The Holidays

This year the holidays just seem like they're flying by. I can't believe next week is Christmas already! We had Thanksgiving at my mom's house. My mom made her famous duck with sticky rice inside and ordered more than enough food from Chinatown restaurant. We had leftovers for the rest of the week! Cady also got well adjusted to Nathaniel. When we got there, she kept going into his room. He would be sleeping and I would pull her out, then she would just walk right back in there. Then when she wasn't in his room, she would cry out "di di, di di!" It was pretty funny.



The day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday), we end up going to Carter's and buying Cadence an entire new winter wardrobe which she will only be able to wear this winter. That drives me crazy! I'm all about buying things that will last a long time and even though all the items were cheap, they really added up really fast. And of course both me and Julian are suckers for cute baby clothes. When we see it, we sometimes just have to buy it cos it's so cute. But times have changed. This year, we bought nothing for ourselves on Black Friday. Everything was for Cady. And I'm kind of glad. Both of us admitted that we just don't want to shop anymore and there's nothing that we really want for ourselves. God's probably preparing us in case I don't work when Baby #2 comes.



Work has been really stressful the past three weeks, but it's calmed down a lot. It'll probably get really busy again after the holidays, but I'm looking forward to the next 2 weeks off. I've spent the last 3 weeks in a lot of meetings where people complain about budgeting (which is what I do). I would spend my nights working and talking to co-workers at 10pm. Whenever I get home from work, I'm too exhausted to play with the Cady even though I would think about her all day missing her. In the mean time, the house is a mess and I have to maintain the house on top of all this which is pretty much just washing the dishes. So you could imagine the rest of the house not getting any of my attention. I've had no time to Christmas shop until now. I wanted to make cookies for people and invite people over for dinner, but I've had no time.



On the other hand, Cadence vocabulary is increasing slowly. She now knows how to shay "How are you?" I don't know where she got that from. Sometimes I think she's trying to say " I love you". She can say I love you in Chinese which is "Ai ni" for short. She learned that from Leslie who is taking Chinese now in college. One thing that Cady does do now is yell whenever she wants anything. I don't like it when she does that. She'll yell then say "please". I'm trying to get her to just say "please" and stop the yelling

Cadence meets Nathaniel - November 24, 2008

Today Cadence met Nathaniel for the first time. After a while of ignoring him and not noticing that he was even there, she started to say "di di" (which means younger brother in Chinese). Her attention span isn't that long so she would notice him then go about her business. She quite enjoyed watching his diaper getting changed though. She started laughing as he squirmed and squealed as he got his diaper changed. She could probably relate.....

Something new that she did today was cry out mama, mama when I was in the bathroom at Grandma's house. I told my mom to watch her as I went to the bathroom, and all I heard was "mama, mama" over and over again. It was kind of cute, but I didn't realize how bad her separation anxiety is. The doctor said that it would get worse by 18 months so I figure it wasn't anything that I could train her to not do. After seeing a few other mom's struggle with their kids, I thought that maybe it's a stage that kids go through. Some better than others. But I didn't want to go through the pains of training her to not have separation anxiety when it's going to happen anyways. Cady was once a good baby in the church nursery who just played on her own and could care less if we left the room. Now she's the loudest crier in the room if we leave.

Festival of Lights - November 22, 2008

We decided to go to the Magnificent Mile festival of lights parade. I saw the pictures on the internet and I thought Cady would love it. Again, the holiday excitement got into me and I just wanted Cady to have fun and get excited. I knew she wasn't going to remember it, but I just wanted to see her happy and enjoy that one moment. She's almost 16 months and every month feels like a year she's grown. Meaning she's understanding a lot that we say to her now. Some of the time if I tell her to drink her milk, she knows what I'm saying and will pick up her sippy cup and drink her milk. She's just recently starting to say the words that we say. I tell her to "wait" a lot because she wants me to give her everything when she asks for it and she always repeats me. I said "shoot!" once and she repeated that. So now, I really have to watch what I say. When she climbs on the chair, I tell her to "sit". She repeats that and it comes out sounding like "s**t". I should work on her pronunciation.....

