Happy New Year! (wk 78)

Happy New Year Everyone! Whew, what a holiday break it's been for us. With Tyler being sick, Will still being sick, family get togethers and side trips, the last 2 weeks have been exhausting! I'm actually kind of relieved that things are going to get back to normal...

This week we took Tyler to see snow for the first time! Will and I used to be huge snowboarders, and it's been tough (for me anyway!) not being able to hit the slopes ever since I became pregnant in 2006. I miss snowboarding so much - and can't wait until Tyler can hit the slopes with us. Unfortunately, we'll probably have to wait a little longer since we've been thinking about baby #2 in the near future. Sigh. I had even just gotten a new set of snowboarding boots/bindings that I only got to use a couple times.

We waited until Tyler was no longer sick (thank goodness) and drove up to Snow Valley. I'm quite snobby about SoCal snow (only night boarded once at Big Bear MANY years ago) but there was definitely enough to enjoy a day of sledding. We bundled Tyler up in 3 layers of clothing and made the (surprisingly quick) hour drive to the mountains.

Here's Tyler with Will checking out the snow - he seemed a little uncertain since it was kind of slippery. Tyler had a really cute pair of mittens that he wore for a whole minute before he pulled them off. Luckily, it was pretty darn warm that day.Oops! First slip on the slow! Luckily Tyler was holding onto Will's hand and thought it was lots of fun. :)
Here's a video of Tyler walking around the snow - he seemed surprised when he fell and his hands hit the snow -so cold!

Sledding! We found a nice hilly place (across the street from a Tube park which was $10/person/hour - no thanks!) to take Tyler sledding. Here's Tyler and Will at the top of the hill on their first run.
Going down the hill with Will! Tyler really liked it! And when they got to the bottom, he sat there for a second, and then went (and signed) "More!"
Here's a video of Will going down the hill with Tyler.


It was exciting to see that Tyler is a big enough boy that he can sit on the sled and hold the sides himself. This made getting up the hill so much easier.
After a few times with Will, I took a run with Tyler. He loved it! My shrieking led to Tyler's happy squealing the whole day down.
Even when we got to the bottom of the hill and had stopped, Tyler was still squealing happily.
Here's a video of Tyler and myself going down the hill. You can hear him squealing if you ignore my shrieking. hehe.


After a while, Tyler was done with the sledding. He was happy lying flat on his back in the sled and having Will pull him around. I think he almost fell asleep!
Family picture of Tyler's first snow day! It was a fun day and we all had a great time!
Next day? The San Diego Zoo! I have no idea what prompted this, but I had been thinking of Legoland but had no idea admission was ~$65 a person! What!? I can get discount tickets through work so we decided to wait until another day.
My favorite animal to see at the zoo is the panda! Tyler was most interested in any exhibit that had a lot of water (like the hippos). Here we are checking out the pandas.
The pandas were so cute! They would just sit there facing you and eat and eat and eat. There was even one sleeping in a tree. A zookeeper warned the crowd to keep quiet since we didn't want to startle the panda into falling off the tree.
Here's a video of us at the panda exhibit. My favorite part is Tyler waving Hi to the little girl next to us.


Overall, the zoo trip was very tiring. V E R Y. Tyler wanted to be carried a lot of the time, which made things even harder for me with those steep hills! We may definitely wait a while before we visit again. :)

We also got to hang out with our good friends Shirley/Jessy that were in town from China. First was a Yogurtland run one (cold) night.
And then a BBQ New Years Eve at their place in West Covina. Yes! We actually deviated from Tyler's normal bedtime schedule and stayed there until almost 10pm. Gasp! I can't remember the last time Tyler was not in bed by then. We got to play Rock Band, and I found out that I am just as bad at the guitar in Rock Band as I am in Guitar Hero. How can this BE?!? I did find my groove singing though. That was fun. Tyler insisted on sitting on my lap while I played the guitar though...maybe that contributed to my suckiness...doubtful though.
We put Tyler in his PJs before the drive home so we could put him directly to bed when we got home. It worked out well and smoothly - whew!
And lastly some random videos (so many video posts this week!).

I had a post a while back with Tyler being introduced to Tickle-Me-Elmo... it didn't go so well - he was totally freaked out. Oh, how times have changed. Now he is an Elmo-aholic and says "Melmo, Melmo" all day. So I thought I would introduce this Elmo again - and it went great! Tyler even kissed and hugged him!


And this is just a silly video of Tyler playing with this balloon that my parents had brought over. It still had some helium left, but not too much, so it was like a bubble for him to chase. :)


Hope you all had a good week and are ready to return to normal life! Tyler actually said his first Chinese word yesterday. He'll say some in imitation sometimes, but yesterday he actually showed us he knew the meaning! He was eating grapes while I was doing dishes and when he finished them, he looked at me and said: "pu tao! pu toa!" That's Chinese for grapes. Hehe! Later Will came down and he finished more grapes and was saying "More! More!" and I said, "more what, Tyler?" and he said "putao putao putao!". Hehe, I was very excited. He's been talking more, but mostly English even though he understands when we tell him to do stuff in Chinese.

Darn, just remembered I forgot to brush his teeth tonight. Doh! It was a New Years Resolution of us to brush his teeth more. And also limit the videos on YouTube before bedtime. That we actually did tonight - he got to watch his favorite story "How Do Dinosaurs Go To Sleep" in his crib and then it was pat-pat-night-night to sleep. He tossed and whined for less than 5 minutes before he was asleep. YAY!

Have a good week everyone!