Hilarious baby

This is her looking hilariously funny, rolling on the floor and dashing between the bathroom and living room just before bathtime.

Four more new words: Whoa, Apple, sky and meow meow added to Elle's vocal list. Those words coming out from a baby, simply too sweet, innocent and pure, make me smile and heart melted. Say the word "UP!" gazillion times a day when she's getting up from the floor, climbing up onto our back, and wanting to be carried. A lot of time she'll pronounce "Apple" as "UP-ple".

The staff said Elle was mimicking the words she said all day long at the daycare. When we left, I was caught off-guard hearing Elle said bye bye back to the staff with her sweetest baby tone. Sweet as honey.

Bluey goodness

Nothing beats the freshness of picking these little bluey babies right from the branches. Each bite is a burst of blueberry goodness, leaving a tongue-tingling note behind. The sweetness of those fully ripe blueberries turns me into a believer of they are as tasty as they look. Heavenly.

Elle worked like a little bee, carrying the bucket around, helping us putting the blueberries into the bucket, taking them out of it, and crushing them with her hands. Her belly packed with so many blueberries that she could hardly eat one more. That did not stop her from picking at all. Instead she picked and put them into mama's mouth. Watching her wobbly body walking back and forth between the blueberry bushes and mama, picking one blueberry at one time and popping them into my mouth, simply melted my heart. She fed me a variety, a green one, a mushy one or a yummy one. We picked almost half bucket full of blueberries for $2.50 only.




We headed to the beach right after the u-pick. Elle couldn't wait to get down on her hands and feet playing with the sand the moment we settled down at a cozy spot on the beach. I'm totally immersed in the beauty of Lake Michigan, the glittering light on the rippling water and the sounds of the crashing wave. It's Puurrfect.

Gone Fishin'

Fishing at the Allegan dam where Kalamazoo river runs through. Oh boy! The river bank smelled sort of fishy and we could see the fish jumping out of the water.

The guys wanted to catch some fishes for grilling tonight. It turned out only the newbie anglers, Zu and Bob, each caught a fish. Since the fishes did not meet the minimum 14-inch size limit, they threw them back to the river. At the end of the fishing trip, we came back empty-handed.

Playground

Bubble

It's Elle's bedtime and she's laying on the bed talking to herself. My ears all pricked up, sitting on the couch in the living room, listen every word she utters. Her voices just make me smile from ear to ear. She sounds like practicing all the words she learned during the day, speaks out loud each word repetitively so that she'll not forget the next day. The cuteness version of a baby speaking alphabet A to Z is utterly off the chart! She skips through most of them and goes like this, "a, b, e, i, o, u, l, p".

The funniest is when she speaks out the word "Baby". "Baby" is the nickname we always call her since she was born. We're a little bit caught off guard when she starts uttering the word "Baby". This evening when I grabbed a thing from her hands and hid behind me, she's jumping up and down screaming "Baby! Baby! Baby!". Crack me up.

Ride On

Sunshine

Finally we got some sunshine for the later half of the day.

While I was getting ready for swimming, the melody of <<客人來>> song just slipped through my lip as "Oh O O" [mi re do]. Elle simply carried on the next line of the song and sang "Oh O O" [mi re do]. Then me "Oh O O O O" [mi so mi do re], followed by her "Oh O o o Oh Oh Oh" [re re do re me so so]. I was so awe-struck that all my motions came in halt, trying to comprehend what I just heard. When I realized that she was actually singing the longest melody of the song, which never occur before, I was laughing and clapping like a seal at her. She gave me a puzzled look wondering what's all these excitement about.

Elle didn't seem enjoy staying inside her swim float very much. She spent most of the time looking at people having fun instead, which puzzled us a lot. I guess we just need to think outside the box. The moment we took her out of the swim float and carried her spinning round and round in the water, she's giggling uncontrollably with her arms flapping and legs kicking. She enjoyed being in the water by holding on the outside rim of the float. There's no doubt the highlight of her day was sipping slushies after the swim.

Oh yeah, her 4th tooth finally broke through overnight just a couple days ago. She's all giddy about grinding her teeth to make the icky sound.

Rainy day

The song Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head simply creeps into my mind on this rainy day.

It has been raining all day long. Try to beat the rainy blues and do something fun. Put Elle on her hoodies and off we head out into the rain let her explore rain with her hands and feet on the balcony. We read books over and over again until mama gives in and waves white flag high. We try eating cheerios with a fork. Doing rounds and rounds of tummy tickle wrestling and rolling. She digs out everything from the basket and finds the long forget Rock-a-stack toy. I'm suprised that she takes no effort at all putting all the rings into the rod. She only knew how to take them out of the rod but not the other way round. Somehow it just clicks that she knows how to do it right away. We play all the toys she have and take the longest bath ever.

Daycare snippet: biting

A baby running wibbily wobbily in the hallway towards me, flailing arm in the air with joyous shrill. Oh mine! That's my baby! She threw herself into my arms and wrapped around my neck. My sweet baby.

I couldn't believe my ears when the staff told me Elle was bitten at the daycare again. This time a big bite mark on her arm. The staff said Elle was acting very upset about the biting. I joked to the staff saying let's hope next time Elle would be the one who bites not the other way round.

When we're home, Elle pointed her finger to the spot on her arm where she got bitten and looked at me with a sad face asking for consolation. Mama gave her arm several kisses making everything all better again.

