Baby and french bread

We bought a french bread from Target last week. We were supposed to serve the french bread along with some bbq for a gathering. Anyway, Meredith decided to take a bite out of the french bread. See the missing crust on the first photo. She started playing the french bread after taking a few small bites. About 20 minutes later, Meredith was supposed to have her milk. I gave her the french bread instead of her usual milk and she started crying.

Baby and squash

Our neighbor planted some long squash in their backyard. Some of the squash has overgrown into our back yard. I took one and gave it to Meredith. At first, she looked amused and even surprised by the squash. It took her a while to warm up to the squash and gather enough courage to touch the squash.

Houston Satay Festival

Selling satay can be good business in Houston, Texas. This past saturday was the annual the Malaysian, Singaporean hawker fair day. We helped our friends in their satay stall. We sold 450 satays in two hours! People were still standing in line wanting to buy satay and we had to turn them away.

There's an untapped market for satay in Houston. I think it's a viable business selling satay in Houston.

More DC trip photos

We stayed in an old, historical hotel in DC called the Willard Hotel. This hotel is amazingly close to the White House. In fact, we walked about 1 block or 3 minutes to the White House. Quite a few past US presidents had stayed in this hotel before during its glory days in the early 1900s. Abraham Lincoln had stayed here for a few weeks and conducted state affairs here. Legend has it that the term "lobbyist" was invented here as people seeked favors from President Ulysees Grant when he chilled out in the lobby bar.

All told, we stayed here because it's free from frequent flier points. It's still quite nice but you can tell it's an older hotel and not worth the price. We met a Malaysian working at the reception desk. She is a hotel management student doing her on the job training. Isn't it amazing to run into Malaysian all the time?

Panda Hair Band in Smithsonian Museum

We haven't posted any photos from our trip to DC during the labor day weekend. So this is the first of a series of photos.
Bame flew for the first time on the DC trip. It was a two and a half hour plane ride. Baby Meredith was incredibly coorperative during the plane ride. She didn't have a problem when the plane was taking off or landing.

We visited the Smithsonian Museum of Natural Science the first day. Some of Bame best photos were taken in the gift shop. Bame enjoyed modeling the hair band below.

Bame's first internet video

Due to peer pressure, we are putting Bame's home video on the blog now. It seems like everyone else is putting video on their blog so we are following suit.

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

Houston's Durian Festival

I've been eyeing at the durian in Hong Kong market for a while now. Almost all the durian here are the golden pillow variety imported from Thailand. The normal durian price in Houston hovers around $1.50/lb to $2/lb and it's available year round. We ran out of rice and made a trip to Hong Kong mall to Jasmine rice this past Sunday. I was delighted to see that the durian has a price reduction to $1.19/lb. This durian is about 5lbs and the total is about $5.50. It's actually on par with the price we would pay in Malaysia.

Ah Beng, a family friend came by from Louisiana, we tried to pry open the durian. The durian was still frozen hard and we had a hard time just trying get it to crack. So the decision is to let it thaw in the refrigerator for a few days. We will open it this weekend. Stay tune!

Tug of War

We haven't post a blog entry in almost two months. Both of us are busy with work. I traveled up to Colorado twice during September and was also busy with homework assignment.

But it is time to stop procastinating and start updating Bame's blog (baby meredith).

Here's a photo of Bame playing tug of war with the trash bag. It was taken two days ago.
Bame is quite strong now. She can pull her self up with one hand and stand up. Then she will prop herself up against the wall and move along the wall.

Evan & Meredith

This is our friend's baby boy. Meredith is sizing him up.

Eating green beans

Little Tiger has started eating solid food last two weeks. We gave her some Gerber baby food such as banana, apple sauce, peas and green beans. The Gerber green beans package has to be one of the worst tasting food created. In typical western food fashion, this green beans thing is tasteless and flavorless. Little Tiger does not like the green bean at all, she has a hard time keeping the green beans in her mouth. Instead, most of it ended up on her face.

Loch Ness Monster

There is a legendary monster called Loch Ness monster in Scotland. This mythical creature live in the depth of a lake and sometimes popped its head above water and amazed tourists and locals alike. This mysterious creature has been affectionately called Nessie by locals. See picture above for Nessie moving around in the lake.

