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!
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!
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. 😛
For Mother’s Day, I made plans to take the kids to their first “play”. It’s actually more like a recital since there are two narrators—the adult narrator who’s the storyteller and the child narrator who plays the role of the Ugly Duckling. Classical music performed live interspersed with the narration and there’s a “slide show” of scenes in the back. The main reason I wanted to go though was that the show is narrated in Mandarin. Darren thoroughly enjoyed the show, especially since I asked a family from his Kindergarten class to join us, although Cameron was a little scared and had to keep asking what’s going on because he doesn’t understand Mandarin—unlike Darren. Besides the show, there were kid-centered activities outside the concert hall, like face painting, which the kids loved of course. Like at the San Francisco Zoo, Cameron requested to be a lion…
Today Cameron’s school had a Mother’s Day brunch and performance. I had an inkling of what the performance would be since Cameron sang the song to me for the first time a couple days ago. It’s one of my favorite songs and it always brings tears to my eyes when I sing it to the kids. With the crowd in the classroom, Cameron raised his voice and wasn’t singing as nicely as he did in private a couple days ago, but I loved his enthusiasm. 🙂
