First Road Trip and Baby Blessing

Emily is funny. She likes playing for a while in her crib after she wakes up. We have to listen very carefully to know that she is awake. Most of time we won't know until we walk in. She covers her face with the blanket as soon as she sees us. When we asked:" Where is Emily?" and took off the blanket "There she is!", she would break into a big giggle. She loves Peek and Boo and "Ten Little Indians". Of course, a smiling face never fails to win her smiles or laughters. She enjoys using her hands - grabbing, sweeping, touching everything. My favorite thing is when we change her diaper. If we ask, "Emily, could you please hold your legs for me?" She would grab both of her legs and help out as long as she could ... Isn't she precious?!!!

This past week was a busy week. Our missionary friend Eileen is in town. She stayed with us on Tuesday. Dad was on the way to Austin and stopped by too. On Wednesday, Jerry and his mom came to visit. David worked with Eileen and helped Jerry with his homework. He was exhausted by the end of the day. Thursday we packed up and went to Houston to apply for my passport (it's going to expire in July). We stayed with David's good friend Terry and his family. Hong made delicious Vietnamese dinner. Terry and Elizabeth played violin and piano for us. Emily was so tired that she fell asleep on her own in the PackNPlay when the rest of the crowd were visiting.

Friday we applied the passport in the morning and headed to Austin in the afternoon. We went to the hospital to see Amy and Sophia - our new niece who was born on April 22. Both of them looked great. When we went home in the evening, Emily was tired and fell asleep on her own in Chloe's crib again. We were amazed at how well she did in a strange environment! Chloe kept us entertained till everyone was ready for bed. Saturday we helped Amy to check out from the hospital. Amy did so well that we even stopped at a Mexican restaurant for lunch on our way home. I couldn't imagine to have that strength and energy on the third day after childbirth! David made a chocolate cake and baked sweet potato for Amy's birthday since we won't be there next Saturday. After the cake, we headed back to Dallas. Poor Emily - she was confined in the car seat for at least four hours for three days in a row! We really felt for her small body. But she did amazingly well. She went to bed as soon as we got home.


This Sunday was the baby blessing Sunday. We got up early for the early service. Then we stayed for the first ten minutes during the second service. Gordon prayed for all the new babies including Emily and asked each parent and every church member to make commitment to bring up these babies in Christ. After church we had a brunch with other babies and their parents. Emily was a little cranky in the end. We went home and found out she was having constipation. She's been through a lot this week!

Helping out during diaper changes

Stretching a little bit on the way to Houston

Terry and Elizabeth played violin and piano for us

Meeting the new cousin - Sophie in the hospital. Two sisters were making agreement - Be Gentle ...



Seeing Sophie close up
At Baby Blessing brunch




The baby blessing video can be watched here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPlUwZJbmnI

Teething and Such

Our little princess started teething this week. For the first couple of days, she was constantly moaning with her fingers in the mouth. We used her teething toys and our clean fingers to rub her gum. That seemed to comfort her a little bit. Two days later, she suddenly stopped moaning and went back to the normal happy Gerber Baby (that's the name that my co-workers gave her. They call Emily their Gerber niece). Emily began to enjoy the rice cereal more and more each day. She sleeps from 7 or 8 o’clock to 4 o’clock in the morning. Only four or five times in the past couple of months, she slept to 6 o’clock. But since she goes back to sleep very quickly, we aren’t stressed about her night wakening at all. We rejoiced several times when she fell asleep on her own. Emily is growing into a fast grabber. Last Wednesday when David was having Friendspeak with Jerry, they put her in the bumbo seat on the dining table. Within minutes, Emily grabbed the spoon from the blackberry sauce bowl and swirled in the air. It took David a good effort to clean the red dots all over the place.

It’s a challenge to keep up with Emily's growth. Last month I was very proud of myself buying some pretty 6-9 month summer dresses at a local consignment store, thinking that they should get Emily over the whole summer. Last Sunday we found out we ran out of clothes again since she outgrows 6-9 month clothes already – summer even hasn’t started!! I wasn’t satisfied by putting away those pretty dresses that were never worn. So I tried to put them on Emily - at least once. One morning when I took Emily to see David after I dressed her, David hesitated for a while and said, “Do you think the hat is a little bit too small? It looks like a shower cap on her …” Well, I knew it was too small. But I just didn’t want to admit it. Too bad that Daddy thought that way too!!!

David put out the Exersaucer that Fang and Fred gave us. Emily loved it! She would bounce on her feet and check out every Nic-Nac’s. We were so happy that she had a new place to play!

David has been helping Jerry’s parents on the Insurance. He met with the insurance guys and other restoration service guys during the week to put Jerry’s mind at ease. Friday night he went to the Mission Resource Network benefit dinner and had a wonderful time. Saturday was Prestoncrest Lady’s conference day. But considering that we will have a very busy week ahead; our refrigerator was completely empty; and most importantly, David was bound home for a whole week, I decided to give up on it this year. Next year it will be a lot easier!

Heidi came with us to church on Sunday. We had invited her to come on Easter. But she didn’t make it. We were glad that she made it this time. The message wasn’t really for a person who comes to the church for the first time, but we prayed that Heidi benefited from what she heard and experienced at some level. If not, at least she knows that we enjoyed having her very much.

Happy Easter!!!

Happy Easter to everyone and to our friends who had their first Easter with their babies!!! Hope you all had a wonderful Easter! We surely enjoyed ours.

Emily had several “firsts” last week: she started to spin her bottles with her fingers and scratch everything else she touched. She had her first hair-cut on Friday. It was not easy. We sat her in the bumbo seat but it was difficult for her to sit still when I pulled her hair. So we didn’t cut much - only her front hair. We saved them in her “first curls” keepsake box. Talking about her hair, when we first took her out to church four months ago, a guy came to me and asked, "Did you put a wig on her?"

Another first was that she broke the angel’s head that we put on the picnic table in the back yard. It happened when we tried to take some Easter pictures of her on that table – I just can’t take enough pictures of her (Is that a new mom’s addiction or what?!). It was the first thing that she ever broke. One thing that worth noting but I didn't blog in the previous blogs was that Emily could turn on the music on her swing, car seat toy bar, etc. She started doing that several weeks ago. We even didn't know that her car seat toy bar has music until she turned it on by pulling it.

David and I had a new toy this week – it was a digital SLR camera! We started looking for a good camera ever since my canon camera stopped working. Finally we bought a 3-month-old Nikon on Amazon. We took some pictures with it. But none of us had a SLR camera before. So there’s a lot to learn before we can take really good shots in different situations.

Grandpa Jack visited us both on Wednesday and Saturday. Emily always enjoyed being with Grandpa. She got her first Easter bunny from Grandpa too. Sunday we were invited to the Hargroves and the Norths for lunch. But we turned them down because Joey was coming to church with us. It was his first time to church. We prayed that the message he heard would touch his heart. Gordon did a great job again. Several people were baptized during the service. Joey really liked everything he experienced. He had many questions about Easter. We had planned to take him out for lunch after church. But he had to go home to prepare for his exams. So we grabbed our lunch on the way home. During Friendspeak, we heard that one reader that we know was baptized too!

Last year David and I helped organize an Egg hunt and Easter egg decoration event at church for Friendspeak. This year we were too busy to do that. I really missed it. Maybe next year Emily will have her first Egg hunt. It rained on Sunday morning. When the sky cleared up in the afternoon, several kids in our neighborhood started playing egg hiding and hunting games. They had so much fun!

Emily is too young to understand what Easter means. All she knew was that she liked the two more Easter bunnies she got from Gayla and Judy during FriendSpeak. She was spoiled!

Sitting in the high chair (Grandma from China hand-made the padding for the high chair)

Taking pics in the backyard


You can take pictures now. But be quick ...

How do I look in my Easter dress?




A couple of pictures under the sun ...



Broken angel










Try out the new camera

Here is how you know your picture session is over ... Enough is enough ...

(More Easter pictures at: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=qu0dq1t.2r178tv5&x=0&y=-lnwevz&localeid=en_US )

Baptism and House Burnt Down

(I've been lazy not to come up the titles for the posts - that task alone kills millions of my brain cells. Now that I added a ticker to the blog. No excuse to name the post according to Emily's age any more. I'm sure you will applaud my effort for that!)

Emily began to grab her feet with her hands now. Her belly laughter can be easily triggered by gently tickling her tummy or chest. She is so easy to please. A rattle, a book, a prayer lamb, a happy face, or a strange sound will definitely bring smiles to her face. Nathan and Amy came over to see Emily on Monday night. We had roast and played a couple of games after Emily went to bed. It was fun!

We had a busy weekend as usual. Friday morning we got a call from Jerry that his parents’ house/apartment was burnt down. After many calls, David and I took some clothes and went to see them. The roof was gone. The house was full of smoke and ashes. They didn’t sleep at all on Thursday night. David's clothes smelled smoky after he came out of the house. I stayed in the parking lot talking to Jerry’s mom Yunny. For the next two nights, Jerry and his parents stayed with us. They don’t speak much English and they don’t have many friends. So David and I are on call to help them in every way we can. We helped them to come up the property list for the insurance company. Luckily Jerry’s dad had just bought the insurance policy last November. He thanked God for His protection. Jerry’s dad was baptized five years ago when he came to America. But Jerry and Yunny are still searching. Yunny told me later that when she looked at the wild fire eating off everything they had, she cried and prayed to God the first time.

Saturday morning we went to FriendSpeak reader Amanda’s Baptism. Amanda studied with Gail for a while and got closer and closer to God. Finally she decided to be baptized before she goes back to Taiwan in two weeks. After the baptism, we had lunch with the Hargroves, the Millers, and Amanda at Jerry’s parents restaurant across street from church. Saturday night, we had a great time at Kyri and Jeff’s house. We had the Hamburgs and cheesecakes at their backyard. The weather was perfect. Charlie and Emily were so accommodating that their parents enjoyed the conversation very much.

I liked the Sunday sermon a lot (Thanks to David for taking care of Emily so that I could listen to the sermon uninterrupted!) Gordon talked about the “Love Dare” (Philippians 2:5 “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” Matthew 5:48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”) as he preached on Mat. 5:37-48. The video on forgiveness brought tears into my eyes. The lady in the video said, facing the young murder who killed her 26-year-old son, she saw God standing behind the young man and pleading to her "Will you forgive him?" She made a statement to forgive him. As a mom myself, I couldn't imagine how difficult to do that. But her action and statement changed the young man and changed many people's lives after. After his sermons, two people were baptized that morning (one for each service). Now I got a glimpse of the reason why his church multiplied so fast in Brazil. I wished our Friendspeak readers can hear his messages! Maybe it’s time again for a “come and see” ?!

4 Months, 3 weeks

The most notable things about Emily this week are: she began to get the joke – laugh and try to make you laugh. She also began to entertain herself when she was awake.

Friday night, we met up with Fang, Fred, their kiddos, and Fang’s parents for dinner at CiCi’s. Emily watched us eating for the whole time. Fang’s parents loved seeing her smiles and gigglings. Saturday morning I went out to run an early errand while Emily and David were still sleeping (David didn’t sleep well because of the soda drink he had at Cici’s Friday night). I went into Emily’s room and saw that she was sleeping across her bed – she must have had some gymnastics in her dream! I took a picture of it before I left and put the monitor at David’s bedside so that he would hear Emily if she was awake. After I came back at 9:15am, I was surprised that both of them were still sleeping. Emily normally gets up at 7ish. I waited for another 15 minutes before I went into Emily’s room to check on her. To my surprise, she was playing with her fingers and toes in the bed, still across the bed. I had no idea when she actually woke up since she didn’t make any noise all this time. She was so kind to daddy so that he could sleep till whenever he wanted!

Emily not only does gymnastics in her bed. She did that in the swing and on the sofa too! One day I put her down on her back on the sofa lounge and ran to her room to get an outfit for her. When I came back, I saw her hanging in the air with only her arms and head over the lounge! I asked David to get her when I ran to get the camera myself. But before I could press down the camera, David caught her in the air! Whew!!! For a few days she liked scooting down while she was held on our laps.

Saturday we visited our friends Kathy and Li. They just had their first baby Mike last Friday. We had a nice visit with them and their parents. They (Kathy and Li, Kathy’s parents and Li’s parents) took turns to hold Emily. They really liked her a lot. Sunday we had lunch at Jerry’s parents’ restaurant because Jerry’s mom wanted some Emily’s pictures to put in her wallet. Jerry’s mom took Emily back to the kitchen. All of them just loved her. David and I didn’t get to hold her much. When she was a little hungry, the waitress Cindy took over Emily and began to feed her. Jerry's parents watched her doing that. I felt like their restaurant business would suffer if we eat there too often!

When David was doing Friendspeak, I stayed in the car hoping that Emily would take a nap. But she was too excited to sleep. She played with the burping cloth and laughed every time she looked at me. She laughed almost every minute for 15 minues. Silly girl! I didn’t know why she was so happy. Maybe it’s because of her discovery that her laughter actually could bring me to laugh every time. She just giggled herself to sweat. Finally I gave up on the idea of napping and took her to see David. We met up with Ted and Mary for dinner afterwards. Emily laughed all the way home. It was great to end a week with catching up with friends!

Joey comes to our house for Friendspeak every morning. He loves Emily and Emily loves him. Here is a picture of them:






Emily sleeping after gymnastics:



Emily loves bath time:

4 Months 2 Weeks

This past week is wonderful: first of all, it is the spring break week! Only two people in our team were working (I’m one of them). Work is so slow and easy. I had a relaxing time in the office. The weather has been most beautiful with 70s degree and sunshine every day. David moved the tomato and pepper plants to the vegetable garden outside. Several teacher friends came over for a visit during their break: Paul and Jerry came over on Wednesday; Tracy came over on Thursday. We were so happy to catch up with them!

Emily enjoyed the nice breeze and bright sunshine too. She was fascinated by the dancing leaves, flying birds, yellow flowers, and all kinds of sound outside the house. She rested better with longer naps. She really worked hard on her legs – You can tell from the video below that she was very proud of the baby steps she made when she was supported by daddy. She started to sit in the bumbo seat – but not longer than 20 minutes a time. She gave free smiles to everyone. She likes to twist to her right side and fall asleep at night. Sunday (on my birthday) she successfully rolled over a couple of times without any aid! That was the best birthday gift I got! We started to experiment with the iron-fortified rice cereal after her last feedings before bed. We are surprised at how well she took it. But she won't eat more than half tea spoon of the rice cereal every time. Her bed time has been 7:30pm consistently (if we allowed her). She has linked bathing-feeding-sleeping together. That’s so easier on us.

It’s hard to think about it. Last year this week we just found out that we were going to have a baby. Emily’s size was 1/3 of a rice grain. And her heart beat was 109 per minute! In one year, she’s grown into a happy, lovely and beautiful girl of 26 in. long! How blessed we are to be her parents! We thank God everyday for the joy she brought to us each moment.

For my birthday, Robert and Gail took us to a wonderful steak restaurant Friday night. I indulged myself with a crabcake, steak, spanich salad, and baked potato. They were so good! At work, we had mini-cheesecakes and icecream. Yummy! Saturday, David arranged a surprise party with some of our Friendspeak friends at a Chinese BBQ restaurant for lunch. We had dinner at Brooks and Ann's house with another Chinese couple. Sunday we had lunch with some church friends at Jerry's parents' restaurant. Jerry's parents and the waitress just loved Emily! At Friendspeak, David got a big Chinese fruitcake. People enjoyed the cake as much as I enjoyed the Happy Birthday song! Emily was popular everywhere we went. Everyone commented how good she was. Ann made her laughing out loud many times. She delighted everybody with her bright smiles and giggles although she was overwhelmed/over-stimulated by so many people and missed her much needed naps. David and I thought she will grow up a people-pleaser! I got gifts from Dad, Amy and Kendall too! Thank you my dear husband, my loving friends and family for a very happy birthday weekend! Don't you love your birthday being spreaded over several days!! God has really blessed me with another great year. I'm looking forward to what lies ahead in the next year!

