Aidan graduation

As I'm writing this, I'm filled with so many conflicted emotions- happiness, sadness and pride. It seems like yesterday that you came out of my womb and now, my baby is graduation from Senior Kindergarten… Where did the time go? I am so thankful for God that he gave me this year to be there for my dad and also for you and Kendall. How amazing is it that He restores all things? Praise be to God. I am so honoured that I got to share in this special moment with you. I love you!

The morning before I dropped you off at school. Don't you look handsome?

You and Kendall.

Kendall wanted a solo shot. 

The gymnasium was packed with parents. Daddy couldn't be here because he had to work, but I wish now
that he had taken it off. It was such a special day that I never want to forget. 

The graduation procession. You totally ignored me!

All the Senior Kindergarteners from your school that were graduating this year.

Singing O Canada.

Each of the classes had a performance that they did. This was your class's performance.

My handsome boy.

You made a self portrait of yourself.

Your favourite memory of Kindergarten.

Getting ready to accept your diploma.

You did it! You graduated Kindergarten! That is your teacher- Ms Stamkos and Ms Silverberg. 

The graduation slideshow of your class- Room 110.

You and your best friend at school- Mateo.

Another good friend of yours- Avishai.

You also love these girls- Amayah and Cailyn.

Here you are holding Cailyn's hand. What a guy!

You and mommy. I am so proud of you!

My little graduate. You are wearing daddy's white shirt backwards!

This is what an S/K (Senior Kindergarten) looks like

How is it possible that you are entering Senior Kindergarten?? It seemed like yesterday when we were dropping you off for your first day of Junior Kindergarten. How time flies…

You were so excited to start school. Although you have been going to daycare every day in the Summer, I think you were bored. You really love learning so I think you were excited to finally start the school year. And now that kindergarten is full time, I imagine that you will learn so much.

So long, farewell~

Becoming a mom turned me into such a sentimental wuss. I don't know why, but every little milestone makes me into such a cry baby. 

Today was your last day at your daycare. You are starting a new daycare that Aidan is currently attending. The reason why we wanted to put you in Aidan's daycare is so that the pickups and drop-offs are much easier for both daddy and I. Last winter, daddy had such a hard time going to 2 different daycare centres to pick you both up. We would have put you in Aidan's daycare sooner, but they only accepted kids over 2 2/1 until recently. They are now accepting 2-year olds. I guess the demand is high where we live…

I didn't think that today would be a sad day for me. However, it made me realize that my babies are growing up. This daycare was the daycare Aidan started at when he was 1 so it's a little bittersweet. I think I now know why people keep having more kids. 

Your teachers- Miss Karina and Miss Sandeep wrote you a beautiful card and inside were handprints of all the kids in your daycare class with a class photo. I literally had a lump in my throat when I read this. Thank you Karina and Sandeep!

Birthday boy

As I write this, I'm dead tired and basically running on adrenaline. I'm in the busiest time at work, but I've been staying up late every night to make Kendall and your loot bags for your daycare birthday parties. Never have kids with birthdays 1-day apart! #deadtired #whydoidothistomyself

Yes, I could have gone to the dollar store to pick up loot bag items in their party section and I did do that, but nothing was good enough for my taste. My occupation is a graphic designer/art director so I can't put my name on something that is not up to par for my liking. I decided that I would again, hand make something. Of course, once I start something I go all out. I hardly got any sleep this week, but it was all worth it. You were so excited to see the finished product and super excited to go to daycare this morning to give them all out to your friends.

It all started with me seeing something on my Instagram feed. I follow a crafter, Sharilyn Wright and she
posted something not too long ago of her handmade notebooks with washi tape spines. I thought that was
such a great idea. I modified the notebooks I made by adding the names of all the kids as well as some
more personal details that they could fill out at the bottom- age, birthday, favourite colour. Since your
writing skills have drastically improved as soon as you started junior kindergarten, I noticed you are always
drawing and writing. I figured a personalized notebook would be the perfect gift for all the kids. I scored
the cover stock a 1/4" on the left where the washi tape ends so that it would open easily. 

Just a close-up of some of the washi tape patterns. Aren't they pretty stacked like that?

Instead of just plain, blank pages, I printed grid paper and lined paper to give it more of a custom feel.
I also added a page at the beginning where it had a box that you had to draw a picture of your family. 

As well as the custom notebooks, I added a bag of flavoured popcorn- white cheddar popcorn or butter
popcorn to the loot bags. 

If I had more time, I would have added one more thing to the loot bags, but I didn't have anything left in
me to design something else.

I love the Ikea-brand ziplock bags (purple bag behind the notebook). I covered the Ikea logo with the
tags of all the names of the kids. This is your loot bag.

There were 26 kids in your class, so you can imaging just how many I had to do. And that's just for your
daycare. I worked on Kendall's daycare loot bags too. The Longo's bag on the bottom right had peanut-free
cupcakes to bring to your daycare this morning.

This was you after I picked you up around 3:30pm. You guys were all eating the cupcakes when I picked
you up. When you got the car, you declared that this year was the best birthday of all. 

Waiting on our front porch for daddy and Kendall to come home. BTW, since Kendall's birthday is on
Monday, I will be giving out Kendall's loot bags then. Yours falls on a Sunday this year, so I had to do your
birthday party today.