Cool off in the summer heat

Elle blurted out "ball" inside the pool when she's seeing a big colorful ball floating in the water. She's walking around the pool area with a towel, dragging it all over the place. Whenever I tried to steal away her towel, she'd be crying out loud and chasing after me. This baby has a pet peeve over rag since she's born. She would lay on top of the rag in the kitchen and bathroom. She would grab all the kitchen towels off the places we hang them and walk around the apartment with them.

Sing

Elle is getting more and more vocal. Her most frequently used words are Ooh! O!. This afternoon, we hum the song <<客人來>> to her and immediately she picks it up and now she can't stop rhyming "客人來看爸爸" as in "Ooh! O! O!" "Ooh! O! O!" all day long.

Oh boy! Her singing just cracks us up.

Beach day

As we stepped out of the car and walked towards the South Haven beach, we heard echoes of crashing waves and howling wind. The beach-combing crowd was scattered all over the shore basking under the sun. Unexpectedly, a humongous wave crashed up higher than the lighthouse and broke against the pier. We were in awe of its spectacular. The blowing wind and crashing waves made it a perfect day for surfing.

Elle was all giddy and excited with the crowds, the flocks of circling seagulls, the boats, the sand and the ocean-like lake. We heard her constantly shrilling in joys. When she saw the boats passed by, she screamed "boat boat". When the seagulls flying by, she screamed "bird bird". She's busy shoveling the sand into the bucket, onto her dada's and mama's feet, walking around with her dada's sandals in both hands, and digging treasures, a.k.a other's trash, out of the sand. We made 3 trips to the water crashing against the waves. The water temp was comfortable. However, the wind gave an unbearable chill when we all got wet. Every time when Elle started shivering, we went back to the shores getting her all warm up, playing more sand, and then crashing the waves again.

It's another picture perfect beach day.

Lavender U-pick

Today's weather forecast was t-storm, damaging winds and hail with 99% precipitation.

We woke up to a gloomy day and became very indecisive about whether we should go or not to the lavender u-pick. We'll have to wait for next year if we missed it today, the final day of u-pick in the season. When we finally decided to go regardless of the horrible weather, the rain started dripping off the sky. Elle was cranky for long stretches of time on the road again. Since her 13th month, she has been acting very fussy in the car whenever we're out of town no matter of it's a long road trip or a short one less than an hour. The crying and screaming really got on our nerves that I almost wanted to jump out of the car. Thanks god that she finally drifted into sleep making the last half an hour stretch a peaceful drive.

When we turned into the driveway to the Lavender Hill farm, we're surprised the place was already packed with cars and there're many people picking in the lavender bushes in raincoat or with an umbrella. This off-the-beaten-path lavender field gets much more attention than I expected. Well, really, I didn't know what to expect at all when I found this on the net and Hin was joking the place might be only having a few bushels of lavenders next to the tent selling the lavender products.

The eyes greeted rows and rows of purple swaying in the field and the air was pungent with a sweet and heady scent, mesmerizing all senses. Delightful. The whole u-pick experience started off with a drizzle and a happy baby, then the rain stopped and a wriggly baby wanting to be carried in one second and to be down the next, followed by the sun broke through and a pair of exhausted, grouchy parent and a grumpy lil' one. It took quite a while for us to pick as much as possible to fit into a floral tie. Five bucks a bunch. It's a good deal for hard work, squatting our butt and bending our back to harvest one by one.

Beach fun @ Ramona park

Jello eating faces

Tickle Tickle Tum Tum

Number One, tickle your tum
Number Two, just say BOO
Number Three, touch your knee
Number Four, touch the floor
Number Five, take a dive
Number Six, wiggle your hip
Number Seven, jump to heaven
Number Eight, stand up straight
Number Nine, walk in line
Number Ten, start again
Elle loves mama rhymes this baby bear board book with silly, exaggerate movements to go with each number counting. She loves reading so much that we can hardly slack off at all. She'll bring the books to us every single day, not once, but several times, forcing us to read with her. Yes, I really mean "force". She would pull our hand and then tuck the book into our hand, insisting it's reading time! It becomes a ritual lately that we have to read a book to her while she's drinking her bottle.

14 months old

Dear Elle,

You're a bouncy bundle of sweetness, fun, and mischief.
A creature of moods not easy to please.
You're mama's little darling & dada's sugar 'n spice.
You're sunshine and moonbeams, brightening our world as never before.

Happy 14 months old, lil' bug!

Love,
Mama

How's new addition

Welcome the new addition to How's family, Caleb! This 17 days old sweetheart has long musical fingers and big feet. His big brother Gabriel is about six months older than Elle. Surprisingly, they're almost the same height standing next to each other.

Happy July 4th!

We had a parent & baby group meet-up in Chicago on July 4th weekend. It was fun, busy, lots of parent talks and continuously juggling with kids in between. After a late lunch at Chinatown, we decided to avoid the traffic and take the train to downtown. It was an adventurous experience for 3 parents and 4 little people in 4 strollers. We dealt with flights of stairs and detoured looking for stroller-friendly station. We even made it to stay for the fireworks began at 9:30 pm, with a 3-mos-old in tow. By the time we checked in the hotel, it's already past 1 a.m.. Elle conked out after a day filled with activities.