Surprise lunch with friends

Dinner with the Neals

Dinner with the Hargroves

Sitting in the seat

Daddy's little girl
First Rollover (Video)

Step and walk (Video)




Giggling

4 month 1 week

The weather was not really good this week. It was raining for the first couple of days and cold for the rest of the week. So Emily stayed at home all week except Sunday. Friday Joey and his girlfriend from Taiwan came to visit. We had nice lunch together. Rusi (a SMU student from China) came to visit on Saturday morning. David picked her up early in the morning and then took her back to school at noon. She told us that her classmate April was going to be baptized! We knew both Rusi and April last year when we picked them up at the airport. Later we brought them some used household stuff to start their new life in Dallas. I still remember the day when David and I sat in April’s hot apartment talking about Religion. She was very articulated and deep-thinking. We were so happy that she found the new life and decided to become a Christian half year later. I called April and told her that David was at SMU campus. She asked whether David could take her to see Emily. Saturday afternoon we hosted a baby shower for David’s FriendSpeak reader Ray and his wife Olivia. So April joined us for the shower. She told David on the way that she had always searched for spiritual things. She had a monk friend in China. But she was never touched by Buddhism. Recently she was moved by the message that a Chinese preacher from Arlington (Arlington Chinese First Baptist) delivered at SMU. She wanted to be changed by God and then use her own testimony (of change) to reach out to her parents! She invited Rusi (her classmate) to her baptism. Rusi asked me what the baptism was when David was putting Emily down for a nap. I explained it to her. She said, “I didn’t know there’s such rich meaning in it. No wonder April invited us to see her baptism.” On the way back, it happened that David talked to her about baptism too. So Rusi had a double message on baptism!

The baby shower had a great turnout: with all the active Friendspeak workers. We were so thankful that George, Bob, Louella, Pam, Gayla, Dawn, and others came to the shower and reached out to Ray and Olivia despite of their busy schedules. It was such an encouragement for Ray and Olivia. They said they learned so much from everybody. Ray hasn’t attended Friendspeak regularly ever since Bill Kidd passed away a year ago (Bill and David used to work with Ray). At the end of the shower, Ray told everybody:”I’ll see you tomorrow at Friendspeak!” Unfortunately David was sick. We didn’t go to Friendspeak Sunday afternoon. But hopefully we will see him next week.

Emily is still a super baby: easy and contented. Her appetite really started to grow this week. She is eating 4-8 oz for each feeding. She stayed awake for half of the party on Saturday and went to sleep in Gayla’s arms. Sunday she put up with us at Gayla’s house without a nap (Gayla prepared a delicious lunch). Sunday night Emily slept through the night for the first time – from 9:00pm to 6:15am! Yeah!! Here are a few pictures this week:

4 Months Old

Emily is four months old!! At four months old, she attempts to stand up against the sofa. She also flips pages and drools a lot. She likes licking/sucking her fingers when she is hungry or sleepy. She is quiet, gentle, contented and happy. We just moved the coffee table out so that she can have a big play area in the living room. The next thing is to baby-proof the whole house.

Emily had four-month check up today. She is still an A+ girl!!! Her weight is 14.5 lb (75%). Her height is 25.8 in (97%). Our pediatrician suggested us to begin adding iron-fortified rice cereal.

Amy, Kendall and Chloe were here for the weekend. Amy had her baby shower in Kyri's house. I made a diaper cake as practice. It was a lot of fun. On Emily's four months old birthday, the weather was beautiful. Both Chloe and Emily had their pretty spring dresses (I can't believe that I didn’t take a picture of them together …) We attended the second service. During the prayer time, Gordon came down from the pulpit to pray for Todd Miller’s family. Then he saw us. So he walked over to pray for Emily. That was the sweetest thing. He prayed for Emily’s development and for our parenting. On the way to lunch, David said “Parenting does require patience!” “Why do you say that?” I asked. “Gordon prayed for us for patience.” We are really impressed by our preacher’s personal touches on the church members. We had lunch at SpringCreek BBQ. Before Emily could take a nap, we had to go back for Friendspeak. It got hot in the car. So I took Emily into the Friendspeak room. So many people wanted to talk to her and touch her. She was exhausted in the end. We barely had time to have a feeding and diaper change before the “Made in the Street” missionary report. But we didn’t stay to the end. Emily had another long and busy Sunday!

Here are a few recent pictures:

Emergency diaper change at the roadside:

Smile to Gayla after Sunday service:

Practice stand-up (or Kong-Fu??)

Why can't doggie talk??!!

See what I can do in the swing

Thank you Daddy for feeding me!

Changing diaper at church - lady's restroom (Thank you Robin for the changing pad! We use it everywhere):

Getting ready to have shots at doctor's office :-(

Hurry Bath time!!

Fascinated about the blocks and rings:

Flipping through pages:

Hands and feet workout: