Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!! What a great time to rejoice in the birth of Jesus and be reminded of the abundant blessings. December was just packed...hanging out with lots of people and eating good food.

Ryan has been doing really well in preschool and always looks forward to going. Lauren has started teething and eating all kinds of solid foods. Her favorite foods are peas, sweet potatoes, winter squash, and rice cereal. Ryan also likes to eat Lauren's baby food as a snack...as a matter of fact, I too, like to eat it for a snack. Only Chang doesn't like baby food...he's the oddball in the family. Lauren's 12 hour nighttime sleep has been interrupted the last 2 weeks due to her teething which is also the reason for my excessive coffee drinking, but things are returning to normal again and she has been sleeping through the night. But she is still teething like crazy and everything goes straight to her mouth.

Anyways, we had a busy month. We started the festivities at the NLMC Christmas party. We had a white elephant gift exchange and ended up with a mini pool table. Great food and fellowship!

Also, look at how long Lauren's hair has gotten.

And also look at how fat her cheeks have gotten too.

On Christmas day, we woke up and opened all the presents under the tree. This was the first year where Ryan actually WANTED to save opening the presents till Christmas day. Lauren in the meanwhile LOVED the wrapping paper and was shoving it all into her mouth. This was good because mommy and daddy did not buy her a present. Haha. We did buy her a cute hat a week later though.

Afterwards, we went to church Christmas service, ate lunch, and then played with all the new toys at home while Chang watched his beloved LA Lakers playing. And for Christmas dinner, we had some yummy food at a friend's place and hung out there. 

 

After a long day, the kids like to sip on some cooooool milk. And then Lauren goes to bed in her favorite crib and Ryan goes to bed with his favorite yellow blanket and his ladybug pillowpet.

Normally, we go to LA to visit family during this season, but we decided to stay up here. The good thing is we got to meet with lots of people that we normally don't see...Esther, Mary, Phil & April, Laurie & Wayne & Lucy, etc.

Meeting Adelynn for the first time

And how can we not end this blog entry without a video? Ryan is very musically inclined and he especially likes drums. We contemplated getting him a drumset and some drum lessons for him, but practically I know the noise would drive us nuts so he'll have to settle for using this baby music set that he got when he was like 1 years old. Even after 4 years, he plays with this toy. Definitely got our money's worth on this one.

We want to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Thanksgiving 2010

November is always a busy month for us. We celebrated our 7th year of marriage on the 22nd! Oh how God has blessed us over the years. This year we had dinner at Spencer's Steakhouse. I got the Eye of Ribeye steak and Chang got the Prime Spencer's Steak...so delicious! And their bread and wine were super good. Despite not being carded (booo!), we had such a good time and got a bit buzzed from the wine. Afterwards, we headed off to see Harry Potter at the theatre. We were so thankful to have Jandre's family babysit BOTH kids for us. It was the best anniversary present ever.

This year, we had 3 Thanksgiving dinners. One at church, one at Jandre's, and one at home.

We had kalbi, chicken, sausage, jabchae, soondae, and lots of other yumminess at Jandre's place. His mom can cook! She is such a diligent mommy. Our stomachs were happy and Ryan got to hang out with Jandre's cousins so he had fun.

Below is our dinner at home. I really liked the turkey this year but it was a mishmash of multiple recipes so I totally mixed things up and lost track of what I was doing so I probably cannot repro this turkey again ever. My fav recipe this year is the cranberry sauce though. I love it so much I've even been putting the leftover cranberry sauce on everything! Cranberry sauce on salad...cranberry sauce on rice...cranberry sauce with cookies. LOL.

Lauren will be 6 months on Dec 4 and these days Lauren is sitting up by herself ... ALMOST. She flaps her arms up and down like a chicken whenever she gets excited or when she wants to keep herself occupied. When Ryan was her age, he used to put his hands together and just stare at them. It's interesting how each kid is so different. Ryan used to sleep with his butt in the air, but Lauren likes to sleep like this. HAHA.

These days Ryan's most favorite thing to do is have a sleepover in the living room. We lay out the futon in front of the big screen and watch a movie with popcorn and snacks and then play in the makeshift blanket tent with a flashlight and sleep there. Oh so fun!! Oh man, I know I'm gonna miss these days sooo much when the kids are older.  

Our marriage has been blessed with these two sweet kids. I love them!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Kids are so cute!

During our usual bedtime routine yesterday, Ryan and I were talking about school and how he liked his current preschool teacher and he recalled the names of all his old teachers. I told him that he will have a new teacher next year. Ryan said that after preschool, and then kindergarten, you go to "oneth grade". =) I corrected him and then we talked about all the grades from 1st through 12th grade and then I mentioned that after 12th grade mommy went to college. He replied, "I went to college too!". Well, that's news to me!

And not too long ago when Ryan was sick and coughing he said, "I have too many throat" and "My throat is coming out". What he means to say is that he has too much phlegm. In hindsight, I probably should have told him about phlegm, but I didn't. I just bust out laughing every time he says this.

And tonight as I was helping him get ready for bed, I see that he has 3 band aids on his body. From what I can tell the band aids are for invisible owweees. We must be spending a good amount of our salary on band aids and not just any plain old band aid; they must be Dora, or Sesame Street, or Sponge Bob band aids which apparently have magical powers to make all owwees go away. See the band aid on his middle toe below. On any given day, Ryan will always have at least one band aid on his body.

 

Lauren also has some quirks. 