Similary last few days in the early hours of the morning, we found a hairy creature staring at us while we are sleeping. This creature is not able to see a lot above her crib because she is not tall enough yet. She is straining her neck to the best of her ability trying to see her mommy and daddy while they are sleeping. She doesn't make a lot of noise in the morning, all she does is move around in the crib. The only thing visible for a few minutes is a mop of black hair moving around and then suddenly Little Tiger with her darting little eyes appear like Loch Ness monster to our amazement.

Firetruck

The fire truck visited our neighborhood. It was National Day Out and Meet Your Neighbor Day. The neighborhood association organized a casual hotdog meal get together at the pool.
The association has been heavily criticized for not doing anything at all for the past three years.
Every household has to pay $400 annual dues. Last year, they spent $3000 on a puny christmas tree that adorned the neighborhood entrance and $38,000 to clean the 10ft x 10ft swimming pool. They must have hired a lawyer to clean the pool.
After constant bombardment from the residents, some of the board members were kicked out and the neighborhood association is doing better now.

Iis pretty cool that they got the firetruck out here. The kids just went crazy and you can see them swarming all over the truck. Meredith told me she wants to grow up to be a firewoman.

Showing her teeth!!

Little Tiger finally has two lower front teeth! You can see that in the first photo.
By the way, she is at home this few days since Boon Hong doesn't go back to school until end of this week. We are also trying out a new babysitter. She is an older lady from China and she lives in the retirement home three miles from here. The plan is to go pick her up and have her at our house by 6am everyday if this works out.

Sending Little Tiger away with her belongings

The attached photos were taken the night before we send her to the babysitter's house. There she was, sitting happily in a box of diapers. The box contained her baby formula, a change of cloth, baby wipe and some diapers. She was happily sitting in the box, flashing her trademark smile...and not knowing she will be going to a stranger's house the next day.　

It has been extremely hard for me this week. I am going back to my teaching job next week and there's also two days of teacher's training this week. So I started leaving Meredith at the babysitter's house on Monday. It was very painful. I literally burst into tears when I left the babysitter's house and drove to work. I can't really explain this sadness. It is sort of like seperating your legs from your body...., no I should say that it is like a needle poking your heart constantly hurting.

Little Tiger lost some of her usual sparkle this few days. When I took her back today, she went to sleep right after I showered her. She is normally very energetic when I shower her, flapping her arms and trying to reach out to touch the water, but not today. She was exhausted when I washed her hair for her, closing her eyes and resting her limbs quietly on my body. She didn't really smile as much as she used to. Everyone that knows her say she smiles alot. She normally breaks into a big smile whenever we smile to her．We had to work really hard to get her to smile this last few days.　

She may be tired as she didn't sleep much at the babysitter's house. After the shower, I dressed her and rocked her for a while. She slept for almost two hours...while normally at this time of the day she would be wide awake and very playful. I took her to the swimming pool in the community and then right after feeding her at 8p.m, she went back to sleep. I got less and less time playing with her and I was sad when she is not as happy and energetic as before..

Boon Hong

Meredith's feet

Those feet are so small and tiny.
In a few months, Meredith will be standing on her own, on these tiny and tender little feet....

My favorite food

My favorite food is egg. Any dish that is made from egg or just an honest, down to earth egg.
Boon Hong favorite food is pork. She likes pork ribs, or just pork in general.

Eggs + Pork = Cell Phone

Our daughter's favorite food is cell phone. She likes to eat cell phone, whether it is in closed position or flipped open position.

Will she......

It was a pretty busy Tuesday.

07:05 Woke up and fed Meredith
08:00 Cleaned Meredith's bottles with boiling water while she drifted back to sleep.
08:30 Cleaned restroom, vacum the living room, and then shower.
09:00 Feed Meredith and bathed her. She really enjoyed bathing,
she likes the sensation of water running down her body.
10:30 Headed to library for Meredith weekly's gymboree activity.
12:00 Went out lunch with Ning Yik. Meredith had her milk while I was driving to Sandee. We bumped into quite a few aunties from church having lunch at Sandee.
16:00 Cooked dinner while Xiao Xiao Pang was taking a nap.
18:30 Eric got home from work. Went out for 45 mins jog while Eric babysit Meredith

This is my housewife's life since May 27. Soon, I will be back to school, teaching all those less than courteous kids and leave my baby Meredith with a stranger. I am sad. It is pretty painful to leave her for half of a day. Will the babysiter feed her when she is hungry? Will the baby sister hold her when she is cranky and cries? Will the babysiter change her diapers immediately when she poop? Will baby Meredith cry because she misses her mother's smell? The babysitter also has her own grand baby to watch.

