First Bruise and New Car

Emily is pretty good at one-hand walking. She likes holding our hand with her left hand and use her right hand to pick up things from the floor or touch the things along her way. Sometimes she can stand on her own for a few seconds. She can also bend down to pick up things on her own. Her favorite stop in the whole house is the air purifier where she can step on top of it and then step down. We fastened some of the cabinets with the rubber bands so she didn't play with them as much as before. Her new development this week is to hold bottles on her own. She put the bottle in her mouth a couple of times to feed herself. David said she also said Hi for the first time although she's been waving for a while. One thing that I wanted to jot down is when I came home from work, Emily always ran to my arms from where she was with big exciting screams - nothing is better than that!


Everything I read told me that babies are natural picky eaters. But Emily is an exception. She loves everything: from brocolli to tofu, from noodles to bread, from carrots to celery, from fish to chicken, from kiwi to catelope, from eggs to yogurt ... no matter what we put into her mouth, she took them all with gladness and she wouldn't stop until she was full! We are so glad at that. Hope she will keep up in the future!


Emily had her first bruise this week - she fell on the triangle block. It left a dark deep bruise on her left face. After that, she kept falling on the floor when she was walking or cruising around. But she only cried three times among those dozens of falls. She is a little explorer!

David went to the LST Harvest Call in NRHCOC Saturday. He had a great time. Prestoncrest announced to be a centurion church during the dinner. Friday night we stopped by Amy W's house to drop off Lori's baby gifts. We ended up staying there and had a piece of yummy pie. Rachel loved Emily. She took such good care of Emily the whole time while we were there.


We've been looking for a car to replace David's car for a while. Finally we bought a white 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid today. We loved it!

The bruise on Emily's left face and the guilty blue block

Stand up from where she falls and move on ...

Step on the air purifier

Such a good eater!

Love this picture

Bath is fun

First Sunday Class

We took Emily to the Sunday class this past weekend. It was her first class ever. During church, we took her to the nursery. There was only one boy of her age in that room. Emily started playing on her own. Melissa who worked there urged me to leave:" She did so well, you can go back to the service." I had planned to stay in case she cried. But after Melissa said several times that I could leave. I felt like I should leave. So I went back to the auditorium. After the service, David and I went to the nursery to check on Emily. She was doing fine until in the middle of the Bible class, she began to cry. Miranda told us it was because she saw us there. Emily didn't sit through the class. She was hungry and sleepy toward the end. She fell asleep not long after we left church. It was one hour after her regular nap time.

Emily figured out how to open and close the cabinets and doors this week. She practiced it whenever she had chances. She also knew that she could tear the paper into pieces.

David went to the EEM dinner Thursday. It had a great turnout. Saturday we had the last LST training session at our house. Sunday afternoon David's reader Victor wanted to go to church with David after FriendSpeak. But David had to give a ride to another reader back home. Victor has attended evening services with us for a couple of times. He apparently liked it. Hopefully he will come with us next Sunday.

These two pictures are taken when Emily played in the nursery

This is when Emily was in the Bible class. We missed the picture of her crying because we could not find the camera then.

This picture was taken when Emily ate banana while holding the paper she tore apart

In this picture, Emily was watching the Potty Power DVD
We moved Emily's sitting play area to the office so she has two places to play now

The previous sitting play area became a cruising/entertainment area

See what I mean by "cruising"

Ah, ah! Don't look at the diaper on the floor ...

Autumn After the Rain

In Chinese we have a saying:"Autumn comes after the rain". It's certainly true for the past week. I was digging through Emily's fall clothes everyday. Emily is more and more independent each day. She can stand and play for a little while; She started to wave; and she can walk with a pushing toy now! We are so proud of her! Little girl is growing up so fast!


Since Emily's birthday will fall on the weekend after we come back from China, we will not have time to take her birthday pictures before then. We took her 10 months old pictures instead. We had her pictures taken during my lunch hour last Wednesday. So we didn't have much time. But Emily did great. The photographer said most babies don't make it through the whole session. Here is one autume themed picture of her:





Here is Emily walking with Daddy. She loves to walk and stop occasionally to look up at us with a sweet smile. Wish I could capture that:


Here's Emily enjoying her food:

Here's Emily doing forehead kissing with Daddy:

Here's Emily shopping with Mommy:

"What's for dinner?"

