Blog Hiatus

After much contemplation, I made up my mind to take a hiatus from mommy blogging. I realized I was spending too much time on the computer between blogging here, facebook, and uploading pictures on my flickr photo page on my precious evening times. Amelia Love will continue to grow and fulfill our lives and be documented through my camera lens here.

But I might be back again after having a restful and fun summer break.. who knows? We are still living out lives to the fullest, just off-line instead of online for a while.

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Baseball Gene

It seems that Amelia has definitely inherited her father's love for the baseball. We took her to a very crowded Orioles game tonight at Camden Yards and Amelia could not hide her excitement for being there. She loved seeing the game; she loved the crowds cheering, and she absolutely loved the ball park food. Our good friends Wes and Ginny were there to make the game even more exciting. Amelia kept cheering on "Go Orioles" and laugh with glee. Although Brian is a life-long die hard Red Sox fan, he supports the Orioles as long as they are not playing his boys. That is why he was generous enough to sign Amelia up for Orioles Dugout Kids membership which allowed us to buy tickets for dollar a seat for tonight's game. Apparently tonight's game set a record for one of the biggest walk-in seats sold at Camden Yards in history; the number of crowds and the lack of parking certainly proved it. It is going to be a great baseball season in Baltimore this year. Although the Orioles made a good comeback in the ninth inning, they lost to Rangers by a run.

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Gratuitous Pictures of Amelia at Play

I have been too busy to post this week. So... here are some pictures of Amelia at play. I love how she is completely into whatever she is doing at that moment. Whether it be eating, playing in the sand, or on a balance beam. I hope she carries on this trait of being passionate. I believe she will; she is my daughter for sure.

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Finally, Big TEN Comes Off

As of this weekend, I finally lost ten pounds in total since starting our lifetime change in early March. All those morning workouts, all that rice uneaten (I'm a rice-a-holic)... it finally paid off.

We have 11 days left for the cruise. I wonder if I can lose some five more pounds by then.. I have two more days of work conference which binds me with horrible schedule since the conference is in Virginia. Fitting working out time is going to be such a challenge. Today, after leaving the house at 0545 in the morning, I returned home exactly at 2045. After spending 1.25 hours with Amelia and eating dinner, I just finished my workout 10 minutes ago. Now it's time for bed.. I hate shortened days like this.

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Taking Advantage of Spring Weather

After three days of miserable rain, the sun finally came out and official spring weather has struck Baltimore region. We had to take advantage of it and take Amelia to a local park we have yet to visit, BWI airport's aviation park. As the name indicates, you can see the planes land from the playground.

Our most frequently used airline, Southwest landing:

Amelia's hair usually goes berserk with static near any plastic slides at a playground:


Amelia wondering what that sound is... it's the sound of airplane coming in!


Finially, I captured some pretty bokeh in the background..

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Baby Zombie Defenders

I took above pic at my friend Seth & Kim's son's birthday party. The blond baby in the front is Nathan (the birthday boy)'s cousin Jonah, and Nathan is in the background. I posted this pic on facebook and this is how Seth and Kim commented:

Seth-- For some reason this picture makes me think that baby Nathan and baby Jonah are preparing to defend against Zombies or something.....

Kim-- i can just imagine a group of zombies marching down the street like in night of the living dead...

Seth-- They look like they are taking a mental inventory of all weapons they may have available at their disposal.

I laughed so hard reading their zombie scenario involving these cute babies. My theory for Seth and Kim being this imaginative is because they own a very big bookstore and therefore read lots of books, including few about zombies. I love my friends for coming up with such creative comments on facebook. I thereby title this picture "Baby Zombie Defenders."

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Mommy, I Quit

Now that she is three, Amelia seems to really flourish in power of phrases that make statements. She learned to say "I quit," which Brian and I swear up and down that we've never uttered in front of her. Here's how last night went:

Me: Amelia, it's time for dinner. You have to turn the TV off.
Amelia: No, mommy. Dinner is not good. I quit my dinner. I quit eating!

"I quit eating??" We have never imagined that my daughter would ever utter such words. My baby who has been the number one eater since the day she was born; this is the same baby that hung upside down from my bosom to breastfeed while I was going through stomach virus of the century. Of course the statement wore itself out faster than she could mutter "I want some food" but it still amazed me. For now, we are living with a happy quitter who doesn't really quit. And that's a good thing. I do wish she quits watching Dora or Diego for a while though.

The above picture is of Amelia before the hair cut. I am getting mixed reviews regarding her new style. I have friends who think her new do is hip and adorable but I have had some who just cry out loud "Why??? Why did you cut her hair????"in despair. Coincidentally the ones who cry in despair are the ones who support long, luscious locks themselves.

