Size matters

Regardless of what the title illicits in your dirty mind, I'm talking about sunglasses.  Yes, William is all boy, and has developed a healthy appreciation for his package in the last few months, but that is beside the point.  He has embraced the oversized sunglass trend, and flexes his inner fashionista as soon as he can swipe a pair from an unsuspecting adult.

The original gangster - Om Noi's sunglasses...a BIT big

Sporting an athletic look with Papa - the boat driver NEEDS the glasses because squinting is dangerous.  Safety first!

 Thank you, Ba, for passing down your enormous noggin, so these adult-sized glasses fit me

Hamming it up in the hipster peepers trend

Two more minutes

William is beginning to learn the fine art of negotiation.  Not from me.  My negotiation skills are laughable at best - it makes me sick to my stomach and sweaty to ask for a better deal or lower price.  Luckily, Nang's an old pro and practices his skills daily.  The problem with Nang teaching William negotiating tactics is that Little Man uses them on us, specifically on me, and I don't even know that I'm being dealed down until I turn around, and Nang is laughing at me. 

Let me lure you into my web of manipulation

As his first lesson, William learned to add "That's a good deal" to the end of what he wanted.  It works like this:  "William, it is naptime.  We need to change your diaper."  William replies, "Ahhhhh.  No change diaper.  Stroller ride?  That's a good deal."  Then he walks to his stroller, gets in, and assumes that his good deal is THE deal.  Nang claims that this is a classic Asian negotiating strategy.  Weird thing?  It works!

Let me lure you into my web of manipulation

Now William knows to reply with "Two more minutes" to stall an inevitable event.  Originally, he learned this from Mimi and Papa.  It started out as one of us telling him he had one more minute doing what he was doing before we needed to move on to something else, but he realized that one minute went by too quickly, so when he learned about two being bigger, he added it to his repertoire.  "William, turn off the TV, it is time to go upstairs and take a shower."  "Two more minutes."  "OK."  And he can get a good ten minutes out of this.  Such. A. Sucker.

Tiny

Two-week old fingers wrapped around my finger.  Tiny.

Ooops!

Nang biked his third MS150 from Houston to Austin in April, so William and I drove up to see him cross the finish line.  William and I wound up stranded on the side of the road when our car's brake line failed, and I realized it while trying to slow down from 70 miles per hour to merge onto a cloverleaf highway entrance behind another car.  There maaaay have been a rapid fire succession of hysterical phone calls to a husband who was RIDING A BIKE from Austin - honey, please come pick baby and me up and handle this.  Right.  NOW.  Yeah, handled very well.

Ba?

Fast forward to the finish line and big mom failure of the day #2.  I was so consumed with spotting Nang and the guys approaching the finish line that I forgot to tell William when they passed, and he missed the group, so I pretended another group of riders contained his Ba, and had Little Man cheer for and wave to that group.  Big ooops!

Sign

In addition to Baby Ngo #2 (Elouise? Clara? Elizabeth?), I'm now incubating a cold AND a bad case of dog fever.  Some of the places I go for work are a little "edgy," and I always run across some rough looking stray dogs (of the pit bullish variety which Papa has verboten), and it is taking alot of willpower not to lure the little/big/cagey-looking/mangey boogers into my car and bring them home.  Logically, I recognize that this is not the appropriate time or way to go about getting a good family dog, but I'm not the only one that is sporting a burgeoning love of dogs.  The signs were all there from the beginning.  Would Nang be able to say "no" if the Wildebeest brought home a stray/shelter/rescue dog?

 3 months and hitting the dog hard

 Holding paws

Controlling two ferocious beasts on a walk

Flirt

In March, William "ran" his first 1k with his best-friend-who-terrifies him, Paige.  He hustled to stay with the crowd in the beginning, requested to be carried for the body of the race, and hit the finish line on his own to shake his money maker (and suck his paci) to the music blaring at the end.

