Baby Breann is here

Little Breann arrived on Feb 17th. My brother-in-law is so organized, emailing baby photos and calling everyone just hours after the birth from the hospital.
Besides sharing the same birth month, Katrina and Breann also weighed about the same (6 lb 14oz. vs. 6 lb 10 oz.). They also have the same last name even though only their moms are related. I thought Breann looks quite a bit like Katrina when she was also a few hours old.
Of course kids look different everyday and only time will tell if they end up looking alike. Hopefully they'll get to see each other more and become friends when they grow up.

Katrina's Birthday Party

The timing of Katrina's birthday means it'll always fall right around Superbowl weekend - fortunately none of her young friends have become football fans yet But her birthday also will always be around 農曆新年 (Chinese New Year). In fact, her birthday falls exactly on 農曆新年 this year ! She was bummed a few of her friends were out-of-town for CNY festivities and couldn't make it to her party, but she still managed to have a pretty good time. Enjoy the pictures:

Katrina's 4th B-day

Marcus' Birthday Party

Marcus and Katrina are only a few weeks apart in age so they've been friends for a long time. It's fun to watch them grow together as lose their baby fat and gain their oval faces and tall lean builds together.

As usual, it's always hard to capture kids' photos but here are our attempts:

Marcus' 4th B-day

Miss Responsible

Katrina has been carrying her baby doll David around and tucking him in every night lately. Out of the blue, she did a really long monologue in the car. I was impressed not only by her ability to speak such a long and complex sentence, but mainly astounded by her sense of responsibility:

係噃,我要記住擤鼻涕嗰陣時要擤完左邊先至擤右邊, 咁就唔會病到咩嘢咁喇 (ear infection), 如果唔係如果我病得好厲害, 咁邊個湊David 喎. 因為爸爸又病, 又要揸車, 媽咪又要返工, 爺爺又忙, 嫲嫲又有嘢做, 佢(points to Nathan)又細個唔識嘢, 姑姐又要瞓覺, 咁無人湊David點算呀! 咁唔得咖嘛,係咪 ?

終於識叫媽咪

For months, Nathan would only sound out objects that are phonetically "B-ish": 波波, 鼻鼻, 拜拜, 包包 (麵包), 爸爸, bear bear. The rest were all 嗰個. (Another favorite everyday word was 跌咗.)
After calling me 爸爸 forever, Nathan finally started calling me 媽咪 a couple weeks ago. Not that he couldn't pronounce the "M" sound before - whenever he was frustrated, he would go mamamama (媽媽聲) - maybe I should be glad he never called me 媽媽 and went straight to 媽咪 and didn't associate me with the sound of frustration ?

Costume Contest Winner

We participated in several Halloween festivities this year:
Oct 26: Katrina's school had its Fall festival and Nathan tagged along.

Oct 31: Whole Foods Kids got to Trick or Treat for healthy snacks while mom picks up groceries, perfect for our early sleepers who don't eat candy anyway.

Nov 3: A neighborhood church hosted a Costume Carnival with lots of games. Katrina has probably never thrown bean bags or bowled or tossed rings etc. but she did pretty well as a first-timer on all of them. It turned out there were secret judges walking around judging hundreds of costumes and Nathan won in one of the 4 categories ! Check out the album to see which category he won !

Halloween 2007

Pumpkin Patch

The kids had lots of fun running around a local farm checking out antique farm equipment and the colorful harvest.

Pumpkin Patch 2007

表情多多

Both of our kids have very animated facial expressions - here are a few of the many recent Nathanisms we captured:

...等我諗吓點樣整蠱媽咪爹哋先

啊!!! 笑啊啊就係咁樣咖喇

嘻嘻, 你咁識引我笑呀

唔, 你嗰樣都幾得意喎

吖呀, 乜嘢嚇到我咁驚!

嘩! 嗰度有啲嘢好特別,係乜嘢嚟嘅呢 ?