Is it Caturday again?

Time flies!

Happy Caturday 7-16

Morning Nap

Mochi waking up from her morning nap. I love that Mochi loves the blanket I crocheted for her

Mochi last week

Although Mochi tended to stay away from the heat most of the days, she's been enjoying the sunshine in her usual spots. I love that sunlight coming through the tree. The light made Mochi look even prettier and rather mystical. One day though, she looked annoyed and confused to see all these toys in her spot. Little Guy, on the other hand, thought Mochi took his toys and begged her to return his toys☺

Mochi loves sunbathing😽

Hello beautiful☺

Toy Train Tracks

Mochi seems to think that these curves are made just for her

What Little Guy Read This Month

I love books. Reading was one of my favorite activities in my childhood (still is but sadly little time to read). I even made myself a little reading nook in a closet for a comfortable, uninterrupted reading time since I shared a room with my brothers. I love that books can teach you many things, cultivate imagination and quite literally take you anywhere you'd like to go. One thing I definitely would like my son to take after me would be the love of reading (hopefully in both of his languages!), and naturally I enjoy our story time a lot. Luckily Little Guy seems to like reading too :)

So I've decided to share a few books Little Guy read and liked each month here on my blog. I've finally signed up for Goodreads and share the rest of the books he read, some of which he liked and some didn't so much. So please check those out too. I hope one of those books will turn out to be your favorite.

OK, without further ado, here are some of the books we enjoyed this month in no particular order. 

Goldy Luck and The Three Pandas by Natasha Yim

This is such a cute and funny book. As you can imagine it's based on the Goldilocks and the Three Bears story but the main girl in this book is a Chinese girl celebrating Chinese New Year, and the three bears are, naturally, pandas. I like that after making a mess at the panda family's house, Goldy regretted that she ran off and actually went back to their house to apologize and make amends. It's a feel good story for a new year and you can have a glimpse at how other culture celebrates New Year too. I'd think it's a little lengthy for really small children but for this one Little Guy didn't mind it at all. 

Snowmen at night by Caralyn Buehner

A little boy sees the snowman he built looked a bit "off" the next morning, and wonders what the snowman was doing all night. It turns out the snowmen around the neighborhood gathered together and had a lot of fun, like snowball fights, playing baseball etc. This is such a cute way to look at a sad part of making a snowman. Instead of feeling bad about it melting, children can imagine all kinds of activities the snowmen did and that is why they look a little different the next morning. When it was time to return this book to the library, Little Guy actually cried :(

 Hansel and Diesel by David Gordon

This is another one of those stories that's based on a fairy tale. I got this one out from the library because Little Guy likes the trucks and Diesel in Thomas & friends, and he liked the story a lot. The storyline is pretty much the same as Hansel and Gretel but instead of being abandoned in the woods, the brother and the sister decided to go find fuel on their own for the family, came across a fancy gas station and met the wicked winch. It's a funny adaptation of a fairy tale.

You're a Crab! A Moody Day Book by Jenny Whitehead

Last but not least, this is my current favorite :) The book illustrates different emotions comparing to sea animals, for example, crabby crab, silly jellyfish, mean shark, and mopey manatee. The best part I like is that when a child just feels like left alone, they can be a hermit crab and Mom will be one too and stay by their side until they feel better. When Little Guy feels a bit moody, we make a silly puffy fish face or do the octopus hug like in the book, which helps us a lot. Being able to learn names of sea animals is a plus too. The only thing I'd have to say about this book is, because the crab looks scary in the cover picture, Little Guy initially thought this was a scary monster type of book and took a lot of my effort to convince him to read it.

Please also check my goodreads page and Little Guy's "bookshelf" to find more books we read. Thanks.

Pipe Cleaner Christmas Ornaments

It's Christmas Eve. We've made Christmas cookies, We've read a few Christmas stories (e.g. Llama Llama Jingle Bells. Cute book). We've watched quite a few Thomas & friends Christmas episodes. And we've made lots of Christmas crafts at the library. Among them, Little Guy liked and was good at making these pipe cleaner ornaments, so I got the materials and we've been making lots more at home. I was impressed that he threaded the beads through with little difficulty and was actually enjoying doing it. This seems to be a good practice for fine motor skills and to learn colors. And the end results are beautiful ornaments. Love it.

Materials

12" Pipe cleaners (need three 6" pipe cleaners for each ornament)

Beads

String (if you hang from a tree)

How to Make

1. Cut a pipe cleaner in half by scissors and make three half pieces (Mama did this in our case)

2. Lay the three half-size pipe cleaners like a snowflake and twist them together at the center to keep its shape (Mama did this too)

3. String some beads

4. If hang from a tree, fold one end a bit to make a loop and put a string

That's it!

To my adult's mind, I thought clear sparkly beads on silver pipe cleaners would make the prettiest ornaments and suggested that we buy clear beads. But Little Guy insisted on colorful solid color ones, so I obliged. It seems Little Guy was right. What he made were most beautiful, if I do say so myself :)

I hope everyone will have a wonderful Christmas/winter holiday :)

Happy 3 Year Old!

I hope all of you are having a joyous holiday season :)

Our family celebrates one additional event during this fun but busy season, which is Little Guy's birthday! And he turned three! He's so proud he's three now and telling everyone he meets that he's three years old using his three little fingers. so cute.

If you've been following my facebook page or instagram account, it's quite apparent that Little Guy LOVES Thomas and his friends. So naturally this year's birthday theme was set to Thomas and his friends. I found a few Thomas themed cakes on pinterest, but Little Guy liked this one the most so we decided to make one. It turned out really fun and cute! 

Following the original picture, I used graham crackers and mini oreos for the trains to carry the cupcakes, a whole piece for the top base, two quarter pieces to connect the mini oreo wheels. Differently from the original, I used melted chocolate to connect all the pieces (and this was super yummy).

Little Guy's new train buddy, Stephen. Looks like he's quite a popular guy among Thomas fans. I heard a few boys saying "Look! Stephen!" when Little Guy was carrying Stephen while shopping.

For the main meal, I used this train onigiri kit we found on our recent trip to Japan to make some sushi to keep the train theme.

And a couple of train sandwiches, cut out by train shaped cookie cutters.

Little Guy loved his birthday so much that he kept saying "I love my birthday!" for the next few days. We're so happy he liked his birthday party. Happy Happy Birthday Little Guy.