Some pics to tide you over

Hi Team,

I know that the pictures are slow in coming, but it's a matter of having enough time to sort, cull, edit and post them as well has having to write descriptions, not to mention doing the video, settling back into home life and running a number of errands today!

So to reward your patience, just a few more of Margaret to tide you over until I have some more time to post the photos. I'm hoping tomorrow, but no guarantees.

Taking a photo break from the gambling that is traditional for CNY to usher in good luck.

Margaret with Mommy

Margaret with Daddy

Standing tall in a new dress!

Having breakfast the morning the Taipei Tsien's left

The happy family!

Chinese New Year in Cebu

We've been back for a few days now and I've been spending my time busily cutting together a brief video of our trip.

For those of you who don't know, Sarah, Margaret and I went to Cebu in the Philippines for our Chinese Lunar New Year break. We were there with basically my entire family and we had a great time enjoying the sunshine and resort living.

Some of you have been asking for photos - and they're coming. I promise. But I just have to come up with a way to efficiently show them on the blog. During my first look cull, I wound up with 58 photos that I wanted to show off. That's way too many for the blog so I thought I'd focus on the video first.

I'm sorry about the quality - there's a 100 MB limit on the file size which puts a crimp on the quality I can post at.



I'm back to work tomorrow. I took today (Monday) off in order to spend some quiet time with my own family.

All I can say is that I loved today. We spent much of the day at home and Sarah and I were out for a few hours in the afternoon to run errands. However, the highlight was going out to dinner with Sarah with Margaret strapped to my chest in the Baby Bjorn.

It was but a few hours out today, and the food was awful, but as I think back, it was really the highlight of the day and felt like an entire vacation in and of itself. We took the ferry across the harbor to a part of town we'd never been to before and explored a bit before having an early dinner and heading home.

It sure messed up Margaret's feeding / sleep schedule (she's still crying intermittently from her crib now at almost 9:00 PM) but in so many ways, I'm glad to have had that time with my family.

Now, Sarah and I are having quiet time in our cozy living room. It's the best feeling in the world. Baby in her room, Sarah at my side. Everyone should know this happiness that is mine.

Cebu Trip Sneak Preview

Hi Team Margaret!

We're at the end of our Chinese New Year Cebu Trip and are in the airport waiting lounge where there's free wifi!

To celebrate our return home, I thought we'd quickly post a sneak preview of some trip pics before the computer battery runs down.

Enjoy!

Bathtime in the big hotel sink

Big hotel beds are good for little babies, too!

Looking good in resort wear!

Swimming with Mommy and Daddy. Keep her mouth out of the water!

Bathtime and Talking

Lotta' posts today. This is the third one in the past 7 hours so don't forget to scroll down.

Margaret's development continues to astound us. Or, at least keep her self congratulatory parents full of pride at something we have absolutely no control over.

The past couple of days have seen her "vocabulary" grow by leaps and bounds and she continues to get more and more verbal so that we feel like we're having real conversations with her.

Who knows how much real communicating she's actually intentionally initiating but it sounds good to us! I have to catch myself, sometimes and remind myself that, no, she's not really talking and that she's just babbling so that she can eventually learn to talk.

But with a wife as linguistically talented as SAM is, it's hard not to think that maybe, just maybe Margaret is a genius!

Video below.



Also, I took some photos before, during and after Margaret's bath today.

She had her bath at around 5:30 pm and the late afternoon sunlight was just streaming into the bedroom so I couldn't resist.

She's going to hate me for these when she's 13, but I don't care.

Household Improvements

As the weekend draws to a close (it's Sunday evening as I write this), SAM and I are relaxing in comfortably improved household circumstances compared to last week.

Not only has SAM taken the week to continue to improve our organization and put things away, but we spent both Saturday and today looking for a few last items to complete the home we've moved into.



The first major organizational coup was that SAM managed to repurpose some old Ikea, "Lekman" storage containers we were about to throw away into shelving units for her and my sweaters.

Above, you can see that they fit fairly nicely into the vertical nook that we're not sure what our landlords used for when they lived here.