I still have two more weeks .........

Boon Hong

Sitting up...

Little Tiger is getting stronger and stronger. Little Tiger likes to growls and squeals while lying flat on the her stomach, with her mum pursuing her and grabbing her legs. After growling for a while, she tried to pick herself up. She cannot really sit straight up yet but she is propping herself up with her hands.

Ribs...

I don't really like eating pork. Growing up, I shunned Char Siao and othe popular pork dishes. I just never really eat pork in Kuching. However, in the past few years, I discovered that no all pork at created equal. I have grown to like bbq pork ribs or smoke pork ribs a lot. I have tried many different type of bbq ribs in various restaurants. Now is the time to try to replicate it at home. I found a recipe book and followed the instructions religiously. The ribs were marinaded with about ten different spices, soaked overnight, and then slowly grilled over medium heat for one and a half hour. Needless to say, the result was satisfying to the stomach and to the soul. Too bad, Little Tiger cannot eat grown up food yet. A few friends came by and got to sampled it....

Like father Like daughter

My hair don't always stay straight. Most of the time it is semi curly and messy, especially after a 40 miles bicycle ride. I came back from the bicycle ride Saturday, took off my helmert and my hair looked just as messy as Little Tiger's hair. Most people commented that her hair is wild and unwieldy just like mine. I guess that what it means by the old saying, like father like daughter.

Gymboree

Boon Hong took Little Tiger (a.k.a Xiao Xiao Pang) to Gymboree this past Thursday. This is a free program available at the Sugar Land library. During this program, infants and toddlers get a chance to kick around, exercise and twist and turn to the tune of popular children music. This is a good program because we get to learn about various lullabies. We did not know any lullabies to sing to Little Tiger. Boon Hong came back from the Thursday session with one or two new lullabies to sing to her. Actually, Gymboree is a also a franchise business. I heard that there are other locations in town that offer Gymboree sessions for a fee.

National Geographic Cover Lookalike

Imgp6703cropped for print
Originally uploaded by Meredith Sugar Land.

This is from Meredith's first week. I thought the photo looked like one of the National Geographic front page with the Afghan child. Anyway, her hand during that time was still wrinkled from months in the mothers womb.

New Hair Cut

I brought Xiao Xiao Pang for a hair cut on Monday at Little Cut. She did great and was coorperative enough with the barber. She just like to twist and turn her head every now and then to look at me. She must be wondering why there was a scissor rummaging through her hair. The hair cut cost $10 and is more expensive than the $2.99 hair cut Eric goes to.

I am blessed that Meredith is easy to care for and I treasure every minutes that I spent with her. She loves to laugh and giggle when you hold her up. She starts to demand how she wants to be held now that she is five months old. She make noises when she wants attention. She is such a cute baby when she wakes up in the morning. She will smile at you and opens her arms up waiting for you to hold her up. The feeling of holding her up in my arms makes me wants to hold her more. Many parents have told me not to pamper babies by holding them too much. For me, I just ignored that advise. I have to admit I love holding Meredith. The feeling is simply priceless.

Boon Hong

Meredith's passport photo

Meredith applied for her Malaysian passport and birth cert. Part of the requirements on Malaysia Borang D application is to put her thumb prints on the form. I called the Malaysia Embassy in DC and asked if we need thumb prints for baby. Sure enough, the embassy personnel said, memanglah! put thumbprints. So we tried to finger print her. We used ink from the computer ink jet printer cartridge. She would not hold her hand still and her finger print is so small. She ended smearing the application form by moving her inked finger all over the form. I still could not understand why they wanted baby thumbprints. Anyway, it was a funny incident. The photo attached is her passport mug shot.

First Day Care Experience

We went to Lakewood Church a few weeks ago. This is the largest church in US with weekly attendance of 20,000. The whole Sunday experience felt like a big commercial concert production, with the pastor and worship team looking like celebrities (which is not entirely positive). We did enjoy the experience. The day care system is very efficient. Meredith was being assigned a bar code and sticker very quickly on her arrival. Then, the day care staff in Lakewood church promptly whisked her away into the infant room. Of course, we were a bit worried because this was the first time she been away from us. We claimed her back after the service, and she was sleeping soundly in the day care room. So, Meredith has grown up and ready to step out on her own.