Rolling Fun and Bronchitis

This past week was a very busy week for us. Joey came back from Taiwan. David resumed the Friendspeak lessons with him on every morning. Jason and Megan visited us Tuesday afternoon. Then David went to the airport to pick up a Chinese student Terry. Terry stayed with us for a night since his apartment was not ready yet. Wednesday morning David took him to his apartment near SMU campus. Then David had Friendspeak with HongYing in the afternoon. After I came home from work, it was time for him to go to Church for Friendspeak again. After FriendSpeak, he went to Sue's place to fix some computer problems. He started feeling very tired and weak on Thursday. But he hated to cancel the lunch with Nathan on Friday. By Friday night, he was having 102 degree fever. I asked him to go to CareNow. The doctor told him that he was having Bronchitis. We had to cancel the party at our house for some of our FriendSpeak readers on Saturday. For the next three days, David barely had strength to move inside the house. Because it's highly contigeous, David restrained himself from touching Emily. We prayed that Emily will not be infected and get sick. Luckily the doctor told us today that the contigeous period was over. We are so relieved!

As far as Emily, she is more and more fun to be with. She started playing games with us. When we put her on the sofa, she would intentionally roll all the way over to us and fall in order for us to catch her in the mid-air. If she sees us behind her, she would throw herself back to fall on us to make us laugh. From pictures and video below you can see what a girl she is growing into:

Besides the spoons, purple cross, balls, Emily also likes to chew on this:

this ...

this ...

and this ...

Playing with herself in front of the mirror

Playing with Katie and David

Welcome to America, Terry (we used the self-timer. Notice how Emily looked at camera ...)

Rabbit checking out soccer ball

Like Mother, like daughter ???

Like Father, like daughter

"Warning: I'm going to roll!"

Rolling fun



Playing in the exersaucer

Clapping and Happy Time

This week we had a doctor’s emergency visit because Emily cried several times Monday night and Tuesday morning. We were afraid that she had ear infection. After the doctor looked at everything. He assured us that it’s just her teething – her top two teeth are coming out! We were thankful that Emily hasn’t had any real sickness. Hopefully we’ll keep it up for many months or years to come.

Friday night David and I rented a Chinese movie “Happy Time” using our Block Buster gift card from Dawn. The movie was a lot better than I expected: real, touching, and funny. The only thing is that the language has a Beijing accent; which is difficult for David to catch up. The English subtitle sure is helpful. Saturday we took my car in for the inspection and oil change after we ran some errands. David’s reader Hongyu and his wife Sandy invited us for dinner after FriendSpeak. Sandy got a job in Virginia. So she will be moving in a couple of weeks. Sandy has been coming to FriendSpeak for over three years. We will miss her a lot.


Emily’s new exciting development is clapping! She claps whenever she is happy, excited, or when she wants attentions. One morning when David walked into Emily’s room to see whether she was awake, she surprised David with her beaming smiles and clappings. Here is a picture of her clapping. We also got several videos of her clapping. Her expressions in the videos are much more animated.

Emily laughs a lot. She laughs when she touches a stack of blocks to cause them to fall down; she laughs when she kicks at the ceiling fan; she laughs when her eyes lock with ours; sometimes she just laughs for no reason. She still loves watching the sign language video. She also comes up her own sign. Below is her sign for “I’m done with eating”:


Emily never passes an opportunity to play piano. Every time when we walked by the piano, she would reach for it. Here is a picture of her playing:

This is a picture of Emily kissing herself in the mirror. She also likes to smile at, wave at or give a high five to “the baby in the mirror”:


Here is a picture of Emily playing with Daddy:


This is a picture of Emily happy with the ball:


This is her reading with Daddy:


This is a video of Emily kicking at the ceiling fan – her daily dose of exercise:

