More Daddy Daughter Time

Happy Leap Day!  I wanted to try to post today since it's such a rare day.  :)

On Sunday I had a wonderful lunch with Kim and Janice at Tiny Boxwood (again, I had my camera but forgot to take a picture).  It was so much fun to catch up with my girls and have an adult outting.  It had been a while.  :)  While I was enjoying my migas and cinnamon roll with mint lemonade, Bryce and Abby were out buying mulch and plants for our 2012 garden.  By the time I got home, they were almost done and the garden looked great!!  We had 2 pepper plants that survived the summer heat last year and of course, our trusty ol' avocado tree that's miraculously still alive too.  Last year as I was de-weeding the garden, I accidentally ripped out all the sage (it looked like a weed to me!!).  Oopsie daisy - I'll have to be more careful next time.  :)

Different kinds of tomatoes, peppers, cucmber, etc.

View of whole garden.

Abby loves to help out her dad in any way possible; whether it's in the kitchen or outside.  It's so cute and reminds me of myself as a kid.  I was always getting up early to help my dad work on a car or clean the heater out or help build/assemble things or change the oil in a car or just run errands.  I don't really recall ever helping my mom out in the kitchen - go figure - that explains a lot about my lack of culinary skills now I suppose.  :P  But I love to watch the two of them spend quality time together since I feel like Abby and I get PLENTY of that during the week.  Other than having my face, Abby is a mini-me of her Daddy, especially when it comes to their personality and I love to watch them interact.  It's the battle of goofy wit vs. goofy wit.  :)

Every mother loves the sound of their baby laughing.  :)

As for Baby Baker #2, I'm currently 35 weeks and 4 days.  I have less than 4 weeks to go and the anticipation is killing me!  I cannot wait to meet our little girl and see what she looks like and learn what her personality will be like.  And I can't wait to see Abby and her mei mei interact as well.  I'm sure there will be a few obstacles to overcome in the beginning but I hope they grow to love each other's company like I do with my siblings.  As for me, I'm starting to get really uncomfortable.  Sleep is already evading me and it's just hard to get around or just walk/move.  Same song, different baby.  I'm just glad I'm not breaking out like a teenager like I did with Abby at this stage.  :P

And a quick note on Abby before I part - it's been a while and I need to be fair!  She's almost 38.5" tall (vs. 38" in early Dec 2011).  She seems to have skipped size 3T altogether and is in 4T already (and she's only 2 years and 10 months old!).  She's still in size 9 shoes and I still haven't cut her hair (besides the bangs early on).  She loves to sing all day, just like I always did as a kid.  She knows about 10-12 songs and even sings one in Chinese (lian zhe lou hu - two tigers).  It's so cute!!!  She still really enjoys school which I'm so thankful for.  She goes twice a week now but next year she'll be going 3 days a week and I know she's already excited about that.  :)  Bryce and I are THOROUGHLY enjoying the fact that she's potty trained.  Not only does it save money but it's just so much more convenient for us all.  She still wears a nighttime diaper but she has yet to pee in it at night.  She will actually wake us up and tell us she needs to potty in the middle of the night!  Pretty cool, if you ask me. 

I haven't been good about taking pictures this past week (too much effort to stand and get the camera, I suppose) but hopefully I get better about it.  I was told to cherish my alone time with Abby before #2 comes along and I fully intend to do that as I know our dynamic will change soon enough.  Until next time!

Congratulations Kirk and Lucy!

This morning, my brother Kirk and Lucy were married in court and I couldn't be happier to have Lucy officially part of the family now!  Their wedding reception will be held later this year.  My dad is an only son and Kirk is also an only son so we finally have another Chen!  And he's also the first to marry another Chinese person because me, my sister and my cousins all married white guys - haha!  I ended up taking pictures with Lucy's camera so I don't have many on mine but here are a few from this morning.  :)

Kirk and Lucy Chen

    We missed you Ruby!

Family Time!

