2.5 Years

Little snippets from our life together:

Somebody gave you a counting cookie jar for your first birthday, and you're finally old enough to use it properly now! You used to just try jamming random cookies in, but now you can recognize numbers and put in the appropriately numbered cookie when the jar prompts you. Except that sometimes you get into a contrary mood and start arguing with it.

"Hi! I'm Counting My Cookies Jar! Can you find the number 3?"
"NO. I don't want to find the number 3." *puts in the number 6*
"Oops, sorry, that's the number 6. Try again!"
"That not 6! That 9!"
"Let's play a game. Can you feed me four cookies?"
"I don't want to play a game."
"Let's play again real soon. Goodbye!"
"I don't want to say goodbye!"

There's also music video you like to watch called "Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?" Sometimes after watching it, you sit all your stuffed animal friends around the cookie jar and go around accusing them of taking the cookies.

There are two books at the school teacher's lounge that you particularly enjoy, The Rainbow Fish and Duck for President. I have never read them to you; each week when you finish your lunch early on Thursdays you pick random AP Chem students to read them to you. I am so grateful for their patience and willingness to humor you. One time you came home and looked at Mssr. Bear's fish and sadly said, "It not a rainbow fish." Another time you dropped Farmer Cow on the floor and said "Uh oh, he all dirty...like Duck for President." You are particularly attached to Jasper, to the point where when Jasper was gone for a field trip, you spent the whole day wandering around school asking "Where's Jasper?" And when you refuse to put on pants, the best way to induce cooperation is to remind you that Jasper wears pants to school, so you should too.

Daddy took out your IKEA tent from storage recently and you have been loving it. After watching the episode of Daniel Tiger where the rain sends them into the clock factory for an inside picnic, you love bringing all your blankets and friends and play food inside the tent and playing inside picnic. Occasionally I'll hear you singing "Turn it around and find something gooooood!" And when I peek inside the tent window, you are actually turning around in a circle inside.


Daniel Tiger has made a huge impression on you, maybe because he loves playing with his farm animals too? Besides playing inside picnic, you also enjoy playing splat-ball with my round mousepad at school, building fences with your blocks, and going to an imaginary bakery for birthday cake. You sing the clean up song whenever you pick up your toys, which I am forever grateful to Daniel Tiger for. When the U of Chicago college recruiter came to make a presentation at school during your naptime, you spent the whole assembly singing "Won't you ride along with me? RIDE ALONG!" over and over and over at the top of your lungs inside your nap closet while the poor lady tried to interest students in Chicago.


You've now reached the stage where we really can't just stay home anymore; every morning during breakfast you ask "Where we going today?" Usually it's just school, sometimes Paigey's house (inevitable response: "I wanna eat animal crackers!"), sometimes Cassidy's house ("No Gus Gus!"), but if I don't have a ready response you are happy to make suggestions (usually library, Target, or Costco). You have gotten really good at remembering when I say we're going somewhere, and you'll keep reminding me in case I forget. "After school we go library?" And if after school I tell you a student needs to make up a test first, you'll keep going to the office to check if the student is done yet, all the while reminding me that we are going to the library.

It is so gratifying, though, to see you race through the library yelling "NEW BOOKS! NEW BOOKS! NEW BOOKS!" with such obvious glee. The reader in me is so thrilled that what you remember about places is what books you read there: school has all of Baby Josiah's books, Paigey's house has Panda Bear Panda Bear, Cassidy's house has Pout-Pout Fish, Costco has the book that sings Old MacDonald, etc. And the other night instead of going to sleep, you just kept chanting "I wanna read books! I wanna read books! I wanna read books!" When you wake up in the morning, you bring your books over to the IKEA stove to read by the light of the burners and my heart just wants to burst. Besides the cows everywhere, the other major appeal of Chick-Fil-A is that you get a new book, and when you get your kids' meal you inevitably look for the book first. Then when you get home you have to take out all your other "Chiffy" books and line them up and examine your collection and talk about which books you still need to collect.


We went on a picnic (outdoors) at the park by Paigey's house and instead of eating, you wanted to read your book first. And then after you read your book, you still didn't want to eat; you ran over to the playground area and bravely climbed the structure by yourself and slid down (to Paigey's cheers). Then you cruelly abandoned Paigey to befriend an older girl who was pouring water with her toy teapot. I had to laugh at how slyly you sidled up to her at the ledge and leaned over on your elbows and smiled at her. I was too far away to hear what you two talked about, but in no time at all you were playing on the structure together and sharing her teapot. When it was time to go, you held out your arms and gave her a big hug and all of us Sanity Club mamas laughed at how you just picked up an older girl. Maybe you have your daddy's WOO...

Ever since we took you to the ultrasound appointment to find out the coming baby's gender, you've been convinced there's a zebra growing in Mommy's tummy. Since the ultrasound was black and white and stripy, and the heartbeat sounded like galloping hoofbeats, I guess it makes sense? Now every time you come with me to my OBGYN appointments you ask if we're going to listen to the zebra. I'm not sure how you'll react to a baby instead of a zebra, especially considering your penchant for yelling "No Gus Gus! No Tommy!" I do get glimpses of your sweet heart, though; we went to Souplantation with Paigey's family and you tried to share your precious raisins with Baby Kina when she was crying.

Your collection of things you require in order to sleep just keeps growing. For some reason you've latched onto my fuzzy white bathrobe and named it "Pyo Pyo," so when we tuck you in at night the order is Yellow Blankie (alphabet side up so that you can see the letter Z), then Bo Blankie (animal side up of course), and then Pyo Pyo. During the day you like wearing Pyo Pyo as a cape but it's so huge it swallows you up and you look like a tiny white Jawa, or maybe Princess Leia in her hooded dress. I asked if you would like to wear your Quidditch robe (which is actually your size, that I painstakingly sewed for you to wear last Halloween for all of twenty minutes), but you vehemently declined. Of course.


You get panicked whenever you see "tiny buggies" and insist that "Mommy kill it!" The funny thing is that you always want to see the dead spider, fly, carpet beetle, etc. If I vacuum it up you are extremely disappointed to not be able to see it. One time a gnat started flying around the window when you were eating breakfast; after the inevitable panic, you remembered that frogs eat flies, so you asked me to draw you a frog on the dry erase board. Then you wanted a fly for the frog to eat. Then you got upset that there was a fly on the board and asked me to erase both the fly and frog.