Hot Summer Account

It was so hot this past week with three-digit high five days in a row. Emily enjoyed her daily indoor activities with David. She expresses more and more of her will/preference in a very subtle way. When she wants me to stop touching her hair or stop playing with her toys, she would look at my "guilty hand" and gently pat on it. At first, David didn’t know what it means. After I explained its meaning as “please don’t”, we both laughed. Emily is gentle with everything she touches, except the piano. She loves playing piano. But she couldn’t make any sound at first because her touch was too gentle. So David had to teach her to pat on it with more force. We taught her not to be gentle now and we will have to teach her to un-do that in the future. Besides piano, her favorite toy is the blue ball (yes, this little girl likes blue). She has been enjoying the ball swirl giraffe. Her expression was so animated when she tried to track the balls. Her whole body dances!

Emily definitely likes vegetables more than fruit. That surprised us since most babies like fruit. But David and I don’t like those smashed jar fruit either. I’m sure Emily will like the real fruit when she can bite off it. Talking about biting, Emily’s teething was really bad last week. She woke up twice in the middle of the night crying. The rubber spoon has helped her to relief the teething pain. Hopefully she will feel better this week. By the way, Emily's favorite words had been "Dadadada" two weeks ago. Last week it changed back to "Mamamama".

We started potty training for Emily last Saturday inspired by a book borrowed from Dawn and our friend's son who was potty trained before one year old. We were really encouraged by the results in the first couple of days. Emily is an excellent communicator. She has always let us know when she poops and she never poops when she is sleeping. It made so much easier for us to start with potty training. We caught all the poopies (although for the first one, she was already in the middle of it when we got to the toilet and it was a hussle) and one peepee in the toilet. Emily seemed to be very happy when she realized what happened. We can’t wait to use the potty chair when it arrives.

Emily seems to get over the stranger anxiety already. Now she uses her delightful smiles to bring joys to everyone she meets. This morning when David took her for the morning walk, they walked by a man. David said "Good morning! I also say hello for Emily since she can't talk yet". That man replied: "She did better than that - She gave me a beautiful smile already!!"

Robert and Gail invited us to their house for lunch on Sunday. They showed us the pictures they took during their vacation in the west several states. We really enjoyed those pictures, stories, food and our visits with Richard and Cathy too. Actually we enjoyed it so much that we forgot to take pictures. We didn't do a good job taking pictures this week. Well, below is a picture as a representative:


A side note: Many of my friends asked about my family when they heard about the riot happened in my home town last week. My family live around two hours away. So they are safe, except that I still can’t reach them by phone or email yet. My sister and brother-in-law went home for vacation ten days ago. They had booked a tour group this week. But all the tour groups were canceled because of the violence in that area. I wasn't surprised about the news because the Uighurs (Muslim) had thrown bombs and killed people over the many years when I grew up there. But my heart hurts deeply to read about how they brutally attacked so many innocent people who they didn’t even know... Remind me of 9-11. How can they have so much hatred to the passerbys and normal people on the street? I feel that it's so helpless and hopeless to instill love and peace in those people's hearts. Only God can make it happen. I can only pray that God's true love will find a place and take root in people's hearts there; and God's spirit and healing power will bring forth hope, reconciliation and new life to everyone affected ...

Happy July 4th

Our holiday weekend started at 1:00pm Thursday afternoon. David and I did some spot cleaning in order to prepare for the July 4th party. I was easily overwhelmed by how much work it took to clean the whole house. But “Hey, who said that you have to have a clean house to have the party?” Amy, Kendall, Chloe and Sophia came in town Friday afternoon. We had roast for lunch. Friday night we met with Steve and Delfina at On The Borders for dinner. We had a great time.

Here is a family picture that Amy took for us. Thank you Amy for taking a beautiful picture for us!

Saturday morning David took Chloe and Emily for a walk. They became the main attraction on the trail. Afterwards we went with Amy to see Diane’s new house before we had lunch with Sherry and Diane at Gloria’s. Our friends gradually showed up at 4:00pm. It was great to see them and their babies. Below are some pictures we took:

(Stroller walk with the girls)

(Charlie playing with the blocks)

(Emily joined Charlie)

(Chloe playing the ball swirl)

(Amy H. and Emily)

It was the first time for Emily to attend a big party like this. But she did very well. She seemed to be happy sharing her toys with others too.