Last week Bryce was gone all week for work and Abby had a pretty tough time with it.  Bryce travels quite a bit for work but he was actually home for more than 2 months straight so Abby got used to him being there all the time.  Monday and Tuesday were the hardest for her. Poor little girl.  She must have said "I miss my Daddy" or "I really, really, really, REALLY miss my Daddy" about 20 times a day all the way up until Friday when he came home.  Then they were attached at the hip for the entire weekend and our little girl was on cloud 9 because her Daddy was home!  :) 

Anytime Bryce lays down like this, Abby jumps onto his back.  This time, she's also combing his hair.  :)

*Don't tell but Bryce is actually stalking my Pinterest page here.  He looks at all the recipes and found an awesome pita bread recipe which we (he and Abby) used to make gyros for dinner Sunday night.  Thank you Bryce and thank you Pinterest!*

This is a bad picture but Abby looks EXACTLY like me in my baby pictures - minus the brown hair.  Scaaarrryyy.....

Canoodling.

Love, love, love.

I woke up entirely too early on Sunday and desperately needed a nap by the afternoon so I decided to take one on the couch.  The next thing I know, Abby hands me my favorite teddy bear, Mr. Bear, grabs her Lego box to use as a seat and gets a book to read to me while I go to sleep.  Monkey see, monkey do?  Definitely.  It was so sweet.  She obviously can't read but she was whispering the book to me by memory.  I can't think of a better way to fall asleep.  :)

(Side note, Bryce took this picture and I saw it upon waking up and the first thought in my mind was that I resembled a beached whale.  Ruby says it's not that bad though.)  :P

While I was snoozing away, Bryce and Abby were busy making the pita bread from scratch.  Bryce took this video and I must say Abby is quite the Little Baker (pun intended!).  I was impressed and so proud of her!  She loves to help Bryce make any kind of bread so I'm not surprised.  :)

Final product.

It was delicious and super puffy!

And on a totally unrelated note, I'm usually really precise about how I fold my clean dish towels but Abby loves to help with laundry nowadays so this is how our dish towels turn out.  She even trifolds like I do!  At first I would re-do them but now I have learned to let it go.  It's taking time but I'm getting better about my OCDness!

Quality Time

Watching Daddy play Angry Birds.

She hadn't done this in a long time - taking a nap on Daddy.

Bryce loved it and they did this for 1.5 hours.  He's as big of a sucker as I am!

Might as well get used to it with #2 on the way.  :)

I'm currently 33 weeks and 5 days.  Less than 6 weeks to go!  I'm really starting to get uncomfortable now.  My ribs hurt, tweaked my back again and my legs and feet are really starting to swell again.  It's the home stretch and I'm just going to suck it up.  I just realized I haven't entered the "nesting" phase yet and probably won't at all this time around.  I atleast need to dig out Abby's old newborn clothes to pick an outfit out for mei mei's first ride home.  I suppose Bryce needs to install and rearrange the car seats and I need to make one last trip to Costco for diapers and formula.  It's amazing how much less nervous we are the 2nd time around.  Hopefully we aren't forgetting something major!

My favorite, Abby's new favorite

When I was little, my favorite thing to play on in the park was the swing.  I would swing FOREVER.  I'm talking until I had blisters on both hands.  Kirk and Ruby would play around on everything (Ruby likes monkey bars and slides) and I would swing, swing and swing some more.  I still love it.  Well, with the rain finally subsiding, I took Abby to our local park and today was the first time she used the "big girl" swing all by herself!  And let me tell you, she had a BLAST!  She held on really tight and had good balance (she gets that from me....future dancer in our hands, I hope).  I should have taken a video of her laughing and squealing but I didn't trust not being there to catch her just in case she fell.  We will definitely being doing that again.

Abby and Lao Yie

My dad got back on Sunday from his extended vacation of Perth and Taiwan for the past 2 months.  Abby was super excited to see her Lao Yie on Monday!  Love this picture!

Da Xiao Jie

Abby is turning into a da xiao jie "big little lady" right before my very eyes.  My mom just got back from Taiwan and got Abby her first qi pao and it fits perfectly.  Although she is almost 2 years and 9 months old, the qi pao is for a 4 year old.  That sounds about right to me.  She's turning into quite the poser for pictures!