You are always watching and absorbing, even when we think you aren't. After many, many mornings quietly observing Daddy making coffee with the Aeropress, one day during lunch you spontaneously put your water bottle on top of your water cup and announced "I making coffee! It come out the bottom! I bring it to work like Daddy!" Another time, two weeks after Auntie Elaine's birthday, for which I made two cakes, you stacked some blocks together and announced that you were making a birthday cake for Auntie Elaine. One day during breakfast you rolled up your pancake and said it was a burrito. Scary, all the things you remember that we don't realize you know!

Now that you're front-facing when riding in Daddy's car, you can see a lot more, namely billboards. You love pointing out Chewbacca and Darth Vader and the caveman and The Man, the latter being a random dude in a suit advertising an attorney specializing in car accidents. You remember that you're supposed to see them on the way to church and daycare, and even though they switched out Chewie and Vader for beer ads, you still have to remind us that "it not a Chewbacca. It a bottle now." When we went to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose and ate a picnic lunch outside, several lightrails went by with the same accident attorney advertised on the side, and you started jumping up and down screaming delightedly, "It the man! It the man! On the train! The same man!"


You know so many songs now! There are so many common themes in kids' songs that you do get them mixed up sometimes, e.g. "Old MacDonald had a farm...and Bingo was his name-oh! B-I-N-G-O! B-I-N-G-O! B-I-N-G-O...B is for ball, B for bus, B for baby shark...Baby shark doot doo doo..." You love singing the phonics song to yourself and while some letters have fairly consistent examples (C is always for cow and cat, D is for dog, etc.), sometimes you surprise us by making a connection with a word we haven't explicitly taught you. Today you said that U is for unicorn...and universe. You love spelling out the words you see and making guesses about what they might say based on your assumptions. At school you have a Chinese/English picture book and you painstakingly spelled out "O-X-F-O-R-D-P-I-C-T-U-R-E-D-I-C-T-I-O-N-A-R-Y," and thought about it for a bit...then triumphantly announced "That spells magazine!"


Lastly, here's a comparison shot of you at five months, and again two years later, at the same Korean restaurant, in the same booth, sitting on Daddy's lap. You used to be mesmerized by the TVs there because you never saw screens at home, but now you're much more interested in playing find-the-vegetable with the placemats.

Because I Don't Want to Forget

You refused to take a picture with the lobster, so Walnut will have to suffice.
Also, you used to be scared of this monster outfit, but now you suddenly like it.

Dear Zachary,

Before I had a kid, all I really knew about the under-five set was that you had to beware of the Terrible Twos. Of course, now that I'm more intimately acquainted with this population, I hear that the real problem is the Threenager. I don't know if that's just in addition to the Terrible Twos or if three is the new two, but let me just say that ever since you've turned two, you have been especially delightful. I can say I genuinely enjoy you and the time we spend together and I love hearing what you have to say now that your language has exploded!

I used to worry because you weren't talking much prior to two, and what you did say was mostly foods and animals, but I needn't have bothered. Other parents warned me that once you really started talking I would rue the day because you would never shut up, but I seriously can't get enough of your little voice and your little monologues. It's not any kind of month milestone, but I need to write all this cuteness down now before you turn into a threenager. Although maybe you'll pleasantly surprise me and be an amazing three year old too?

Of course, I'll still love you regardless of what kind of three year old you are,
Mommy


In no particular order, here's what I want to remember forever:

