We be Parents

The months keep flying by – 6 months since my last update brings Hazel to the 2 year mark! She’s a total blast and sure keeps us moving! Hazel had a busy birthday week last week as we hosted Yenari’s friend Eulji in a week long trip from Korea. We spent the three day weekend in Santa Cruz, played on the (windy and cold beach), met up with Rebecca and Ewan, did lots of shopping, ate way too much food, and celebrated Hazel’s birthday. Hazel looooooves Eulji and had so much fun running around and playing with her, but somehow I didn’t get a photo of them together – drat.

We’ve had a lot of visits and trips in the 6 months since I’ve last wrote…a month long visit from Yenari’s mother, a visit from my mom, many visits from my father, and a trip to Boston and Connecticut where we saw Liza, my mom, Duncan, and my grandmother. Many other things have been keeping us busy too – Yenari started a Master’s program in nursing in January, she switched from the cardiac unit to the mother/baby unit (just yesterday!), and my company was just acquired…so we each have (somewhat) new jobs even though we’re both working at the same places.

Hazel is at that stage where every day brings new words, new understanding, and just plain figuring things out that no one tried to teach her. She hasn’t moved on to full sentences, but she’s practicing her parrot routine – trying to say everything that we say and practicing lots of words.

Here’s Hazel with one of her favorite birthday presents, her bad-ass trike:

She hasn’t figured out how to ride it the ‘real’ way yet, but she happily scoots around our living room on it.

Hazel has become a slide aficionado, content to repeat the cycle of climbing up the playground steps, making her way as fast as she can to the slide, then sliding down…exclaiming ‘weeeeeeeeeeeeee’ each time she swirls down:

Hazel is still sleeping in bed with us, something we haven’t been able to shake. She did finally stop breastfeeding though – at the ripe old age of 23 months. While two years is still the World Health Organization’s recommendation, it sure is a difficult thing to keep up for that long – Yenari is finally free! This also makes life easier for me when I take care of Hazel at night, because she no longer holds out on eating until Yenari gets home from work. Here are a couple photos of Hazel getting her stuffed animals ready for bed:

And to round it out, a bunch more photos from Hazel playing in our backyard…

Yay Hazel! Happy birthday (not so) baby girl!

Catching up on some things that happened over the past month…starting off with my brother’s wedding! We flew across the country bright and early one Thursday morning to Virginia – early enough that Hazel (who still sleeps on a teenagers schedule) slept almost the whole way…aside from waking up at four something in the morning, this was traveling with a baby at its best.

The whole extended weekend was spent hanging out with my family, meeting Andrea’s family, and spending time with both of their friends. A couple photos of the company we were keeping:

They had their rehearsal dinner at a beautiful organic restaurant where the waiter (in a fake British accent) overwhelmed us with all the details about where the butter was made, how awesome it was, and how it was accompanied by the homemade bread…yup, the butter was accompanied by the bread, not the opposite. The dinner was incredibly tasty, the scenery beautiful, and the company excellent:

It was at this rehearsal dinner where Hazel met Coralie, her best friend of the trip:

On the day of the wedding, the weather did not look like it was going to cooperate…the sky was filled with clouds and it was raining on our way to Weather Lea Farm, the beautiful wedding spot. Somehow, magically, the sky cleared just in time to decide to do the ceremony outdoors instead of the backup indoors spot. We got Hazel all geared up in her princess dress:

Hazel had so much fun seeing everyone that she totally passed out right before the ceremony. We walked down the aisle with other family members to kickoff the ceremony, Hazel passed out on my should for the whole walk. She stayed sleeping as I held her over to Yenari so that I could hand over a ring, kept up the sleeping as Yenari held her back, and continued sleeping as we marched out after the ceremony…totally passed out. Some photos of the ceremony I caught from the front row:

and sleepy Hazel…

After a cocktail hour we head into the barn for the reception, and almost on cue the rain resumed, having cooperated for the whole ceremony and cocktail hour. Hazel bounced around from table to table, stolen away by friends and family…giving us a chance to actually eat our food without rushing and without having to keep an eye on her. Hazel awake and ready to party:

We all joined the crowd on the dance floor and Hazel had an awesome time moving to the music, spinning around, and seeing everyone else having so much fun. After a couple hours of dancing Hazel was worn out again and totally passed out…on the dance floor…Lady Gaga blasting away. We had to tone down the dancing a bit while she was asleep, but we stayed on the dance floor and kept on moving! Here’s the crowd:

The wedding was great – a beautiful ceremony, such great people on all sides, a great Thai dinner, and so much time to spend with family. Hazel was wasn’t always the center of attention – the bride and groom took that honor – but I’d say she ranked quite high on the list. Not only did Hazel have a blast entertaining and being entertained, but she got herself a new Aunt! Welcome to the family Aunt Andrea!

For those not able to quickly divide by 30, that would be about 9 months and 20 days – way too late for a 9 month update and not quite ready for the 10 monther. Hazel has definitely transformed quite a bit since the 8 month update – she’s moving around more (not quite fully crawling though), pulling herself up into a sitting position, clapping her hands, making lots of noise, and generally being a lot more active. Holding her is a lot more difficult than it used to be – now she just crawls all over us and doesn’t seem to want to sit still. She’s up to 4 teeth – two on the top and two on the bottom, and she’s eating a wider variety of food, including Cheerios and other ones that she needs gum away on before she can swallow them.

