Cameron loves his swim buddy Amara and likes to do everything with her in class, including sitting right next to her—a little too close really! Thankfully Amara doesn’t seem to mind and her mom and I get a good laugh out of it every single time. Today Dad was able to step in for me, so I could finally document this stalker tendency, which Darren also exhibits sometimes with girls he likes! I guess it runs in the family! 😉
Cameron got his first invitation to a classmate’s birthday party—all the birthday parties he’d been to are our friends’ kids’ or Darren’s friends’, but since he started school this fall, he’s made his own friends and has his own parties to go to now! The party venue is quite popular among parents and kids and has lots of activities including huge bouncy houses and rock climbing. As much of a daredevil Darren sometimes is, he’s never wanted to rock-climb—once he got all geared up like Cameron did here, but then he didn’t want to climb! Cameron’s usually the timid one, but my boy is full of surprises—when we asked him to rock-climb, he readily agreed and did great! Way to go Cameron!
Finally the day has come! Cameron is officially riding his trike all by himself! I’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time now because I remember Darren reaching this milestone when he was 2 years and 7 months old. Cameron is 2 years and 10 months old already. I guess it’s not a big difference, plus it’s somewhat understandable since even though Darren is a bit of a klutz, at least he’s very active and pretty strong. Cameron’s more mellow—not to mention he’s so skinny it makes sense that his scrawny legs really couldn’t manage to pedal the trike along. He also didn’t have Darren’s natural instinct to steer in the right direction and would always ride off the path into trees, rocks, etc. (at a very slow speed of course.) I’m thankful Darren’s a good rider and probably an inspiration to Cameron to ride on his own. Now I just need to get a bike for myself—I’ve always wanted one with a basket :)—so I can ride with my boys!
Ever since we made a pit stop in Monterey on our way to Santa Barbara in January, we’ve wanted to visit Monterey again. So I planned a weekend stay during Darren’s days off from school. After a two-hour drive, the kids needed to run around! Perfect time for checking out Dennis the Menace playground, which I had heard so much about. Even though the famous authentic train exhibit that kids could normally climb on was off-limits, the kids pretended the play structure that had a bell and ladder to be a train and had endless fun.
And then there was a giant slide, which Cameron enjoyed surprisingly—he’s usually the cautious child, but I guess with Darren in front of him, he wasn’t scared. I didn’t manage to catch their faces in the video of them coming down the slide, but you could hear Cameron’s laughing and that’s music to my ears. 🙂
After a bit of practice at his school’s Halloween party, Cameron is ready for some real trick-or-treating in our neighborhood!
This is the first house that the kids decided to trick-or-treat at:
There were a few houses that were too scary for Cameron, but he knew to stay away from those. After an hour of trick-or-treating, the kids came home loaded with candy! Since it’s a special night, they got to enjoy their favorite sweets, which were M&Ms and a lollipop for Cameron.
I indulged him further by introducing him to my favorite—Kit Kat—and he loved it of course! 🙂
Since Cameron only goes to school Tuesday and Thursday mornings, his school’s Halloween party is today. The festivities kicked off with a “performance” by the kids. I was only paying attention to Cameron and the kids right around him, so I don’t know if others were more on top of it than my little one, but I’d think this piece was pretty hard for 2-year-olds in general.
The real performance would come later after Cameron was done trick-or-treating in the school’s administrative offices…
…and eating his loot…
…when he’s washing his hands!
Actually he normally could sing in both English and Mandarin pretty much perfectly, but he bungled it today. Still got an appreciative audience’s praise though! 🙂
Cameron started going to Music Together classes when he was just a year and 1 month old—that’s 1 year and 9 months ago—and Darren has been going a year before that, but I rarely video them in class because the teacher requires a high level of parent participation. Today though when Cameron started spinning to the music, I just couldn’t help but pull out my iPhone—he’s so silly and happy! And of course at the end he made the requisite request to view his own performance!
That’s how Cameron greets his swim buddy—Amara—who was in Cameron’s first swim class when he was 8 months old and has been in the same class with him since then. Cameron has grown to love Amara. 😉 Today we ran into Amara and her mom at the grocery store after swim class (in which he got his blue ribbon!) The two kids had so much fun together—shopping and dancing to the music in the store—I had to invite Amara over for a playdate, scheduled for less than 2 weeks away! 🙂
When I came home with Darren from his gymnastics class today, I found Cameron holding court over his firemen, fire trucks, and other vehicles, reading them his fire truck book. I have no doubt he’s inspired by Darren who loves to play teacher with his stuffed animals, but Cameron’s spin on it is pretty creative too! I videoed Cameron for two and a half minutes, but as Vincent had instructed not to go over 30 seconds in the interest of our readers’ time, I created the following clip—yes I cheated a little bit! 😉
Gymboree is usually quite good at pretend-play with their limited equipment and toys. Today the famous Gymboree log became a choo choo train, which Cameron loved of course. But it turned out what he loved more was falling off the train! Not very realistic—I hope—but clearly Gymboree is even better at making little ones laugh!
