Maya lost her first tooth today

A big milestone. Finally lost her First tooth. Let's see how much money she's going to get from the tooth fairy.

Tooth is out!!

Maya's Note on Her Door

Maya's friend Ethan comes over today for swimming lessons with Chuck. Maya and Ethan always play very well together and they like to have privacy. ;)

Here is the note Maya puts on her door, prohibiting Luca from entering the room. She and Ethan are playing with legos.

Finally, the kids are sleeping...

After eating a dragging-on-forever dinner ( the kids eventually settled on chicken tikka masala mama bought from the farmer's market on Wednesday - they ate that for dinner, too, the day before yesterday), and making a lot of noises and fusses, Maya and Luca finally understand that they have to and must go to bed. Maya insists on sleeping on Luca's bed. Luca's butt hurts from diaper rush and his legs hurt from heat rash. He refuses to take a shower, but eventually succumbs to mama's insistence. It takes forever for Maya to put on her pjs. Finally they climb up to Luca's bed. Maya closes her eyes as soon as the light is turned off, but Luca continues to play with his airplanes. Ten minutes later, Luca gets up and runs downstairs, crying for daddy (who's still at work. He's had a vey busy week.) on top of his lungs. Mama gives him a good massage to calm him down. 

At 9:30pm, the kids are finally sleeping.

Maya and her friends

Angelia

They play together a lot. And the moms see each other a lot, too, and they help each other pick up the kids if one is late and cannot make it to the school on time. Angelia, like Maya, is strong-willed, and fancies being a princess. They two tend to have conflicts when they play together, though most of the time they play really well. Sometimes they say they don't want to be friends anymore but only to reconcile several seconds later.

Kendra (in yellow tank) lives two streets down from us. She likes to play with Maya though Maya sometimes plays cool and doesn't play with her. Two weeks ago, Maya had a playdate at Kendra's house and she loved it.

Isabella likes to play with Maya, too. She's a good gymnast.

Dakoda, Cin (Maya loves playing with Cin. Cin and her sister came to our house for a playdate not long ago), Maya, Angelia, and Katty (Katty is very sweet to Maya. On the day of Pirates Walk, when I asked Katty while I was volunteering at the school where Maya was, she stopped what she was doing and looked everywhere to find Maya. )

Jordan. He's a good friend of Maya, too. He's sweet boy. He once whispered to me when I was volunteering at Maya's class that he wished I were his mommy.

Ray (the boy) and Maya have playdates from time to time.

A post dedicated to Luca

Luca is very daddy-focused these days, especially at bedtime. When asked to choose between mommy and daddy at bedtime, his answer is always daddy. It's almost unfair to Maya because she sometimes wants daddy to put her to bed too. His napping at home is becoming challenging - it can take mommy up to two hours to make him nap during daytime. It's frustrating to mommy, of course. Maybe it's a new phase. He brings toys (trains, airplanes, cars; different fancies on different days) to school every day and it's impossible for mommy to take them away without making him crying. But he usually gives them to his teacher Desiree after mommy leaves - he's realized that he cannot play with sand or other toys with both of his hands full. He's still going strong on Terrible Two, throwing a tantrum easily if his needs weren't met.  But he's also very polite and sweet, saying thank you, please and sorry all the time. And planting a kiss on mommy's face without being asked. 

New acquisition. He's watched Planes probably 50 times already and still hasn't gotten tired of the movie.

Maya and Luca like to share.

He's big on Lego. Maya and daddy build, and Luca plays and destroys their masterpieces

When will the pizzas ready? We are HUNGRY!

Luca doesn't look too happy. Did Maya just take a toy away from him?

Luca got a haircut several days ago. Daddy took him to his salon, but Luca didn't want to have anything to do with haircut. When he got home, he was totally cooperative when Daddy shaved his head. Maya had fun touching his head and calling him a baby. She even went to her room to fetch a photo of her and Luca when Luca was a real baby.

On this photo, Luca is trying to fix his bike which has a flat tire. He loves helping daddy with fixing and repairing.

 Daddy is a pretty good hair stylist.

Yes, that's Luca's baby photo.

Luca has a lot of fun walking around with mommy's running shoes…till Maya grabs a toy from him. In another year or two, it won't be so easy for Maya to take things away from Luca.

Part of Luca's airplane collection. He calls the yellow and the dark-blue airplanes Blinking. One day he woke up his nap, asking for Blinking. At that time, mommy had no idea what he was referring to. He cried like crazy, asking for Blinking again and again and again. Mommy offered all kinds of toys, but he wouldn't stop crying. Finally he saw the two airplanes on a table, he reached for them and laughed immediately.

That's how he usually sleeps. He still uses pacifier at night - it's difficult to make him quit. Mommy's experience with Maya's quitting doesn't work for him. (See that big blue monster truck? Yet another new acquisition. Poor Luca had to go to emergency and be hospitalized for one night recently. The truck was Maya's well-wish gift. He loved it and ran it up and down on daddy.)

Maya graduated from Kindergarden today!

Dearest Maya, congratulations!!!

From now on, please remember to address Maya as a First Grader. :) The long summer is ahead. Maya will go to an art studio not far from home, for the first two weeks of June, then she'll go to Galileo, a nature/adventure camp, for one week. Then it's July 4th - maybe we will find a good place to see fireworks. Then we'll go to Toronto for a little over two weeks to see Maya's Dajiu and his family (their kids are 4 and 2). Then it's summer camps again though Mommy hasn't signed her up for them yet - it's tons of research around summer camps, if you ask mommy. It's crazy, isn't it? All this money, all these structured playing…...In old days (daddy threw mommy a "not-again-you-sound-like-an-80-year-old" look), kids, during summer breaks, were roaming in their neighborhoods without parental guidance like wild animals…

So for today, parents watch videos of the kids and their activities. Then it's time for the ceremony. Then the kids get to play at the playground, wearing swimsuits and playing with water, enjoying fruit and popsicles (Maya has had three popsicles during the 3-hour playing - mommy was counting).