On Monday, SAM went to a second hand baby shop in our old neighborhood with our friend Lindsay and scored a previously owned but never used crib. It was delivered on Thursday as you know, and we are very happy with it. It's got the one handed opening gate on both sides and should last Margaret for a good while.

Of course, I'm sure she'll be growing out of this sooner then we expect.

Finally, we spent the past couple of days working on the living room.

After moving in, we found that we had two issues with the living room. One was lighting and the other was floor covering. A few days after moving in, we transferred the rug from our old living room into Margaret's room to warm that up (and to kill the echo in there) which left our living room floor bare and rather cold.

SAM spent some time the past week cruising Ikea to try to find solutions to both issues but didn't find anything she liked.

So Saturday, we spent the afternoon at "Horizon Plaza" a 20 story factory building converted into a huge vertical home goods shopping center. With store directory in hand, we marked every store listed under "Carpets and Rugs" and went to work.

While our original intent was to buy something simple and affordable, by the time we walked out of our second Oriental rug dealer, our original plan (and budget) were blown. Our new goal was to find a nice 5 x 8 ft oriental rug which we could both love (at that price, you better love it). It made the list of stores to visit shorter, I suppose.

Well, two cups of coffee and a few hours later, we had seen many rugs that we liked individually but none that we really could get on board as a team.

At least we left Horizon Plaza with two Chinese porcelain lamps which you can see in the below photo.



Today, armed with another couple of rug dealers' addresses, we set out again.

Miraculously, we saw the one we wound up getting at the first place we went to. The second place was closed, so we took it as a sign and went back.

After a brief bout of bargaining, we took home what you see in the pictures.



It's not the perfect match for our furniture, but we both like the rug. We figure we'll have it for years so we can get new furniture if we can't get used to it.

In the meantime, we'll have something warm beneath our feet that we both like to look at. Life is good.

Ubi2

Some of you have noticed that we've been giving a lot of coverage to Margaret's many playtime friends but that Ubi2 has been noticeably absent from the blog.

Unfortunately, this is because Ubi2 is so busy helping us to take care of Margaret that she hasn't had much time for play in the same way that Margaret's other friends do.

Below, you can see the indefatigable Ubi2 giving Margaret her 10:00 pm feed last night while Mommy and Daddy were having Saturday date night.



A true lifesaver, Ubi2, is.

The Warm Heart of Our Winter

As we close in on Chinese New Year, the weather has been getting quite cold at times. Many of you may scoff at our 7 degree Celsius (45 F) weather. The fact that it is damp and that most people don't have heat (luckily, we do) makes it feel quite chilly. Today, the cold was combined with rain which made it raw and disgusting outside.

Luckily, Margaret keeps us warm through her smiles, the sounds she makes and just about anything she does. It's soooo great.

Many of you remember early video of me giving her a bath. The tub makes it way easier. Highly recommended.


Today with mommy during her late AM feed

Getting ready to go out - bundled up for HK weather!

She's all ears!

Why we had a baby

She did it again!

New crib and she still slept through the night.

My alarm is set to go off at 7:00 AM. At 6:59, I wake up to hear, "She did it again."

In fact, the only reason she woke up is because Sam went in and brought her into our bedroom to feed her. I think she'd be good for another half hour to hour at least if we didn't wake her.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.

We're hoping that this becomes a pattern.

A full night's sleep

This is a picture of Margaret taken at 7:23 AM. She has just awakened and is sucking her thumb.

This was the first we heard of her since putting her down at 10:45 PM the evening before.

Miracle of miracles, she slept through the entire night.

It was really funny, actually. My alarm clock went off this morning at 7:00 and the first words out of Sarah's mouth were, "is she dead?" before jumping out of bed and running to Margaret's side.

Thankfully, she was just asleep.



I was quickly called over to her cribside to marvel at this new, life changing phenomenon. After a suitable period of dumbstruck awe, I broke out the camera and started snapping photos. This was the reason I wasn't out the door until about 10 minutes after I usually leave.

We are both ecstatic by this new development but know that it is unlikely to be repeated tonight. Not only was Margaret's sleep patterns off this afternoon but we just had a new crib delivered today and wonder if Margaret will be able to adjust to it so quickly.