Here are a few other things going on with us this week:

Emily likes to play her tongue with the new teeth. I guess she is getting used to the new residents in her tiny mouth. Her favorite chewing toy is the spoon. Her favorite color is blue. We bought some used toys for her. She loved them.

David accidentally scared the Gecko that the Gecko broke off its tail in our bathroom sink. David took the tail-less Gecko out of the house afterwards, feeling bad for this little poor guy.

Our air conditioner was broken. It cost us $1500 to fix it. We also repaired the sprinkler heads and the kitchen disposal system this week.

Monday Dawn gave birth to baby Austin. We went to the hospital to see her. When we entered the hospital room, she was holding a well-dressed baby. "Wow... Look at him! How alert he is! He is big..." David and I commented one after another. Later on we realized that Dawn was holding her friend's three months old boy. Austin was held by a girl at the corner that we didn't even see. How embarrassing!!! - it shows you how quickly parents forget how small a new born is!

Talking and Singing All the Way

The biggest thing about Emily last week was baby talking and singing. Emily showed eagerness of talking when she was about two months old. At that time, Grandma and Grandpa predicted that Emily would be an early talker. But from three months on, she didn't show any sign of an early talker. I began to doubt grandma's prediction. Emily was quiet until last week. She suddenly took off to singing and talking, starting at "Mamamama" and followed by "Dadadada" two days later. Her voice was sooo cute that she made us laugh every time. David and I realized that the prolonged quiet time was a history now. Emily talks whenever she is awake. Luckily she doesn't scream much. Her talk seems to have meanings too. When she dropped her toys or when she was too impatient for the milk, she would look right into our eyes and "Babadadada ...." with various tones, as if saying:"I dropped my toy and I want it back. Could you please pick it up?" or "I'm starving to death. Can you be a little faster?"... We were not used to this yet. When she was in the singing mood at church when everyone else was not singing, we had to take her out. The most enjoyable singing time for mommy and daddy has been in the car. Emily entertained us all the way from church yesterday.

Emily began to have her own will and she will let us know most of the time. She likes chewing on chopsticks, paper, and hair brush these days. If we take any of them away in the middle of her chewing, she will use crying to warn us. So out of sight, out of mind! The best strategy is to hide whatever we don’t want her to put into mouth and distract her with something else. We were thrilled to see two tiny pearl tips popping up from her bottom gum already. From this picture you actually can see a little bit of the white pearl if you can bring the picture to a full size.


We can definitely feel how strong Emily’s leg muscles are becoming. She's apt to lunge forward onto all fours from a sitting position. During the past week, she did lots of "precrawl" exercise, rocking back and forth on hands and knees or shifting directions by moving her upper body on the floor. These pre-mobile days won’t last long. Better enjoy it now and get the house baby-proofed quickly.

Emily went to a play group on Thursday at Nikki’s house. Friday we met Fred and Fang for Fred’s birthday lunch. Saturday we invited several friends from FriendSpeak to our house for lunch and movie. We had some BBQ meat from a Chinese restaurant and baked vegetable. After lunch, we watched the movie “Facing The Giants”. It was the third time for David and I to watch it. But we enjoyed it every time. All our FriendSpeak readers whom we showed the movie before liked it too. The DVD makes a good gift for them.

Sunday we were invited to Gayla’s house for lunch. We had a long and very delicious lunch between the morning service and FriendSpeak. In order for Emily to take her afternoon nap, David and I drove two separate cars to church in the afternoon. Before we knew it, the weekend was gone again!

Here is a video of Emily talking in the exersaucer:


Babies can be obsessed by the new skills that they learned. Here is a recording of Emily singing as soon as she woke up at 5:30am Saturday morning (Her singing made me laugh so it took me a while to go back to zzzz’s again. By the way, the video below is the monitor in our bedroom):

Happy Father's Day

For some reason, I’m more excited about Father’s Day than Mother’s Day. I looked forward to seeing the smiles on David’s face when I sang “Happy Father’s Day”; I anticipated the pride and contentment that rose up as we dedicate one day to him as a father; I dreamt about the joy and happiness that swept away all the tiredness and worries in the early fatherhood; I couldn’t wait to tell him what a wonderful father he is … Emily is lucky to have such a loving dad and I’m blessed to have such a great husband to be my child’s father and our spiritual leader. My sweetheart deserves all the compliment a father could ever receive. Happy Father's Day!

Dad was so kind to offer driving down during the weekend for Father’s Day. After spending a day with Amy and Kendall at Austin, he spent Saturday with us. We went to a BBQ place (Hutchin's) that David wanted to take Dad to experience. It’s in the old town of McKinney. The atmosphere was very unique – barn style arrangement with pans and pots hanging around the lights. Emily was busy looking around while we were mooching in the delicious ribs and sandwiches. I was embarrassed to say that I had two bowls of peach cobbler with icecreams. David joked that we were a perfect match since I ate all the fruit and he liked all the crusts. Here is a picture we took outside the restaurant:

Sunday morning I made blue-berry pancakes with fresh blue-berry jelly for breakfast. David said he wished everyday was a Father’s Day – I realized the area that I definitely needed to improve: making good breakfast on a normal day. I haven’t done that ever since I was pregnant. A delicious breakfast often gave in to the sleep that I craved for. Cereal, fruit, yogurt have been our breakFAST. It’s time to invite other food back to our regular menu. After breakfast, we opened gifts for Dad and David. Since Emily was too young to write, I managed to hold her hand to sign her name on the Father's Day card we made for David. She was so cooperative and her handwriting was much better than I expected. Here is the card:



(Front cover:

F.A.T.H.E.R.S.
"F" aithful.
"A" lways there.
"T" rustworthy.
"H" onoring.
"E" ver-loving.
"R" ighteous.
"S" upportive.

Inside:

God took the strength of a mountain,
The majesty of a tree,
The warmth of a summer sun,
The calm of a quiet sea,
The generous soul of nature,
The comforting arm of night,
The wisdom of the ages,
The power of the eagle's flight,
The joy of a morning in spring,
The faith of a mustard seed,
The patience of eternity,
The depth of a family need,
Then God combined these qualities,
When there was nothing more to add,
He knew His masterpiece was complete,
And so, He called it ... Dad)

Sunday afternoon Owana invited us to lunch at her house with her Chinese reader. It’s been a year since we saw Owana after Bill passed away. We were so glad that she came out of the pain (seemingly) and she is reaching out to others as she and Bill used to do. Occasionally she wiped the corners of her eyes - it's impossible for her not to think of Bill when she saw us. But most of the time we were talking and laughing. Emily took a nap at Owana's back bedroom. Here are pictures of Owana holding Emily:

It’s been very hot these days. But we have so many errands to run during the weekend. Emily did so well getting in and out of the heat several times a day. She sat in the shopping cart or high chair like an elegant princess. She had such a good disposition that wherever she went, people were always attracted to her. She is still having some degree of the stranger anxiety. David takes her for a morning walk on the trail every day. Hopefully she will completely get over the anxiety soon.

Here is a Father's Day prayer for all the fathers:

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all the fathers in the world. Strengthened them as Christian fathers and multiply their influence on this earth. Guide them to be good role models and loving to all their children. Help them to be a father like You are. Let the example of their faith and love shine forth. And help us to honor them always with a spirit of profound respect. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen!

Here is The Strongest Father video (I posted it before but worth reposting): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLUPiAs20i4

http://www.cjcphoto.com/can/

Sippy Cup and First Threw Up

We are still in the blissful parenthood where we brag about our Emily to everyone we talk to. Some people warned us:” She is most likely a fore-runner of a not-so-easy baby …” But let me tell you more about how easy Emily is (sorry:-) ): She is an excellent sleeper; she is a good eater; she tries everything that we give her; she never waggles when we change her diaper; she never wets her bed; she never spit up/out; she seldom (if at all) screams; she is so persistent and focused that she can practice the pincer grasp for 30 minutes if we don’t take her away… whatever she determined to learn, she practices it until she gets it. Below are some things happened in the past week:

She tried the sippy cup for the first time. We took the valve out first and then put it back in. She blowed and spilled out at first but gradually got some water into her mouth:

Emily likes to sleep on her stomach, which surprises me because neither David nor I sleep on the stomach. So when we walk in her room if she is sleeping or just waking up, here is what comes into our eyes:

Emily is so into practicing her vocal skills these days. It was so funny to hear the tiny cute voices that she makes. Her mouth would make different “O” shapes to make those sounds. Sometimes she put her fingers into mouth to help make different sounds too.

Sunday is easier and easier for us. Last Sunday Emily got up at 6:00am and took a morning nap from 8:15am to 10:00am. She almost sat through church except a quick diaper change (I should have changed it before church). In the afternoon she slept from 1:00pm to 3:30pm. Then we went to FriendSpeak and evening service. Many people enjoyed holding her during FriendSpeak and church.

Before we went to FriendSpeak, David fed Emily a small spoon of watermelon. Emily started to cough violently and her face turned red. I thought we were going to have a choking accident. But as soon as David picked her up, she threw up on him and everything was fine again. Apparently she was not ready for the tiny piece yet. Here is a picture of her before her first ever throw-up:


Here are some produce from David’s mini garden in the backyard: peppers, tomatoes, squash, and Okra. We had first jalapeño peppers already. The birds took the first fruit of the cherry tomatoes.

Last week I mentioned that Emily likes to sniff her nose because of her congestion. Some friends thought she was just playing with her nose. She is still doing it today –

As for David and me, our week was uneventful: David got his new glasses but it needs more adjustment. Joey went back to Taiwan for summer vacation on Wednesday so David’s mornings are freed up for the next six weeks. He helped Sue to set up her computers Wednesday night and met with a friend on Thursday night. We went to the hospital to see Todd and Becca’s new baby Marshall Friday night. Saturday David cleaned the house while I spent some time with Emily. We had dinner with Heidi and Hongying Saturday night. Here is a picture of Joey and Emily:

By the way Father’s Day is next Sunday. It's funny that at work, some people spreaded rumors that Father’s Day was last Thursday (by a Morocco mommy) or last Sunday (by a Finland singleton). It was finally straightened up by an American father that it’s NEXT Sunday.

Sleep Trained and First Fall

Recently I came across some articles about baby sleeping. Many said that a 6-month-old should drop the night feeding already. Emily should be able to fast for 12 hours without any problem. But we were still faithfully feeding her if she woke up thinking that she must be hungry. One reason was that she always went back to sleep right away if she ate a little; Another reason was that it's so tempting to quickly put our sweet daughter back to sleep with a satisfying meal.

After reading those articles, I realized that we can't do that anymore. We may be fostering bad habits for her to rely on the bottle to fall asleep and to eat more than what she needs. We’ll have to train her to fall asleep on her own. We tried it before. Sometimes it worked. But most of time it involved cries and guilt. We hadn’t really let her cry out. I secretly wished someday Emily would magically start falling asleep on her own all the time. But from what I read, it won’t happen unless we let her struggle and practice. By being over-protective, we could deprive her of the opportunities to learn a valuable, age appropriate, new skill. Sleep training might be one of the millions difficult situations that we as parents have to discern what is the best for Emily in the future. The best thing we can do is to let her know that we are with her when she struggles to grow - and jump in when she really needs our help.

