Happy birthday William!!!!

It was difficult for Eric and Julie to decide what kind of cake to get William for his first birthday cake.

At first we thought we were going to get him a organic carrot cake. But thanks to Amy, juju, Megan and Carl, William got a bumble bee ice cream cake and a black forrest ice cream cake.


William had so much fun. He loved the ice cream but he loved the icing even more.


It is going to be difficult to top this birthday celebration:)

William's first Christmas!

William loved ripping open his Christmas presents and play with the wrapping paper.


He also liked playing Santa's little helper and hover over all the presents:)

A pleasant surprise on Christmas Eve

William gave us all a big surprise on Christmas eve. He went from step, fall, step, launch.... To step, step, step, and he hasn't stop since then^_^

Bear with me or Bare with me...

As you all know, Julie often says the darndest things.

J: Eric, is it B-A-R-E with us or B-E-A-R with us?
E: Why?
J: Because I wrote it in one of my student's evaluation and I am not sure which is correct.
E: I am pretty sure it is B-E-A-R... unless you want to have someone undress in clinic!
J: Thank goodness I asked... luckily the evaluations are not out yet.

A little break in Maui

Thanks to Julie's CE class, our little clan was able to take a mini-vacation to Maui. However, due to Eric's busy work schedule, we were so grateful that grandmmie agree to come on the trip to help us with little William.

Here is a picture of William with daddy's snorkel gear (doesn't he look like a natural). William didn't get to go in the ocean on this trip (still a little scared of the sound of the wave). But we are all looking forward to when he is older and is able to go snorkel with daddy.


However, we did hop in the jacuzzi tub next to the kiddy pool. William loved to splash around in the pool. So much that he would get a lot of water in his mouth ^_^


Julie was able to get a few nice shots of William the morning she didn't have to go to class. William loved the morning dew on the hotel lounge chair.



He liked to point at them and splash around in them...Thank goodness for Oxyclean... look at those white shorts...

William also liked to show off his walking and standing skills while we were there. He is not ready to walk on his own but he loves to hold our hand and take us in the direction he wants to go. Sometimes we can trick him to stand on his own if we give him something to hold.


Here is Julie's favorite shot of the trip. This is something I think we will always treasure... his little hands holding on to ours...


Thanks to Shirley, we were able to have a really delicious dinner at Mama's Fish House while in Maui. Even though the price is a little high... but how can you say no to this Tahitian black pearl dessert ^_^ the chocolate moose, the passion fruit sauce...



Finally, this trip would not have been possible without grammie ^_^ Thanks Mom!


o... and I have to embarrass Sung a little...

Since Eric had to work half of the time while he was in Maui, it was nice to have Sung go snorkel with Eric in the mornings. But here is a picture Eric took of Sung... with the bright yellow life-jacket (plus reflectors) ^_^.


More pictures from Maui:

William's new friend

William loves to take baths now. Since William is super curious about the facet, Eric and Julie thought it would be safer to pad the facet so William won't bump his head... however... it kind of back fired. William love the bright color on Elmo which made him even more curious about the facet.



Now William is kind of scared of the shower head...

OMG! William is almost walking: 11months

William always seems to shock mommy and daddy on his monthly birthdays. For the past few weeks Julie has been able trick William into free standing by handing him food ^_^

This time, Julie handed William the house keys when they got off the elevator. William was so fascinated by the keys that he forgot he was standing on his own. When he realized that mommy had already walked away from the elevator, he took his first step... amazed by his own achievement he hurried and sat down to make sure he does not fall.

Since then, he's been showing off his one hand hold walking skills. He cruises next to furniture and launches on to the next furniture to continue cruising.

It has been so exciting for us to watch him discover his new skills!

pictures to follow.

William's first Thanksgiving

Eric and Julie were pretty excited to celebrate William's first Thanksgiving. After packing his dinner in little containers, Eric and Julie headed to Andrea and Mike's place to enjoy the Thanksgiving feast (from the gourmet kitchen of Safeway). However, William was not interested in his own dinner... he had his eyes set on the turkey and the mash potatoes on the table... can't blame him... it does look much tastier than his cold dinner from the little containers. SO... William officially upgrade himself to chunky food on Thanksgiving night ( with turkey, bread, and pumpkin pie).



Why stop there right?! While William's Godmama Carol was visiting that weekend, we also let William have some ice cream ^_^ acorn does not fall far from the tree... he loved it!



Besides surprising us with his interest in food, William also surprised us with his curiosity for adventure. Here is a picture Grampie captured of William stepping on Julie's craft supply box so he can get a better look our the window. It's been difficult to try to keep him off the box since then.



More pictures from November:

Two Teeth at 10.5 months

After watching William's library friends have their teeth come out like spring flowers, we started to wonder when his teeth are going to come out...



Well... here it is ^_^ this is a picture of Julie try to hold William down with her feet and open his mouth with her hands so daddy can take a picture of these two precious pearly whites ^_^


Also, here is a picture of William trying out Grampie F's baby outfit that was made by great grandmama many many moons ago. Doesn't he look great in this outfit?


Here is another one Julie really likes.

Here are pictures of William picking out his own pumpkin at the library:


Time sure flies!

Guess what else I found?

