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.

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!

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!!

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.

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.

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.