Baby Time

INTRODUCING

Emma Lai-Sin

Born Monday, April 23rd at 7:14 pm

7 lbs 6 oz, 20 inches

Emma gets her first name from a great great grandmother on dad’s side and her middle name (Cantonese for beautiful fairy) from a great grandmother on mom’s side.

Emma is a darling angel baby.  She smiles at Neal.  She is our quietest baby.  She is well loved by her big brother and sister.  She is loving all the attention she is getting from grandma this week.

 

By far the best birthing and recovery experience so far.  Will get back to sharing the details soon, just after I go snuggle princess #2 some more…

The Official 1st Blogiversary

I don’t know what possessed me to start this blog on February 29th, 2008.  It was probably not intentional.  So, while it has been around for a handful of years, now I can officially say, Happy 1st Blogiversary to me!

Seemed like a good time to come out of hibernation. You laugh but I really do hibernate….

So since this only happens once every four years, I’ll give you four updates about each one of us.

LILY:

1. Is pretty much potty trained! Well, 95% but still, hooray! She has the funniest i-need-to-go-potty dance, reminds me of Elvis.
2. She is a talker.  She likes to lay on compliments to others but gets mad when you return the compliment (um, girl?).  She will say to you, “I got to tell you a question” and you say what? and she will say “What is your favorite color?” to which you will reply and most likely you would be wrong, it is always the color you are currently wearing.  She also likes to tell made-up stories, usually involving a pony named Fluttershy who wants someone to play Angry Birds with her.  All the ponies seem to be too busy doing more important stuff like making cupcakes and laughing. Finally Spike the dragon agrees to play Angry Birds with her and saves the day. Hear it for yourself:
   
3. She is almost 2 1/2 yrs old, she knows how to navigate my phone pretty well, she loves Disney Princesses, My Little Ponies, Little “Ein Skeins” (Einsteins), and Dora.  She can read most of the alphabet too, and loves going to the library and kids museum.
4. Still has curly red hair.  And two cowlicks which make styling it all the more difficult.  Her hair is growing out funny in back and a few sections look almost mullet-esque so I think I’m going to have to chop it to even it out.  She has discovered that she likes to play with mom’s hair.  She loves to brush it and put clips in it and try to braid it… It has been funny because Aedan has wanted to get in on the action too and now knows how to braid my hair…

AEDAN:

1. This boy got so many Lego sets at Christmas and of course no sooner than when he finished building them all he starts getting excited about Star Wars and Star Wars Lego stuff.

Aedan in the Robots exhibit, Rockford Children’s Discovery Center Museum.

2. He is a great reader.  He is so funny with his writing and drawing lately.  Apparantly he was fed up with our rules so he made up some of his own:

Rules: 1) never close my door 2) don’t distroy my legos 3) keep hands and feet to self 4) never mess up my bed

3. He plays really well with Lily but knows how to get her to do things he knows she shouldn’t do.  And of course she is just thrilled that he is giving her attention so she happily obliges.  He has accepted the fact that he will have another little sister and tells me he is so excited.  He’s been super helpful.

4. We still have a hard time getting him to eat most meats and foods that are mixed.  He is SO SLOW too.  It doesn’t help that Lily is super fast and eats just about anything, makes him even crabbier.

Aedan fussing about eating his food and Lily’s impression of Aedan fussing about eating his food.

JACKIE:

1. 33 weeks now.  Still a girl.  Baby has been breech for a while now and is VERY active so of course my bladder is loving it.  I sure hope she turns.  Had some contractions yesterday but if she is like my other two, she will be fashionably late.  Is it crazy to say I almost hope I can schedule an induction again?  It is so nice to be able to plan it and I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I went into labor on my own.  Oh well, looking forward to that epidural! Below is me sometime early January. That jade bracelet I put on in my first month of pregnancy and my wrists got swollen quick and could never get it off.  Had to break it off shortly after this picture.
2. I usually get a burst of energy now but sadly it doesn’t seem to be happening.  I’m slowing down, physically and definitely mentally.  My short term memory is shot. I’ve been trying to get things ready despite myself, mostly worried about freezing meals and getting kids ready for Spring and such, not so much about gather baby stuff.  I hate the term nesting.  I’ve also become hateful of undeserving things.
3. Being creative seems to take a lot of brain power but I do have my moments.  Aedan once commented that he wished I could come to his Kindergarten holiday parties so I decided I would find a sitter for Lily and surprise him by coming to his Valentines Party.  I signed up to do a game and thought a VDay game of twister would be silly.  So going for minimum cost and effort, I cut out paper hearts and machine stitched them onto a unused white shower curtain of ours and made a spinner out of cardboard.  It was fun.  I also made Neal a VDay present, again low $/effort, and decorated some recycled jars to make personalized snack containers for his desk at work.  Gotta push my mind somehow people.
4. Things have been busy for me in my church assignments these last few months.  Inspite of my swollen fingers, I decided to play my cello for Christmas Day and it went ok.  It was more for me and my kids, forcing myself to not forget how to play and my kids needed to know that it is ok to be brave and do  things that make you nervous (or maybe in my case, embarassed).  There have been some Sundays where I’ve found myself playing the organ, teaching a Primary class, teaching Sharing Time, and teaching Singing Time, all back to back.  It has been crazy. 