Regardless, we are happy to know that she can, in fact sleep through the night and will be hoping for the best, now, every time we put her down to sleep.

We'll keep you posted.

Margaret's conversation with Eli

Margaret is getting chattier and chattier. This is a conversation with her friend Eli from a few days ago:

Escape

Scenes from the past few days, including evidence of Margaret sucking her thumb (which I think is keeping her asleep longer at night - yes!), Margaret training for the luge (winter 2010?), and my favorite: Margaret and Freddie trying to escape when Lindsay was in the shower.

Back online... sort of

It's been a light week for posting, I know, but we finally have Internet set up at the new house now and so we're able to post an update from someplace that's not a Starbucks.

Unfortunately, there's a problem with the phone cabling within our walls and so we couldn't get the equipment set up in our actual office. The wireless router will have to live by the window in our living room unless we decide to rip the cable out of the wall and replace it. *sigh*

More unfortunately, our apartment is of concrete and brick construction so the signal at my desk is anemic at best. Sarah's computer, which is by the window, gets a full power signal, mine, a mere five feet away, has almost none.

Taken Monday while I was home sick

Other than that, however, the move has gone very smoothly. We're completely in our place now, all the boxes are gone and, for the most part, we've even found space for most of the crap we brought over.

We even put all the art up on the walls.

Our final task (aside from finding homes for the last of our errant things) is to get some curtains we like up. We will be replacing the blinds and the cheap, worn and ugly curtains that belong to our landlords with canvas Roman blinds - most with blackout liners.

We've had Lilian, our wonderful curtain expert lady in already and we should have some nice, neutral, sound absorbing, light blocking and all around warmer window treatments up soon.

On her play mat on Monday. She loves her mat.

Margaret has settled in nicely as well. She was a bit clingy to SAM for the first couple of days, but she's now back to her good old self, smiling, gurgling and acting as cute as ever.

Also from this past Monday. On the couch.

I'm not quite sure if any of you out in blog land can tell, but she seems to be changing day by day. On more than one occassion this week I've looked at her and said to SAM, "She's different today than she was yesterday."

Her newest thing is that she actually wants to have a conversation with you. No, she can't form words yet, but she will now vocalize in response to when you talk to her. She even knows to do it when you pause your own speech and will change volume and inflection in response to yours. VERY cool.

"Who me?" This one from Friday.

The new job is going well, also. Things have been very busy but I've been learning a lot. I'm starting to take on interesting tasks now and am feeling like I am actually making an impact and making other peoples' jobs easier.

Let's hope my boss notices.

Yes, that's Sarah's phone hanging with the toys.

Having to work half day aside, today was really fun and productive.

Sarah and I went out and bought a convection oven as our new apartment doesn't have an oven :(

After a brief stop at home to feed Margaret (and read her a book), Sarah and I went out for Hot Pot with our friends Bill and Molly and Lindsay and Graham along with Lindsay's father, Barry and his wife Dottie.

Communal cooking was followed by gelato at XTC.

Now, unfortunately, we're already into Sunday and I'm already dreading having to go back to work on Monday.

Funny thing about that - as much as I love my new job, the fact that I have to work Saturday makes me feel like I don't have enough time over the weekend and makes me not want to go to work on Monday.

A happy baby (happy to see mom, the photographer).

Oh well. At least I get a weekend. Plenty of people don't.

I count my blessings.

Reading Goodnight Moon tonight before we headed out.

This morning's expressions

A quick photo shoot from this morning to satisfy the regulars. She's been a bit off since the move, but we're hoping she'll start feeling more settled soon.

One of my most rewarding moments as a parent so far was seeing her recognize and smile at me when she came back from being at Joy's on the moving day. Since then, however, she seems to have saved most of the smiles for her father. She's all business with Mom and all smiles with Daddy. You can tell that Mommy was shooting this morning, as we're heavy on the contemplative looks.

New Apartment!

All of the boxes have been unpacked, but as you can see, the contents are now piled everywhere looking for homes. We thought you would like to see our work in progress, though. This may be our only post this week, as our internet will not be set up at the new house until Saturday.