• You seriously love reading. Your daycare teacher said that she's never seen a kid get so absorbed in "reading" and looking at all the details in books. A couple weeks ago she told me you were in the middle of reading a book when it was time to go outside, so you tucked the book under your arm and brought it outside with you. Are you my child or are you my child? I used to do the same thing and it warms my heart to think of you loving books so much. Even the church nursery workers, who only see you once a month because of the rotation schedule, comment on how much you love books. Today, you had your first real tantrum; you cried and yelled for thirty minutes because you really wanted to go to the library but it was closed. 
• When you have independent play time, your favorite activities are reading animal books, playing with your animals and feeding them toy food, or playing with your Duplos. I heartily approve of all of these pasttimes. Also because you get so absorbed, I can actually get work done now! On an average day, you'll spend at least an hour and half playing on your own in the morning before school and another hour reading and talking to yourself after school. On an amazing day, you'll spend up to four hours (spread out over the course of the day, of course) entertaining yourself. Your introvert mommy is so thankful. 
• Your fascination with animals is incredible. Besides the typical two year old farm animals and African savannal animals, you can recognize and name all sorts of other, more exotic animals (a sampling: tapir, okapi, cows vs. bulls. vs. buffalo vs. bison vs. water buffalo, bowhead whales vs. beluga whales vs. killer whales vs. narwhals, horned frogs vs. tree frogs vs. poison dart frogs vs. bullfrogs vs. toads, octopus vs. cuttlefish vs. squid vs. jellyfish, clownfish vs. zebrafish vs. puffer fish vs. barracuda, "regular" leopard vs. snow leopard vs. cheetah vs. jaguar vs. ocelot, and so on). You delight in giving explanations about what these animals eat, where they live/originate, and how they are different from other animals ("The lion eats [sic] envelopes. [read: antelope]" "The bear eats fish. Also the penguin."  "That's a donkey. It's a fake horse." "That's a Siberian tiger. This is a Bengal tiger." "The cow udder makes milk. But not the bull.") You are so into animals, you can spot even the tiniest 3-mm picture of an animal as part of a logo (the tiny macaw on the Arnott's TimTams package, the tiny butterfly on the non-GMO symbol in the corner of the cereal box, the tiny cow next to the tiny barn on some dairy porduct). 
• Because of your love of herbivorous animals, it's easy to trick you into eating your vegetables. All you need is the reminder that cows, giraffes, and elephants love eating their greens, and you'll gobble it all up. Meat is still hard though, probably because you are disturbed by the notion of lions eating your beloved zebras or polar bears eating penguins. You still love sour things (re: lemons -- "It's sweet! I like it!" and your love for grapefruit, aka pamplemousse, is so powerful that you now like moose) and cold drinks ("I want some ice! It's spicy. But it tastes good!"), and you are now aware of the existence of chocolate, cookies, ice cream, and brownies. Thankfully, you are also pretty good about accepting boundaries around sweets and the coffee you see Mommy and Daddy drinking every morning ("That's for big people. It's not for little boys."). 
• It's really thanks to Costco that you know about sweet things. You've gotten so used to trying all the samples that when we see a sample stall, you get really excited and so I feel guilted into letting you try a bit of chocolate-covered almond or coconut cookie or juice. As a result, you love going to Costco. Also commonly requested for outings: Trader Joe's (because of all the cows on the dairy products), Target (because of the animals in the toy section, of course), "Chiffy" (aka Chick Fil A, because of the cows again), and the Inside Zoo (aka the California Academy of Sciences, because of all the guess what, animals). 
• Back when it was Christmastime, you loved hearing "Away in a Manger," "The Little Drummer Boy," and "The Friendly Beasts." Common thread? They all have animals/barns featured. You even wanted me to add more verses with more animals to that last song, so I had to figure out what a cat might have contributed to the birth of Jesus. I was, of course, reminded of the scene from Love Actually where it is revealed that there was more than one lobster present on Christmas night. We didn't have a real Nativity set, so we got creative with your pirates, barn, and assorted animal figurines. Your favorite Christmas book was (and still is) Who Is Coming to Our House? Because again, animals. 
• You really like the Hamilton soundtrack, but really only three of the themes: the King George songs (cue clapping and yelling "OCEANS RISE!!!"), the Ten Duel Commandments (this song seriously taught you to count...and now we can almost sing it as a duet, with you singing all the number parts!), and Dear Theodosia (most recent lullaby request: "Mommy, sing the Dosia"). 
• You still love the toddler music videos on YouTube during teethbrushing, but not every song is created equal. Animals are generally preferred, but the Hickory Dickory Dock with the elephant crushing the clock made you very upset, Daniel Tiger is a favorite of course, but not the theme song for some reason, and Silly Songs with Larry's Water Buffalo song and Weebls' Dugong Song are constant requests. Oddly enough, you really enjoy the phonics and alphabet songs, and I credit the constant repetition of those songs with how well you know your letters (all the upper case and most of the lower case with the exception of b/d/p/q) and what letter words start with (worth it, for the fifty million times we've sung A-a-apple, B-b-bear, etc. in the car). 
• Lest all this talk about reading and animals and letters make you sound too much like you are your mother's child, you are equally interested in bodily humor and functions. When you fart or burp you yell "EXCUSE ME!" with alacrity; when Daddy taught you your body parts you went around chanting "my nipples, my penis, my testicles, oh beedeedah [bellybutton]!" During diaper changes you always want to see what the poop looks like and you'll comment if it's especially big. Today you ran through the halls at school yelling BOOGER BOOGER BOOGER, and when I asked you what you wanted for snack you said lion boogers. Sigh.
• It's scary and amazing how much you pick up from observing us. When I inobtrusively listen to your monologues while you play in your room, I am relieved and gratified to hear you having Mr. Harlo, Mssr. Bear, Ice Cream Penguin, and Piggy Wiggy use thank you and you're welcome, and you even instruct them to share your lap! You tell yourself to clean up when there are too many things out on the floor, and you are very conscientious about putting things back where you found them. It's nice to know that all the training to be a good citizen is working...for now!
• Speaking of being a citizen, a crucial part of parenting during this scary Trump presidency is teaching you compassion and empathy. Sometimes this works a little too well; when you learned that the last verse of The Farmer in the Dell goes "the cheese stands alone," you got really sad about the poor lonely cheese. We had to find a cheese friend to accompany your lonely IKEA cheese so that you would feel okay. Then the other day I was singing Humpty Dumpty to you and at the end, you spontaneously said "Humpty sad." I was exceedingly pleased at your sensitivity asked what you could do to make Humpty feel better, and you said "Give him a cheese." Okay, so maybe a cheese friend doesn't solve all problems, but it's a start? 
• And speaking of the lonely cheese, here's an incomplete list of reasons you've woken up crying in that terrible 2-4 am time slot in the last couple of weeks: 1) you could only find one of your cheeses, so we had to dig through your twenty stuffed animals to find the other cheese; 2) you wanted to read the new animal storybook that 舅父 got you; and 3) you wanted to wear your new animal shirt.
• You still love going to school with me, thank goodness, because it's not like you have much of a choice about that. You've got the routine down pat, you know where Mommy's classroom and cubicle are, you know which buttons to press for the elevator, and where to go to listen to the choir sing or find the badminton team at practice. You've gotten a little too comfortable with everyone there, enough so that you wandered off to another classroom and didn't realize you were lost until they paged you over the intercom. Your favorite thing to do after school is wander around looking for Jasper or Elijah or Lester, but when you actually find them you are usually seized with a sudden shyness and just want to stare and smile. 
• A month ago I did a little "interview" with you and I never posted the results on the blog, so here is a record of your answers:

A month later, you have now mastered the consistent use of the number four, and your revised answer to
what Daddy does for work is "he holds the coffee and go to work and drink the coffee and bring pasta."
Which sounds significantly better to me than killing spiders. 

TL; DR summary: it's all about animals. To the point where when other little boys come over for playdates, they want to know where all the cars are, and how come you only have animals. But hey, you like what you like even if it's not mainstream, and I love that you're firm about it and unabashedly passionate. You've got the makings of a geek, my boy, and I couldn't be more pleased!

Twenty-Two Months

Dear Zachary,

The theme of these last few months has been inconsistency; your "schedule" kept changing as we dealt with the AP exam prep rush, the end of the school year, teacher in-service, packing and moving to the new campus, weddings, going on vacation to Seattle, and then finally settling into summer vacation. And just as we're getting the hang of being together alldayeveryday, things are going to change again when school starts up in a couple of weeks. Still, you've been remarkably flexible, all things considered, and generally you're amiable to schedule changes. As long as you've got snacks and toys, you're pretty good. I do see some clouds on the horizon though ("Crebain from Dunland!") in your tiny meltdowns over not getting your way. It remains to be seen whether we will somehow miraculously escape the epic toddler tantrums I've been warned about.

You were such a trooper at the two weddings we went to this summer!
There are still two more to go to this year, so we'll see how things go. 

In the meantime, I'm going to try my hardest to enjoy this time where you're 1) pretty good at understanding what I say and following directions, but 2) not verbal enough to express opinions about my decisions, and 3) not old enough to stage a full-blown protest. You're learning new things every day and constantly surprising me with what you're capable of, so things are pretty fun. I almost feel bad about having to go back to school!

love,

Mommy

I'm pretty sure you would feel just fine about going back to school though...more things to climb on!

Some snippets about you from the last three months:

Language Skills: I was starting to be worried about your not talking more, but in the last two weeks you've been picking up 1-3 new words a day. I'm glad I was patient and trusted you to have your own pace of development, because it is so fun to see you decide on your word(s) of the day! It is slightly less fun to have to talk to you about that thing all day, but the plus side of waiting and waiting and waiting to hear you talk more is that I'm more willing to discuss cows a hundred times in a morning? Some of the most recent additions to your vocabulary are yeah (because when you yell "Mama!" all day, I always respond with "yeah?"), which is fun because now you can finally answer questions in the affirmative, cow (helpful because your previous word for cow, "mmmm," was easy to mishear), lion (I told you we were going to the zoo and you decided that that was impetus enough; besides, how else would you be able to ask fifty times on the way to the zoo if there would be lions?), sit (which unfortunately sounds a lot like "shit"), done (you yell it so triumphantly when you decide you're done with dinner), and wow (you draw this one out so that you sound like you're extra impressed). Besides picking up new words, you are also better at using your signs to communicate when you want something. Before, I would guess at what you wanted and prompt you to make the sign, but now you'll spontaneously sign "eat" or "water" or "noodles" to make your requests known. Friends of older toddlers warn me that when you have sentences, I'll long for the preverbal days, but right now I'm just excited to see two-way communication!

You are such a ham! You had way too much fun smooshing your face against the office window (and licking it) at the new building for a delighted (and slightly horrified) audience. 

Motor Skills: It turns out that you just needed to play with some toddler friends in order to be inspired to climb playground structures. Cassidy has been great for getting you to try new things, and now you're a pro at climbing the playground structures and going down slides by yourself. You are also almost jumping (sometimes you just jerk your body in random directions and surprise yourself by lifting off), capable of climbing stairs while standing instead of crawling (this was motivated by the need to climb stairs while holding toys and snacks), and dextrous enough to actually put your Duplos together without help.

You did not want to climb onto this turtle yourself. I had to lift you onto it and you were dubious.

Intellectual Skills: You know SO MANY animals. Wait, scratch that, you know so many African savanna animals. You don't much care for the rainforest, temperate climes, or Arctic tundra, but boy do you know your lions, giraffes, zebras, cheetahs, leopards, gazelles, wildebeest, meerkats, rhinos, hippos, and warthogs! Barnyard animals are also a big hit, and throw in a couple of random other animals like wolves ("ah-oo"), dinosaurs ("dino"), and dragons ("dobby"). Shapes and colors are still beyond you, but you know that the number six comes after five. You take great delight in sorting and lining up your cars and animal models (and you know when one is missing). Just in the last few weeks, you've suddenly figured out imaginary play, so now your cow/pig/sheep/horse/giraffe friends must pretend to drink water, eat snacks, and take naps. You've decided that Daddy's calculator is a good substitute for a phone, so you'll ask calculator-Siri for cat pictures and then talk to imaginary people and hang up after saying "bye bye!" But best of all, you're starting to really make connections between what you read and the real world. When your balloon popped, you wanted to read Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs over and over again to help you process this traumatic situation. You love looking at the baby hippo in the car seat in One Two Three (five works well for a ride in the car, as long as the car ride isn't too far)!

You still love Sandra Boynton and all the Costco books with real animal pictures, but a surprising favorite "story" is what I call Bebbers Went to the Zoo. It's your favorite story when we come back from a zoo: we trace our route along the zoo map and talk about the animals we saw. After Seattle, we told the story so many times that the map fell apart and had to be (secretly) recycled. 

Social Skills: We've finally given you more opportunities to play with kids more or less your age! Between playdates with Cassidy, hanging out with JJ during Bible study, and zoo trips with Wes, plus random other hang outs, you're beginning to recognize and have fun playing with other kids. So far (knock on wood) you seem open to sharing snacks and toys, and if things get taken from you you're pretty chill and can move on to another toy. There are some things you're fiercely possessive of, though -- one time Mommy gave your dino cup to Cassidy and you just. Could. Not. Handle. It. Meltdown ensued and long story short, I had to find a different cup for Cassidy. You've also gotten better at waving hi in greeting (usually only when prompted, but you will do so spontaneously to babies at the zoo/library/park) and high-fiving/fist-bumping for goodbye. Your hugs are sweet and usually happily given, but kisses (i.e. pressing your face into the other person's cheek, but without the smack sound -- which you're totally capable of doing -- and then in a very French manner, doing the same on the other cheek) are saved for a select few. You are also very good at petting animals gently and holding out a fist for smelling first, and one time you happily fed a dozen cheddar rockets to a random florist dog.

I love love love that Cassidy lives close enough to be your more-or-less regular playmate.
You're not as much a fan of Gus, though, since you get jealous of Mommy's attention. 

Current Favorites: 

• Little Baby Bum videos, especially Wheels on the Bus. Thank goodness there are ten versions, all different, or else I would go crazy. 
• Having an audience while you eat. An assortment of animals or vehicles provides moral support while Mommy and Daddy try to convince you to eat meat. 
• Noodles/pasta, berries, cherries, watermelon, peaches, cheese, raisins, and Trader Joe's honey whole wheat pretzel sticks. Still not a fan of meat (you will tolerate shrimp) or most green veg (peas and green beans are acceptable, occasionally broccoli or zucchini).
• Zoos/animals. We've been making good use of our Oakland zoo membership and going at least once a week, much to your delight. We even went to the Seattle and SF zoos, but those were less delightful because of the lack of elephants. Your favorite things to see are still the African savanna animals and petting zoo animals, but there are surprisingly few places that feature all your favorites in one place. 

 

The Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle let you get pretty close to the lion...statue, that is. 

I'm still impressed that you recognized these as giraffe ears and horns!
You loved these photo op backgrounds at the SF Zoo.

