Father's Day breakfast

Ethan just gave Daddy his present.

Picture of Daddy, Ethan (and yes, me too).

Ethan invited John to the Father's Day celebration at his school. They had breakfast together and then Ethan gave his Daddy a very cool card (with a happy face in it that was drawn by Ethan himself) and a DVD with some pictures of him and his classmates.

On your mark, get set, GO!

Last weekend, we went to visit our friends Christine and Jeff in Oakland. They have a baby girl, Mai-An, just three weeks older than Zoe. We had lunch and walked around in the Rockridge area. While we were at their house, Zoe and Mai-An had a little crawling race to see who could get to the remote control first.


As you can see, Mai-An won the race. Mai-An was such a quick crawler but wasn't too motivated by the remote. So, Mai-An may have won the race but Zoe won the remote!

Check out Mai-An's blog - actually, her blog was the blog that inspired me to start this blog.


Here is another shot of the crawling race! And yes, it was actually Batman (aka Ethan) who beat all of us! It was the first time that we let Ethan out in public with his bat gear on...we are hoping he won't insist on wearing it all the time. He is obsessed with Batman and Spiderman these days..before it was Blues Clues, and now its Batman/Spiderman. Its literally all he thinks and talks about. He dreams about it (talks in his sleep even!), reads about it and always plays with Batman/Spiderman toys. I'm sure its a phase but it is so funny how kids - even at this age - know what they like!

Another thing that happened this weekend was - Zoe got her first tooth! Yeah!!! Poor baby has been so miserable and cranky lately and now we can confirm that she was teething! But she isn't only cranky because of teething but she also has stranger anxiety! She is very particular and only wants to be held by mommy, daddy or grandpa. That too should be a phase - but hopefully it ends soon because starting mid June, Zoe is going to join her Kuya at the montessori school he attends. So we'll see how that goes...

May 2007

Now that Zoe is 8 months old, she is starting to drink from her sippy cup and eat three meals of baby food each day in addition to drinking her milk.


Here is a picture of me and Zoe. Surprisingly, I was taking the picture myself.



We celebrated Manuel's 16th birthday at Bill and Carla's house over the weekend. Here is a picture of Ethan and Isabelle smiling for the camera. "Cheese" Its cute how they both have the same silly smile.

Zoe is crawling much more now. She still doesn't get up on all fours when she crawls, instead she kinda does the snake or centipede to get everywhere. Its cute though. She managed to get underneath her jumper.



We went swimming for the first time this summer. Ethan and Zoe both loved it! Ethan swam for hours. Here is a short clip of him swimming...

Mother's Day 2007

Here is a picture of our family, including me and John, on Mother's Day. One of the greatest mother's day gifts that I got was seeing my kids together. They love each other so much and really like to be around each other. Here is a video of Ethan playing with Zoe and hugging and kissing her. And you can see on her face that she just loves being around him.





Daddy and his kids...


Three generations of Docena women...Zoe, me and my mom!

Lots of cool things...

Ethan invited me for a special mother's day breakfast this morning at his school. We had fruit and muffins and sat with a couple of Ethan's friends (Ryan and Joshua) and their mom's. Here is a picture of the gifts Ethan made for me for mother's day! It was very sweet and he was so happy to be eating with me at his school.

Here are a few pictures of Ethan with Zoe. Lately, Ethan has really been interested in playing with Zoe. He always gives her toys (partly so she doesn't play with his toys, hahaha) and always talks to her. He tells her not to cry and checks up on her when she is in her crib. The other day, he was in her room and I was getting ready for work when I overheard him say, "Don't cry Zoe, mommy will be here soon". It was so sweet. A few months ago, he didn't pay much attention to her but its all changed recently. He loves to carry her and calls her "Ethan's Zoe".

Even though Ethan loves to carry Zoe, he still drops her when she wiggles or reaches for something.

Here, Ethan is trying to get Zoe out of her car seat. He wanted to carry her too but couldn't unbuckle her seatbelt.



As many of you know, Ethan loves to read. He loves all sorts of books and loves to read them over and over again. In fact, he has memorized many of his books and can pretty much tell you what is happening on each page. Here is Ethan reading a Batman book. We thought this picture was funny because he only has one shoe on. And the shoe is on the wrong foot. But he didn't even notice because he was too busy enjoying his book.

Last night, Zoe tried to crawl for the first time. I'm not sure it is technically 'crawling', its pretty close and we were so excited!

Rememeber I told you that Ethan loves to play volleyball? Well here is a short clip of spiking and bumping the ball. As you can imagine, John was so proud!!!

Playing hide and go seek...

Daddy and Ethan reading a spider-man book last night before bed.


Ethan is not the only one 'into' spider-man! Even Zoe likes to nibble on Ethan's spider-man toys when her Kuya lets her.



Zoe is standing showing off her new skirt and t-shirt.

Kuya Ethan is always trying to teach Zoe new things. Here, they were about to start practicing crawling but got distracted by the Warrior game that Daddy and Mommy were watching.

Last weekend Ethan and I played hide and go seek. We started out with me counting and Ethan hiding but he kept hiding in the same place. So I decided to let him count and I'd go hide and then Ethan could come find me. Ethan really seemed to enjoy that. We have a little video of us playing hide and go seek. Check out how Ethan closes his eyes and counts to ten.

Ethan at 2 yrs 8 months old

Ethan is getting to be such a big boy now. He is so independent and loves to do things for himself, like put on his jacket, wipe up spills, brush his teeth, feed himself, etc etc. He is even talking about wanting to go into preschool now. A few of his friends left his classroom and are now in the preschool classroom so he wants to go too. But before he can go to preschool, he has to learn to use the 'potty' consistently. He sometimes likes going to the potty..but only when its convenient. So we're working on it...One thing that is excited about is getting to wear spiderman and batman undewear. One of my favorite things that Ethan says right now is, "Daddy (or Mommy), you are my best friend!" ITS SO CUTE...just melts our hearts.

This is his new smile for pictures. Its pretty funny and cracks me up each time I look at it.

Ethan, like his daddy, loves sports. He loves tennis, basketball, and volleyball. Daddy and Ethan practice for a little bit almost every day. Right now, his favorite is probably volleyball because he has been "bumping" and "spiking" with his daddy a lot.