Devine 9

Divine Nine

Haeley has officially started crawling (Hooray!)! To be exact, it happened on August 18 (9 months 1 week old). Haeley is absolutely thrilled with her new skill and is a now a crawling machine. The first week, she took it slow and easy and would only crawl a few steps and would sit up and rest. She would crawl only if she feels the absolute need to, like to grab a piece of tissue on the floor (I'll discuss this later in the blog) or a Cheerio that dropped on the floor (yucky). But now, she is ready to participate in a baby crawling race! She crawls towards anything thats shiny (like our garbage can), anything that can help her pull up (like legs of chairs, low tables or even the stairs) , and any of her favorite toys. The best is when she follows mama around the house. Apart from 2 gates, a couple of electrical plug protectors and some corner cushions, we haven't really quite baby-proofed the house yet...I know, it's time to get moving!

---Haeley's Top-5 Favorite Things ----

Favorite Item: She is wild about tissue paper. Once she gets hold of a piece of tissue or paper (sometimes she'll take them out of the tissue box), she would start shredding it up and putting in in her mouth and eat it. Of course she finds it both hilarious and irritating when we get all panicky trying to dig the piece of tissue out her mouth, or sometimes she'll get really upset if we take it away from her. Check out the video below (if you have ear plugs handy, put them on!)

Favorite Game: Peek-a-Boo! While in bed, she would pull the sheets up herself and cover her face and she would waits for us to ask "Where's Haeley? Where's Haeley?" and then she'll pull the cover down and starts laughing. We do this a number of times till she gets tired and is ready to sleep. Sometimes, just for fun, we keep silent when she's expecting us to say "where's Haeley?" and she'll mumble something under the sheet as if to say "com'on, hurry up!"

Favorite Toys: Apart from things like our cellphone, remote control, laptop and mouse, which she simply likes to grab or tap, Haeley loves small and simple toys, like stacking cups and rings, shape sorters, small balls and water squirting toys during bathtime. She is also fond of peeling out the alphabets from the foam ABC floor mats and travels around the house with them. Her favorites are the smaller pieces like the hole in the letters O and D and number 9! In school she'll get to play with all kinds of big fancy structural toys.

Favorite Moves: clapping hands, giving high fives, kissing, and dancing to children songs. Whenever Haeley hears those childern songs, she would shake her body. In fact I think she's more in sync with the beats than her daddy is.

Yeah, high five!

Clapping hands in a hardware store!

Favorite Food: Some of her fave finger foods include Cheerios, apple puffs, fruits like banana, peach, melon, carrots, peas, bread, soft cheese.

Haeley continues to be a great eater (testament to her bulging belly) and chomps down almost everything we feed her. She is now more interested in self-feeding and loves mini pieces of food that she pass from hand to hand and put in her mouth. There's two neat tricks that Haeley uses occasionally when she can't quite use a pincer grip - she picks up her food with her palms, squeezes it tight into her fist so it sticks to her hand, then she carefully brings it to her mouth and licks it up. The other method would be to squeeze her food real tight till it pops out around the top of her fist and she sucks her food up. You can probably imagine the mess she creates nightly.

What are you staring at? Is there something on my face?

Ermm... where the cheerio I tried to put in my mouth?

----Physical Developmment----

Haeley had her 9 month well baby visit early August. Everything checked out very well. Those who are into health and fitness can try to figure out her BMI: she's a whopping 20 lb 11 oz baby which puts her in the 75-90 percentile, and she's 28 inches tall which is around 50th percentile.

Her two top front teeth came out about a month back. So now she has four teeth and a fifth one is starting to protrude on the top rack!

Wanna rub my buddha belly?

Where do I sign up for gym membership, Dr Laura?

Paper fetish

Hey, why do we always take the same pose each time I get a check up?

----Play date with Tristin -----

Approaching Trisitn for a welcome kiss *muak*

Having a great time with T!

---- Family Gathering ----

Kurt's sister has 2 boys (Nathan and Nicholas) and the family has been living in Shanghai for the past 5 years . Each summer, the whole family would come back to the Bay Area where they used to live.

First time meeting my cousins!

Haeley with gu-ma Linnet and gu-cheung Eddy

Haeley giving a kiss to cousin Nicholas

Haeley hanging out with grandma and grand aunts

3E (grand aunt #3), do you like my outfit?

----More Random Pictures ----

I just crawled here and now I'm gonna stand up... watch okay?



mama always like to tickle me!


Wanna race? I got turbo arms and thighs!









Who's that cute baby in the mirror? I'm gonna kiss her!!

