Daddy Cam

By MAGGIE WANG

Kevin has been out of town since Saturday, March 21, and doesn't get back until Thursday, April 2 ... so you can imagine why there haven't been any blog posts here recently.

Here is how Kevin is communicating with Sedona. You can you see her in the corner of the screen ... so happy to see Daddy. She has asked a few times this week, "When is Daddy coming home?" and "Where is Daddy?"

Kevin missed my 31st birthday, but luckily I had my girls to celebrate with ...

Don't they look cute in their "horsey-man" dresses? (Kevin and Sedona refer to her Polo clothes as having a "horsey-man" on them.) I had a nice dinner with Patty, Loretta, Whitney and Emily at Mama D's in Hermosa Beach before heading out to Burke Williams for a much needed deep-tissue birthday massage.

Today, I brought the girls to Sedona & Me class for some fun and an Easter egg hunt.

One of Sedona's favorite things is cleaning her toes (as she does daily) when her feet might've gotten the slightest bit dirty.

She did some driving around in the play yard at class.

There was painting time, too.

Maven went about crawling around the classroom, but she looks like a little person.

Easter Egg-hunt time!

Yummy, Goldfish in there!

Can you find Sedona patiently listening to Teacher Cheryl read?

We've all been healthy and we have been handling things well but look forward to Daddy coming home. Maven is totally into food. She has her own opinions about things and gets bored with toys easily. Sedona is learning to stay in bed throughout the night and she basically no longer needs diapers of any time at any time. She is a big girl, even though sometimes she'll say, "I'm still little." She talks in complete sentences like a regular older person. It's amazing how fast they are growing up.

A Parade Without Green

By MAGGIE WANG

So I'll admit, I might have been a few days late for this monthly photo, but Maven didn't seem to care (even though she's eating so much table food these days that she must be growing significantly by the day) ...

 

She loves to play with paper! 

That made it quite hard to take a photo that shows how much she has grown compared to New Gnow-Gnow. Maybe we'll start taking the comparison photos with Maven standing up; she has gotten pretty sturdy when standing or walking with assistance these days ... especially in her new Nikes!

 (Kevin hereby proposes to rename this "New Gnow-Gnow" as "Ngow-Ngow," which is how the name should be spelled based on the way it is pronounced, although his elders weren't wise enough to grasp that 40 years ago when giving Gnow-Gnow to his newborn big sister.)

Kevin came home from a week away Friday, so we had a mini-family day at the Santa Monica Pier. Sedona was so excited about getting on the carousel, but...

... when it came to the time actually to ride it, she was scared.

Meanwhile, Maven didn't appreciate being left out on the sidelines:

So she got her chance ...

... but then also didn't appreciate the ride nearly as much as she thought she would. (For $1 per ride for me and one child, though, it was an experience.)

Saturday morning, Sedona fed Maven breakfast.

(Sorry about the underpants shots, Sedona!)

Maven loves her Yo Baby yogurt (as does Sedona).

During this taking of this picture, Sedona passed some of a 2 1/2-year-old's wisdom to her sister: "Maven, don't look up to the sky or you will choke!" It was pretty funny!

Then it was off to the Hermosa Beach St. Patrick Day's Parade ...

... and we obviously forgot to wear GREEN because the real holiday was still a ways away! Oops.

Sedona tried to be cool with a creative seating style while enjoying the parade from the stroller.

Here's one for the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Maven and Kevin passed some time playing with one of his favorite sodas, Mountain Dew. Given that we have photos of baby Sedona holding some Dew, it seemed appropriate to have shots of Maven, too.

Maven is growing up so fast! Kevin was messing around with Sedona and trying to see if Maven could say, "Da-da and Jeh-Jeh" (Taiwanese for "Big Sis" is "Jeh-Jeh" ... slim probability on Maven saying "Sedona" anytime soon) ... and Maven actually did it! Sedona was thrilled. Maven did it twice, and each time Sedona grinned and laughed huge.

Ha-ha, just a funny Maven expression.

Our Portland Get-away

By MAGGIE WANG

Kevin and I had our first get-away this year without the girls. It was a much needed and very enjoyable trip -- even though we got pelted by hail!

We headed up to Portland, Ore., (my first time there) early on Sunday for Kevin's Monday (March 9) Lakers game. The minute we got off the plane, we hustled downtown to Bluehour for a yummy lunch and then walked around the Pearl District and Northwest/Nob Hill area for some shopping.

Portland reminded me of a small-town San Francisco. The major difference was the weather. The city would be beautiful and then out of nowhere, everything would change. It was the strangest yet neatest thing.

