Insects galore.

Check out what A. caught a few days ago.



I found it on the handle of my car. This thing is HUGE, it's the size of my palm. I think it's a grasshopper, A. thinks it's a locust. I'm not sure. The thing flies so I guess it's not a grasshopper, right? All I know is that it scares the crap out of me. Don't worry, we released it last night and it flew, happily away.




We also received some silkworm eggs in the mail a week ago. They're all ready to be hatched in a week or so.

Week 1

Parent/Teacher Conference.

Yep, I had my first parent/teacher conference regarding Aria yesterday. It went well. The teacher told me that Aria's motor skills are great, that she's a smart girl. It takes her a bit to warm up because she's not a morning person but she does fine after she a while. I voiced my main concern about Aria's social interaction with other kids. She really doesn't have any friends in her class. I don't want her to be 'the loner' in her class. Her teachers told me that she's doing fine and that she parallel plays fine with other kids. Their words are reassuring but I still wish she was more social. If it wasn't for her great friendship with Cassidy, I would worry alot more. Unfortunately, Cassidy goes to another preschool and Aria just hasn't struck up any friendship similar to the one that she has with Cassidy at her current preschool. I think I need to set up some playdates for Aria.

Doing lineup right before going back into their class.

Waiting to do tap.

Heel, toe, tap.

She's doing much better in her tap class. I'm not putting her in May's recitel but I think that it's the right decision because I don't want to put any pressure on her to perform well. I just want her to have a good time.

This week's creation.

I was only able to produce this piece all of last week. I'm trying to make it few versions of this as gifts. I'm bring this to class tonight and hopefully it'll get to go into the kiln this week.

Fair and farm weekend.

Our local YMCA offered a Kid's Day event on Saturday to basically offer summer programs. I didn't sign Aria up for anything because I want Aria to have an easy summer vacation this year. We're not going to commit to much except for swim lessons. It's for selfish reasons really. I want to spend more time with Aria before she gets older and she's more immerse into a schedule.

On Sunday, we headed to The 15th Annual Farmwalk at Pierce College. We had a fun time there last year and this year did not disappoint. Except for a little sprinkle, we had a good time seeing the horses, cows, pigs, sheep, and lambs. Aria was very brave around all the animals and wanted to pet all of them. She might make a great vet when she grows up.

Aria and I participated in a cooking demonstration at the fair. Chef Mel taught us how to make a fruit salad.

We ran into Jen, Aria's first ballet teacher. It was so nice to see her again.

Here's Aria tackling the huge air-filled obstacle course/jumper. She didn't want to do it at first but once she was on it, she refuse to stop.

At Farmwalk - Aria feeding hay to a cow. Check out that tongue.

Adorable baby lambs.

More cow petting.

There were alot of weird statues at one location of the college. Aria is chilling with prostitutes?? It gets weirder than this. Scroll down.

Here's a pioneering family without the man. Maybe he's out on the range.

Ah... I have no clue what this scene's about. An abduction scene?? Pretty creepy. I didn't know how to explain it to Aria. She's mesmerized by the weird heads on the bottom.

Professional pics.

A nice little surprise besides today's school event was Aria's school picture package. They finally arrived in her cubby. These are Aria's first professionally taken pictures. Yes, I'm a terrible mom for not taking Aria to the photo studios regularly to have her pictures taken. It's just that I feel that I do a good if not better job at capturing Aria's personality through my own pictures. I take tons and tons of pictures of her, usually on a daily basis so I don't think she's missing out on the lack of pictures. Also, Aria's not a natural in front of the camera. It's really hard to get her to smile or to even look at the camera so I would hate to subject her to annual trips to the photo studio just for some shoots.

Aria's first professionally taken individual picture. He got her to smile!

Class picture. I'm not a big fan of this picture. If you look carefully only one out of fourteen kids is smiling. It's kind of a sad picture, so somber and gloomy.

Aria's in the middle top roll. The two adults are Aria's teachers.

Picture of Aria's new school bus.

Big thanks to my little sis for the awesome purchase and to A. for putting it together. It's staying in the room permanently because we can't get it out of the doorway without taking it all apart and that's not happening.

Party at school.

