Memorial day weekend

Highlights from the 3-day weekend:

From hipster...


... to diva.


Hanging out with BFF at the park:


At a park enjoying a graduation celebration of a friend:


With the graduate:


Blueberry yogurt moustache:


Amazing video of Rosie enjoying cha (Vietnamese sausage) and then practicing our new family call:

Playin with bubbles with Vavô:


Leading Vavó around the house:


Face timing with Aunties who just graduated from UD (undergrad and masters). We are so proud of them!


Evening walk. Rosie learned how to use her pockets!


Enjoying a Jamba snack:

Random shots from the last week

At a high school ultimate tournament in Santa Cruz. Rosie had so much fun chasing down frisbees, eating people's food, and making friends;


Friends like this boy who was super sweet with her. I think this conversation went something like this: "I've trapped you with my cuteness. Now bring me more kettle corn. Peeeeeese"


Met up with Auntie and Rosie's cousins at Santana Row:


New favorite park! It has this awesome water feature, plenty of shade in the playground, sand galore (mixed feelings on that one) and grass! Met up with a good friend G and his mama J:


Mesmerized by leaves:


Tonka truck! This was DaddyO's from when he was Rosie-sized:


Now mesmerized by pine trees:

Location:Iris Ct,San Jose,United States

18 months

Year and a half! Here are the highlights:

• Chatterbox! Rosie is finding her voice. Words (or variations of them) include: hi, buh-bye, thank you, water, bounce, Dada, Mama, Vavô, Vavó, Ba, Ong, Elmo, Big Bird, up, bu bu, apple, cheese, pan (bread), more/más, bubbles, yeah, no no. She also tries to mimic sounds. We are working on the alphabet (we can get to D and then it all kind of sounds the same).
• Signing: new signs include: melon, bird, flower, penguin, giraffe.
• Comedian: Rosie loves to laugh and to get other's to laugh too! I think she takes after Di T and loves to join in on the fun just for the sake of a good belly-shaker!
• Leads the way: She will gladly take your finger and lead you to her destination. This might include her patting the seat next to her to have you sit down, walking us to our bed as a gentle hint that she would much rather snuggle with us there instead of the crib, and directing us to the fruit basket.
• Games: Hide and Seek is forever being perfected. Coffeehouse. 
• Books: Rosie still becomes engrossed with books (yay!). Her all-time favorites right now include the Tails book by Matthew Van Fleet (though she has loved it literally to pieces), Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox, and most Sandra Boynton books (especially Barnyard Dance).
• Musica: Rosie loves music! She loves to sing (i.e. have sung to her): If You're Happy and You Know It, Open Shut Them, Kia Con Buom Vang, Rubber Duckie, Elmo Song, Head Shoulder Knees and Toes, the Barney I Love You song (much to DaddyO's dismay), to name a few. She also likes to shake her little booty. Her dance moves mostly revolve around fist pumping, rocking back and forth, and stamping her feet. 
• Teeth! She has at least 10 teeth, though it's something hard to get a good look in there. She's got 1 monster molar with others cutting through. Looks painful! She doesn't particularly enjoy brushing her teeth, something to work on.
• Walks. Most afternoons Rosie and Mommy take a walk up and down the street. Rosie usually doesn't want to come back down. In fact, I'm pretty sure if I let her have her way she'd go straight for the library! On our walks, we stop to see what flowers are in bloom, pet tree bark, chat with neighbor people and pets, and sit on people's stoops. 
• Water-crazy. Rosie loves to be in the water. On hot days we've set up her mini pirate boat pools and a crazy water sprinkler. We also found a great park that has a great water feature. She is become more fearless when it comes to water-in-the-face and doesn't shy away. In fact, I usually have to take her kicking and screaming a little.
• Clean up: A pretty random but funny memory to record is that she likes to throw things in the trash and clean up. She will sometimes dump things out of its packaging just so she can use the trash can. Once she was playing in the living room and she walked into the kitchen, pulled the hand towel, wiped spilled water, then came back to attempt to get the towel back on the rack. She also spent 20 minutes mesmerized by the vacuum. Now if we could only teacher to change her own diaper...