• Speed and excitement. Things like being tossed into the air, riding in the grocery cart when we push you really fast across the parking lot, and running up and down the hallway while Mommy, Daddy, and Walnut chase you. We are all shocked, frankly, that Walnut cooperates with this game. 
• Lining things up. On the windowsill, on tables, on the couch, on the magnet board, anywhere where you can take a visual inventory of all your animals and vehicles. 
• Escalators and elevators. Your favorite favorite thing in Seattle was riding the three flights of escalators at our hotel, and if we had let you I'm pretty sure your second favorite would have been pressing all the buttons in the elevator. 

The beginning of this obsession started with the moving sidewalk at the airport.

• Pressing buttons that result in a form of water being dispensed. You love sneaking into the kitchen and pressing the water dispenser on the fridge and getting cold water all over yourself. When we were staying in Seattle you loved running down the hall to get ice from the ice machine. 

I'm sure eating the ice afterward wasn't too shabby either if that face is anything to go by!

Nineteen Months

I really didn't intend to let so much time go by without blogging your growth and development, but having a toddler is really so much more work than a newborn! Well no, scratch that, there's just less nap time downtime for me to write. So no thoughtful letter this time around, just quickly jotted down stories so that I remember what you've been like the last five months.

I think this picture is fairly representative of the current state of things: Walnut is resigned and lazy but still secretly begging for belly pats, you are goofy and into elephants and balls. 

• For a while, you were really into this dollar store package of yellow balloons. You wanted to carry them everywhere and point to every balloon on the package sand say "Ball! Ball! Ball!" like some kind of weird balloon affirmation ritual. More than once, you tried to bring it to a meal, but we have a no toys and books at the table rule (the latter is really necessary for both you and me, less so for Daddy), so I took it away. You had the saddest crumple-face meltdown and refused to eat without your beloved package of balloons. I really wanted to 1) laugh at how pathetic the whole situation was, and 2) capitulate, because you were really so sad, but I held strong and calmly reminded you of the rule.  

Teary-eyed over a package of balloons. 

• You are really into looking at books with real animal pictures, so I've been checking those out at the library for you. You loved the last batch so much, they were overdue for three weeks and I ended up paying over $20 worth of fines. Oops. Generally I try to return library books without you in tow, because when you saw the book return machine eating "your" soccer ball book, you got seriously upset. I thought I was being so clever by returning them solo, but the other day we mentioned one of the library books and you promptly went running throughout the house looking for it. I'm amazed (and so proud) that that book apparently made such an impact that you remember it even a month later! You are indeed your mother's child. 

Even the SPCA fundraising booklet is acceptable reading material, because it has pictures of cats and dogs in it.

• You are still more of a cat person than a dog person. Granted, ever since Sandra Boynton's Doggies went missing a month ago, you've periodically pointed at its picture on the back of her other books, and asked where it is, but I like to tell myself that that's because you like inventorying, and not that you really like dogs that much. I console myself that every morning, your first order of business is finding Walnut to say hi, and every night, you have to say goodnight to Walnut and give him a kiss before you can sleep. When we go out, I am always surprised when you point and insist that you see a cat that I can't see, and then it turns out that you were right, there really was a cat. Or tiger. Or something else vaguely cat-like. Daddy says you're an S for cats. 
• You might also be a J. You love inventorying your toys: cars, dinosaur food, hotel shampoo bottles, wooden stacking rings, and gelato containers all get lined up, appraised, then rearranged into a more pleasing configuration. You sometimes get a little too eager to clean up and throw everything into the laundry basket regardless of whether or not it needs a wash. So far, you seem pretty amenable to cleaning up when I say it's time, knock on wood... 

You tried to help out the library by rearranging all the chairs in the kids area .

• Besides running, you can now walk backwards and on tippy-toes, as well as hang out in an Asian squat. You can also approximate a bow (to the horse and cow), strut (like a duck), and spin (with the chickens, cluck cluck cluck). You're also ridiculously fast, more resilient to falls, reaching to the third shelf of the EXPEDIT, and climbing the boxes barricading the penguin humidifier in your room. 
• But you are really cautious in new environments. When we go to the park, you do not want to let go and explore. Given your choice, you prefer to stay in my arms for the first several minutes when in a new place, then depending on how stimulating the environment is, you may cautiously explore. No amount of warming up time, though, seems to be enough to get you to climb a play structure. 
• I was beginning to think that you would escape having a security item, but now you seem fairly attached to your towel-turned-"bo"-blankie. After I spent all of third trimester lovingly sewing quilts and plushies for you, of course you would glom onto a mass-produced, non-marine-themed towel, of all things. From Hong Kong*, no less, so there's no buying replacements if this one goes missing. Sigh. It is pretty cute, though, seeing you pad around the house with a little light blue blankie like Linus. 

Not the greatest picture, but that's the towel blankie. This was the morning you insisted on wearing Daddy's sock. 

• Bebberousness is brought to you by the letter B. No surprise there, I suppose, considering we call you Bebbers, Mr. Bebs, Bub, etc. But what I meant to say is that most of your "vocabulary" is some variant of bo/ba/bee. Bo = ball or balloon or elephant or your blankie (which has elephants on it), ba = zebra or bus or bye or sheep or please pick me up, depending on the context, bee = berries or beans or babies or bellybutton or bear, again, depending on the context. But hey, at least you finally call me Mommy now, or rather, Mae, as in mah-mae. Of course, you also call the moon mae, but then I guess my name originates from the Greek goddess of the moon...perhaps you can somehow intuit name etymology? You have also picked up D sounds, but because Daddy always asks you to say "please, Daddy," you've come to the conclusion that dada = please. 
• You have become a self-proclaimed vegetarian/occasional pescatarian. If it were up to you, you would live on carbs, fruit, and beans/legumes. It's a struggle to get you to eat any chicken or pork, and you pretty much won't touch any form of beef. If you're in the mood, you'll eat fish. Cheese and egg are tolerable, but really, a diet of blueberries and strawberries would be just fine with you. Perhaps you are secretly a fruit bat? 

You didn't want your turkey, but Walnut was all too happy to take it off your hands for you. 