William loves to watch daddy get ready in the morning. Maybe because there is so much fun stuff in the bathroom. TP is William's new toy. He loves to unroll it, have us roll it back, then unroll it again.

Go Giants!

Even though we are not Giant's fans, it is hard to not join the festivity when we live so close to the ball park.

The evening when Giant's won the championship, we can hear the cheering even though we live so many blocks away. The cheering lasted past midnight. Eric did go out and take a few pictures while Julie stay behind to watch William.

Few days later, Julie walked William over to Eric's office to go join the Giant's victory parade. It is amazing how many people took the day off to come see the parade. The news said there were at least a million people came to join the celebration ( last time Giant's won was 50 years ago).



William sat on daddy's shoulder for the first time... it was scary for the both of them... but William did squeeze out a smile for mommy's camera.

Halloween outfit

It was difficult for Julie to figure out what to dress William up as for Halloween. After all this is his first Halloween. Finally, Julie decided to let William have multiple outfits. We know William won't remember.... But Julie will^_^



So Julie first had William try on the Chinese outfit he wore for his one month birthday... The shirt was a little tight and the pants ripped after William wiggled a few times (but the outfit did make it through the library and our apartment halloween party).



Then Julie dressed William up as Charlie Brown on Halloween. With the little amount of hair he's got, doesn't he look like Charlie Brown?


You would think that it would be easy to find a yellow shirt to put a brown strip on... It took Julie forever to shop for that shirt. She finally gave up and just bought a white polo shirt and some yellow cloth dye... Tada! Charlie Brown shirt!

William didn't get to have any candies this Halloween but Eric and Julie shared some of William's candies together.

We also celebrated Eric's 31st birthday by visiting the California Academy of Science.


William loved the aquarium!

Since we were close by the De Young Museum, we also tried to go and visit the Impressionest exhibit:

Julie had a little too much fun with the cutouts.




Here is more pictures from October:

What does this bottom do?

Our Curious George has found the flush on our toilet. He is heading into the bathroom to try out this new bottom every chance he gets! Luckily we pay a flat fee on our water bill...

Hello Adolf... wait... I mean Charlie Chaplin

Here is a picture of William's first taste of miso soup at a Japanese restaurant. Julie tried to feed him a piece of the seaweed and it landed on William's lips instead. We just couldn't pass up on this precious moment ^_^

And here is a video of William climbing up some stairs for the first time:

The strategy to combat "NO"

The terrible twos is what all new parents fear and the word "NO!" is what all new parents don't want coming out of their toddler's mouth.


Even though we are still far away from the terrible twos, we are already catching ourselves telling William no a lot (ex: don't pull out the electrical plug, don't lick mommy's shoes)

So the other morning, Eric said to Julie:
E: I know how to solve this problem!
J: how?
E: so for the really bad stuff we will say no but for the stuff that is not too bad we will just say "you shouldn't"
J: why don't we just do the Taiwanese way? Just call their name in a harsher tone. This way he won't associate the behavior with a specific word and he will learn his name too :)

Blogging from my iPos touch

It has been difficult to blog since our little guy came along. Julie is often trapped on the rocking chair while William takes a nap on her lap. With her new iPod and the new blog app she is hoping to be able to blog more. Here is our first test blog from the iPod. And here is William taking a nap.

Life is precious

Life is so precious and unpredictable. The usually healthy and athletic papa Yang suddenly fell ill in early September, sending our little clan into panic mode. Packing up everything we needed in 4 hours, Julie was still in a daze when they made it on a flight bound for Taiwan.

( Yes! William and his stroller!)

Unlike our last trip, we just brought whatever bare necessaries we could fit into two carry-on suitcases (e.g. William's slumber music machine, bath time rubber ducky, baby carrier, and lots of clothes).

Like our last trip, William was a pretty good sport. He was able to sleep through most of the flight but this time wanted to crawl around when he was awake. We tried to keep things light for him so we took him to the child play area while transiting through Narita Airport so he can get some crawling out of his system (he enjoyed following the older t0ddlers around).

We also rewarded ourselves with some ice cream while we were there. Sorry William... maybe when you get older^_^

Papa Yang and Mama Yang were glad to see William there.

Luckily Papa Yang was able to recover quickly during our 3 weeks stay in Taiwan.
Here is William having fun with our luggage as we are packing up for our return trip. He always likes to be in the middle of the action!

Towards the end of our stay, a typhoon came through the southern part of Taiwan sending down lots of rain and wind. Julie's uncle's house in Kaohsiung was affected.
Although water flooded their basement/garage, Julie's uncle, aunt, and cousins were able to move their car and mopeds to higher ground in time. Julie's aunt said that since the water rose so fast, they didn't have time to think about what to save. They tried to save whatever floated to the top (e.g. slippers) but later realized that their nice shoes were all in shoe boxes... which didn't float up.
Luckily no one was hurt.

As Julie was doing her final e-mail check before heading to the airport, she got the bad news that her college roommate Amy has passed away...

It was quite a shock to both Julie and Eric since we just spent a Saturday with her back in June.

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco. She brought William a Giant's panda bear, which became one of his favorite stuffed animal (probably because of it's high contrast). In Julie's mind, Amy was always smart, happy, and smiley... wish we were able to share some of her burden...

Life is truly precious... we thank God for our wonderful family and friends and we hope to be able to continue treasuring our time with love ones.