At her 9 month checkup a couple weeks ago she measured up well – she was ‘off the chart’ on height, coming in a just over the highest line on the growth chart at around 30 inches. She weighed in at just under 20 pounds (70th percentile) and her head circumference was around the 75th percentile.

One of her biggest changes in behavior has been her stranger anxiety. While she is cautious around just about anyone she doesn’t see on a regular basis she is much more weary of men…and the scariest of them all seems to be my dad! Last week he came for dinner and Hazel burst into tears before he even stepped in the house – the mere sight of him did it. After a while she (mostly) lets down her guard – here she is after a couple hours:

One of the big things we did was to go on a short road trip down to LA with the sole purpose of satisfying Yenari’s craving for Korean food. The Bay Area definitely has much better Korean food than most other areas of the country, but it is still no match for LA. This was a very similar trip to the one we took about a year earlier except this time we had little Hazel to keep us busy. She did great on the drive down to LA and was fairly well behaved in most of the restaurants we went to. Here’s the Korean food connoisseur and Hazel taking in the end of a crab feast at OnDal:

And a quick stop for ho dduk – a sugar-filled Korean dessert pancake. This was the first of many visits to this place and was inspiring enough to Yenari that she was talking about wanting to open up a ho dduk stand of her own!

Hazel had a blast in our hotel playing on the big king size bed:

On the way out of town after three days of gorging on Korean food and watching the Korean Olympic speed skaters kick some serious butt, we stopped by the house that my great grandfather build – the house where my grandmother grew up, my mom lived for many years, and the first house I lived in in the weeks after birth. Hazel didn’t seem very excited about any of this and slept through the visit:

On the way back home from LA we took a detour to Delano to see Carol, Yenari’s buddy from nursing school:

This trip to Korea town in LA was just practice for the real thing – this coming Thursday we’re flying to Korea for a two and a half week vacation. This will be the first time Hazel meets her grandfather, great grandmother, uncle, many other relatives, and Yenari’s friends. While we’re not looking forward too much to the 10 and 12 hour flights, we are excited about having the chance to take a long vacation and spend some time with Yenari’s family in Korea.

And now…more pictures:

The last week and a few days have been really fun because my mom and my sister Liza came for a visit.  Liza stayed a week and left this past Thursday, trading places with Duncan.  My mom and Duncan went down to a classic car race in Monterey for the weekend, but they’re due back any time now.

My mom and Liza were super helpful in their visit…playing with Hazel, burping her, arranging all her clothes, cooking, and giving our house the most thorough cleaning its seen in a long time.  My mom actually brought all her favorite recipes and let us pick out which ones we wanted for different meals – very luxurious.  They also watched Hazel during the day while I was at work so that Yenari could go get a massage.

Not only did they do all these useful and helpful things, but they had fun with us too!  Here’s a photo of Liza playing with Hazel just before heading out of the house:

And here are all of the girls at the tail end of a walk we took around the Stanford campus:

This was the second trip for my mom to visit Hazel and its amazing how much Hazel has grown and changed in the weeks between her trips.  This was Aunt Liza’s first encounter with Hazel and her first time spending any significant time with a newborn.  One of the nights when they were here my dad was also in the area on business, so we had a big family dinner – Hazel’s second time having dinner with both her grandmother and grandfather.  Here’s my dad with Hazel:

It was a great week with Liza and my mom, a nice stop in with my dad, and we still have a day and a half with my mom.  But the visits aren’t slowing down…tomorrow my Aunt Janet and cousin Morgan from Portland will be visiting us for dinner, on Wednesday we’re going to Yenari’s aunt and uncle’s house to see them and Yenari’s grandfather who is coming in from Korea – this will be both Hazel’s first and my first time meeting him!  Then…next Saturday my brother is coming for a three day trip after which I’ll be headed to the Boston area for a business trip with Yenari and Hazel in tow…we’re extending the trip a couple days to head down to CT to stay with my mom again.  Then, I think, the month of visits will end and the preparation for Yenari heading back to work will begin.

This past weekend Yenari and I went to visit my dad in Chicago.  We were lucky enough to have excellent weather and had a great time seeing the sights, eating the eats, meeting up with my good friend Michael, and hanging out.  Here are a couple photos from the weekend…

Guacamole made at our table at the Adobo Grill

Yenari and my dad walking into the Second City for a comedy show

'The Bean' in Millennium Park

Yenari under 'The Bean'

Under 'The Bean'

Greg and Yenari

Yenari and her new friend

This was Yenari’s first time in Chicago and she absolutely loved it.  Some of that love was definitely directed at the hot fudge sundaes at the Ghirardelli shop right in front of my dad’s apartment.  She was also pretty pumped about the good restaurants – there was even a Korean restaurant that met her high standards.  My dad’s apartment has a great view of the Chicago skyline and the lake and when she saw it, Yenari seemed ready to move to Chicago!  When she learned that the building across the street was actually a women’s hospital, she started salivating over the super short commute.  We have no plans to move now, but Chicago is definitely on Yenari’s mind…