.

Too heavy

A few weeks ago Evan said something that caught me by surprise.

He was asking to be carried ("妈妈抱"). As I bend over to lift my 30+ lb bunder of joy up, I said to him, "You're getting so heavy Evan, what are you going to do when mommy can't carry you anymore?"

Evan actually replied: "Daddy 抱!" ("Daddy carry")

I was shocked (woah, you actually understood me?) and amused at the same time. That little fella knows a lot more than we give him credit for.

"Habei YuYu"

That's Evan's version of "happy birthday to you". He sings it diligently, practices morning and night, and ends the song by blowing out some pretend candles.

"cold day"

One phrase that Evan's been saying a lot lately is "cold day". What he really means is "cold", but instead he always appends the "day". I think it's because likes to go out and play in the backyard first thing in the morning, and during winter/spring months it's too cold to go out, so we'd always say to him "cold day" and make the shiver sign. Now when he washes his hands in cold water, he says "cold day"; roll down the window of a car, he'll say "cold day". Eat a few bites of ice-cream -- "cold day!"

跳

Another word that Evan likes to say (and do) is 跳 (jump). Last weekend we went to a birthday party where there was a jumping house. Evan can't quite jump up in the air yet, but he invented his own way of jumping by kicking both legs out from underneath him at once, and land on his bum. Why waste energy when one can just let gravity do all the work?

Counting

Sarah has been teaching Evan how to count in Chinese, and lately there's been amazing progress. Now we often hear him mumbling to himself "一, 二, 三, 五, 八, 九, 十" (one, two, three, five, eight, nine, ten). Naturally, the harder to pronounce numbers get skipped over.

China Trip

We went for a 2 week trip to China to visit family in Shanghai, just me and the boys. This was Evan's 2nd trip abroad. Some highlights of the trip for Evan include:

1. 电梯 (Elevator)

We stayed at my great aunt's condo which is on the 17th floor of a high-rise. Luckily for Evan that meant getting to ride the elevator everyday. We quickly figured out that the best way to distract him was to go for a elevator ride. He wouldn't normally let 外公 (grandpa) carry him, but if there's an elevator ride involved, then he'd happily go with 外公. It became their daily routine where 外公 would take Evan to ride the elevator up and down a few times every morning.

Second to elevators, the next best thing is stairs. He's gotten a lot braver at climbing stairs now and would often insist on doing it all my himself (no holding hands).

2. Mama's Boy

Evan got used to getting carried by me, especially from the plane ride. The two words that Evan uttered the most on the trip was probably "抱抱" (carry me). He was rather clingy the entire trip and often wouldn't let me out of his sight. Perhaps it's meeting too many new people that made him more clingy to me.

3. Sliding Doors

Doors has always been Evan's thing, but he's never stayed in a place with so many sliding doors (including kitchen and bathroom doors). I think the sliding mechanism is a little different than closet doors here in the US, and he ended up hurting his finger several times. But usually after a few good cries he'll go straight back to doing the same thing again.

4. Taxi cabs, bridges, and tunnels

Going for a car ride in China is so much more exciting because there's no car seat or seat belts! Evan's usually rolling around trying to open the windows, standing up on the seat and looking out the rear window, or reaching for the light switches on the ceiling, basically doing everything except sitting still. He also loved going over bridges ("桥") and under tunnels ("地道"), though he often gets the two mixed up.

5. Not so great eater

I had often told my parents how great an eater Evan was, but he did not live up to his reputation this time. The longer we stayed in China the pickier he became. Towards the end he was basically surviving on 肉松 and rice. He even started rejecting milk. Nathan was the same. I resorted to taking the kids to MacDonalds (which they normally hate) and that was probably the most that both of them ate. I guess they just wanted something familiar. Here's a picture of Evan feeding 外公 some fries:

6. Home sweet home

Being away for 2 weeks definitely made Evan appreciate home more. He really missed 阿姨 (nanny Sarah) and Vavo ("grandma" next door). He did cry on the way back from the airport in order to protest having to sit in a car seat again, but after coming home and seeing all his familiar toys again, it was all smiles!

Doors

I just noticed that in this photo taken almost over a month ago, Evan is doing two of his favorite things: 1) wearing shoes that are too big for him; 2) playing with a door.

In this photo Evan's playing with a regular door, but since then he has branched out to other door types. His area of expertise now include sliding doors, glass shower doors, and swinging gates.

Fearless

Evan has become quite a thrill seeker. One of his signature moves is to climb onto the side coffee table, raise his arms up with hands behind his head (sort of like an Olympian diver), and face plant onto the couch. He prefers an audience and even Nathan is copying him now.

Row, row, row the boat

One of Evan's favorite songs is "Row, Row, row the boat". We used to do the standard version of holding each others hands and row back and forth. Now he's found a new rowing partner: teddy bear (which for some reason he calls "zhuzhu", Chinese for pig). Anyway, for the last few nights he's been doing "row row" with the stuffed bear, it's quite cute since they're about the same size actually. After singing the same song 5 times, I'm understandably looking for something else to do, but Evan would insist on more and prompts me with "Row" and "Mei" (for "merrily").

I've been meaning to take a video to document, but these days whenever Evan sees the camcorder, he drops whatever he's doing and runs straight to the camera yelling "wen wen, wen wen", wanting to watch videos of himself. I think my last 10 clips are all of Evan attacking the camera. Hopefully he'll outgrow this phase soon.

