A New Twist

I have been looking everywhere for sponge curlers like my mom used to put into my hair when I was a child. I finally found them yesterday at a hair supply place. I showed them to Liz and she was very excited to try them out. (In case you aren't familiar with Liz's personality, she is about as girlie as they come. She loves shoes, clothes, make-up, shoes, jewelry, dresses, and shoes. She seriously did not come from me...). I had her take a bath and then she sat patiently while I tried to figure out how my mom used to do my hair. I was worried she would complain about sleeping in them. When I broke the news to her that we wouldn't take them out until the morning she was very distraught - she didn't want me to ever take them out! Here's how she looked before:


Here's how she looked today at church...



Oh, wait, I forgot to take pictures. It was cute although extremely curly! I should have practiced on a night other than Saturday - considering the only day Liz really has plans is Sunday! Perhaps I'll do her hair again next week...

Bottle-rific!

Lucas has recently tried his hand at holding his own bottle. He's getting pretty good at it although I think he sometimes forgets he's holding it and lets it fall.


Jared is the happiest with the development of this new talent since his arm gets tired holding the bottle for Lucas while we are driving. Sometimes being the oldest sibling has its drawbacks.

A Word from Jared

Jared came home from school on Thursday and decided to build a huge dinosaur town in his bedroom. Here are a few pictures (that he took himself) and his description of the town.

"Hi, this is Jared. This is how I builded it. I didn't let Lizzie help me because she kept trying to break it and step on it. I took all of my play time away by building it. Lizzie made all of the food and let me think, oh yea, now I remember, I think that she was having a fun time making the food. And this is how I builded my dinos. I put them all in certain pods with same dinos. First, I used some blocks but there weren't enough. So then I used some other things until there were enough. Then some people kept knocking it down so then I had to make it a little bigger. I also felt happy that I made it. And I also made it as big as I could until all of the dinos could fit and it took over my whole room! There were some big dinos and some little dinos. The big dinos got to be by themselves together - the big dinos got to be next to each other in the big one. And I also did let Lizzie help a little but not a lot. First it was just a little town and only the Velociraptors and the Brachiosauruses had a spot. Then I made it a little bigger until I could fit the Ankylosauruses, then I builded it a little bigger so I could fit the Stegosauruses then I built it big enough the T-Rexes and Allosaurus could fit. I also builded it big enough that it could fit - wait, I skipped something between T-rexes - then after I made it big enough the Stegosauruses wouldn't fit in their spot because there was a big one so I made a bigger one using my train tracks. I had to make it tall enough that the little guys couldn't break through. Then Mom came home and I showed her my town."

Hmm, I wonder from whom Jared gets his long-winded, run-on, compound sentences?

Hostages

Ever since Jared started kindergarten he has almost completely stopped taking naps. On Saturdays when we're home we usually have him still go into his room for "quiet time." He can read or sleep or QUIETLY play. He just has to stay quiet for an hour...

Elizabeth, on the other hand, is still a nap taker. When she woke up yesterday Jared and Daddy had just left for Jared's soccer game so it was just the two of us playing while we waited for Lucas to wake up. She went into Jared's room to get something and came running out screaming, "Mommy! You have to save my dolls!! Mommy, help! Hurry!" I went in to investigate and found this:


Jared had hung five of Liz's stuffed animals to the bottom of the bunk bed. Liz was distressed and then angry!


Having an older brother traumatize you is only just beginning, kid!

Thumbs Up!

Seriously?

Ok, ok, ok. I know I said come back in 4 months and I'll update you on the Fong Five then but there is just so much going on right now. It's not that I'm addicted. Seriously. I guess I'll just add this one post and then not post for 8 months. Then it's all even, right?

I'll start with Halloween and then let randomness abound.

We carved pumpkins for Family Home Evening the Monday before Halloween - who knew you couldn't carve them 5 days in advance of Halloween? They were moldy and full of colorful fluffy stuff by Halloween day. Here are some shots of Dan, Jared and Liz making their masterpieces. Unfortunately Luke had already gone to bed. Liz refused to let us cut into hers. She just drew a "face" onto it - it was definitely abstract art!


Jared loves to write his name on EVERYTHING - even pumpkins. Could he be any happier?


And the finished product, all lit up, before the fluffy mold grew inside. Well, obviously before the mold grew. That stuff has to be highly flammable.


So Jared was going to be a zoo keeper for Halloween until the night before when he decided to wear last year's costume and be Black Ranger. I told him if his costume still fit he could do it. I think it fit better this year than last! Here he is at his school parade (remember the school parade of costumes???).


After the parade I stayed and helped out in his classroom for a bit. They were mostly making Halloween crafts (go figure). He was especially proud of his bat. Yes, he's that cool. He loves to pose for the camera with a "deep" expression then smile and say, "Let me see it!"


Lizzie couldn't really decide on a costume either. She desperately wanted to be a witch - it's all she talked about for months. And except when she told my mom she wanted to be either a "piece of candy" or a "stick of gum" she's told everyone else she wanted to be a witch. She just couldn't decide which dress a witch would wear. She wore the pink dress on Halloween night and still told everyone she was a witch. A princess witch? Unheard of.