Aria's preschool hosted a Mommy/Grandma/Aunties' Day party today which ran for the first half of school. There were tables set up for arts & craft and a table with snacks. Aria and I headed right for the snack table and ate 2 mini chocolate muffins and some juice before we tackled any crafts. We can't refuse an offer of free food, especially when it involved chocolate.
For arts & craft we decorated and potted 2 plants and made handprints on heart shaped wooden cutouts. Aria painted a couple of paintings and played with bubbles. Very fun overall.

Aria with her first potted plant. She picked the flower and the container, both of which are purple. Surprise, surprise.

Here's our finished handprints on a wooden cutout.

Potting her second plant. I had to force her to use a pink container, anything besides purple again.

The massive bubble container.

Finally.

We (mainly A.) finally put this together. Picture to come later.

Lunch playdate.

My friend Lina threw a potluck lunch playdate at her house today to celebrate 2 of our friends' birthdays. I made a veggie noodle dish because one of my friend is a vegetarian. Alice couldn't make it but I brought her daughter Cassidy to the party to help Alice out by babysitting Cassidy for the afternoon but mainly because I knew Aria would have a better time if her 'best' friend was there. It was fun to chat with a few friends and let the kids tire themselves out (especially when it's not in my house). Hope we have more of these in the future.

from left to right: Patrice (belated Birthday girl), Marylou (Birthday girl) and Lina.

The spread. Don't be fooled by the picture, Aria only ate one fish stick for lunch while Cassidy, in the background, ate 3 corn dogs, carrot, fish stick and noodles.

My friend Soumya, the vegetarian and her 2 sons. That's my dish that she's scooping from.

The kids: Josh, Dalia, Aria, Cassidy, Emma and Amanda.

Aria, Cassidy and Josh.

The ride home.

Another happy note...

Aria did great in her tap class today. Teacher Tracy even pointed it out to me during class. Then Teacher Tracy asked Aria for a hug after class because of her outstanding performance. Her performance is not perfect but I'm so proud of her for putting in 100% this week versus last week. I'm still not putting her in the May recital. I think she's not ready. I'm just glad that she's doing good.

Ceramic 101

I don't know if I've mentioned that I'm enrolled in a ceramic class that takes place every Tues. nights. I had grand visions of making wonderful ceramic pieces that will eventually get distributed out to friends and family as gifts. Well, now I know that I was kidding myself because I[ve been procastinating. I haven't been very diligent in working on my ceramics for a while now until this last week. I think it's because my schedule has finally opened up and I find myself with more free time. I've been working on ceramic almost everyday. Thought I'll show you some works in progress before I take them to class to have them put into the kiln. I don't know how these pieces will turn out, whether they'll crack or not, but hopefully they'll survive and will eventually make nice gifts. All the pieces are hand tossed and are still in the greenware stage (before firing). I haven't mastered working clay on the wheel yet because the teacher is hesitant to teach that until a student has been in the class for more than one semester. I don't know if I'll last for more than one semester.

Leaf bowl. I used a leaf and imprinted it into Long Beach clay.

Leaf plate.

Another leaf plate. Ah... there's a theme here, huh?


Leaf/heart cup.



Plain vase, no leaves....yet.

The whole collection so far. There's another piece not shown that's in-the-works.

Recap of weekend.

Last weekend consisted of the same old, same old. We hit the YMCA for a few classes for Aria. A. usually swims when Aria has her classes but on this Saturday, some kid pooped in the pool so they had to shut the whole pool down, drain it and decontaminate. Bummer for him and all the other eager swimmers. We did Lakeshore as usual after the YMCA. Then we had dinner someone's house which resulted in my rant on the previous post.

The highlight of Sunday was our trip to Todai's for dinner. A. received a free coupon for his birthday a few months ago and it was going to expire soon. We decided to go there with his friend Mauricio. He's a lover of good buffet places. I have to say, I've hit many buffet places with him and he's one person whom I'm comfortable gorging in front of. He doesn't judge my enormous amounts of food intake. Food was great, we closed the place down.

On the railings of Todai's.

The famous Todai mascot. It's like tradition. Everything we go there, we have to take a picture with it.

The fish that decides the pricing for kids.

The famous Mauricio, exiting the men's room after consuming a huge quantity of food.

Fuming.

