Cameron has been going to Gymboree since he was 5 months old! Amazingly, after 2 years and 11 months, he still loves going there every week. He loves Gymbo, Teacher Rose, and his buddy Ronan. Teacher Rose told me recently that Cameron is to be credited for helping Ronan blossom in class because before meeting and befriending Cameron, Ronan was pretty shy and kept to himself. Well, my little goofball certainly knows how to bring a smile to my face, so I’m glad that he’s sharing his talent with others!
The two little friends shared lots of hugs before parting ways!
It’s an end of era for me too—Darren started going to Gymboree when he was 11 months old, so I’ve been going for almost five full years! Goodbye Gymboree! Thanks for all the songs and memories!
My friend Katherine who was visiting from Hong Kong recently took her three kids all over the Bay Area to the best kiddie attractions. Topping the list for us is the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose because there’s a fire truck at the museum and she even sent me photos of one of her kids dressed up in firefighters’ gear standing on the fire truck. So I’ve been planning to go at our first opportunity, which is today. As soon as we got to the admission booth, I could see that the first exhibit was the big red fire truck! Darren and Cameron rushed to climb into the cab of course and we were promptly told by a dad that his kid was in line first. Oops! Too excited to notice! While I helped Darren get into the pretend play firefighters’ clothes that they had—you could see me in the background of this photo on the deck of the fire truck—Cameron was waiting patiently in line for the driver’s seat already.
When he and Darren finally got in, they had the funniest conversation between themselves—mostly in Cantonese, mixed in with some English.
For those of you who don’t understand Cantonese, here’s the dialogue:
Darren: “You need to go—otherwise, all the people will die. That’s why you need to keep going.”
Cameron: “There’s a red light and I’m still going.”
Darren: “Yes…[even though you have a] red light, the other cars have to stop and then you go, right?”
Cameron: “Yes…I also have to go with a green light.”
Besides the fire truck though, there was also a ton of other really fun stuff, like bubbles…
…and painting! (Cameron likes to write the letter E these days!)
Since Cameron only has Mommy-and-Me classes or his twice-a-week 2.5-hour “pre-preschool” program every morning, he gets stuck with me the rest of the time running various errands, which included going to the car wash today. I’ve been going to a car wash place called Ducky’s recently where they have a ducky kiddie ride. With three cars, I have to go to the car wash quite often, so I never give Cameron coins to feed the ride (which has always been my default with Darren as well.) Cameron is used to climbing up and down the ducky and rocking it to move it! 😛 But today he ran over to the bench right behind the ducky where I was sitting and emailing Vincent and showed me what he found excitedly—he found a quarter in the change return compartment of the coin box! Someone must have tried to feed the ride, but the quarter fell back out. So I announced to Cameron that it’s his lucky day because he gets to ride the ducky for real! Cameron was so happy—ahh the simple pleasures in a 3-year-old’s life! 🙂
Cameron has been drawing a lot and much better for the past couple months. Before that he would get really frustrated with other people when they didn’t draw exactly as he envisioned. Thankfully he finally ventured into drawing himself and the more he drew, the more confident he became! 🙂
My favorite is the faces that he draws. He came up with these big eyes and crazy hair all by himself that cracks me up. Under those funny faces, he would draw stick figures—they used to be short, so the people would have big heads on short bodies like many cartoon characters, but today when I asked him to draw a family portrait, he made long stick figures—a little less cute in my opinion, but still it’s his first family portrait! The first person is himself—he and Darren have been huge fans of the cartoon Fireman Sam ever since Cameron fell in love with fire trucks and they assigned characters in the cartoon for the whole family—Cameron is Station Officer Steele who has a moustache, hence the little lines that you see Cameron drawing on the first face above the mouth!
Cameron’s love of Mickey Mouse has brought our family to Disneyland again and again. This time we’re staying at the Disneyland Resort and our hotel’s best feature undoubtedly is the breakfast with Mickey and Friends. It’s our first morning here and the kids are so excited to see Mickey. They got to take pictures with Mickey and then this!
Cameron has been going to bed late at night. He has never been a huge night sleeper, which is probably why he’s a champion napper—he could nap for more than 3 hours in the afternoon, so most of the time we have to wake him up at 4:30pm if he hasn’t woken up by himself to “protect” his night sleep. Since he goes to bed so late, I decided Vincent and I should take him shopping tonight after Darren went down. Vincent discovered one of our travel duffel bags had a hole when we came back from our recent Tahoe trip, but we’re going to Disneyland this weekend, so we need to buy a new one. The only times Cameron would go out late at night after dinner would be to catch a flight, so when we arrived at the nearby mall, Cameron asked, “Is this San Diego?” 😉 When he realized we’re shopping for new luggage, he decided to try out the one we like!
Darren was three and a half when he first tried skiing and it worked out pretty well. Cameron only just turned three and he’s not as strong as Darren, and definitely much more cautious, but we wanted to put him on skis sooner rather than later since we plan to go up to Tahoe at least two more times this season. Vincent took Cameron to Soda Springs’ Planet Kids today for a half-hour ski lesson just like Darren’s first time on skis. Cameron’s a trooper—he’d fall and when asked if he wanted to go again, he’d say no, but when the instructor and Vincent said “Let’s go”, he’d say “OK.” Even onlookers applauded and praised his effort!
Alas it’s our last day in Koh Samui! We have an early evening flight, so we took our time packing. The kids, of course, are no help with packing—except I guess on this occasion, they’re helping with lightening our load! Well, Uncle Alwin’s load to be exact. They found Uncle Alwin’s potato chips in his villa and got to work. It’s not often we see Cameron chowing down with such gusto but once in a while when he gets his hands on chips, he’ll look like an eating champion. For those of you who don’t understand Cantonese, Vincent and I were giving the kids a hard time when Alwin walked in catching them eating his chips!
Today’s beach day! Since our hotel doesn’t have a very nice beach, Alwin asked our butler Yod to book a minivan to take us to one of the better beaches. The kids were all ready to go with beach toys in hand, but the minivan was an hour and a half late! Good thing the kids were pretty good about having fun anywhere, even if it’s just a hotel lobby!
Ironically, these beach toys didn’t get much use because the beach Yod recommended, which was really far away, was probably even worse than our hotel’s! The minivan driver actually warned us, but since he was so late, we assumed he didn’t want to drive that far. He took us to another beach for lunch, but after lunch it was Cameron’s and Jayden’s naptime already, hence this look on our ride back!
Cameron fell in love with fire trucks a little over a year ago at Gilroy Gardens (I didn’t catch a photo of him in a fire truck but when he was riding in one and heard other kids yell “Fire, fire!”, he was hooked!) When Auntie Selene asked me what birthday gift Cameron would like, it was a no-brainer. I couldn’t wait for Cameron to see his gift—kids these days are spoiled indeed, but the excitement and joy they get out of a beloved toy is contagious! Thanks Auntie Selene!
