Cameron Lo

I was so glad after the Ugly Duckling show we stumbled upon a quiet spot with favorable lighting for picture-taking. What I’d like most every year for Mother’s Day is a nice picture with my sons!

Vincent had to take a lot of pictures to get a couple good ones for me and the kids because either I looked terrible or the kids weren’t looking at the camera or both, but of course the first one I took of him and the boys, the kids were adorable! No fair!

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…

…and Darren a bunny again!

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. 🙂

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!

4:30pm on a Sunday afternoon—time to wake up our baby from his delicious nap! Big brother Darren is always up for that fun task—he’s gentle though, touching Cameron with one finger on his head. It took a while to rouse him! While Darren dropped his afternoon nap promptly at 3 years and 3 months (I remember distinctly because he had just started at his first preschool that was only a morning program in September 2010 and I thought that was perfect since he was still napping and then a month later he sang and strip-danced in his crib for two hours, mooning me on the baby monitor—yes that was a clear sign I should let him out of the crib and off the hook for afternoon naps), Cameron thankfully is still napping at 3 years and 4 months. As Vincent said, kids are at their cutest when they’re sleeping, hence sleeping beauty posts are popular on this blog. 😛

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!)

My childhood friend Katherine and her family arrived from Hong Kong yesterday, so today we went to the San Francisco Zoo together. One of the biggest hits with the kids is the children’s zoo. There’s a coin-operated animal feed dispenser—I didn’t have any change on me, but amazingly, Katherine the tourist had lots! The kids clamored for her quarters, including Cameron who has definitely grown up! A younger Cameron wouldn’t be feeding a goat, even if it’s just dropping the food on the ground!

That said, Katherine pointed out her kids weren’t feeding the goats out of their hands either unlike fearless Darren!

The other big hit was, surprisingly, a rope climber! We were on our way to lunch when we walked past this attraction and all five kids couldn’t get enough of it!

Even when we were leaving the zoo after seeing lots of animals and riding the little puffer train, we caught another big hit—bubbles!

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! 🙂

It’s the kids’ second time visiting Fairyland. It’s a far cry from Disneyland, Legoland, and even Gilroy Gardens, all of which the kids frequent. But I’m happy to report the kids love a humble, run-down amusement park all the same! They only got on a few simple rides, half-listened to/watched a puppet show, and even had to wait a long time for their lunch, but they had so much fun just climbing on anything and everything!

Last weekend was the first weekend Cameron went to ski school! Kids have to be at least 3 years old to attend ski school at Northstar and lucky for us Cameron is a winter baby, so he’s just old enough for the ski school’s youngest program called Lucky Stars. Cameron started off on the bunniest of slopes in the Northstar Village last weekend, which is a gondola ride away from the mountain where we were skiing, plus we were told he’d only be skiing for an hour out of the 2.5-hour morning program, so we didn’t visit him during ski school. (Cameron did go to full-day ski school last Sunday, but we didn’t manage to get late checkout and had to pack up everything on time besides squeezing in ski lessons ourselves and tracking down a friend who took a spill and ended up with ski patrol!) But yesterday Vincent found out when he tried to pick up Cameron at the end of the half-day ski school that Cameron was doing so well that the instructor brought him to the mountain! As luck would have it, we got super late checkout today, so we finally had time to check up on Cameron. We found him on his way to lunch, so I quickly snapped a picture of him without even having time to focus the camera. The staff photographer consoled me and said Cameron has “a ton of pictures” on the resort’s website, but when I looked it up, mine turned out to be the best of my lucky star—lucky me! 🙂