Our goal Monday was to get up early and shop at the Nike employee store in Beaverton for a couple of hours before going to lunch at Jake's Crawfish downtown. Well, we never made it to lunch. We ended up shopping at Nike from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., spending more than $1,000 and leaving us not much time to eat anything before Kevin needed to leave for the game. However, it was well worth it: The store Kevin has hyped for years as so great was everything I had dreamed it would be!

While Kevin covered the game, I got to relax in the hotel room and watch "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" on DVD and drink hard cider. What a relaxing night!

On Tuesday, we woke up for some brunch at Mother's, a famous diner there. I had this tasty crunchy french toast with corned beef hash, and Kevin had homemade pancakes with apple sausage. We had a little time to kill before the flight so we headed to Nordstrom and purchased some jeans to take further advantage of no sales tax in Oregon!

I really enjoyed some alone time with my hubby and hope that we get to do it again ... even though I really missed our girls, who did pretty fabulous without us at A-Gong & A-Ma Ding's house.

Today, while Kevin continued on the road in Houston eating fresh boiled crawfish for lunch at Ragin Cajun (I'm such an inspiration to him!), I was back home and got to bring Sedona and Maven to see Charlotte Diamond (songwriter of "Slippery Fish") in concert. Sedona was mesmerized, and Maven danced along.

Before I go, here is just an adorable picture of the girls today!

Toshi A-Gong & Alice A-Ma return

By MAGGIE WANG

Toshi A-Gong and Alice A-Ma got back from another one of their trips to Japan yesterday.

As you can see, the girls were happy to see A-Gong (and A-Ma).

Kevin was able to get Maven laughing by showing off some ball skills so I could take some nice shots of our darling baby.

Sedona requested that we all gather around to listen to her sing and play guitar. She declined, however, to repeat her earlier smash hit song, "I want to buy a car with you."

She loved the attention.

I got some work done during the day, but overall it was a lot of quality bonding time with the girls and my parents (and Felix and his girlfriend Jenny came by also). The supreme comedic highlight of the day came in the car when Kevin was driving the girls and me home from our dim-sum brunch and we could tell by the sounds Maven was making back there just what she was doing. Kevin said out loud: "Maven's got poo-poo in her pants." And Sedona slowly and quietly noted for all of us: "Not a good idea."

What have we been up to?

By MAGGIE WANG

So yes, it has been a while since I've posted but it has been a tough few weeks, as you may be able to sense, with work and all the sickness in this house. But through it all, we've managed to have some fun!

When Maven was sick and congested, she took it upon herself to be propped up to breathe better for sleeping! Funny, huh? (In this photo you can also see her signature move for self-soothing: right index and middle finger in her mouth, supported by her left hand to make it easier!)

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22: ACADEMY AWARDS NIGHT AT RILEY'S HOUSE

The young ladies ate healthy: carrots, apples and as always, mac and cheese.

Look at my girls giving me lots of love. Yes, Riley is my unofficial third daughter!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26: RONIN PLAYDATE

We missed Ronin's first birthday party because I had to work, so Auntie Rosana brought the party balloons to us.

Sedona practiced learning to share with the lil' ones.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28: SALMON NIGHT

The girls built log cabins, sort of. OK, they aren't so good at it. Maybe in a couple more years!

After eating another healthy, Trader Joe's frozen mac and cheese meal (with tofu), the girls made instant sugar-free butterscotch pudding. Surprisingly, Sedona took only a couple bites.

MONDAY, MARCH 2: AUSTIN PLAYDATE

Daddies Mag and Kev were off work and on kid duty, so they scheduled a playdate.

Aren't they cute?!

Austin got caught up in this crazy Maven smile.

Maven's style of kissing -- open mouth with lots of slobber -- was again visited upon Austin. Yes, it did leave Austin's head all wet. Maven does this to Sedona quite frequently -- and to the little babies in her Mommy & Me class. I have to ask her to stop eating the other kids.

Uncle Mag showed the kids how Pluto moves (after Kev showed Uncle Mag).

They liked it!

There was a little competition to hold Pluto's dog food!

"Hey, Austin got the dog food!" Maven thought. "But maybe I can distract him with a bearhug and a Maven kiss!"

"Feel the slobber? OK, drop the dog food!"

"I guess it didn't work."

"I'd better get aggressive."

Was it a Maven-Austin playdate or a Kevin-Mag playdate? They worked in a little PlayStation ... on which Sedona tried to join in.

TUESDAY, MARCH 2: BEAR FACE

Sedona loves having her face painted. I often put ladybugs, smiley faces, rainbows, balloons, bracelets and rings on her. Today she wanted to be a dog, which was a little difficult, so I made her a bear (like the one on her hair clip). That bear was red with an apple on its forehead. I spared her the red face but gave her the apple!