• When I was growing up, I was always hanging around church while my parents were in meetings. You, on the other hand, are always hanging around school while your mom does review sessions. Generally, I can't complain about your behavior; you're more or less quiet and you haven't destroyed anything or hurt yourself too badly, and you're willing to be pacified with snacks, calculators, and of course, selfies on student phones. It's ridiculous how good you are at taking selfies. I also hear that you enjoy Snapchat, so in that arena you're more up to date than I am! You have your favorite teachers (Mrs. Condit and Mrs. Sun, of course, and Lester) and students (Maggie, hands down) and classrooms (Mrs. Campbell's room, with all the tigers on the walls), so I hope you have as many fond memories as I do of that old church building.  

At school, ready to learn!

• It's scary how much you learn from watching and listening to us. You want so badly to be just like all the "adults" in your life! I say "adults" in quotation marks because, besides learning to vacuum the couch and under the table like I do (no lazy slapdash vacuuming for you!), you also learned to use phones to take a hundred selfies, probably from students at school. You also insist on having deodorant in your armpits (Daddy fakes the application with a covered stick), sitting on chairs at desks when at school, and trying to help dust the furniture when I do. If you can get ahold of a calculator, you hold it to your ear and babble for a while, then say "bye bye!"  I always knew toddlers were like little sponges, but I think it really sank in when you started saying "bad 貓貓!" every time you saw crumbs or other litter on the floor. It took me a while to figure out what you were saying, but one morning you pointed to a hairball under the piano bench and said "bad 貓貓!" and I suddenly realized that I always call Walnut a bad 貓貓 when he makes a mess exiting his litter box. Oops. Thankfully it's not a cuss word, but I do feel slightly bad every time you try to blame a mess on your big brother. Still, I have to laugh whenever we're at school and you exclaim "bad 貓貓!" when walking through the classrooms after kids have been messily snacking.  

Also not a cuss word, but still concerning? One time you pulled up Siri and babbled at it, and apparently Siri thought you asked for a sex movie.

• You are finally developing a sense of humor about incongruous statements/situations. You'll smile deviously and shake your head no when I ask if you're a little boy, then nod yes that you're a cat. You ask to wear your socks on your hands and laugh when you can't pick things up. If I put my shirt on you, you run to the mirror and giggle at your reflection. Lately, you've been requesting to be rolled up/tucked in with a blanket so that you look like a baby burrito once more.  

• You are such a busy little person. If you're not arranging all your toys, you are busy opening up all your containers and pouring out their contents, pulling all the books off your shelves, or toting your food pouches back and forth. There have been multiple occasions when Daddy has come home from work to find that his socks and boxers have all been rearranged because you took them all out, then put them back in (of your own accord!) in a different order. In the backyard, you love trotting back and forth with your little cup to water all the plants, and if the plant tags are close enough to the edge of the planter box, you will dutifully collect them all and present them to Daddy. 
• Everything needs to have a signature noise. I suppose that's really our own fault, what with emphasizing that cows go moo, sheep say baa, and three singing pigs say la la la. Unfortunately, that means I frequently have to improvise when you want to know what noise a giraffe makes (we settled on "nom nom nom" since they're ruminants), or a rabbit ("hippitty-hop"), or an alligator ("snap! snap!"). Worst improvisations: a snail (according to your Auntie Emily, "snurrrr....snurrrr...") and a beansta, because one time we tried Trader Joe's black bean rotini, which was nasty, but bean + pasta = beansta, which was too evocative of a name not to attempt illustrating, so I drew one on the whiteboard and then you wanted to know what noise it made, so Daddy decided that it could just say its name several times in quick succession, like a Pokemon. 

That's the beansta on the bottom left, with a grill and a blingy necklace and wielding a gun and a syringe full of drugs. "Beansta beansta!" On the right, next to the periodic table, is a Japanese beansta, courtesy of Auntie Emily. 

*You also LOVE the little public light bus model that Lester has in his office, so maybe we are indoctrinating you correctly, that Hong Kong is the best.

Fifteen Months

Dear Zachary,

Once you turned a year old, updating monthly seemed 1) unnecessary, and 2) impossible. Now that you are a full-fledged toddler, there's no leaving you alone! It continually amazes me how much you can get into in the fifteen seconds that my back is turned. You can always move a little faster, reach a little farther, and eat a little more than I expect or prepare for.

As I mentioned before, when you were first born we called you Baby Guy, but that shortly turned into Bebbers Guy, then Bebbers, and now just Bebs. Your nickname has also been adjectivized by us: bebberous is how we describe your personality. When you are especially extroverted (grin and wave at ALL the people!), when you insist on a certain order of food (carbs first, then fruit, then meat and veg), when you get crumple-faced over not doing Barnyard Dance fifty times more, when you gleefully pull all books off your bookshelf, you are being bebberous. Most of the time bebberousness is just funny, but sometimes it gets to be a bit much (like when you would rather run around your room naked instead of putting a diaper on post-bath). I guess there comes a point in every parent's journey where one must start thinking about discipline philosophies.

Crumple-faced over not wanting to put on your seatbelt.

Sometimes when you are being extra bebberous (or when I'm at school working with teenagers), I think about you becoming a Terrible Two or a Threenager, and one day a sulky adolescent, and I get scared. You're pretty dang fun now, but already showing your stubborn personality. Does it only go downhill from here? But then I think back to pre-parenthood, when I was afraid it was going to be all dreary responsibility and grim-faced sleep deprivation, and how pleasantly surprised I was by how fun a baby could be. I'm going to assume that the same principle holds true (and other parents further along the journey assure me it does) regarding your continued maturation, and that while I may look ahead and be afraid of what is to come (ridiculous reasons why my child is crying! tween sass! learning cuss words! rebellion!), there will be joy and delight to match and exceed my expectations.

love,
Mommy

Maturation = developing your brain (hat).

New this quarter:

• Walking, and almost running, has been the default for about two months now. Well-meaning people told us before that once you started walking, you would sleep better because you would tire yourself out. This has not proven true. Maybe I need to enroll you in baby marathon training? 
• You used to hate wearing shoes, immediately collapsing into a puddle every time I tried to put them on you. Thankfully, that changed once you realized that shoes = going out = so excite, much fun, very people to see (because, you know, extrovert). Now, when you've been home too long and are getting bored, you go grab your shoes and hold them out to me, like hello, we should go somewhere now. 

You also try to put on everyone else's shoes. 

