Benefit of One-sies

One-sies are these jumpsuit looking tops for babies that clip around the diaper like a loose leotard. I always wondered why there are so many one-sies designed for babies, even for kids older than 1 years old. Well, I found my answer yesterday.

Isabel just had some solid food for lunch. She was wearing a cute brown top and a pair of white shorts. The top is not an one-sie (not tied under the diaper) and just simply falls over the shorts. It was a warm day, so this seems like the perfect outfit for Isabel to stay cool.

As usual she was walking around everywhere and playing, while we all got ready to go out with Jaime's parents for Father's day brunch. As I was coming out of the bedroom, she was in the hallway and I saw something fall from her finger to the carpet. Since she just ate, I thought perhaps some food dropped on her clothes and she picked it up with her finger.

I picked it off the carpet and put it close to my mouth to smell it. I guess it's instinctual for humans to smell their food. Well, it was NOT food. She is now almost 14 months old and her arm is long enough to reach, I guess. Because she pooped and it was itching her. So she reached into the back of her shorts to scratch and picked out some poop, which is what I saw drop to the carpet. Oh, the joy of motherhood.

The funny thing is I wasn't grossed out at all. I just started to laugh my head off. To think, it was so close to my mouth. I guess this is what happens to moms. Her poop is just an every day affair. It just reached a new level yesterday.

Moral of the story - now I know why one-sies are so useful. It can prevent your kid from picking poop out of their diapers. Lessons learned!

- Lei

Happy Father's Day!

We had a wonderful day celebrating father's day with Jaime and his parents. We had brunch at Delancey Street. Then we had a photo shoot for Isabel as one of my good friends, JuanPablo, offered to take her pictures as her birthday present. He has about $3000 worth of equipment and we had a lot of fun. We can't wait to see the photos in a few weeks.

The best part though of Father's day is what Agnes created for all the wonderful dads for Father's day. She is becoming quite a pro at this. Enjoy!


- Lei

Any guess what Isabel is doing?

Jaime took this video while I was at work two weeks ago. It's so cute and funny. It's hard being a 1 year old. Any guess what little Isabel is doing?



- Lei

Isabel loves to dance and play on her toy cart

She literally dances to any music she hears. Here you see her move to the music of her toy cart (grandma's birthday gift). She would stop and dance to commercial music on TV and of course when we play music. It's too cute.

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- Lei

From Crawling to Running in One Month

It's amazing how fast Isabel learned to walk and run. She took her first tentative independent steps at end of April and now she is walking and running everywhere. Here are 2 videos from mid May and end of May

She was still walking like this mid May. She is so excited to be walking


She is walking and running more like this now (end of May) and barely ever crawls. She realizes she can go faster running :-) oh trouble


- Lei

Isabel loves hide and seek

It is not all what you think. She does love it when we run around, hide away, and wait for her to find us. But what you don't know is she also love to hide everyone's stuff now that she can reach higher and open up drawers.

3 weeks ago, I realized that I can't find my MPS player. Agnes said she last saw it on our dinner table but also don't know what happened. I asked her to look everywhere with no success, so I thought I probably just lost it. We kinda gave up.

Well guess what, today while Agnes was not looking, Isabel came around holding my MPS player in her hand. I guess she gave up on us finding it, so she is like "okay, I guess I will just give it back to you. This way I can hide it again when you are not looking :-)" I couldn't believe it. I still don't know where she hid it. She apparently did the same thing to Agnes' MPS player a month ago, but we found it under the Wii Fit board after just a few days.

The morale of the story - visitors beware! All your stuff that you bring to the house is fair GAME for Isabel. She will eventually give it back I think, but we don't know when :-)

- Lei

We can all learn from a 1 year old!

I am amazed how relentless Isabel is at learning how to walk. Every day she would fall down many times and then get right back up again to try again. Her face is full of excitement as she takes more steps and now only after a few weeks, she has gone from only walking a few ginger steps slowly to practically running down the corridor.

Imagine what we adults can accomplish if we acted like a 1 year old - never giving a second thought to "falling down" but with every waking hours just keep trying and trying to reach our goals with enthusisam and vigor. There is no concept of failure or looking good to a 1 year old. There is no thoughts of regrets of the past or worry for the future to a 1 year old. Everything is the present and everything is just a journey to the next part of growing.