Pink cup

As part of bed time routine, both Nathan and Evan get given a cup of milk before bed. We have been doing this for many many months now. Lately there's been a couple of times when Evan has decided he doesn't like his milk anymore, and wants Nathan's instead. Even though they are the exact same milk in the same kind of straw cups, only difference is the color of the cup. Because Nathan has claimed pink as his "favorite" color, we usually give Nathan a pink cup, and Evan a different color so we can tell them apart. I guess Evan has noticed this, and decided that he likes pink too. A couple of times we had to negotiate with Nathan to let Evan have the pink cup. Other times I just give both of them pink cups. Evan probably hasn't settled on any favorite color of his own yet, but I wonder if he will end up liking pink because Nathan does?

So what words can an 18 month baby say?

At Evan's 18 month checkup today, one of the questions on the checklist was how many words is your child saying? James and I had to pause and think since we haven't actually counted. Our guess-timate was 20. As a follow up exercise, I decided to list the words out since this is excellent blog material.

Many of the words that Evan says have multiple meanings, making it a challenge to understand him sometimes:

Mama - 1. mommy 2. more more
Dada - 1. daddy 2. 灯灯 (light)
Gege - 哥哥 (older brother)
Meimei - 妹妹 (little sister)
Hi - hi
Daidai - bye-bye
Dudu - 1. poopoo 2. 肚肚 (tummy)
WaWa - 1. 袜袜 (socks) 2. 文文 (Evan) 3. Vavo (portugese for grandma)
YeYa - 月亮 (moon)
Yinyin - 星星 (star)
Nana - 1. 奶 (milk) 2. Banana
Dado - Ding-dong (door bell)
Yee - 听 (listen)
Jiji - 飞机 (plane)
Go - cold
Ga - All gone / all done
Yao - 要 (yes)
Uh-oh (whenever something drops on the floor)

Bye-bye shoe

In the last month, there's been countless attempts by Evan at throwing away his shoes. Once he managed to kick one off while shopping at Target. Another time we were looking at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Sunnyvale and he managed to throw both both and sock out of the stroller. I thought we had lost it for good since it was crowded and in the dark, but thankfully somebody had found it left it on a table for us. While we were having dinner at Marie Calendar's on Christmas day (sadly the only place open in Prismo Beach), he managed to lose a shoe while walking around, and again a kind stranger found it for us.

Our luck finally ran out in Santa Barbara, the very last day of our road trip. That morning after checking out of our hotel, we decided to go for a walk on the wharf before the drive home. Both Nathan and Evan were strapped in the stroller since the wharf was high over the water and there were no railings. There were very few people out there except for a few fishermen waiting for their catch. Nathan was interested in how they were casting their rods so James rolled the stroller to the edge of the wharf for a closer look. I even had this bad feeling that something bad was going to happen and told James "not so close" (and James ignored me as usual). I started imagining the whole stroller falling into the water, and before either of us could react, Evan had pulled a shoe off and threw it into the water! We were speechless for few seconds and couldn't do anything except watch his shoe slowly float away in the pacific ocean.

We haven't bought a new pair of shoes for Evan yet, so he's wearing a pair of old Nathan shoes that are slightly on the large side. It's been over a week now and he hasn't attempted to throw those away yet. I wonder why?

Cars, trains, planes, and anything that moves

This holiday Evan's favorite toy by far is this Little Tikes Cozy Coupe car that he can climb in and out of. He hasn't figured out how to propel himself forward yet with his feet, so relies on us to push him around. He knows how to ask for "faster" by pointing forward and saying "dudu". Thanks to Nana he also got a matching gas pump so after making a few rounds he would routinely stop for gas.

A few other toys that Nathan never really got into are finally getting some use now thanks to Evan. The Thomas train tracks he doesn't know how to put together yet, but likes to just push the train around, especially up and down the bridges. We also have a few RC cars that Nathan got given a while back. Evan used to be scared of them, but now finds them fascinating and often brings one of us a remote to indicate he wants to play. I got James and RC helicopter for Christmas and interestingly Evan is not as interested in it as the cars. He likes to say "jiji" though every time he hears/sees a plane outside.

His love for the moon continues. Unfortunately it's been a pretty wet and gloomy winter, so we rarely get to see the real moon these days. Instead we found this history channel phases of the moon video on youtube that he loves. These days whenever we are near my computer he would point and say "yueya", requesting the moon video. He's even figured out that pressing the space bar pauses and plays the video. From where he routinely chooses to pause, we discovered he has preference of crescent moon over full moon.

Another Evan favorite is an Android app that shows phases of the moon. On our road trip to San Diego during Christmas break that came in handy as our last resort for when he starts crying in the car. Most of the time he was entertained by eating all sorts of snacks and listening to the "music together" CD.

At Legoland there weren't that many rides Evan could go on, but he didn't mind. His was happy just going up and down stairs and could've done that all day if we let him. At 2 of the hotels we stayed at we had to take the elevators to get to our rooms. Evan almost went crazy and quickly learned the Chinese word for elevator (电梯). Many tears were shed from him wanting to go on the elevators for the Nth time and we had to say no =(

Another thing that Evan found fascinating in the hotel rooms were the floor standing mirrors on the closet doors. He'd wave and say hi to himself in the mirror, sometimes even giving himself a kiss, so cute!