• You understand directions now! Whether you choose to follow them, though, is another story. You like going out well enough that you obey when I ask you to fetch your shoes, and 80% of the time you lift your arms up when I say "over your head" so that you can undress at bath time. But if I'm asking you to stay still so I can change your diaper, forget it. 
• Decided book preferences: we are reaching the dreaded stage where you only want the same five books over and over again. Thankfully, none of them are too annoying: Barnyard Dance, Perfect Piggies, Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear, How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats, and Kittens. Two of them are by Sandra Boynton, whom I love, and two are about cats, and one is from our dear friend Shayna, so all in all I'm pretty okay with these choices. 
• Two way communication! You learned to sign "milk" at about ten months, but ironically you don't sign that anymore. You have, however, learned "please" and "more," plus pointing, which you use with great vehemence anytime you want something. You can also sign "all done" and "where," and actually say 貓貓, 包 , 奶 奶, "nana" for banana, and ball, but somehow have still not managed Mama. 

You were in heaven at IKEA when you discovered the huge bin of stuffed basketballs. 

• Sometimes I worry that I'm not teaching you enough normal vocabulary. Because of the toys you have available to play with, you recognize the words lobster, Mr. Frodo, Frankie the Hankie Whale, yardstick, and Android Babo. None of which are really useful, per se. 
• You have a well-developed "What is the most dangerous thing that I can touch right now?" radar. Given an entire dishwasher full of plastic Tupperware and rounded spoons, you will inevitably reach for the one knife. Standing on your tippytoes looking at the things on my sewing table, you will bypass the sleeve roll, the lint tray, the fabric, and the pattern paper, and make a swipe for the pin holder or the seam ripper. When you are extra clingy and insist on following me to the bathroom, you ignore the table of books (which normally you would be super into) go straight for the toilet plunger. Confronted with an entire living room floor covered with toys and books, you will find the one teeny tiny clump of cat hair and try to eat that. I think that falls under the category of Worst Superpower Ever.
• Evidence of the development of a schema (albeit imperfect) for the concept of cat. You know Walnut, of course, and (most endearingly) start every morning with running through the house looking for your adored older brother, yelling  "貓貓貓貓貓貓貓貓!" while holding up your hands in a "where" motion. When you find him, you get really excited and point at him (while yelling some more). It took a little longer for you to generalize that Walnut is not the only 貓 in the world; other cats are also 貓貓. Then you went overboard and started assuming that all fuzzy things were 貓貓, so dogs and faux fur pillows also got labeled as 貓貓. It took a little longer, but just recently you've learned how to recognize illustrated cats as 1) also 貓貓, and 2) different from other illustrated animals, which I think is pretty incredible. Crowning moment: I put on a sweatshirt with a stylized cat face on it and you pointed at it and yelled "貓貓!" I had never shown you that shirt before, so the fact that you recognized it as a cat was pretty awesome. 

You very much enjoyed Gemma Corell's cat doodling book.

• You are a big fan of garbage trucks, birds, being held upside down, balls of all kinds, looking at artwork up on walls, the fake elephant trumpeting noise that I make, watching live basketball, belly blasting Daddy, and being at school. You are deathly afraid of horseflies, mildly afraid of the giant bears at Costco, and hate getting out of the bath, wearing socks while eating,wearing hats, teeth brushing, and washing your face after meals. 

Trying to get a normal, non-blurry picture of you wearing a fedora is nigh impossible. 

• Favorite foods: cheese, Cuties, noodles of all ethnicities (Italian pasta, ramen, udon, jap chae, chow mein), cheese, berries of all kinds, cheese, jellyfish (!) and豆苗 (we discovered this at a Chinese wedding banquet), pinto beans, cheese, and oh, did I mention cheese? 

You are not a fan of meat in general. One time you discovered that Walnut likes turkey, so you fed him and laughed like crazy when he ate out of your hand. 

Bebberous idiosyncracies:

• Ever since you learned how to safely get down off of the couch by scooting on your tummy to land feet first on the floor, you've sporadically employed this method of getting "off" of texture changes, e.g. scooting off the edge of the rug onto the laminate flooring, scooting off of a piece of fabric onto the carpet, etc. It's ridiculously cute. 
• You like being carried up and down stairs. Maybe it's the novelty of stairs, because we don't have any at home, but once you discover that a place has stairs, you will, despite many attempts at distraction, keep returning to them and insisting on going up and down ad nauseum. This has happened at friends' houses, at school, at the industrial park where Daddy plays basketball, and at church. 
• You like comparing the cereal that you're eating to the picture on the box. It's for people like you that cereal companies need to add the disclaimer "enlarged to show texture."

• When you get ahold of something you really like (e.g. a phone, the remote control, Walnut's feather-on-a-stick toy, etc.), you like to bring it over to my side of the bed, climb up, and lie on your back while holding your prize in the air, admiring it and savoring your possession of it.
• Not an idiosyncrasy, but still worth noting: people always say you look just like your daddy. Strangers have come up to say this to us. We have memorialized this with side by side pictures:

Goodbye, 嫲嫲

Dear Zachary,

One of the major reasons why we moved back to the Bay Area from SoCal was so that you could spend more time with your grandparents. Because our grandparents were in Hong Kong, we didn't get to enjoy a close relationship with them, so we had hopes that your childhood would be different. Alas, you will probably not remember the time you spent with your 嫲嫲. Tragically, she passed away unexpectedly when you were not yet fifteen months old. However, we are so incredibly grateful for the time you did have with her.

Your 嫲嫲 loved you so much; even though she spent a lot of the year in Philly, the times she did spend with you were special. When you were first born, she spent hours holding you while you napped, a happy baby burrito in her arms. When you were awake, you loved lying in her lap, kicking her tummy. When she came back for a long visit when you were half a year old, she spent so much time trying to cook and feed you nutritious first foods. You loved the pork and Chinese veggies that she made. When you got a little older, you refused to eat the specially set aside curried pumpkin sans curry; you demanded the full experience of her flavorful cooking. I'm so glad you got to taste all of her nuanced sauces, nutritionally recommended sodium levels be hanged.

In between visits, you Facetimed regularly with her and she delighted in each new skill -- rolling over, sitting up, banging on the piano, crawling, and pulling up to stand -- even if the development meant that most of the call was spent trying to keep you from grabbing the iPad. As you got older, you definitely recognized her voice and when she finally came back to see you in person, you greeted her with a big toothy grin.

