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.

New Vehicle

Here’s our new baby:

Not that one, this one:

We got a 2009 Mazda 5 Sport MICROVAN!  What is a  microvan, you ask?  Just like it sounds, smaller than a minivan.  Actually, I’m not sure if it is really called a microvan, that is just what the dealer called it.  These vehicles are apparently much more popular outside of the US. 

We needed a second vehicle and our Toyota Rav 4 (below, parked next to the Mazda) is great for us now but if we ever add on another child to the family we would need a bigger vehicle.  Well, as you can see by the picture the microvan is not necessarily bigger.

(This is Aedan with the salesman putting on our plates)

**SIDE COMMENT: Aedan asked us yesterday if Heavenly Father and Jesus make microvans.  Funny kid.**

We went to the dealer to test drive some minivans and to be honest I wasn’t quite ready to be a minivan mom.  I just don’t like the feel of driving vans.  And it is not like I am not used to them.  Being the oldest of 5 kids in my family I was well trained in the art of busing people around in big vehicles.  I love the space of a minivan but it seemed too big for us at this stage in our life. 

The dealer caught on to my half-hearted attempts at shopping for a van and introduced us to the Mazda 5.  We test drove it and WOW!  It drives like a car!  It seats up to 6!  The doors slide open just like a minivan!  The cargo space is not the greatest if we have a full car but the back seats fold down and it is perfect.  Even if we have another kid in the next few years we will still be okay.  AND this was more of an economical move for us, better gas mileage, etc.  AND the price tag was easily less than half the cost of some minivans so we were able to get a lot newer model rather than settling for a much older used minivan.

(same layout but with black interior and no navigation system)

Can I just say shopping for used minivans is not a picnic?  (Especially in a short period of time?) After a handful of years old they start getting a little trashy.  Plus they are not easy to come by as people tend to hold on to their minivans for a while.  We hope this Mazda will serve us well for many years and when the kids are older/bigger we will most likely dive in to the minivan world.

But for now Aedan likes to call our vehicles “twins” as they are both silver.  We are all lovin it.

Our First Home

A lot has happened this past week!  And NO it wasn’t an April Fools Joke!I can’t believe we were able to go house hunting, find a home, get an offer accepted and a contract drawn up, AND purchase a second vehicle all within a week.  That is not to mention all of the research/prayers that went into making these major purchases! 

 

With Neal starting a job so soon and with two more months of rent left on our current residence, the plan of action is that Neal will be living in temporary housing while he works and writes (he is going to be finishing his PhD work in the evenings and weekends) and the kids and I will stay here to pack.  We are looking at about 3 hours of drive time separating us for about a month and a half.  As you can imagine it is a less-than-ideal situation but it is manageable and we can see him on the weekends if he isn’t too busy.  

The company is offering Neal the chance to get a business degree by taking evening classes while working and so most likely he will begin that this Fall.  The job is at least a 2 yr commitment, probably 3 for the business degree and who knows what will happen after that.  With that in mind, we were looking to start out in a smaller home with the idea that we may not be here longer than your average postdoc.  

We saw several homes and our very last home we saw was the one we got.  It is a HUD home (read this to know what I’m talking about) however it is in very good condition.  There are a lot of things we need/want to do to it prior to moving in but overall this seemed like the smartest investment for us, especially if we have to turn around and sell it in a few years.  But who knows, we could be there for a lot longer.

It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with an unfinished basement so we have room to grow.  It has plenty of yard and it is on the end of a culdesac and, yes, is right next to train tracks which for those who know our current status, it is nothing new although it is much quieter than here. It is in a little growing town called Davis Junction just south of Rockford.  The nearest LDS chapel is about 10 miles away and we will be in a branch (yes we knew about that beforehand) and we had a chance to meet some people in the branch this last Sunday.  The branch president made sure to collect our callings history and was very adamant that, “the Lord needs you here!” and I guess he was right because we got the home.  

Being a HUD home means we will have a little bit of work to do before we move in.  It is stressful but kind of fun to be able to pick out carpet and flooring and light fixtures and appliances…. I know that sounds like a lot but even with all of that we believe we will be coming out ahead when it comes time to resell.  What an adventure! I am excited to be able to pic out the things that we want (or is it I want?)

We have big plans for the basement and Neal is a handy guy so we will get to it as soon as time permits. If you looked carefully at the aerial view you would notice a pool which is no longer there so we have to help the grass grow back.  Well for the few readers who need more pics (hi mom!) here they are.  Just think of them as “before” pics with the “after” pics yet to come:

Aedan chose his room.  Thank goodness it was the one we were going to put him in.  He spent Easter weekend at his Grandma and Grandpa K’s house while we house hunted.

Lily was perfect for us!  What a trooper!

All those trees are ours.  There are many more trees.

 

Tax Credits and Rebates here we come!  Be sure to check back to see vehicle #2!!