1. I can always tell when she is sleepy because she will bury her head in my shoulder. 

2. Aside from the horrible stink, I can always tell when Lauren has pooped because she will babble non stop afterwards.

3. When we first started rice cereal at 4 months old, she was sooo impatient. She needed a constant stream of rice cereal in her mouth or she got upset. Unfortunately for her, there is no such thing as a funnel spoon so she had no choice but to learn how to be patient.

Now at 5 months she is a good and patient eater.

 

And of course, Happy Veterans Day today!! To all the veterans and those currently in service - we are grateful for your service to this country.

Sick

It was inevitable. Lauren got her first cold this past week, most likely from me. She had a runny nose and I'm sure she ate a lot of snot cuz it was dripping like crazy down to her mouth, but she was in good spirits. In a way I'm glad she finally got it because now I don't have to avoid her. I can finally give her hugs and kisses again!

These days Lauren loves taking a bath every night and then getting tucked into her crib for bedtime. She gets all excited and starts kicking and squealing with excitement. I remember Ryan did that too. Lauren and Ryan go to bed around 8:30 and wake up at 8. I'm glad they have synced up their bedtimes. Because of the cold, gloomy mornings, Ryan has a harder time getting up, and he eats his breakfast at a snails pace, so he is always a little late to preschool. Ryan doesn't have time anymore to watch one of his favorite morning shows on TV called "Team Umizoomi". I really should get up earlier to wake him up earlier, but for now, I really love having any amount of extra sleep.

We missed the Reformation Day festivities at church since our family was sick, but if they had gone, Ryan would have dressed up as Thomas and Lauren would have been Belle. Although it's late, I'm going to get them dressed up so we can take pictures at least.

As we were wallowing in our misery last week from being sick, it made us totally appreciate being healthy. How easily we forget to appreciate what we have when we have it. Anyways, I'm looking forward to a much better week and SUPER excited about the upcoming holiday season.

And also, I am super duper excited to watch "MegaMind" screening tonight with Ryan!

Must Have Baby Product

I must tell all parents to get the Exergen Temporal Thermometer. I love it! We wasted hours of our lives trying to take temperatures of our kids with those dinky little thermometers. Yeah, this thing is a little on the expensive side but definitely worth it.

Also, good news! Lauren likes her new Britax car seat. Her old one was too small for her and Lauren loathed it. So, this is VERY good news. I don't think Ryan's crying stressed me out as much when he was a baby. But when Lauren cries, she sweats from every part of her body until she is dripping wet. It starts with a cute fake crying sound, then gradually the volume increases until it becomes a scream...then it becomes silent all of a sudden where I often wonder if she is still breathing...and then a shriek and then silence for like a second before repeating the whole cycle. I have to give her a shower after her crying spells in the car seat because she is covered in sweat. And her tears are like huge raindrops falling down her face. So so sad and so so stressful. But I think our car seat woes are over now. I hope.

I'm back

This is Ryan's blog, but mommy and daddy decided to hijack it. It's really a shame that its been over 1.5 years since our last post, but that's what happens when you're busy taking care of a toddler. Ryan turned 4 last month and got a brand spanking new baby sister named Lauren on June 4, 2010! Thankfully, it was an uneventful delivery and Lauren is a very healthy girl. We are desperately hoping it stays that way as everyone in the household has gotten a cold except for Lauren. I feel like Lauren is not the type to just sleep away a cold ... I predict she'll probably fuss and cry and drive everyone bonkers.

Ryan turned 4 on September 12, 2010 and he is an awesome big brother. He doesn't covet his old toys as it comes out of storage and helps mommy and daddy with Lauren. If he is jealous, he doesn't show it very well. He is in his second year of preschool which he loves. His teacher is Mrs. Hewitt, a godly lady who knows how to keep her kids in line. He can read, write the alphabet and numbers and lots of words, knows the Lords Prayer, and is in the process of learning the Children's Catechism. In fact, we told Ryan to write a story for Lauren to give to her on her BIRTHday and this is what he wrote:

 

Pulitzer prize worthy, eh?

Anyways, what milestone did Lauren reach that I was motivated to revive this blog?? She has discovered her feet!! She can stay quiet for a long time playing with her feet instead of sucking her paci.  If only adults were so simply entertained. Chang and I still looove watching movies at the movie theatre and now that the kids go to bed by around 9 we can finally go watch em. Seriously though, we need to find a cheaper form of entertainment...like playing with our feet. haha.

Here is a recap of Lauren's first 4 months:
-Lauren smiled very easily. Don't remember exactly when her fake smile went away and her real smile came but by 2 months she was smiling ALL the time and she has an ADORABLE smile.
-Lauren beat Ryan at sleeping through the night. 8 hours at 6 weeks, 10 hours on her baek-il!! At 4 months and 4 weeks now she sleeps between 10-12 hours. PTL!
-Lauren hasn't rolled over at all and has no interest in doing so.
-Lauren doesn't like radio or CD music, only live guitar music.
-Lauren despises the car seat and in an effort to get rid of her aversion to the car seat we just bought her a new one which will hopefully resolve this very serious problem.
-Lauren is a pig. She gets upset if her next spoonful of rice cereal does not come fast enough into her mouth. She is growing so fast that my friend calls her "Off the Charts" aka OTC!
-Lauren doesn't like strangers. If you can get her to look at your face without crying, you can be our designated baby sitter.
-These days Lauren is learning how to say "umma" and "appa"

-Lauren looks like Ryan. I told Chang to write an ULTIMATE comparison blog entry of our two kids so I am looking forward to that!

Lauren at 4 months

Ryan at around 5 months

**Posted by Young