While we were waiting for daddy and Kendall, you enjoyed eating your popcorn.

Welcome home Kendall!

She had show and share day at daycare where she had to bring in a teddy bear so she brought Muk Muk,
one of her large entourage of stuffed animals that she carries around these days.

My cutie patootie.

Watching Aidan eat his popcorn.
"When can I have some???" —Kendall

I end this post off with a cute video I took of Kendall today. She is constantly saying no these days. 

But it's not just a short "no!" It's a long "Nnnnnnnnnnno!"

Becoming quite the reader

It's truly amazing to see you grow up before my eyes. I still vividly remember you as a baby so it just blows my mind that you are now reading. Ever since you started Kindergarten, you have really expanded your vocabulary and your writing and drawing skills are amazing.

Your teacher lets students who show exceptional reading skills to borrow from her own personal collection of books. I guess you are doing well, because you always come home with a new book in your backpack.

Noelle's 100-Day Celebration

With all that's going on with your Toronto halbi's health, your Toronto halmi insisted that Auntie Jessica throw Noelle a 100-day "Baek Il" party. Nothing fancy, but for Noelle to be the centre of attention. Auntie Jessica has been working at the store every day since your halbi got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer so Noelle's been away from her mom ever since. Her paternal grandparent's have been taking care of her during the day. We ended up going to a Korean restaurant for dinner with just the family. It was nice getting dressed up and seeing everyone together. I wanted to take pictures at the restaurant, but it's so hectic when I have to take care of you two. Plus, Uncle Wayne's younger brother, Will, was taking many candid shots at the restaurant. After dinner, we went back to halbi and halmi's house to have dduk cake and Will took our family portrait shots. We've always wanted to do that so it was really special.

I dressed you up in your new coat that Auntie Jessica bought you for Christmas.
Haha, look at Aidan in the background.

My leather jacket-wearing lil dude.

And my little princess.

When I was tying your hair in my bathroom, you kept pretending to brush your teeth with mommy's
toothbrush. I guess all those days of watching mommy brush Aidan and your teeth paid off.

On our way to the party. Look how cute you look!

Mommy and Aidan day

I had a carryover day from 2013 so I decided to take today off since you already had your annual physical exam today. I decided that we would make today Mommy and Aidan day. I was super busy at work for the past 2 weeks so I was so glad that I could spend a whole day with you. My co-worker had gone to an indoor trampoline place for a Forever21 event and I thought that was such a good place to take you. You can be a bit of a scared-y cat (actually, you're a BIG scared-y cat!) so I wasn't sure how open you would be to it, but I prepared you by telling you in advance where we were going so you wouldn't be overwhelmed.

We started the day by going to your doctor's appointment at 10am. Usually you are so good at the doctors, but for some weird reason you were in a silly mood. Whenever the doctor told you to do something you would fool around and not listen. For example, when the doctor was checking your tonsils, she lightly touched your chin. You screamed aloud, "She's tickling me!" and started giggling like crazy. Then when she was checking your eyes with a doctors light and told you to open your eyes really wide, you raised your arms, opened your eyes really wide and then stuck out your tongue and shook your head like a crazy person. Yes, I was annoyed, but more than anything I wanted to crack up laughing. You were so hilarious! The funniest was when she was checking your private parts. She got you down to your underwear and told you to lie on your back. She put on rubber gloves and pulled down your underwear to check down there. As soon as she lowered your underwear, you yelled out, "Mommy, she's touching my gotchu!!! (gotchu means penis in Korean)" I started laughing, but had to stop because I knew that would get you to act more silly.

Here's where you at right now:

Weight: 39.5 lbs

Height: 33.5"

The start of a hilarious checkup.

Your appointment ended sooner than I thought. Your trampoline time slot started at 1pm so we had a bit of time to kill. I thought that it would be a great idea to visit your Toronto grandparent's store since we hadn't seen them for a long time and since halbi is sick. You were so excited to go. When I saw halbi he lost so much weight… His eyes were also a bit yellow. I'm just praying that he is ok. He has his specialist doctors appointment on Monday at 3:30pm. I'm going to pray hard.

Halbi trying to get you to eat a ham and cheese sandwich. You loved it. You told me that halmi
was a great cook.

You said you wanted to be a "cooker" like halmi and halbi. Apparently you thought they were
cookers because they had on aprons. You kept yelling out your orders to them.

Just being silly all day long.

We had to leave pretty quickly because halmi and halbi's sandwich store was getting so busy because it was lunch time. And plus, we wanted to get to our trampoline place on time :-)

Mommy bought these Sky Socks for jumping. It has these special grips at the bottom that make
it really easy for you to jump.

You were pretty excited, but nervous at the same time.

I thought that I could jump beside you, but there was a bit of a separation between an adult jump pad and a kid jump pad. You were being pretty shy at first by trying to get me to come close to you, but it didn't take you long to really get into it.

All in all, it was an amazing day. You sweated a lot, I sweated a lot and we just had a blast
spending time together. Next Friday I have Kendall for mommy and Kendall day. I'm not sure
what I'll do with her, but I'm so looking forward to it.