So Monday was the day that we decided to stop the night feeding and put her down awake every time. Emily went to bed easily before 7:00pm. I rehearsaled many times what I was going to do if she woke up crying: pat her first, then hold her if patting doesn’t work, then 2 oz milk if nothing works (normally we gave her 6 oz at night). No wavering!! … Luckily Emily didn’t wake up until 5:30am. David got up and held Emily until she realized that nothing was going to happen. She went back to sleep. Not bad!!! Tuesday night she wouldn’t settle unless she had 2 oz of milk. I was surprised that she went to sleep contently after only 2 oz without extra holding. Wednesday night she went back to sleep after 2 oz of water instead (which told me that she didn’t need the milk). Thursday night she woke up at around 3:00am. David and I stayed in bed listening what was going on. She talked to herself on and off for about 15 minutes (that kind of cute little girl's whispering voice!). Then she went back to sleep on her own. No cry spills. Yeah!!! By Friday, we were completely confident that she can fall asleep on her own. Emily seemed to have realized that too. She used to cry when we put her down awake. Now she immediately works on putting herself to sleep and she always can within two minutes. She must have mastered the secret of falling asleep. I would asked her what it is if she could speak because I can't fall asleep that fast!!

We are so proud of her for this big milestone! What a joy to see that she gains confidence in herself too! The whole process was so smooth – actually we thought it was too easy because we expected a couple of long crying episodes. There were times that 2 minutes crying seems to be forever. But we were glad that we didn’t jump right up and pick her up. That could be harder on Emily and on us in the future. Now Emily is an even happier baby because she doesn't cry at all when we put her down in bed awake. She cries less and smile more in other situations too (which we suspect the result of her gaining confidence). We are truely blessed with such a calm, contented, smart, sweet, and beautiful daughter!! Here is a picture of Emily - As soon as she rubbed her eyes. I carried her to bed from the play station. When I checked on her two minutes later, she was sound asleep. Go Emily!!!

Emily had her first fall yesterday. I put her at the edge of the bed while I sat on the floor to pick a birthday card for Fang. She normally sat pretty well and she didn't move much. So I was flipping through the cards and asked her:"How is this card? Do you like it?" Suddenly I heard "Peng" and I realized what had happened. She fell off to the ground probably when she leaned over trying to see what was in my hand. She cried with tears. I was scared and picked her up. After much poking and twisting, she seemed to be fine. Little Angels were watching for her! No broken bones or bruises! I held her for extra love and promised her to be very careful in the future. She was as happy as she used to be.

We've been having hot tiles in the master bathroom and hearing the Siii water sound for a while. It turned out that our hot water pipe broke. We hired a plumber and it costed $1500 to fix it.

Joey has been studying with David every weekday morning except Wednesday. We are constantly encouraged by how far he comes each day. Last week he asked David to teach him how to pray since he wanted to make wise life decisions. This week he told David that he talked to his girlfriend in Taiwan about Christinality and God. He is going back to Taiwan for the summer vacation. But before he leaves, he planned to read a couple of Christian books during the vacation. Yesterday he took a CFA test. He emailed us that he was much more confident after he said a prayer. He is such a nice guy with a tender heart. We know that God has special purpose for his life. We are glad that David's reader Hongyu and his wife Sandy came to church today. I wished we could go out for lunch together. But Emily looked sleepy and it was her nap time. We hurried home and she took a good two hour nap.

Summer officially starts this weekend for many families who have school kids. Several of my co-workers already mapped out the vacation plans. My boss is going to take vacation next week. Below is a picture of what happened in our group a few years ago when she took a vacation (we took a group picture and added a Miami resort background then sent it to her :-)) … I wonder what will happen this year.

Emily has been having stuffed nose for the past several days. She was so cute to sniff her little nose trying to clear the congestion ...

Here are Emily reading the Chinese-English picture book




This is a video of Emily working on her arms. She hasn't crawled yet. But it seems that she's trying.