American Girls

By MAGGIE WANG

Playing the piano at A-gong Toshi & A-ma Alice's house ...

We hit the farmer's market at The Grove for some yummy stuff, including large lollipops!

Can you guess who bought those for the girls?! haha

Lastly, we checked out http://www.americangirl.com/ to see what the hype is all about...

...and of course, each girl got one! Maven insisted on getting the same one as Sedona, even though I wanted to get her one closer to her own lighter hair color. Yes, our girls are fortunate little ones. What a fun day! They were pooped.

All About Maven

By MAGGIE WANG

A playdate with Oliver from Maven's Mommy & Me class with Turid King through South Bay Adult School ...

Isn't she adorable in that cap?! ...

Finishing up our second session of music therapy with Sara Dudik -- with friends Charlotte and Raychel in the class, too ...

"Valentine's" Day? What's that?

By  MAGGIE WANG

As with all other years in the Wang-Ding household, Valentine's Day is not acknowledged or celebrated. I don't expect anything but he could at least say 'Happy V-Day' back to me, no?! (We do have our personal alternative, Kevintine's Day, which usually falls some day near Feb. 14.)

Regardless of that, I have an amazing husband and an incredible family. We spent the morning of the 14th at Venice Beach. Here are some fun moments with the girls ...

Great pictures taken by my artsy husband.

T.L's Valentine

By MAGGIE WANG

From our pal, T.L in our funky monkey class at  South Bay Adult School. He decorated this for us because we weren't in class. Thanks, cutie!

Happy Birthday & Lunar New Year (Year of Tiger)

By MAGGIE WANG

Happy 35th Birthday, Felix!

The girls love cake! Surprise! Surprise!

Time for red envelopes!

We celebrated Lunar New Year's with Kevin's side of the family the weekend before after the girls had a fun time at Skyler's basketball game. Unfortunately, no pictures to document that fun day, sorry! A-gong & A-ma Ding kept up their tradition of givng the girls special $2 bills.

Kevin snapped a photo of this wall, mostly a tribute to our girls, while we were at my parents' house.

All the Fun!

By MAGGIE WANG

Here are a couple additional pictures of the girls loving the bike and scooter:

On Sat., Feb. 6, we celebrated Ronin turning 2 and met Baby Jordana (so cute!).

The party was supposed to be at Travel Town, but it was raining -- so we just got a lot of people together at Jimmy and Rosana's new home (and yes, I was their realtor.. so fun working with them) in La Canada. I brought our bounce house along for entertainment value.

We've been making some Rice Krispies treats here. Can you see the goo on Maven's nose?

Sunday was Hailey's 4th birthday party, held at Power Plant, a new acrobatics workout center on the corner of Artesia and Aviation.

We brought Sedona pal McKinsey because her parents were on a romantic weekend away.

Sedona was leery at first about the swinging, but once she got the hang of it, I couldn't get her to stop!

--

Sedona has been having a stuffy nose at night when she sleeps. She asked her daddy after the party if she could go to the doctor to get some help ... so here she is the next day!

She has allergies, it seems, so we've begun a regimen of Flonase and saline spray every morning and night. Seems to be helping already.

--

Yesterday, I went away for the night alone (no kids, no husband, no friends, no reason). It was fabulous. I have traveled alone for work or to see friends but never with no purpose except to be alone in solitude and take care of myself. I got the tip from good friends Elizabeth Beshear and Emily Watts ... and I thank them for the great idea!

My awesome hotel room at the Newport Beach Marriott Bayview is above. I started with a nice lunch at a local cafe, then an amazing 90-minute manicure and pedicure; they didn't skimp on anything. I hit the bookstore to buy this pretty interesting book: "The Five Languages of Love" and shopped before heading back to the hotel to watch a cheesy-girlie movie. It was heaven. Kevin stayed home and had great bonding time with the girls, including a fascinating chat with Sedona about her classmates and whom she liked best (Brandon is No. 1!). They e-mailed me a full update of the convo. Thanks, sweetie. You are the best!

Sedona: "Very sweet, happy girl"

By KEVIN DING

Given that I was out of town for Sedona's very first "Educational Progress Report" at her school, the least I can do is proudly post what Miss Valerie, her teacher, wrote about her ...

"Sedona is a very sweet, happy girl. She loves school and her friends. Sedona is also an amazing helper to her friends and teachers. She is always positive about doing challenging work and is doing great with her phonetic sounds. She is a pleasure to have in the class, and I am looking forward to a great year with her."

Good job, Sedona!

Maven's Scooter Debut

By KEVIN DING

Great to be back home from the road with all three of my girls. I started the day with some quality one-on-one reading and learning time with Sedona while Maven slept in. And after school for Sedona, we wound up having her try her new bike outside for the first time -- she has been cruising along pretty well back and forth on our hardwood floor between the living room and office for some time -- which availed the scooter for Maven to try for the first time.

We were pretty impressed by Maven's skills at two months shy of age 2. Here's some video from my Blackberry ...

I can say "SEDONA"!

By MAGGIE WANG

The girls constantly say adorable things that I try to repeat to myself over and over again in the hope that I'll actually remember to document it -- but I always fail.

Maven is learning to talk a lot. She speaks in complete sentences but fails to enunciate well enough for us to always understand her. She hasn't been able to say "Sedona" because she has a hard time pronouncing the "S."

Tonight, as Maven and I were lying in bed, she said, "SSSeeeeDona." She smiled when she realized she said it --almost like she had been able to say it in her head and now it finally came out. Kevin had just been saying this afternoon on AIM with me that we needed to get Maven to make the jump from the security of "Tze-Tze" (Taiwanese for "big sister" and easier to say) to "Sedona."

Sedona was already in bed, so I brought Maven to the girls' room to put her in bed. Maven then started to say, "SsssssEDooonna, ssseeeDona..." over and over again until Sedona finally said, "Maven, I heard you already."  It was so funny.

Uncle Teddy & Aunt Debbie, Inaugural Babysitters

By MAGGIE WANG

Uncle Teddy & Aunt Debbie came into town this weekend to help me out and put in some quality bonding time with the girls. They even watched the girls for almost 3 hours without me! This the first time we've ever let someone other than Linda, grandparents or West End child-care service watch our girls.

The girls absolutely LOVE Teddy & Debbie (even if each has a favorite girl among our two). It was super cute!

We also had a nice breakfast at Ocean's Diner with Uncle Jason & Aunt Anita. They were playing with the girls nonstop for hours in every part of our home ... from bounce house to "jump on Aunt Debbie" to hide-and-seek with Teddy.

The older girls fell asleep while the young one stayed up on the drive to Century City Mall and dinner at Hurry Curry with Auntie Anita.

Teddy was a good uncle, pushing a sleeping Sedona (while Maven whined on the side, begging to get into her Bugaboo stroller).

Sunday morning was sad, as their trip went too fast. I'm not sure Teddy & Debbie felt that way, as they were worn out by the youngsters.

Can you guess which girl is Teddy's favorite? It's so wrong to have favorites, don't you think?!

I'm not sure Aunt Debbie has a favorite but it's hard not to love smiling Sedona when she is constantly asking for you rather than her own mommy.

Sedona has been asking when y'all are coming back ... so please come visit again soon!