Yes, I know we have another child. I'd better mention him here or he might cut his hair to get my attention! Lucas is just so darn mellow he sometimes doesn't get as much air time. Dan was Magic Johnson (totally didn't get a picture with his afro wig on) and Lucas was a duck - a very sleepy duck. His normal bedtime is 6:30...just when the party was getting started!


Now for the randomness.

This week Lucas has been trying a new trick - army crawling. Seriously. We keep trying to tell him he is FAR too young to be crawling around. Oh my gosh, the stuff that Jay and Liz will have to get up off the floor is not even funny. However, against our protests, Luke persists. He definitely is a work in progress but he pulls his legs under him and pushes them out and moves forward. He is not fast by any means and not super effective but he is very deliberate in his action. I fear that he will be crawling before we're ready for it. He's 4 months old in these pictures (which will make Dan laugh because whenever the kids get close to the next age he starts calling them that age - which annoys me because they aren't that age yet!). To be specific, he was 4 months and like 29 days. So if you're voting for team Dan then he is 5 months, if you're voting for team Cathy he's 4 months. I digress. Again. Here are Luke's efforts documented:


He's doing these tricks long before our other 2 superstars did. Is he just trying to catch up to them? Doesn't he know he's my baby and should act accordingly???


Okay, my last bit of randomness. On Saturday Liz took a 3 hour nap. I'd blame it on the time change but that hadn't happened yet. Actually, she was up late the night before out begging people for candy. While she was sleeping our imagination boy, Jared, built a train in the backyard and wanted Luke to try it out. Here is Jay's creation and the boys enjoying their ride. (Oh, yes, and Jared has no clothes on. I was doing laundry and he was wearing his soccer uniform so I told him to run and throw his clothes into the washing machine - Stat! He did and then just stayed in his chonies. What is it with kids and running around in their chonies?! They get that from Danny's side of the family, for sure!).


Wow, that post probably felt like another 4 months of life - and it was really only 1 week. Is this why people blog so often? Life just seems to keep running by whether you're ready or not. And there's so much more I could tell you. Like Liz waking me up yesterday at 5 AM (that's from the time change!) begging for a bath because, "I smell like you Mommy!" Completely not sure what that was supposed to mean but she got me out of bed. I apologize for my writing style - I call it a "stream of consciousness" which is a true writing style but Dan would probably just say you can now sympathize with him as he tries to follow my thought process each day. I make no long term predictions this time. I think maybe I am addicted to blogging.

Seriously.

Okay, but just this once...

A slight amount of peer pressure has been applied to the Dan Fong Family to start a blog. Our response is always the same, "We don't have enough time!" And yet, here we are, blogging away. Basically it means we will add our lives in huge chunks of time! So here is what we've been doing for the last 4 months...

Lucas Wai Yohng Fong joined the Fong Four (thus making us the Fong Five) on May 29th around 3 AM. I say around 3 AM because he's the 3rd child and all the numbers just start blurring together into one amazing birth where 3 children were born at once! Anyway, here are his siblings welcoming him to our family.

Liz was shocked not to be the baby anymore...

...but Jared was an old pro.

We'll skip past swim lessons and other summer fun and jump straight to September 4 when Jared started school and Lucas started sucking his thumb. It was eventful day for the boys in our family.



Not wanting to be left out, Elizabeth decided to get noticed again. She got a pair of craft scissors and cut off one side of her curls and the bangs we had painstakingly grown out. She had some trouble using the scissors, but luckily big brother Jared was there to cut the part she couldn't.


She did a decent job of getting our attention! Here is what she looked like at the hair cutting place before haircut (very happy)...


...and after haircut (even happier!).

Needless to say, Lizzie loves going to get her hair cut! She kept saying, "But I don't want to have short hair..." If only she had thought of that before going Edward Scissorhands on herself.

Here's a quick picture of Lucas' newest trick:

Our final bit of excitement is Jared's soccer games every Saturday. He doesn't necessarily pay much attention to the ball or even really care whether or not he gets to play, but he has scored a goal! When they were handing out uniforms the coach held up all the numbers and let the boys pick which one they wanted. Jared jumped up and grabbed #7. When he got back to me he said, "That was Daddy's number too!" I'm not sure how he knew that but he was correct. So Jared and Daddy share a number - and their skill level is about equal as well. Here's an action shot.


You're probably wondering how a boy so young is able to keep a ball pressed to his chest while he runs. No, it's not the power of Photoshop, it's the power of The Force. He plays for the Jedi Knights.

Danny is looking forward to training his young Padowan with a lightsaber. I'm guessing when Jared starts putting a blade of plasma energy through the solar plexus of an opponent a lot more scoring lanes will open for him.

Finally, I'll end with a recent picture of all of the kids together. What do people without kids blog about? Themselves? Oh, well, Dan went to the Kings game on Monday. No pictures taken; sorry. Ok, back to the kids. This concludes our post. I guess it wasn't that painful; please don't tell Michael or Jen that. I "tag" Traci to post now (see how quickly I've acclimated to the blog lingo - I've already tagged someone).


See you in 4 months!