There was no school or mommy-and-me classes today (Memorial Day), so we decided to check out Children’s Fairyland. Vincent and Darren went ahead first because Cameron’s naptime is in the middle of the day. I already put Cameron down earlier than usual today and he cooperated and fell asleep very quickly, except he slept for 2.5 hours, which is not totally unusual, but I was definitely hoping he would be up sooner in order to have more playtime at Children’s Fairyland. So we kinda cut short his lunch—thankfully the traffic to the East Bay was great and we were able to get Cameron on couple rides (he would always wave hi to Dad whenever we passed by), see quite a few animals up close (which was a first for Cameron), and try a bite of ice cream sandwich (also a first)!
Cameron has a new favorite activity: buckling! He started with his own booster seat—he’d stand in front of his booster seat, ask someone to sit in a chair next to him, snap the buckles of his booster seat in place, and then ask for help undoing the buckles, so he could repeat this exercise over and over. Today when Darren was climbing into his highchair, I found the safety straps buckled, which I thought was weird. After Darren was done with his meal and let out of his highchair, Cameron walked over and started buckling Darren’s highchair’s safety straps and I realized why they were buckled earlier! Cameron could go at this so many times it’s amazing! Seems to me Cameron understands at a tender age couple important lessons in life: patience is a virtue and practice makes perfect! 🙂
These are a few of Cameron’s favorite things: balls, blueberries, any cleaning agents (from Kleenex to brooms (toy or the real thing)), a Mickey Mouse soft toy (that Darren could argue is his, but since Darren has a huge collection of soft toys, I insisted he let Cameron have this one because that’s the only one Cameron cares about), pacifiers (Cameron’s all-time favorite! Cameron’s really funny—sometimes he’ll pull out his pacifier and “share” it with me or Vincent–we’ll pretend to suck on it and look like we’re really enjoying it and he’ll giggle and ask for it back), and the “Row Row Row Your Boat” song. Today he combined two of his favorite things:
Yes, kicking a ball while holding onto his Mickey Mouse. 🙂
Today we went to an aviation museum to check out a model train show. However, the boys ended up spending most of the time in the play area of the museum. Cameron, equipped with his newly acquired walking ability, was roaming freely. He is still a little wobbly but he can definitely get from point A to point B. Darren probably won’t be able to push him around (literally) for long.
(Warning: The movie is quite long and might take a little time to load.)
Just two days after our first video of Cameron walking, here’s one where he’s walking farther and without falling at the end! 🙂 Vincent thinks that Cameron has been able to walk for a while now, but on one hand, we’re too protective (and busy!) and don’t let him walk and take risks as much as he should, and on the other hand, his personality is probably also more risk-averse (notice a chicken-and-egg problem here?) Vincent’s take on this makes sense as Cameron’s walking has improved so much in just two days—very exciting! 🙂
We’ve been eagerly awaiting Cameron to walk unassisted for a while now. He’s been cruising and walking while holding hands with someone for a long time, but he’s very conservative—when he has nothing or no one to hold on to or when he’s tired or when he wants to get to some place fast, he’ll just sit down and start crawling. So Vincent started training him to walk a few steps all by himself recently and every day Cameron is increasing his distance. He was a little bit too excited in this video, plus it’s take number 3 or 4 already, so he was flopping into Vincent’s lap at the end. But it’s definite progress day by day—we hope to show a video soon of him walking around without falling!
Normally, with exciting acts like these, the title of the post invariably says “first whatever”, in this case, self-feeding, but “unfortunately”, I’ve seen Cameron self-feed a while ago. I think I tried to record it, but if I remember correctly, by the time I got the camera, the moment was gone so to speak and Cameron was over it. It’s our fault we haven’t let him self-feed more often until tonight because he’s actually quite good at it even without practice! There’s a distinct possibility that Cameron will be feeding himself in the near future when we still have to feed Darren!
Actually Cameron discovered this cool exhibit first. He had the happiest smile when he saw how the lights lit up when he touched them. So I called Vincent over to video our happy little baby and of course Darren thought it was so much fun too and stole the spotlight in this video! Actually the exhibit plays several different songs and when you touch the lights, you control the playing of the song, but it was too loud in the museum for the kids to hear the music, which was a bummer–otherwise, it’d be even cooler!
We’ve been teaching Cameron to sign “more, more” when he wants more food, more music, more reading, etc. Couple days ago at the pediatrician’s, in order to keep Cameron happy so that the doctor and I could have a conversation, I was giving him some snacks. All of a sudden, I saw him sign “more, more” to me! I told the doctor she’s our witness of Cameron’s first signing! At home tonight, we served Cameron his favorite–blueberries–so he was signing again. Since he’s just starting, sometimes it appears to be a cross between clapping and signing “more, more”, so we were showing him to use his finger more clearly and he caught on right away! 🙂
We went to Hong Kong Disneyland today. We were planning to bring our nanny but she had to take a day off. We borrowed a double-stroller from our friend Vicky and ventured to Mickey’s home.
It was Cameron’s first time at Disneyland. Obviously he had no idea what he was in for. Even though he was young, we managed to put him on a few rides.
It was an exhausting day for everyone. However, it was well worth it as the kids had so much fun!