When and why did we "adults" lose that? Aren't we all growing still until the day we die? As we grow up to "adulthood," it seems that we have come up with many reasons to try less as well as have developed a habit of giving too much meaning to something meaningless. A bad interview or a mistake made on the job is the adult equivalent of "falling down" as we pursue our career dreams. To a 1 year old, these are just opportunities to learn how to do better next time. Many of us, however, would make it mean much more, something about our self worth or market worth, and it spirals from there.

Imagine if Isabel did the same as we adults do today. If everytime she falls down, she spends time analyzing what happened and what does it mean about herself, she may not walk until she is 5 years old.

It's up to us to recognize that in life we are sometimes the ones that actually stands in the way of our dreams. If we just try our best at every single moment and look at "falling down" as only opportunities to learn instead of failures, we can be unstoppable. Imagine what we can all accomplish!

- Lei

Isabel says "Grandma" in Chinese

Grandma in Chinese is "Laolao" for the mother's side. Agnes and I have been teaching Isabel the last month how to say it. I think she got it. :-)



- Lei

Star Trek Movie - only 3 stars

Jaime and I went to see this last night. It was entertaining but nowhere as good as I expected or as the reviews indicated. I give it a 3 star out of five
- 1 star for the action sequences which was great;
- 1 star for the clever way the story line was written to allow future sequels to be completely different from the TV series (you will know what I mean when you see it - very in the spirit of star trek fantasies)
- 1 star for the story of Spock was pretty good

On the other hand, I thought the story for Jim Kirk was too cliche and shallow. His character didn't really develop. He was a rebellious, maverick, cocky kid and he seem to still be at the end of the movie with a captain title. Also I thought the last 20 minutes of the movies was cheesy and so predictable. Lastly, (movie spoiler ahead - don't read if you don't want to know), there is no way they could have survived that last explosion since a dot of that red matter destroyed a whole planet and they detonated the entire red matter that was at least 100K times larger.

I guess I was just disappointed as I had high expectations after seeing the reviews everywhere. We still had a good time.

- Lei

Isabel photo story - what a first year!

The first one was made when she was 12 weeks old. Agnes and I made this second video last month for her first birthday. We had so much fun. Enjoy!


- Lei

Video Series - Isabel loves to Dance

As Isabel turned 1, Agnes and I are creating a series of videos from this past year. This first one is one of our favorite. She is very much like mama and papa - loves to move to music. enjoy!



- Lei

Isabel's Bday Party videos

Isabel's first birthday party

Isabel turned 1 on Sat, May 2, 2009. Wow, how time flies. We had a fabulous party for her at Grandma's clubhouse in redwood shores. Jaime's parents + tita Tusa cooked up a storm and also did all the decoration for the party. Thank you so much! We had about 30+ guest including 3 other babies (Lauren, Dash, Gavin) for Isabel to play with.

Isabel loved her gift from Jaime's parents which was a little princess push cart. She also got many fabulous clothes and gift cards from our friends. My parents gave her the ultimate practical gift which she will appreciate a lot when she grows up - set up money for her college fund plus her gorgeous cake below. Thank you mom and dad.

All in all, a great party. Thank you all for coming and help our little one celebrate.

Isabel's first independent steps

She is walking more and more every day as well as standing up from the ground without holding anything. We captured two videos two days ago - one where she is walking along the walls and the other she took 3 steps without holding anything toward me. So exciting!





- Lei

She is walking.. She is walking

We have yet to capture it on film, but I am so excited. Yesterday, she stood up from the ground while still holding an empty shoe box (she loves boxes). She has been standing up for a few days now. I held out my arm at her shoulder level so she would be incented to walk toward me instead of get down and crawl. And she did! She took 3 little steps towards me while still holding the box in mid air.

I felt so happy - happy that she is starting to walk; happy that I was there to see her first step; happy that Jaime was there too. He was hanging out on the bed while I was playing with Isabel on the floor.

All is all, a really good day! I feel so grateful to have a more relaxing job so I can share so many special moments with our little one. :-)

- Lei