NEAL:

1. He’s been travelling a lot.  He just got back from a trip to Japan, Korea, and China.  He goes to Colorado, Wisconsin, and I think Chicago this month.  We survive without him but barely.  He is so busy with this new position and seems like he is constantly having work added on to him.  But we are so thankful for this position and will be even more thankful once we can cash in on all the flight and hotel rewards racking up….
2. He is busy with doing school part time too.  My mushbrain can’t even comprehend doing all he does now.  He is doing well there too.
3. He’s been spending some good quality time with Aedan these last few months.  Before Christmas he made a goal to build every one of Aedan’s lego sets with Aedan before Christmas came.  That turned out to be a hard goal to meet.  Since Christmas they’ve been busy playing Lego Star Wars together and they’ve started reading Hugo together.  They even got to go on a Daddy/Son outing to see Star Wars I in 3D in the theaters opening day. 
4. He’s had a bit of a break from doing major home improvements these past few months which has been nice.  We are far from done with this place but that is ok for now.  He decided recently that it would be good to refinance our home with rates being so very low now and so we just got an appraisal done.  It feels weird to refinance after only 2 years of being in the home but rates have dropped enough that it was very worth it.  Next on his honey-to-do list is put the crib back together.

Right Now

Right Now the kids are downstairs wrapping Christmas presents for me and Neal.  Aedan’s is apparently something he made at school today (his last day of the year) and Lily just “shops” around the house for things and wraps them.  There is a large assortment of boxed pudding and cake mixes wrapped with “snappy tape” and “oh so beautiful” bows from her under the tree, each carefully labeled by mom for their intended recipient (one even says To: Lily, From: Lily).

Can I just say this is the kindest looking Santa ever? Love Lily’s Santa Phobia. Our little village has a BIG Christmas party.

Right Now the baby is kicking me a lot.  I have to go back for another ultrasound in two weeks because the baby was positioned in such a way that they couldn’t get all their measurements.  We are a bit worried that I am getting a fair amount of swelling at this point in pregnancy, having low iron and such, and I am just hoping and praying I don’t wind up on complete bed rest. 

Neal and Lily on the Holiday Train at the Illinois Railroad Museum

Right Now Lily’s pants are riding low as we have been working on potty training this month and she is out of diapers.  She is not quite 2 1/2 yrs and if I was feeling up for it she might have been trained earlier but my goal was by the end of the year so not too bad.  My limited experience doing potty training has led me to believe that potty training is more training for the parent than the kid.  We just go straight to underwear, no diapers (except overnight) and while there are accidents, it works pretty well and quick.  I am THRILLED to have a handful of months without diapers!

Right Now the house is a mess.  What’s new.

Right Now Neal is working hard so that he can take time off  for the rest of the year (starting tomorrow!).  We are looking forward to a quiet Christmas at home.  I can honestly say I am so thankful to not have to be dealing with the stress, money, time, and more stress of travelling for the holidays.  But we do miss family.

Daddy is good for making the kids smile when they don’t want to.

Right Now I am organizing my to-do list for the weekend.  We have two sets of missionaries here for Christmas Dinner (so much for quiet) and we are trying to figure out menu.  So far Vichyssoise Soup, Beef Wellington, roasted veggies, rolls, salad, homemade applesauce, and maybe some pie. Most can be prepped ahead of time. What are you having for dinner?

