Cameron Lo

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!

At our breakfasts with Mickey earlier this week, Minnie was there too, but we didn’t manage to get a family picture with her. Today is our fourth and last day at Disneyland/California Adventure—we catch our flight back home tomorrow. As we were walking out of Disneyland to return to the hotel for the kids’ bath and dinner, we noticed Minnie was available for picture-taking. We waited in line and the short wait was well worth it—she gave our biggest Disney fan Cameron lots of hugs and this perfect farewell souvenir!

Today we’re meeting friends at California Adventure, but first we’re all meeting for breakfast with Mickey and Friends! The protocol is—before you get seated for breakfast, you have a photo op with Mickey. We didn’t get a family picture with Mickey yesterday morning, but thanks to our friends, we got one this morning!

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!

It’s Chinese New Year’s Eve tonight, so we went out for dinner with MaMa, Grandaunt, Granduncle, and Auntie Selene. Cousin Charisse and Uncle Ivan were having dinner with his family, so Darren and Cameron got to spend some extra quality time with Auntie Selene tonight! In fact, I just realized this may be the first—and long overdue—picture of just the three of them!

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!

Just kidding! First of all, it’s unpaid. Second, it’s not competitive. But it IS our kids’ first photo shoot for Vincent’s company, FabKids, because they’re finally launching boys’ clothing in addition to girls’! I don’t know how the professional photographer’s shots turned out, but Vincent has a couple good ones of Cameron and Darren!

Cameron had yet another birthday celebration today—this time at school! I tried to get on the school’s calendar in December before we left for Hong Kong, but another mom had beaten me to it for her daughter’s birthday and frankly I had so much to do before our trip that it worked out well to have a belated celebration instead.

But with our jetlag coming back from Hong Kong earlier this week, I almost forgot to bake the mini M&M cookies last night to bring to school this morning! I had found a recipe on M&M’s website the day before and noticed it’s a different one than what I had used in the past because it asks for cocoa, but I thought it’d just taste more chocolate-y. When I added the cocoa to the flour mix though, I realized our cocoa mix had mocha in it! 🙁 The cookies actually turned out quite tasty and both Cameron and Darren liked them, but I decided the grown-up taste might not be a hit and I don’t want fellow parents calling me about their kids skipping their naps! So I decided to whip up another batch of kid-friendly M&M cookies the next morning. I cut it real close, but I made it! Happy birthday again my little Cameron! 🙂

Since our return flight from Koh Samui to Hong Kong was delayed by three hours, we actually spent New Year’s Eve through the countdown on the plane (although no one counted down)! By the time we checked into our hotel in Hong Kong, it was almost 2am. Cameron finally couldn’t stand it and fell asleep in the taxi from the airport to the hotel. When all the hustling and bustling of settling into our hotel room woke him up, he had a major meltdown—I was so afraid we’d get a call from the front desk because of complaints from our neighbors! Amidst these chaos, no one remembered to hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign on our doorknob, so bright and early the next morning, the hotel staff rang our doorbell twice to ask if we had laundry! Cameron woke up crying—I wanted to cry too since I didn’t even get to bed until well past 3am and I got woken up by people on our floor walking and talking loudly around 7am. But kids are amazing—for our New Year’s Day lunch with all my cousins—they’re still fresh-faced and full of energy! Happy New Year!