Friday, May 29, 2009

And we're off!!


We leave for our vacation tomorrow.  We're going to Providenciales in Turks and Caicos.  I'm working from home today so I could sneak in some extra time to pack.  Packing for Naomi is much more stressful than packing for myself!  I've already got piles and piles of clothes, sunblock, toys and books.  Now to just sort through it all.


Thursday, May 28, 2009

Memorial Day weekend

We had quite the eventful memorial day weekend in the Wei household. It started on Friday morning when Austin dropped Naomi off at work with me. Despite skipping a nap, Naomi was her usual charming self and pretty much won everyone over in the office. It's always cute to see grown men coo and talk gibberish to a little baby. After spending the morning at my office, we trekked up to Austin's office for lunch. There, Naomi showed off the her amazing dance moves and her affinity to kissing stuffed animals...yes, we are sad to report, she kissed a Yankee's beanie baby bear. On Saturday, Austin and I started the day off early and headed down to Greenbrook, NJ. A couple of hours later and thousands of dollars out of our pockets, left us with a new car! We finally traded in our '97 Honda CRV and purchased an '08 Toyota Highlander Limited. It's so much nicer! And what a treat to have working air conditioning in the summer! On Sunday we had our bbq, and were thankful the weather held up. We even had a chance to bust out the baby pool for the kiddies to play in again. Naomi got to play with her buds Alli and Josiah, and even got to meet Maxine and Liam. It's amazing to see how she interacts with other kids. How she naturally gravitates towards other children, and sometimes it does make me wonder if we should start considering daycare soon. On Monday, after a yummy pancake breakfast in our backyard, we ran a couple of errands, mainly picking stuff up for Naomi's birthday party. In the afternoon, we had another playdate with Josiah and Alli. I still remember our first "playdate" with Alli, where Naomi slept threw the entire date, and Alli wanted nothing to do with Naomi anyway. Hah now, they're crawling all over each other, feeding each other food, stealing each others toys and poking each other in the eyes. Naomi defintitely loved her time with Josiah as well. She actually made the poor boy cry in her over zealous attempt at being cuddly with him. She crawled after him, tried to hug him, and even kissed him! Guess she missed the lesson on respecting other's personal space. We finished off the long weekend with dinner in our backyard. Weekends like this make me love our house, our neighborhood, our friends and our family. Thanks for a great weekend everyone!
















Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Monkey see...

Naomi loves to imitate. It's helped in teaching her tricks like throwing up her hands in the air for touchdowns, raising her hand when you ask who Naomi Wei is, and her most recent, stretching her arms out when you ask how much she loves mama.
When she's taking a bath, she likes to take her wash cloth and "wipe" down the tub. Well this weekend we had some play dates with her friends Alli and Josiah. In her attempt to follow Josiah around the house and invade his personal space, Josiah managed to evade her by climbing up some steps to crawl to the safety of his mommy's lap. Naomi was thwarted by the steps, though not without a valiant attempt.
Last night, I saw her making a beeline for the steps that lead into our kitchen, as she tried to get to Lilo who was staring her down. I followed her, ready to pick her up and bring her into the kitchen in case she couldn't make it up on her own - and to my surprise she lifted one leg up, dragged the rest of her body up, then lifted the next leg up and did the same (we only have two steps that lead you to the kitchen). I only wish I had my video camera cause it was hilarious to see her maneover her way up. (as Jaime and Heather can attest, she is quite the flexible baby. I guess seeing Josiah climb steps made her realize that she could too!

My Baby has a mullet...



Now that Naomi's hair has grown a little longer, the mohawk has died down..but now she's rockin a mullet!!

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Party planning

Invites are out! Austin did a great job with the final design and even printed on the envelopes for me. We ordered stamps from zazzle.com with the birthday girl's picture on them, and I bought flowery glitter stickers from Target to seal the back. I am spending wayyyy too much money, effort and time on a party she won't even remember, but at least I'm having fun, and it's a great way to escape from the workday.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

11 Months


Yes my baby is 11 months today. One month away from being a year old. One month away from toddler-ness. YIKES. It's amazing how much Naomi has grown this month. I know I think this every month, but she really has grown. Even over the past week I notice how she's becoming more and more like a little girl as opposed to a squishy baby. She has her own personality. She has likes and dislikes. Possibly the most noticeable change is her new found mobility. If she sees something she likes, and she can go for it and is no longer relegated to pointing and grunting to get attention. Naomi started crawling last month...but she REALLY started crawling this month. Last month we saw her scoot across the floor. Occasionally she'd get up on her knees and travel a little further, but she was mostly confined to a small area. In the last week her radius has quickly expanded to the extent that we finally felt the necessity to install a baby gate at the top of our steps. An easy way to get her to crawl across the room is to hold up a bag of Gerber dried fruit, or a handful of cheerios. Most likely you’ll see her bop, smile, scream and then crawl towards you. Equally as cute is when she crawls towards me with a big smile on her face as she approaches to kiss you.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Playing Nice

Every Sunday we drop Naomi off at the nursery in our Church. Every morning, as I’m leaving I hear her wailing as the poor nursery staff try to calm her down and distract her. When I pick her up after service, her face is usually red and splotchy, and she’s cranky for the rest of the afternoon as payback for me leaving her behind. Yesterday, I’m happy to report that when I dropped her off, she picked up some toys and started playing with them. While I heard her crying when I left, I heard her immediately stop as soon as the nursery staff went over to entertain her. And after service, when I picked her up, she didn’t even notice me at first. She was too busy playing with another little girl and the toys in the nursery. When she finally did look up and see me, she gave me the biggest smile and crawled towards me. Best feeling in the world.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

The most annoying sound in the world....

Has to be a woodpecker in your chimney at 5am on a Saturday. Apparently it's mating season for woodpeckers, and they like to hide out in chimneys and peck away making their mating patterns. In the winter, I love having a fireplace in our bedroom. Now that it's warm out? Not so much. We turned on the fireplace this morning, since it's gas burning, we knew it wouldn't smoke the bird out, but I think the warmth did scare it away. Of course by the time we came home from church, it was BACK. grrr

Friday, May 15, 2009

Mother's Day

Our Wei family of 3 kicked off our mother's day weekend with a whirlwind 24 hour roadtrip to Harvard, MA and back. We went up to celebrate Austin's mom's graduation. It was a great weekend for driving, graduation, and a seafood meal on the northshore. Though it was an exhausting trip, Naomi handled it like a champ and charmed everyone on the trip.
On the way back home on Saturday, we we ran into some bad luck, and our car started making some pretty crazy noises. We made it safely home, but a diagnostic from our Honda doctor told us we'd need to put another $1300 into fixing the suspensions. This is after almost 3k just 5 wks ago! Austin and I came to the not too difficult decision that it was time to give up my good old CR-V. She is 12 yrs old afterall. And now the hunt begins for a new car.
Sunday morning, still a little bleary eyed, we started our Mother's day festivities! Austin made the most amazing video and gave me an enlarged, framed print out of my favorite photo of Naomi in the pool. After church Austin, Naomi, my mom and I met up with Chris for yummy tofu stew, and possibly a little too much Kalbi. The company was great, the weather was beautiful and the food was yummy. Not much more you could ask for for a first mother's day!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Happy Mother's Day

Naomi and I wanted to wish a happy mother's day to the best mom/wife that two babies could ask for! Here's a little something we put together to celebrate Amy's first year of Mommyness!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Rocking Chair

Last night Naomi woke up at around 12am a couple hours after I had gone to bed. We normally let her cry it out and she can put herself back to sleep in a couple of minutes. This time she seemed a bit distraught, I figured with the loud storms that she might be having a hard time settling down. So I sent in to check in on her. I figured I’d rock her a little to try and settle her down. Since Naomi was a couple of weeks old, she hated being carried by someone who was sitting down. So to get her to sleep we used to have to stand up and rock her and eventually put her down in her crib. As soon you tried to sit down with her, she’d start screaming her head off. Sometimes she didn’t want to be carried even when you’re standing up. She squirms to get free, and she has the strongest little arms that can jab you right in the neck with a perfectly positioned stiff arm. Austin and I always joke about how we have the most non-cuddly baby ever.
Given I was exhausted and bleary eyed, I figured I’d try to rock her in the rocking chair last night. Within a few minutes Naomi was calm and just content to lay in my arms until she fell back asleep, and even though it was midnight and I was exhausted and had to be back up in a few hours, I was happy. My non-cuddly baby wanted to be cuddled.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Party planning

I'm in full on birthday planning mode. I don't think we'll have anything too crazy (like my baby shower which had over 50 ppl, talk about overwhelming). But since it is Naomi's FIRST birthday, I do want portions to be memorable, like her invites. I plan on framing one as a keepsake. I wanted to do this for my wedding invite and my babyshower invite as well, just haven't gotten around to it. Here's the invite we decided to go with. We should get the final prints early next week. Have I mentioned I love being married to a graphic designer?


Give me more

I never thought I'd teach Naomi baby sign language. But we noticed how much Naomi tries to imitate us, and how easy it's been to teach her tricks, (recent trick - "Flying Kiss"), and my friend Lois told us about how her 1yr old son Caleb can sign for "more", "please", "diaper change"!!!. I figured I'd give it a shot. Within a couple of days Naomi started copying me when I made the gesture for "more", and now a couple weeks later, she knows how to signal "more" for when she wants more food!. She still gets frustrated when we take too long to feed her and grunts/whines, but she's starting to use the sign more often. Each time she signals for "more" we give her another bite of whatever she's eating and praise her....then she claps for herself.