Guess what I made?

Happy Monday! First, here is funny picture of Hayden.

Hei hei! I picked up the camera and he gave me this look. What a kid.





I got some sewing time before we went out for a kiddie birthday party on Sunday. I started at 11, took a one hour lunch and finished just before 4. Guess what I made? Here is your first clue:

I think it's pretty obvious from this picture that I made more than one item.



Here is clue number 2:

It took almost an hour to finish the first pair and only 15 min when I got to the last pair. Note to self: Having a crying baby in the background increases productivity by about 300%. At the same time, stress level is increased by about 500%


Here they are! One pair of each style goes on Hayden's feet and the other two pairs will go on sale at Etsy on Wednesday.

30 seconds of my life

This is 30 seconds of what I had to deal with last night:


So, to make me feel better, I went out with a group of moms for dim sum after baby class this morning. The kids were all pretty tired but we wanted food and we were getting food. Kira actually played quite well with Ricky and she ate reasonably well.

The restaurant is literally 5 blocks from our house and she almost fell asleep on the way home. I thought she will certainly take a good nap this afternoon but she is still in her room, crying. It's 3:30pm! At least I have one good kid. Hayden slept through it all. He slept at baby class, and woke up briefly to eat. Then he slept through dim sum and woke up again at the end to eat. I transfered him into his swing and he's been sleeping since we got home around 2. Yeah, right now, he is my favorite kid.


Oh... did I tell you how my day started?

Need I say more?

Crazy Hair

After all the blogging and other random stuff, I actually managed to sew yesterday. Here's what I made:

I think a couple of them will become birthday gifts and I will try to sell a couple on Etsy.

Kira's hair is completely out of control and I need help. It looks totally normal from the front but the back is worse than a bird's nest. I've tried combing, combing with water, putting a hat on her... nothing seems to work. I think a haircut is in order. If that doesn't work, we may have to resort to the old Chinese tradition of shaving... I know Kira's a little old for that, but what can I do?! I can't let her walk around like this. People are laughing... at me!
Crazy hair from the back.

See how the front is totally normal?

My little Buddha and the Mother Load

Kira goes to daycare one day a week and I devote that day to bonding with Hayden, sewing, running errands, paying bills, managing appointments, cleaning, surfing the net, and resting. Em... I think in the end, I don't do any of those things well and I still find myself running around like a headless chicken all the other days of the week. Anyway, today is my "day off" so I thought I'd take some pictures of Hayden (since there's been complaints that I only take pictures of Kira) and do some sewing.
Smile, Hayden. He has been very smiley. For more pictures of him, click here.

Some time last week, I went into my favorite fabric store to get a yard of fabric that I saw on their website... little did I know, the shop owner had just come back from Japan. OMG!!! Japan!! They have the cutest everything. So, 20 min later, I walked out of the store with a giant stack of kiddie fabric and totally forgot about the yard that I went there for originally. But with all my new cute purchase, who needs that one yard of I-don't-even-remember-what.
A spread of the mother load.
So cute and charming.
What I call "fairy tale fabric".
A handful of "boy fabrics".
Hayden staring at my crafts probably thinking, "You are the reason my mommy doesn't spend more time with me!"

Oh... I've been told to put bigger pictures on here. Did you know you can click on the pictures once to enlarge them? Try it with the Hayden vs Sewing picture and you can see that hatred in his eyes.

Playgroup

I rely heavily on playgroups to preserve my sanity. I like talking to the other moms and hearing their stories and to know that I am not alone when my kid won't sleep/eat/poo/smile/talk/climb/etc. Then, today, we had an especially busy playgroup and I asked myself, "how is this keeping me sane?" The noise, the chaos, the crying, the fighting were anything but sane. I guess somehow, I've acclimated and learnt to tune out the things that are stressful and just focus on the fact that I am out of the house and talking to adults.
Here is a short video of playgroup at a friend's house today:


Hayden "participated" for the first time at playgroup and made his first baby friend.














Kira trying to commit suicide with a power tool?????

No... she is just that girly. She turned a power tool into a beauty product - a curling iron.

Little things that's happening

We don't have anything crazy exciting going on here so I am just going to blog about the little things.

Last week in the crazy rain, we discovered the Randall Museum in the city. It's a small children's museum that's funded by the city so admission is free. It is much smaller than the one we go to in Sausalito but it's a cool space just the same. There is a maze that the kids can explore and when they get to the middle of it, there is a collection of other smaller hand held maze puzzles. There is also an animal exhibit that the kids can get really up close and personal with.



Kira explaining to me what the birds are doing in the cage.




Kira trying to convince the turtle to come out of its hiding place.





The past weekend was fun. Saturday was a complete blur to me. I think we just ran errands... library, groceries, Blockbuster, laundry... things like that. Sunday was a little more exciting. Brett invited 12 Magic players to our house for a draft. One of the players came with his wife and baby, also named Kyra, as well. It was quite a gathering. Kira and Kyra had a great time playing together while Hayden slept the WHOLE day, literally. We put him down at 10am and I had to wake him up at 4:30pm to make sure he gets some food.

This picture was not taken on Sunday but on Saturday night but I thought it fits nicely here. Hayden is really starting to sleep well for us. What a good boy.

We went out for sushi after the games and the kids came home and crashed and they BOTH slept through the night! That is a minor miracle in this house.
Hope you all had a good weekend.

Class in session

Baby class / toddler open gym started again after the winter break and I went with Kira and Hayden for the first time today. It's been about 5 weeks since we were last there and I was surprised at how much more Kira can do now. She is usually slow to warm up when joining a big group of kids but she went into the gym and went straight to her favorite ride on toy. We'll get to that in a minute. She played very well and even tried to defend her toys when other kids tried to take them away. Again, that's a first for her. Instead of just crying and running to me, she tried to say no to the other kids and run away from them. Another new skill that she somehow developed during the 5 week break is climbing up the slides and sliding down on her own. I never knew she could do that.
The most surprising thing was her interest in a climbing structure. Kira was never very good at the physical stuff but she tried to climb up this thing today. Granted... she never made it pass the bottom rung...
The other fun thing Kira did today was playing with the ride on toys. She finally figured out how to get in and out of the cars on her own. Today, she had a choice between a fire truck, a dump truck, a pickup truck, a police car, a taxi, a sports car, a pink Barbie car, an Elmo car, a Winnie the Pooh car, a motor cycle, a bus and a number of other animal type ride ons and she consistently chose the police car. I had no idea she was so interested in upholding the law. I mean she yells "stop" when other kids are running or driving too fast and says "pick up" when they dropped food on the floor...
oh, and her favorite thing to do while riding the police car was to try and run me over. She had a very maniacal laugh when she bumps into me and I yell "ouch". What does that say about her being a cop?







So, while Kira was having fun, what did Hayden do? You guessed it, he rode on mommy and slept.




He woke up just before the end and I thought he should try a ride on toy too. Of course he was way too small for any of the cars, so I thought I'd let him ride in another baby's carseat. (of course I know that other baby... I didn't just put him in some stranger's carseat...) Looked like he enjoyed it.
So, all in all, we had a fun outing this morning. Yeah for city sponsored baby classes!