The kids perusing the toy catalogs, marking up what they want for Christmas.  We used to do this as kids, it was kind of funny to watch them do it.

Neal’s Promotion

A couple weeks ago Neal was busy doing interviews for a position within his company and I am happy to report that he was offered the job!  Neal will be the new Product Manager, Immunoassays and will officially begin that post in Septemberish.  This is so amazing as he has only been a Tech Support Scientist for a year now.  In theory he was supposed to be in his current position for two years but they are willing to make an exception in this case. 

This is a big jump for him and will surely make him a much busier man. He has completed two semesters of MBA school this last year and would like to continue pursuing the degree but may have to scale back on the course load for a while.  This opportunity was too good to pass up and we feel so blessed.

If you or anyone you know is looking for work in the life sciences be sure to let us know!  Neal can’t start his new job until they get someone to fill his place :)

Good Job Neal!! We love you!

Half Marathon

This last weekend Neal ran a half marathon with two of his sisters down in Champaign/Urbana.  He did a great job and so did his sisters! 

A lot of people have asked how long has Neal been training for this.  Years.  No actually not really.  More like weeks.  Really.  He had been planning on running this for quite a while but only got around to running in mid-March sometime.  We don’t have a treadmill or a local track so he was limited to running outside when weather permitted. Which, living in northern Illinois, that meant hardly ever.

He hurt his foot running a couple weeks before the race so stayed off of it until right before.  Neal used to run in high school and I’m guessing he was a born runner because with the limited practice he had he was able to do the 13 miles of running in 2 hours.  Not bad! He was so fast that we missed him twice as we (with all the kids) were trying to catch him along the way.

 

{Before and after the race}

We are so proud of him and his amazing sisters!  What an incredible accomplishment! 

Guess who?

Guess who won this prestigious award?

Won at a Stake dance a couple weeks ago. 

I’ll give you a hint.  It wasn’t me, it wasn’t Aedan, and it wasn’t Lily.

Congrats Neal for beating out even the ladies ;)

Concrete Evidence

We really are working over here and here is the evidence.  Granted these pics were taken last September….

Making steps to go out onto our patio.  There was just a wooden step before and it wasn’t sturdy.  We had a nephew fall there in the summer so we definitely needed to fix it.

Aedan was in HEAVEN.  A cement mixer at his house!  A cool looking one too.  I took him to school late that day because he really wanted to watch everything. 

Neal and his dad worked hard and fast.  They made a sidewalk go around the side of our house leading up to the door that opens from our garage.  They also fixed our front porch which was sloping towards the house and I think that solved a good portion of our basement moisture issues.  I’ll take pictures of the finished product someday when it gets warmer outside…

work and more work

I’ve done a lot of posts on the kids lately but maybe it is time I update you on Neal and Jackie stuff:

Lovely illusion at our local children’s museum, September 2010. Apparently tricks the camera too.

Neal is coming up on his one year anniversary working at Thermo Fisher Scientific!  He seems to enjoy the people and the set work hours and he doing well with his job duties.  He has been on a couple short trips for work and has another coming up in April to Orlando (jealous).  We feel so blessed to have got this job and to get our foot in the door, especially in today’s hard economic times.  Work is paying for him to take some MBA classes and that keeps him busy but will hopefully be worthwhile.  He currently has classes on Monday nights and Wednesday nights and we try to get him the rest of the time ;). 

Neal didn’t have a church calling for a few months after we moved in which was okay since he was still finishing up the PhD.  He was finally called to be the Melchizedeck Priesthood Group Leader in August (basically Elders Quorem and High Priests were combined and he was called as president) and had to be set apart as a high priest because of it.  Well, a few months later the church changed guidelines and that calling was dissolved.  That was kind of our “DOH!” moment because now that he was a high priest, he couldn’t serve as Elders Quorem President.  However he was called as High Priest group leader so it worked out just swell.  He is still busy with that calling but he doesn’t have to teach nearly as many lessons.  Neal has been in Primary for sooooo long and he loved it and did a great job there but I think it is time for the adults to experience him!  He is great though, I have branch members tell me how thankful they are for him and what he does.  It blesses our family in ways I’m sure I’m not always noticing, but it is there and we are grateful for it.

