Cameron Lo

Cameron started learning to play the piano this spring with Darren’s first piano teacher. She’s super nice, but isn’t as ambitious and strict as I’d like, so I switched the boys to a new piano teacher this summer. I wasn’t sure Cameron would still like it with the new, more demanding teacher especially since she was hesitant to take him. (She could tell in our first lesson that Darren’s very musical, so taking him on was a no-brainer.) I convinced her to give Cameron some time and he has since impressed her with his fast learning—his legato might even be better than Darren’s now!

Today’s Cameron’s first piano recital. Unfortunately I’ve had to focus on Darren the past couple weeks because he had a piano exam a couple days ago, so Cameron hasn’t been practicing and refining his piece as much as he should, but he went ahead and pulled off his debut with confidence and smiles! Bravo my baby!

Cameron has been chosen by his Chinese teacher to be one of the greeters at his Pre-K Spring Sing. At first when she asked him if he’d like to do it, he said no although I think it’s partly because he didn’t understand what she was trying to tell him since she was explaining the concept of a greeter to him in Mandarin, but also partly because he has a bad habit of saying no to everything new first, but then once he tries it, he usually loves it and is oftentimes the one who enjoys it more than others!

Today’s the big day and Cameron greeted everyone enthusiastically, including when finally Daddy showed up!

During Spring Sing, Cameron performed one of my favorite songs that Darren used to know—Hukilau!

Cameron and Darren raced in their ski team’s year-end race today, which invited parents to participate. Cameron picked me–even though I barely finished before he did, he’s obviously a much better skier for his age and he relished the announcement: “Michelle, racer medal*; Cameron, bronze medal!” and kept repeating it gleefully for us afterwards! (*Racer medal means no place on the podium–thanks for participating.)

On our way home, I added “Let’s Have a Race” song from Thomas the Tank Engine to Cameron’s footage.

Darren saw me work on the music (while Cameron konked out immediately in the car.) As expected, Darren asked for the same song to be added to his race, which I did. It takes a while to get the music to fit nicely, but I decided to add another one of Cameron’s favorite songs to his, just so the two boys have different music. 🙂

It’s Chinese New Year today! The kids naturally have no school since they go to a Mandarin immersion school where they learn a lot about Chinese New Year traditions. For example, Cameron learned this adorable song about the twelve Chinese zodiacs last year in Pre-K (as did Darren when he was in the same program) and this year he knows it so well he performed it twice for me tonight–first a cuter, tamer version as warm-up…

…then a livelier, naughtier take. 😉 Happy Year of the Sheep!

After a week-plus-long trip to Whistler and Vancouver, our little Cameron (who just turned 4 exactly 2 weeks ago) is tired. Tonight he fell asleep during a very short ride home from dinner, so Darren decided to kiss him to wake him up in the sweetest way possible! Awww! This is probably one of the cutest brotherly-love pictures since their very first one!

While I was at the bank today, Darren noticed they were running their annual holiday promotion which gives a horse stuffie for every new account. He managed to persuade me to open accounts for him and Cameron—these smiles, especially Cameron’s silly one, are the only redeeming things during the long wait for the paperwork. Of course afterwards I found out a friend and fellow parent at the kids’ school who’s very senior at the bank could have just given me the horse stuffies without all that trouble—if only I had known! 😉

The last time we went on a tropical vacation, Cameron was nervous about swimming in a big unfamiliar pool, so Vincent and I were a little worried Cameron wouldn’t enjoy our time in Lanai where there’s not much besides the beach and the pool. To our delight, Cameron had no qualms and didn’t even need the fins that I brought! Maybe it’s because he switched into a big boys’ swimming class a few months ago where he’s hanging with 5-year-olds. He was so comfortable in the water just like Darren. When a fellow school parent whom we ran into a couple days ago started throwing the kids around in the pool, Cameron decided to fly! Everyone around the pool had a really good laugh watching little Superman (Cameron learned the pose in the video below from his friend JJ who loves Superman while Cameron loves Spiderman)/Buzz Lightyear (Cameron was wearing a Buzz Lightyear swim shirt and trunks) get ready to launch—to infinity and beyond!

We’ve been to Legoland many times, but we’ve never checked out their Water Park. Of course the day we finally went, it turned out to be cloudy, but that didn’t dampen the kids’ spirits at all! Cameron, in fact, came down the blue slide so many times I lost count! Special thanks to Daddy for filming the kids with his new toy GoPro and for adding music to the action!

I got a three-month membership at CuriOdyssey recently and I activated it for the summer since we get to stay closer to home this time of year. This morning I took the kids to CuriOdyssey and Cameron loves the river otters there! I have a much longer video of Cameron cracking up each time the river otter pushes off of the glass window, but you can’t see his face in that video, so this one will have to do. I’ll have to bring him back to visit these adorable otters soon and hear his happy peals of laughter again!

I bought a combo ride-on and walker toy for Cameron when he was an infant in anticipation of helping him learn to walk. (The ride-on toy that Darren had was a loaner from our next-door neighbor back when we lived in the city which we had to return.) Cameron didn’t end up using this walker much at all when learning how to walk, but Darren loves using it for his in-home transportation and Cameron, forever his big brother’s biggest fan, loves tagging along for a ride. The neat freak that I am wouldn’t mind passing this almost brand-new toy on to free up room, but my babies still have so much fun with it! Besides, I’m secretly glad that they’re playing with baby toys a bit longer than moving onto some of the less “desirable” big boys’ stuff. 😛