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Compartmentalizing My Life

I read a great post at one of my fave site, workitmom.com on how to compartmentalize your life so your work life doesn't run into your family life. The reason I identify with the writer of this blog, Nataly, so much is because I think she is a lot like me when comes to juggling work and family. She only has one daughter, she is very passionate about her work, but she also gets stressed quite frequently from all the juggling. She has high expectations of herself and puts a lot of pressure on herself from what I read on her blog. I will never trade my day job for more time at home, but at the same time there were times I felt like I was going to have a break down at the end of the day. This was one of the main reasons I had to change to another office at the end of the year. I liked the mission and the importance of work I did, but I felt too stressed out.

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Amelia and Aunt Jenny

My best friend Jenny came for a visit on Saturday and hung out with us at a local carnival. The place was so dead, Amelia had every single ride to herself. They even gave her extra rounds at no cost. Nice! Of course, Amelia had met Jenny in the past, but it's amazing how much more she bonded with her this time. She was excited to go on a ride with Jenny and have dinner at Qdoba. When we came back home, she even asked her to read her a story. Jenny, never the one to read a story straight out of the book, added her own spin to it.

Jenny: (Reading "I Love Daddy") .. So Daddy and I played all day and swam in the water and played king of the castle. (Turning to Amelia) I don't think this Daddy has a job, Amelia.

Amelia: No job?

Jenny: Yes. And they had to go swimming because they walk around bare feet and their feet stink so bad.

This is why I love my friend so much. She can still remain her sarcastic self even while reading children's story. She's going to be a one funny mamma someday. I loved that she took time to come visit us even though she is on such crunched schedule while she's in town. Hope to see her again soon.

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Happy Easter!

From Jisoo, Amelia, and Brian (aka the man who tried too hard to look "alert" in his family portrait. He wanted to make sure he didn't close his eyes because of the flash-- Goal Accomplished!)

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Spring Cleaning: New Layout and New Body

Last night I was fiddling around the layout section of the page and accidentally deleted my old template. I have been meaning to change the layout of the page after seeing my dear susper-blogger sil Rachel's fabulous new page. I thought I didn't even have time to look around for a template that I liked enough let alone making a new banner/header, etc. I just kept coming up with excuses. Well, it's a wonder what you can do when you are really under pressure. After my little accident last night, I scoured online for multiple templates, previewed them all, went into photoshop to make a new header.. I did this all within the last few hours. So, hope everyone enjoys my new, fresh, spring design. Of course, it is going to stay on here well after the spring.

Now comes the second spring cleaning topic. For the past month, Brian and I have been on a program to overhaul our bodies. We are currently on a strict diet and exercising 6 days a week. Why did we get inspired to do such a thing? This happened during my birthday weekend when I realized I was turning 29 and I was not in the shape I'd like to be in the last year of my 20s. Yes, it was a last-year-in-the-twenties crisis. And also, we had just booked our fabulous vacation: a Disney Cruise vacation in Western Carribbean for a week in early May! This cruise was significant since Amelia was conceived on the last cruise we took in mid-April 2005. She was our little souvenir from the trip (ahem). This time we get to take our "grown up souvenir" back on the cruise and enjoy the vacation together as family. We are going to be joined by my wonderful parents-in-laws from Florida which will make it even more special. We have been talking about doing a Disney Cruise for a while and finally this year all the stars were aligned. We know we will be having a fantastic time, but we wanted to make sure a) we'd be in good enough shape to be in bathing suits b) have enough energy to do everything that Disney cruise has to offer c) eat all you can on the cruise and still look and feel fabulous.

Today marks exactly a month of dieting and exercising. And the results??? Brian lost 11 pounds and I am down 7.



My friend saw the above photo of us from the weekend and said our faces indeed look thinner. We got about one more moth to go, I hope we keep on shrinking.

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DC in Bloom

We made it out to Washington DC to catch cherry blossoms in their peak season on Saturday. Despite the crazy windy weather and a large amounts of crowd, the trip was well worth it after seeing how much delighted Amelia was. This was Brian, Amelia and Richard's first time seeing the cherry blossoms, and third time for Grace and I. Only gripes we had during the wonderful day was 1. the wind which made it oh so cold and 2. a very long line in front of all the women's bathroom in five mile radius of the cherry blossoms. I frequently get philosophical and resent being a woman when I have to stand in one of those bathroom lines. But cherry blossoms were beautiful and let us know that spring in DC is indeed here, even though it's a bit chillier and windier than usual.

There were so many shutter bugs out there taking beautiful pics of the blossoms. Their pseudo-professional lens kit made me look like I was carrying a small snapshot camera. At first I felt shy taking pics next to them, but after 20 frames into my shots, I started getting bold and pushing people out of the way to get the good shots. I think my photography hobby is making me even more ballsier.

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A Change is in the Air..

Amelia is best known for her long, signature brown hair.



I loved her long hair. She looks great in it.

But it was time to give her a change...and she was ready for it too. It is spring time after all. And we kept hearing this rumor that apparently Amelia's Daddy has been having a very hard time managing her hair in the mornings when he was in charge of getting her ready by himself.

So...



Ta da~ Out with the old, and in with her new look. She still looks adorable. Somewhere in the distance..Amelia's Dad is proclaiming "Yes, I can (manage my daughter's hair now)."

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