William and Lydia

Our landscaping guy (lets call him William) attempted to poison the weeds yesterday (twice), but ended up leaving without accomplishing anything. The first time he came around 3:45 PM, it started sprinkling, so he waited it out for a little bit to see if it would stop...yeah, NO! The rain came harder, so William left. A few hours later after the rain, he came back to spray the poison, but his sprayer didn't work. Sheesh! Hopefully, when William comes back on Monday, everything will fall into place.

So, Lydia learned how to use a straw today while we were at Johnny Carino's for lunch. She choked on her first few sips of water, but kept trying to drink out of the straw. After only a few more sips, she got the hang of it. It's truly amazing to witness firsthand the development of a child's mind. :)

Favorites

Yeah! The HOA architectural review board finally approved our landscaping project yesterday; now if only it would just stop raining, or at least stop long enough for our project to get started.

Okay, so I know I'm going nuts with youtube, but I can't help myself. And just wait until we get a bigger memory card! Here's a clip of Lydia feeding herself her afternoon snack of Cheerios and raisins. Notice how she picks up a Cheerio and raisin together and intentionally drops them so that she only gets the raisin (she doesn't know how to just drop one just yet). Basically, she eats all the fruit first; girlfriend knows what she likes. :P

Rain rain go away

Trung and I have been anxiously waiting for the rain to stop so that our landscaping guy, William, can get started on our back yard. Our first delay was supposedly waiting for the HOA to approve the project, but once we found out they really have no jurisdiction, we wanted to proceed. Not so fast...then came the rain. Right now, we just need four hours without rain so that William can poison the weeds. Then we've got to wait a few more days for the weeds to die to then start the project. Hopefully the rain will stop long enough so that the project, which should take about two weeks and too many grand, will be done by the time Lydia's birthday rolls around in early September.

Okay, so we've been stuck indoors and perfecting Lydia's "face with no name". We're still working on it, but here's what we've got so far. :)

Finally

So the one time that Trung finally puts a post, people think it's raunchy...great. :P Well, nothing much has been going on lately, just the same ole Craigslist and eBay. Yeah, yeah, I know I said it was over, but I can't help myself. It really does give me something else to do during Lydia's naptimes besides house chores.

Speaking of eBay, I was this close (fingers one millimeter apart) to submitting my first unpaid claim. The lady took over two and a half weeks to even communicate with me, and then took another few days to mail the money order. Fortunately, I received the money order today (gee, I hope it's legit) and I shipped off her package. Man, all this fuss for an item that was $.99. Oh wells, at least I still have a clean record of all my items being paid. Kudos to me!

New camera.. same Lydia silliness

Wednesday, we went out to Circuit City to check out a camera I've been researching.. the Canon SD750. It's not their latest Elph, but I really like the slick design and somewhat reasonable price. The camera goes for $300 retail at CC, but the plan was to price match CC's online price of $260 and try to use a printed coupon for $40 off that I found on Slickdeals. This is one of those YMMV (your mileage may vary - for the unitiated) deals since the coupon clearly stated "no reproductions allowed". While waiting for the manager's approval for the price match, the sales rep rang it up and it actually came out to $250 - for some unknown reason - cheaper than it was online. So we jumped on it and handed him the $40 off coupon, which he scanned without carefully reading the details. When all was said and done, $210 (plus tax) for the SD750 is a pretty slick deal!

Anyhow, now on to the outcome of our good fortune. Of course, we've already taken plenty of test shots with it, and most future pics on the blog will come from this camera... but just for starters, this is the first video we took on the SD750. I call it "Lydia does an impersonation of a lizard".


(Yea, the quality doesn't appear to be an improvement over the old videos, but that is because YouTube forces you to reduce the resolution, and it does some crappy compression on it.)

Latest addiction

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm addicted to Hilary Duff. I saw her performance last week on "So You Think You Can Dance" and now I can't stop watching her music videos on Youtube. Unfortunately, due to Youtube's copyright rules, the clip is not gone. boo-hoo.

BTW, it's really hard to say who I think will win "So You Think You Can Dance", but my favorite two girls are Sara and Sabra, and Neil and Pasha for the guys.

She loves us, she really loves us!

A new sound

Today Lydia discovered her tongue, and hence, her "th"s. So now every time she talks, you can see her little tongue. Pay close attention and maybe you'll be able to catch it.

Still going at it

Yes, believe it or not, I am still nursing. We managed to get Lydia to drink the frozen milk, that I had stored, in the morning and then I feed her four more times throughout the day (two times on each side for those mommies that care to know). I feed her before her morning nap, before her afternoon nap, at 8 PM, and then before I put her down for the night around 9 PM. We used to put her to sleep around 10 PM, but she woke up pretty late around 8:30-9ish. I think I may go back to that though because now she's waking up too early (for me) at around 7:30 AM. :P

New friends

Wednesday we had lunch with Anne at our usual Panera, and had pizza with Mike for dinner. Thursday we had lunch with Jennifer C. and Calvin at Star Snow Ice. Dang that place is cheap! After a quick nap in the car for Lydia, we were off again to hang out with our newest friends, Thomas and Chi from Baylor. Thomas and I knew each other from school, but didn't keep in touch. Then at my friend Stephanie's wedding, we were reacquainted and found we had something very much in common...a kid. :) Lydia and I spent the rest of the day getting to know Daniel, Thomas' 21 month old son. We had a great time and are excited about this "new" friend! We definitely hope to keep in touch with them. I personally think Daniel and Lydia look cute together. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Friday and Saturday morning we chilled at my parent's house and got ready to head back home. We picked Trung up at the airport on the way back; we're a family once again! Lydia learned some new tricks...

but we sure did miss Daddy!

At home with the Lee's

Trung went to Rochester on business on Sunday, so Lydia and I went to Houston to spend the week with my family. That evening, we had hot pot for dinner; Lydia showed off her ability to eat table food.

On Monday we just chilled and got Lydia accustomed to my parent's house again. Naptimes were pretty difficult since she wasn't used to sleeping in the playpen and because it was still light out and she could see the different environment. Night time went very smoothly every night...not a single peep. That evening we met a bunch of kids who were the children of Cora's cousins. It was crazy with eight kids running around ranging for ten years old to four months old. Here's a family picture (sans Trung :( ).

Tuesday we had lunch with Jennifer L. and visited with all my former co-workers at TFNB. Then we headed to Tiff's house where we caught up with the latest news, and Christian and Lydia got to play together.

Vanilla Sky

This is what it looked like outside today at 8:35 PM. Crazy, huh?

Lydia's Ten Month Old Birthday

Ten months old already? My, where has the time gone?

Lydia gets into everything now...I mean, EVERYTHING. She's quite a handful, but she's learning the rules of the house. Ah, ignorance was bliss though.

Here's a clip of me trying to get Lydia to say "ma" instead of "ba" (aka Dad) while she's climbing on top of me. Check out her lips...100% Trung as my mom would say.

Sasha's 6th Birthday

Happy birthday tomorrow to Sasha who will be 42 years old in cat years, though I'm sure this past year aged her (and Trung and I) quite a bit with Lydia here. She is looking forward to what this next year will bring...grrr.