Welcome to my toyland!

erm... just a little warmer please

I'm ready for dinner!!


goofy smile


Enjoying a sunset view from our bedroom

Haeley's Adventures at Seven Going on Eight

The past 2 months just whisked by so fast and we have had no time to pen (type) down all the fun stuff Haeley has been up. To our defense, Kurt and I have been busy dealing with the construction of our new home, which we are hoping would be ready by October. In 3 days, Haeley would be 8 months old and she is getting more active, curious and responsive by the day. As part of her learning curve to crawl while in a sitted position, Haeley would stretch her both arms forward, try to reach out for her toys and before you know it, she would lunge forward and her face would be planted on the floor or sometimes on top of a plastic toy...Ouch! My tough lil' one sometimes doesn't make a sound when she is stuck and just quietly try to wiggle her way around. It's funny seeing her in these "painful" yoga-poses.

Many of you may have witnessed how chubby baby Haeley has become in the recent months. It must be her love of homemade food and Mama's milk. Haeley eats a good 3 meals of solid food a day and its a pretty balanced diet too: for breakfast, she enjoys a nice warm fruit cereal or yogurt and for lunch/dinner, she get her carbs from rice or pasta; vitamins from vegetables, protein & iron from turkey, chicken or beef. Occasionally, we'll throw in a fruity dessert such as strawberries and apples to sweeten things up. In between meals, she'll have her "tea" break of her good o' milk. Its funny how chubby she is now that she can barely fit into her 12 months Levis jeans anymore. Our little "fat-fat" weighs in about 20 pounds and is 26 inches tall.

Let's dive right into all the wonderful adventures Haeley's been up to recently:

--------- Palm Springs ----------

During the Memorial Day long weekend in late May, we went for a short getaway to Palms Spring. Instead of driving down, we decided to take a flight and let Haeley (and us!) experience her first plane ride. The flight was a little over an hour each way, and Haeley did great! She wasn't keen with the in-fight entertainment nor the airplane food; she much prefered her own toys and baby food! All in all, despite a little discomfort on our return trip, it was a pleasant flight for her, for us and the other passenger (phew), no nasty stares!

Why does everything look so tiny from here?

Strolling along downtown Palm Springs with sunscreen, sunglasses and sunhat

Hey, Pa, we're getting a lot of attention... is it because of me or you?

Learning cool hand signs from mommy in the hotel room...Surf's Up!

New definition of Babe Watch

Mom, don't let go! I maybe bouyant, but I don't know how to swim yet!

A little father and daughter time in our private "yacht"

This taco salad looks pretty yummy, don't worry, I'll help myself...

after peeing on the hotel bed, I'm ready to go home!
(teeshirt says - Little Big Person)

------Holding Her Bottle------

Yep, Haeley can hold her own milk bottle and sippy cups. She's been doing it since 6 months old and we got all excited with her new ability. We just need to let her sit in her bouncy chair, hand her the bottle and she'll grab it with 2 hands and aim the bottle to her mouth...voolia. She would even tilt the bottle up when the content is getting low.

Full back tilt to get maximum drip!

frame by frame on how she masters this difficult technique!

-----Pull Up & Stand------

Haeley is one chubby baby but with her weight also comes with great strength. This girl loves to be held in a standing position and loves pulling herself up while holding on to short furniture or our fingers. Without much effort on our part, Haeley just pulls herself up and sometimes lets one hand go so she can grab a toy or our nose. There's this game she loves lately. She would hold our fingers and pull herself up, and 5-10 secs later, she's drop herself down to a sitted position and she would go through the stand-up-sit-down-stand-up routine over and over again. It really amuses her and amuses us to see her muster up all her strength to pull herself up and she ain't feather weight!

full concentration

-----Happy Dada Day!-------

I (Kurt) celebrated my first Father's day with a touching surprise! Haeley gave me this card that was created Mommy while I was away on business trip. Haeley has this playmat with all the alphabets on it, and Mommy took a bunch of pictures of Haeley at home holding (and chewing) the letters D and A... and by combining the pictures together, it spelt DADA! How cool is that!!?

---- My 2 front teeth -----

About a month back, Haeley's bottom 2 teeth sprouted out of no where. We only found out about her first teeth when one day we heard her scratching her sippy cup with her teeth. We suspected she might be teething because of her excessive drool, which often exceeds 1 bph (bip per hour), but she didn't really make any fuss about it, so we weren't sure. Babies are known to get really fussy during their teething period so we are very grateful that she dealt with it so well and didn't wake us up at night. :) Now that her teeth have grown a little bigger, she really knows how to make use of them. One of her newly discovered favorite food is corn on the cob!

chomp chomp chomp

Babies: Do not try this at home

---- More Pictures----

Her cheeky monkey look

Bathing is still one of her favourite activities

Do I look good in hats?

Anything can be a great toy, even mommy's hair clip!

D for Daddy, H for Haeley!

Grandpa and Grandma Kwok baby sitting on weekends

Sign of frustration