I'm fuming today over something that happened last night. A family member said somethings to me and A. after dinner that really pissed me off. Since I'm not one to talk back, I just held it in and fumed for the rest of the night. What kills me is the fact that A. and I were having a discussing that didn't involve this person. We were very quiet so she had to eavesdrop to even hear what we were talking about and what we were discussing had nothing to do with her. We were discussing something that we saw on t.v. It was not malicious or mean to anyone. She just came right over and told us that we're 'being judgemental and negative'. I really don't like her personality. Unfortunately, she's part of his family and I've got to deal with it.

Bunny cuteness.

I found the cutest bunny recipe just now and I must share it. Mako Ito has posted up a recipe for Bunny Bao (Chinese steam buns). They are so cute! I promise myself that I will one day make them because they're so cute.Yum, I'm craving baos right now.

Bunny Bao Recipe

Right.

I don't think I blog enough about all the simple things that make Aria so special to me. I have to work on it. My little girl is so sweet. Whenever anyone next to her coughs, she'll give that person a little pat on the back. She'll see something that she thinks that I might like and she'll say 'Mommy, I'll buy that for you when I'm older'. She remembers my favorite color (blue) and will give me things because it contains that color. She knows that I love lavender and will point them out for me when we're out and about.
Yes, there are times when she drives me bonkers but overall she's a pretty easy going kid. Recently, I taught her 'left' and 'right'. She got it pretty fast. I still have a problem figuring it out at times and I have to raise my right writing hand to figure it out. My kid is definitely going to be brighter than me, that's for sure.

Easter Saturday.

Okay, this is the last post regarding Easter Egg Hunts, I promise. I knew going in that Saturday was our big, extensive outing day but I was still surprised by all that we've done when the day was over. We started out at Albertson's 9:00AM in-store egg hunt. Sounds silly but we did it last year and we had a blast so I decided to go there again this year. It did not disappoint. The Easter Bunny was there and the kids had egg hunts in the fruits and veggie isles. Aria was lucky enough to find 5 special eggs to trade in for toys. Yeah! After the Albertson's egg hunt we headed over to Chatsworth Park for their egg hunt. We did that last year also and we didn't want to miss that one. A.'s brother's family was also there. That would make it egg hunt #5 for the year. Aria did what she usually do, she tried to pick only the purple ones because that's her favorite color. After the hunt, we did the free arts & crafts offered inside the recreation center and still found that we were way ahead of schedule. We decided to head over to Lakeshore Learning Center to do the usual free arts & craft projects there too.

Afterwards we got KFC for lunch and headed over to a park to meet up with a few friends and their girls. Yes, Cassidy was there. Aria was so happy to see her. We've seen so much of Cassidy during our Spring Break, I think Aria and I will go through Cassidy withdraws once we're back into our usual schedule. She's a great friend for Aria. They have a blast playing together. I really hope that Cassidy and Aria can remain good friends for many, many years to come. Anyhoo, the kids played and played and we finally left the park around 3:30 PM. I suggested that we head over to Best Buy since it was close by so that A. can purchase a dvd that he wanted. Aria was so tired in the store that she had me carry her while we were inside. She fell into a deep sleep on the car ride home. If you count it all up, we did 4 kid's activities that day. Boy was I tired. We made up for it by staying home all night and vegging in front of the t.v.

Egg hunt in the veggie aisle.




Aria's younger cousin Layla. She's turning 2 on April 28th.

Aria during egg hunt at the park.

Doing gluing project inside the rec. center.

Tackling the jungle gym with Cassidy.

I love this picture because it captures Aria trying to stop Cassidy from leaving the park. They've been playing for over 2 1/2 hours and Alice (Cassidy's mom) was very patient with them and gave them warnings about Cassidy's impending departure. Aria still refused to see her good friend go. A slight tug-of-war occurred. In the end, Alice won.

Friday night dinner.

We had dinner at A.'s brother's house. Their parents were there also. I guess it was an impromptu Easter dinner since we are not all meeting up on Easter Sunday. Everyone has plans. Bella (Aria's older cousin) had her friend Skyler over for a sleepover and Aria wanted to hangout with the older girls. It turned into an evening of screaming and shouting for the girls. Layla, Bella's younger almost 2 years old sister, was left out of the loop. She had to hang out with the adults. There was alot of poop jokes, silly name callings and candy consumption taking place in Bella's room. It was interesting to get a glimpse of what Aria will be like in a couple of years.

The girls hanging out in the family room before they decided -san Layla, to go to Bella's room for privacy.

Bella playing jump rope.

Screamfest.

Screamfest plus running.