Me?  Well this week I have been pulling late nights trying to get our living room ready for painting.  It looked SO ghetto with all the patchups and paint samples slapped on the wall.  The previous owners just don’t know how to fix up a wall well.  Nuff said.  But it is getting better and it is primed and almost ready to go.  I am painting it Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray, a color used by Pottery Barn, and I am going to try adding a very slight amount of sheen using silver metallic paint and glaze.  Really slight, like barely there but enough to hopefully make all the difference in the world, right?  In spite of our house in constant construction mode, I feel like we’ve been doing a lot of entertaining lately.  We’ve been inviting a lot of the branch members over for dinner and it has been fun to get to know everyone.  I purchased two Wii dance games that have been a huge hit for these dinner parties (Just Dance 2 and Michael Jackson’s Experience) and my dad gave us Wii Pictionary which is also fun for parties (but I don’t break a sweat doing that!).

So aside from painting and cooking and normal day to day stuff with kids, I keep busy serving in the Primary at church.  I am serving as a counselor in the Primary presidency.  There really is only the president and myself.  I play piano in there too.  And I basically serve as secretary.  It has been awesome.  I am learning so much.  It is hard work but the internet has been such a huge blessing in this calling.  For handouts, for organizing, for lesson helps, everything. I love that others have such awesome ideas and freely share it.  People have commented to me that I am creative but really what it is is that I have gotten good at gathering creative ideas from others, so I can take no credit whatsoever! I wish I could be that creative though but seriously, who has the time these days :) Apparently everybody but me… My faves currently are:

www.sugardoodle.net because they have everything it is overwhelming.  Check out their general conference packets, they are amazing.

scriptures4kids.com because they have some awesome printables

visitingteachingblog.blogspot.com I know not Primary but I am feeling like an awesome VTer with these cute supplements to the lessons.  March’s is particularly cute.

Snow Days

Last week was a crazy weather week.  I think we had temperature lows in the –20 range.  We had a fair amount of snow but I think what made it worse at our house was the wind.  We literally had snow dunes going on.

Just so you know, we don’t have hills in our backyard,  that is all snow.  When things died down a bit outside we peeked and were excited to still see patches of our driveway.  Little did we realize all of the snow was piled up against our garage.

See you can even see some street in the background.  But really there were so many drifts, several of them chest deep, that EVEN IF we could get our cars out of the garage we wouldn’t have been able to get out of our cul de sac.  Crummy weather.

Here is a better pick of what the end of our driveway looked like. That is a bobcat plowing us out.

It was freezing outside so we didn’t get to play in the snow. It took Neal probably over 4 hours to get to the end of our driveway.  He of course didn’t have work that day but I’m sure he didn’t relish the work at home. 

Well, maybe he had a little fun.

Oh ya, he finished his PhD!

Neal got his new job in end of March and started mid-April but he still had to finish writing his dissertation and defend.  He did all this by mid June and presented his work to his department and committee on June 16th.  Above is a picture of his PI giving an introduction for Neal and below Neal begins his presentation.  As you can see it was a packed house… well, actually people did come but no one likes to sit up front next to the speaker unless they are married to him or they gave birth to him (Neal’s parents came for the occasion) …

He missed the May graduation date and they don’t do a ceremony for Fall but Neal didn’t feel like going through the whole pomp and circumstance so he opted out of all of that.  Which is okay I guess.  We got the diploma in the mail and maybe we’ll have to take a family picture of it with him. 

So I just had to give him a hard time about the fact that among all his acknowledgements and thank yous he included the kids but not me (and look here’s proof) but that’s just fine.  I’m just glad it is done!  Neal did a great job so far as I can tell (Bio is practically a foreign language to me) and we are very proud of him!  He has since then jumped into doing an MBA at a local business school and he is still busy working full time.  I don’t think I can say that we see him more.  Maybe less.  He is a hard worker and we look forward to have lots of time with him over the holidays! Congrats Neal!

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to work he goes!

My handsome hubby off to his first week of work.  He has been at “the company” for two weeks now and we sure miss him at home.  Fortunately we are only a 3 hours drive away so we’ve been able to see him weekends.

After his first week of work we were able to attend an open house for all the employees to come see the new building that was recently added to the facility.  It was a pretty impressive work place and even more impressive that they put in a lot of effort to make the event very kid friendly.  

Aedan and Lily had quite the stash of scientific product (m&m filled test tubes, magnifying lenses, toy dust monitors, Mr. Yuk stickers) when they were done. Aedan especially liked the shipping department and came away with some  nerdy cool labels.