Rosie continues to be super loving. She gives the sweetest kisses and the firmest hugs. She comforts you by patting your back when you're holding her. We're so lucky to have family (both near and far) and friends (both of the toddler and adult variety) who love her so!

Southern love

We had a special visitor this weekend, Auntie C! It was great getting to spend a day with her, which included baking, early morning storytime, biking the Los Gatos trail, and water fun in the backyard. Come back soon!

p.s. in this video you can see where Rosie is really starting to perform. She made us laugh when she was trying to drink the water so here you can see her repeat her performance. Each time she does she looks straight at Auntie C for her reaction. This is both funny and a bit unsettling because that means we are entering a whole new phase of Rosie the Ham.

Happy bday Cousin

Happy birthday to you Cousin A!

Dada and park

After Rosie first said "Dad" about 4 months ago, Rosie decided to use "mama" as the general term to mean family...until today!

She was being super sweet this evening after a fun afternoon at the park with friends.

Back to the Future

May 16,2012, almost 18 months:



March 29, 2011, 4 months:

Never fully dressed without a smile

Baby after my own heart.

Chatty

Testing Rosie on her vocab, of the animal sound, food, family, and miscellaneous categories
Warning: it's 4 minutes long! No time for editing.

Mother's Day II

Many weekends, especially holiday weekends, we often end up hitting the road for a day trip. This weekend we ended up staying close to home and it was lovely! Yesterday we relaxed at home, had Rosie's friend over to play, ended up just hanging out on the front lawn with friends and neighbors, then had pizza on the side yard.
Today we started the day with a bike ride to breakfast, then to the Japanese Friendship Garden.









Then we headed to Happy Hollow to visit the animals and rides.






With a sleepy Rosie in tow, we then headed home to rest. Rosie doesn't transfer out of the bike seat very well so we decided to bring the seat in.



Our next stop was to OSH to pick up supplies for our veggie garden. We lost steam after that though, so we have a good start to the project but haven't broken ground in our planter box quite yet.
We ended the weekend with an impromptu BBQ spring roll party with a bunch of friends. And finishing the 2nd book if the Hunger Games :)

A great weekend! Mommy is one happy mama.

Giggle juice

We had Baby P over to play today. The big hit was the hose, which was apparently spewing out giggly juice.

Chuck E. Cheese's

Rosie had her first Chuck E. experience tonight. As part of a school fundraiser, we immersed ourselves in the sea of tokens, tickets, and constant buzzing and ringing of the game machines. Rosie seemed to cautiously enjoy it and was a little overwhelmed by sensory overload (or am I just projecting?). Moreso than the games itself, Rosie found endless entertainment in putting tokens in the machines and collecting tickets. While it was a lot to take in, she did seem to really enjoy herself. And is sleeping pretty well now! Hooray.

Hot week

It's been beautiful in San José, almost too hot in fact. A few highlights:

Saturday we hung out in Los Gatos (fountains below) before heading to Livermore where Rosie had a playdate with Auntie G, Uncle R, and Cousin A while Mom and Dad had a date night.



We spent the night so we could soend the day celebrating Vavô's birthday!





Monday-hot! Need to cool down in the water:


Playdate with BFF P:


Rosie is such a sweetheart. She loves to give love in kiss, hug, high 5, or cuddle form. She's also developing her opinions (like not wanting us to break apart her food) and loves to lead us to what she wants.

Love this girl! If only her sleep didn't regress this week. Bah!

Sketch

Auntie N's beauitiful artwork!

Transcontinental coffee party

Tonight we had our second coffeehouse in the living room. Notable people in attendance:
DaddyO, Bug, Ong Ba Ngoai, and Di T! It was pretty amazing not only being able to have coffee with DaddyO for the first time, but to feed snacks and coffee through the iPad to Connecticut! Rosie was pretty good at aiming the spoon into Di T and Ong's mouth and clinking glasses with Ba.

She also mastered the post-sip "ahhhhh!" and the lip smacking after having an imaginary snack I imagined we were eating something like xoi. Who knows what went through Rosie's head!

No pics or videos this time. Just a sweet sweet memory.

So fresh and so clean

Rosie learned a new skill today: