If only a nap could make us all so energetic.....

On the drive home from the aquarium, Alex took a nap...not a long nap, but it sure gave his energy back to him! I didn't get the camera out until this had gone on for quite awhile. :-) A lack of energy is never something that Alex suffers from, that is for sure. He runs around and tries to engage his sister all of the time. As you can see, she often does not know what to think about it.

Aquarium by the Bay

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy Chinese New Year! Hope that the year of the ox is a good one for you. It's hard to believe that last Chinese New Year's Eve we were in the hospital and Alex arrived on that night. Luckily, Esmond and Tessa had hosted the Chinese New Year dinner the weekend before, just in case that happened! What good foresight. In just two weeks, we will be celebrating Alex's 1st birthday....wow, time flies!

We had a good weekend here. Saturday was quite laid back with a trip to the Farmer's Market, a stop at Arizmendi for pizza and then a trip to the Emeryville Public Market in the evening for dinner. Lots of eating going on, now that I think of it. (We do cook, I swear!) The public market is basically a hawker's market, with cuisine from many different countries, ranging from India, to Vietnam, to Persia. We had some yummy samosas from the Indian stall, some tasty chicken curry from the Persian vendor and some Greek offerings as well. Alex had fun people watching and tasting our food.

Today we took Alex to the Aquarium by the Bay, which was a good outing. They had a neat tunnel basically under the aquarium, where you could see many fish, including tuna, halibut, skate, huge sturgeon and sardines, as well as a few types of sharks, starfish, and rays. Alex enjoyed tracking the fish and touching a starfish in the pools afterward. Water is one of his favorites, so aquariums are always a hit. We went out for lunch at Butterfly afterwards and had a tasty fish sandwich and a duo of clam chowder, which was rather ironic, since we had just visited the aquarium. The little monkey really liked the New England style clam chowder, as well as the fish from the fish sandwich. He is quite adventurous when it comes to food, which is great!

We plan to celebrate Chinese New Year with friends next weekend, since our original plan was to head up to Tahoe this weekend. The forecast had called for snow as of Friday, so we canceled the trip, thinking that the roads may be bad. In the end, it turned out to be a nice weekend here anyway. Hopefully we will get up to Tahoe soon. Happy New Year!

Pic of the Day

I Love My Sis Sis!

Alex is still completely enamored with his big sister, as you can see. He follows her everywhere, and spends alot of time giving her hugs and trying to get her to play. She's a good sport and really enjoys that he also shares food with her, by throwing it from the highchair.

Goofy!

Alex's latest goofiness on video.

Inauguration Day!

Thanks to Carrie and Johnny, for having us over for a great Inauguration Day brunch today! It was fun to get the babies together to help celebrate this historic moment for our country. There is a huge challenge ahead, but I trust that Obama will help to lead the government and the people of this country to better times. Welcome President Obama!

Tilden Little Farm

This afternoon Alex and I visited the Little Farm in Tilden Park with some other moms and babies, on yet another lovely January afternoon. This weather is incredible!! It is 75 degrees as I write this and we are really enjoying it. We had not been to the farm since July, when Alex was five months. At that time he didn't seem that interested, but today he was definitely intrigued by the cows and the chickens. He was not afraid at all and wanted to walk right up to them and check them out. Afterwards, we all had a picnic lunch at the little playground area and the babies had a great time in the sandbox and on the slide. What a great way to enjoy this day!

Another Zoo Trip....

On his second trip to the Oakland Zoo last week, Alex and I met up with his friend Eva and her mom Anna. We saw some very active chimps who were very vocal. Funny enough, the next day, I heard Alex making "uh, uh, uh" sounds, which were new for him and sounded very much like the chimps....we had watched them for quite a while, so maybe he picked up on their language skills!

Alex and Eva had fun in the Children's Zoo area looking at the potbellied pigs which were right at their eye level. You can see Alex pointing out the animals of interest to Eva. He is an excellent pointer-outer! He had fun playing with a dead sunflower, which he found in the garden, and decided to try out the rope spider web as well. He also practiced walking on the Hayward fault, which happens to run under the zoo. Luckily, there wasn't any shaking going on that afternoon!

Did you enjoy your weekend?

We hope you did, because we enjoyed ours. Yesterday we took a morning hike in Golden Gate National Recreation Area on the Land's End Coastal trail. It was beautiful and the weather was nice and crisp, with clear blue skies. There was no traffic on our drive into San Francisco, which made for an even nicer outing.

Alex is walking around everywhere now. He follows Xena wherever she goes, which is cute. As you can see from the photo above, he is almost her height now. They were looking out the front door, waiting for David to come back from outside. Too cute!

Fun Times

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On Tuesday, we visited the Oakland Zoo with a bunch of friends and had a great time. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous, so we wanted to take full advantage of every ounce of sunshine, before we are all stuck indoors because of the rain. We saw the elephants at feeding time, which was cool. The lions were napping and the meerkats came out to greet us when we arrived at their home. The majority of the time was spent at the Children's Zoo, which is quite nice. There is a playground area with a variety of "bug" structures to crawl on, as well as a big rope spider web which the kids can climb on.

Other activities include swapping lunches and sippy cups, playing with assorted tangerines, checking out the various plant life and shaking trees. Babies are very good at finding basic things which entertain them---who needs to just look at animals!

As you can see, visiting the zoo is quite tiring, as is drumming with your bowl and spoon!

A Nice Weekend

It was a nice weekend here in the Chng household. We had brunch at the Chia's house on Saturday, which was fun. It was great to get to hang out with the family. Nat is such a great big brother to Mika, who loves Elmo these days. Alex had a good time watching the older kids and enjoyed his new books which were a gift from the Chia's.

Today we took the bikes over to Alameda to ride around by the shoreline. While David was unloading everything, Alex had a fabulous time chasing seagulls around the parking lot. He was quite fascinated by the birds, who were being fed by some ladies nearby. Every time they would all start to fly, he would squat down to make sure they didn't hit his head. It was too cute! In fact, a lady came all the way over to us, from a picnic spot to let us know that we had such an adorable little boy.

He has definitely decided that walking is the preferred mode of transporting himself around. He is quite cautious and is aware of transitions between different types of floor covering, as well as thresholds, which is a good thing. He is starting to try to climb on things more and definitely does not stop exploring for a moment! Lately he also has started to say "un-un-un", which always seems to happen when the context would suggest that he is trying to say "no".

We are keeping busy here and hoping for a nice weather week, so that we can spend some more time outside.