During her last visit, besides savoring her cooking, you also got to spend lots of quality time reading with her. While you are usually an incredibly active baby, always on the go and never content to sit still, it was different with her. Because of her bad knee, she couldn't run around with you, but it was as if you understood. She was the only one you were happy to snuggle with. She patiently sat with you and made noises for all the animals in your picture books. TBPH, even though I'm your mother, I didn't have as much patience as she did for humoring your desire to hear continuous mooing for thirty minutes.

Grandmothers are stereotypically portrayed as loving women who knit blankets and sweaters for their grandchildren and cook delicious, comforting meals. The secret to their handiwork, of course, is the love in every stitch of the blanket, the love stirred for hours into the simmering pots. Nobody ever talks, though, about the love vocalized in every moo, baa, and oink.

I know you won't remember these times with her, but I hope one day you can read this and know without a doubt that she loved you so very much. I wish you could have had the experience of growing up with her presence in your life, as she was a generous, compassionate, feisty woman who loved God and people. Her legacy lives on in your father, and hopefully will continue in you one day.

See that yellow blanket? She knit that for you!

How the First Year Went

My dear little boy,

I'm probably repeating the cry of millions of mothers through the ages, but I can't believe you're growing up so fast! How has it been a year already? We started out by calling you Baby Guy, but cannot in good conscience call you a baby anymore; it's Little Man now, especially since you started toddling a week ago.

A year ago, you were a slightly-squashed looking (but still adorable to me) little baby who couldn't do anything but eat, cry, and excrete (note that I left sleep out of that list, because you were a notoriously awake newborn), and now you're a toddler who can basically eat everything we eat, say "mama," and take off like a rocket when you don't want your diaper changed. A year ago, I was thirty-five pounds heavier and much better rested, but also much more selfish and less compassionate. Now, I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight (phew! I was seriously worried that I wouldn't be able to wear any of my cool handmade clothes anymore) and short on sleep, but I'd like to think I'm a better person now. You have challenged me in so many ways, but (spoiler alert: another mommy cliche coming) I wouldn't trade the last year for anything.

Last night Daddy and I were reminiscing about the last year and talking about how the reality of parenting did or did not match up to our expectations; we both agreed that we had been expecting all the difficulties, but what we were surprised about was how much fun it was. You are a remarkably fun little boy, and it's a pleasure to see you grow and learn. Thanks for defying our expectations, Zachary. And based on the way you recklessly climb on everything, it seems you think you can defy gravity as well!

Love you so, so much.

Mommy

New this month:

• Toddling: You can take several steps unassisted now! You still rely on crawling 95% of the time, though, since it's much faster. 
• Talking: Kind of. You inconsistently call me mama; I don't think you know it's a name for me, it's more like "hmm, if I say these syllables everyone exclaims and claps, and Mommy comes running over to swoop me up and kiss me." You also inconsistently say "貓貓" when you see Walnut or cat pictures in your books. This, of course, delights me to no end. So much better than having your first word be "poop" the way a certain doctor-to-be kept hoping.
• Putting in and taking out: You are starting to realize that things can be inside other things, so you've been exploring what objects can fit inside various containers and boxes. The first time you deliberately put a link into the gelato container, I cheered so much that you kept putting that one link in and out, instead of putting the other nineteen links in. 
• Student babysitters: Twice a week, senior girls take turns watching you during lunchtime so that I can get copies made and tutoring done. As far as I know, you've been fine with all the new faces. You little extrovert, you!
• Stealing food: Every afternoon, I sit down and try to eat an apple/peach/plum/some other fruit with a core, and inevitably as soon as you realize that there's eating going on that you're not part of, you come over and sit on my lap and grab it. And then get angry when I try to take a bite. So then you end up finishing my fruit for me. I suppose there are worse diet plans out there; angry baby steals all your food after two bites sounds better to me than only drinking lemon juice with cayenne powder or some such nonsense...

Here, you've just stolen Daddy's banana. You ended up eating two-thirds of it. 

One year old stats: 

• You have grown over ten inches, almost tripled your weight, and sprouted eight teeth. 
• You are now wearing size three diapers, 12-18m clothing, and no shoes yet. 
• You have now slept for almost 4800 hours, used almost 2000 diapers, and drank almost 8 gallons of expressed milk. I have spent over 600 hours nursing you (and making good use of my smartphone and Netflix subscription). 
• Your favorite foods are avocado, blueberries, watermelon, cheese, and carbs of all kinds, except rice. What kind of Asian baby are you?!
• Favorite toys include the IKEA stacking cups, Frodo, the (sealed) tube of diaper rash cream, and my yardstick. You love playing throw-Frodo-off-the-couch, patty cake, and hide and seek/peekaboo. Dancing to "Barnyard Dance" is also a favorite activity. 
• Favorite books are CAT, The Bellybutton Book, and two Chinese animal books that 爺爺 got you in Hong Kong.

When I ask you to find the cow, you turn to the right page 75% of the time. 

Your first birthday party:

The parenting book that Daddy got recommends keeping a first birthday party small and short and simple so as to avoid overstimulating a baby -- invite no more than 6-8 adults and 2-3 other babies, keeping the whole even less than 1.5 hours -- but we didn't read that part until after the party, so we ended up having 25 adults and six kids over for three hours. Oops. Even so, you did great and loved getting to see so many people and play with all your little friends, and you didn't even cry when we sang happy birthday to you! Somehow, in all the chaos, I managed to totally forget to take any pictures though. Oops again. 

I did, however, manage to take this picture of all your pictures! So meta, I know,

On the day of your actual birthday we had a family dinner with a special healthy baby cupcake for you (applesauce, no refined sugar, zucchini baked into it). I forgot to get yogurt for the frosting so we made do with whipped cream, and then I didn't think to put it on a nice plate so the picture of the cupcake sitting on the sad little cooling rack is a little silly. Oops for a third time. 

But hey, you survived a year, we survived a year, and everyone is happy and thriving despite all the oopses. I think that's an accomplishment! 

I think this picture accurately sums up everyone's feelings about the first year as a family of four: Mommy and Daddy are thrilled, Walnut is indifferent/not amused, and you're wondering what the big deal is.