First steps with the pushing toy:



Waving Hi:

Labor Day and Birthday

Our weekend was full of good food and wonderful time with family and friends. Hope yours was too! David had a nice birthday week - he had gone out for lunches with his friends almost everyday. The weather was so nice that it made us believe the beautiful fall was already here. Friday after lunch, we headed off to Tulsa for the Labor Day weekend. Here is a picture of David and Emily on the way to Tulsa:


After we arrived, Amy and Kendall were already there. Leedy Kay dropped by for a short visit. It was great to see everyone. As always, we had Mexican food for dinner Friday and had BBQ ribs for lunch Saturday. Saturday night we had dinner at Linda's house. We were stuffed with good food. Sunday we had lunch at Incredible Pizza's where we bumped into Rae B. She was visiting her brother there. Amy made peach cobbler for David's birthday. Both David and I liked it. David got to open his gifts Saturday afternoon. On the way back from the BBQ place, we also visited the house David and Amy grew up. We even found their hand prints when they were little. Monday night Terry, the new Chinese SMU student, invited us for dinner at his apartment. He cooked delicious food. When we asked how he learned cooking, he said he called his mom so she instructed him step by step ... We still remember the first night when Terry arrived at America, he asked David "What is Industrial Engineering" (his major at SMU is Industrial Engineering).

A snapshot with Leedy Kay

David's and Amy's hand prints from the old house

Opening Birthday Gifts

Emily also had a great time! First of all, she tried a lot of new food and she liked them all: the ribs, mashed potato, spaghetti, rice, guacamoli, refried beans ... I was concerned that she might have taken too much salt and spice by these adult version food. Hopefully these occasional dose won't hurt her much. From now on, no more salt and pepper for her! She also had lots of fun playing with Chloe and Presley; hanging out with Grandpa; and walking laps around the house. Despite of all the activities, she still kept her normal schedule for eating and sleeping. We were so happy about that. Hope she'll do great in China too!

Playing with Grandpa

Playing with Chloe

Reaching for snacks

Admiring Grandpa

Girls, look at camera

Walk! Walk! Walk!

Biting off the banana

David always joked that he lost his wife ever since Emily was born because I always sat in the backseat with Emily to attend her. On the way back home, I sat in the front seat this time. Emily was by herself in the backseat. We gave her a water bottle to play with during the second half of the trip. After a while, she began to be fussy. We thought she must be tired of the car ride. Ten minutes later we stopped at Sonic to grab a cup of drink. I went back to check on Emily. I was surprised to find that she was soaked in water. All her clothes and the car seat cover was wet. The water bottle that we gave her was empty! We had no idea that she could unscrew the bottle cap. No wonder she was fussy! After we changed the clothes and dried the car seat cover with towels and bibs, she was calm for the rest of the trip - of course, I was back to the backseat. We felt terrible. Here is a picture of David apologizing to Emily for what happened:


Emily has five teeth now. More are coming. Her drooling was really bad. She officially graduated from the immobile state. She wouldn't sit for 5 minutes. That's probably one of the reasons that David strained his back muscle earlier this week. He had to hold her hands and run all over the house! It was time to put away David's grandma's old quilt - we've made good use of it: when I was pregnant, I used it as stepstool to climb onto the bed; after Emily was born, we used it as playground for her; now that Emily doesn't sit down to play that much, the old quilt finally got off duty. Thank you Grandma for the quilt! Here is a picture sitting on the quilt the last time.

Here are a couple of bonus pictures:

With the temperature going down, we put socks on Emily so she won't feel cold on the tiles. But these blue socks are the only ones that are big enough for her feet. Need to go shopping now!

My co-worker gave us some toys. Emily was so happy to ride on this toy:

Emily loves to walk holding our hands. But she refuses to move by holding on other stuff. See how nervous she is when she doesn't have our hands.

Here's a short video of Emily and Grandpa:

Here is a video of Emily the little soccer player: