Korean friends holiday dinner

Enjoying Christmas dinner with our Korean church friends.

Big fish in Chinatown

Big fish!

Walking around Chinatown checking out the fresh seafood.

Toy snake charmer

This week my sister went to one of those amusement parks and won a stuffed toy snake.

Daniel immediately claimed it as his new play buddy. I was amazed he wasn't scared of it. Instead he tried scaring me with it. LOL

Could Daniel be a snake charmer in training?

Mouse balloon

Recently I attended a Disney Limited Time Magic event, where they gave out Mickey Mouse shaped balloons. Of course I had to get one to bring home for Daniel.

Daniel was very happy to see a Mickey Mouse shaped balloon. He played with it until most of the air came out.

Overdue haircut

The time has come. The hair has been cut. He was overdue.

To ease the "pain" of the haircut, my son was treated to chicken nuggets and french fries. Fair trade I think yes?

Preschool lunch packing lessons

Now that my son is in a new preschool, I've had to learn to do some new and different things, like learning how to pack a lunch.

I didn't need to learn before, since my son's other daycare/preschool provided meals. Nice and simple.

But not anymore.

Now I had to learn how to pack a lunch each and every day.

So what have I learned these pass few weeks of lunch packing? Quite a lot.

First thing I learned is you need a good container. A good container helps you organize and keep your child's lunch worthy of eating.

In the beginning I experimented with different containers and quickly found out you need compartment to keep the grapes away from the jelly sandwich. Or else your child wont eat grapes with the bread crumbs on them.

I'm not kidding. My son doesn't like food that has bits of other foods on them.

The second thing I learned is the container needs to be a good size to fit both the lunch and then IN the tiny book bag. Again I learned the hard way.

I wont go into details but trust me, no child wants to carry around an extra bag cause his snack can't fit in his lunch container.

The third thing I learned came as sort of a fluke. Usually I do all the prep and packing and then hand off to the bus lady during the morning pick up. Apparently my son wasn't please to be left out the process.

I started noticing him coming into the kitchen while I was preparing and packing his lunch. At first I thought he wanted to make sure I added the snacks he likes instead of a yucky veggie. He's not fond of veggies right now. This was sort of true.

He did remind me which snacks to pack. Then he started telling me what type of sandwiches to make. Then he started wanting to help get items out the fridge.

Pretty soon he was involved in the whole process from start to finish. At that point I learned my third lesson. Let the kid in on the fun. They want to be part of the process also.

I'm sure when he take his lunch out at school, he's so excited because

• That sandwich he's munching on? He helped make it!
• Those snacks? He helped pick them out!
• That container his lunch is in? He helped put the lunch in there!

Who knew that my learning how to pack my son's lunch could lead to such awesomeness?!

Do you pack your child school lunch? What lunch packing lesson have you learned?

Avoiding a mismatched family

Today we met up with Gabe to hangout for a bit...as a family.

To be very honest I've been sorta avoiding him and the whole step family issue since our last meeting. I wasn't sure if I wanted that. To be a step family. With him.

But for months now we've been texting back and forth without a clear yes or no on the subject. With today's text to meet-up, it seemed the right moment to finally settle the issue

After meeting up we headed to the park. It was nice day to let my son run around while I discussed the future plans and goals. This would also give me a clue how Gabe and Daniel would interact.

I will spare the hours of details but it was clear to me that Gabe wasn't there to "be" with us. In truth after spending all those hours together I wasn't sure why Gabe came to meet us.

There was a distance between him and us. While I can deal with the distance between me and him, I can't deal with the distance between him and Daniel.

There was a distance between this man who wanted to be in my life and the person who was my life. A distance I didn't understand. A distance I think would always be there. A distance that made us mismatched

The step family issue has finally been settled. For now Daniel and I will remain a family of 2.

Blasian Remix - I'm Goin' Down by Mary Blige

So my sister was cleaning, listening to music and singing. Very off key.

Then for some reason my son decided to join in. Maybe he thought they could harmonize?

The song? I'm Goin' Down by Mary Blige which came out way before my son was even a thought. The fact that he's trying to learn the words and sing the song blows my mind.

So how did his duet do? Not very good but he tried. He was even getting all in it. Gotta give him an "A" for effort right? At least he picked a classic.

First question about brown faces

My son comes to me. Touches my face. This is black. Touches his face. What's this? Oh Shyt! Are we REALLY having THIS convo NOW?!

I look at him. Touch his face and say. This is brown. Touch my face and say. This is Black AND brown. He does the same. Says we're both brown

He seems happy to understand we're both brown. He's off to play with trains. I'm left wondering how to cope, prepare and educate.

I didn't expect my morning to start with that kind of conversation. My head and heart hurts. I'm going to find a dark corner for a few....

Big boy hair cut

Made a stop to get my son's hair cut.

He doesn't like haircuts, but he did fine. No crying. He's a big boy

Math with gummy bears

So my son is apparently ready to learn math. This morning he figured if I gave him 2 extra gummy bears (vitamins) then he's have 4.

Huh.

So what amazed me the most is not that he can count (add in this case) but that it always takes food to help males focus. LOL