So anyways, we take the train down due to the crowds and parking. We end up standing outside for maybe and hour and no parade yet. It was freezing and Cady's cheeks and hands was getting icy and red. So we decided to warm up at the Corner Bakery nearby. To make a long story short, we missed the parade, but we got to see fireworks. She was surprised at first and started to squint her eyes like she does when she sees a dog, in fear that the dogs tail will hit her in the face. She later started to enjoy it, but not as much as I thought she would. According to Julian, we are not going to the festival of lights again...... :p

With all the changes and growing that Cadence is going through, she's also become a litte piggy. When she sees food her eyes widen and she goes "mmmmm!" It's the cutest thing! She also does that when she sees food in an ad or something. Too bad I think her eating habits are going bad. She's probably sick of the food that I'm making her.

Nathaniel Chu!

Cady has a cousin! Nathaniel was born on 11/16/08 at around 5pm. He came out 6lbs, 7oz. and is a little cutie!!!

Single Mom for a week

Last week Julian went out of town to NY, so I was a single mom for a week. It's been fun and tiring at the same time. Tiring because work has been SO busy so the days that I go into work, I'm already completely exhausted when I come home. But I've enjoyed the alone time that I have with Cadence. Cadence has been a total Daddy's girl. She loves Daddy and always wants Daddy to hold her and would cry when he leaves the room. It was a little sad in the beginning, but I've gotten use to it. And it's kind of nice that she wants Julian to hold her all the time since she's getting bigger and heavier! This week though she's been acting like that towards me and it's kind of nice. :) Cady definitely missed Daddy though. The first day was fine. Then, as I suspected, she started to say "da da" a few times and point wondering where Daddy is. The rest of the week went well also. When Daddy came home, she was really happy!

So we finally checked out Hawthorn mall. The mall which a lot of moms have raved about being the most kid friendly mall. And they were right! They have a great enclosed play area where the kids have to take off their shoes. Right outside of the play area is this Gelato store. I haven't tried it yet, but looking forward to it the next time I go. The best part about the mall is the family bathroom. Everything is new and clean. There are separate little rooms for nursing mothers. There's an area that is just made for diaper changing. There are about 10 separate stations for changing, each with diaper wipe warmers and a sink. I'm probably not describing it too well, but it's nice!!! Some added perks to this mall is the food court! They have Sarku Japan which is the chicken teriyaki place where you can get double meat for .99 extra! :D

Halloween!

This year was Cadence's first official Halloween. We dressed her up as a ladybug.

I think I was more excited than she was. For some reason, I think holidays can be so much fun for kids and I wanted to make this fun for Cadence. We got lucky because our next door neighbor is big on holiday decorations. So everytime we would drive home, she would get so excited because of all the glowing pumpkins on their house.

We didn't get as many trick or treaters this year. Maybe it was because we were outside because it was warm and some of the groups of kids passed our house. So we ended up with LOTS of leftover candy. We started with George and Benita's house. They gave out whole candybars! Cady basically took all her candy from them.

Later from across the street, Anna Maria ran over to give Cady her first award which was "Cutest Costume" award. She also gave Cady a big pumpkin to hold her candy in. They probably thought my little DOMO bag from Target was too little. I thought that was really nice of her though!!

One hour later, we pretty much made it to two other houses before it got dark. We later went to our church Fall festival where Cady got to play some games.

If you can't tell, my sister was a pumpkin for Halloween since she's pregnant. I thought that was a great idea!

October 28th, 2008 - The Morton Arboretum

Today we went to the Morton Arboretum. It was a beautiful day, but freezing!!! I wore a puffer jacket and I was still freezing!! So needless to stay, we didn't stay outside for too long. Here are some pics.