 Hey, grrrrr.

Geeeeez!  Can't you see I'm trying to close the deal?  Buzz off with that camera. Embarrassing!

Shaking his groove thing for Mimi

Scoop

I looove having the scoop - a juicy tidbit no one else or only a select few know is delightful.  My famous friend, Meg, and her sister/photographer extraordinaire, Kate, call it "fo."  For the longest time, I thought they were talking about Vietnamese noodle soup, pho, but then they let me in on the scoop.  Today's fo: I FREAKED out fo real when I saw this cheese's expiration date.  Baby Ngo #2 (Harper, Jane, Caroline?) will be two weeks old by the time I forget to throw this away. Freaking out.

Pastoral scene, lower-fat calmness on the front 

Panic-inducing computer stamp on the back

Guilty pleasure

I succumb to an embarrassingly high number of guilty pleasures for myself, and feel appropriately guilty for each one - caloric content, time wasters, productivity zappers, etc.  William's guilty pleasures are cuter, and will therefore be our subject, but cause me more guilt than my own.

• Melted ice cream in a coffee cup that he sips while repeatedly telling his audience that he's drinking coffee.
• Too much screen time - Sesame Street, Thomas the Train, and cartoons he asks for by name ("Cats" (Puss in Boots), "Penguins" (Happy Feet 2), "Girl" or "Eugene" (Tangled - the Rapunzel cartoon), "Car" (Cars 2), "Elephant" (Ice Age), and "Elephant. Dinosaur" (Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaur (?))
• Pacifiers (but at this point, ONLY when he is going to sleep or sleeping).
• "Medium shoclat" (Whataburger chocolate milkshake), "Shoclat" (M&Ms or expensive chocolate bars Nang gets on out of town business trips), "Bacon" (beef jerky stolen from the stand at Om Noi's convenience store), and "Canny" (candy).

Summer loving

Summer will officially be over on Saturday, and William had himself a BLAST!  He swam at least twice a week, and his dark tan earned him the nickname of Little Pecan from Aunt Carolyn.  The pool's are closed during the week now, so Mimi and Papa won't be taking him swimming on their days watching him. Summer bummer.

***BUT***

William's first beach trip happened in the nick of summertime!  Nang and I missed it due to our responsible adultiness and jobs - booo/hisss.  Mimi and Papa said he had a BLAST from the car ride up there to the car ride back.  SO MUCH FUN that he didn't take a nap all day.  He also had his first McDonald's chicken nuggets, apples, and chocolate milkshake.  Oh, no!

 Uh-oh - the beach's a little dirtier than the swimming pool!

No problem

Summer loving had me a blast

Summer loving happened so fast

I met a girl crazy for me

Met a boy cute as can be

Summer 2012 - we'll miss you!

Labor

3.6.2010

This is the call to the doctor's answering service once my contractions were within the proscribed timing and consistency.  Getting to this point took all day with contractions on and off, getting closer together and then further apart, and then closer and closer and more intense (and I felt like I would die if I didn't make it to IKEA, but I can't remember what I wanted to buy).  Dad's nervous.  Bailey's stoked because everyone is in one room and not spread through the house AND she gets to be on the ottoman without her blanket.  I'm just thinking about all of the needles and prodding and poking and strangers that are going to be involved in the next hours of my life (thank goodness I had no idea what was actually coming).  

I did not handle this stage of labor gracefully.  Contractions HURT.  They are not simply "pressure" as books and pregnancy blogs suggest.  They are pain.  And the breathing trick that my mom (Miss Au Naturel with BOTH kids) taught me - more time breathing in/less time breathing out or vice versa - stopped working.  

If all goes as planned this time around (cough, cough), I will be checking myself into the hospital a week before my due date, and having a planned C-section.

Fear

Fear plays a large role in all my decisions - fear of failure, not being good, disappointing others, doing something wrong, getting hurt, or being ridiculed.  These two guys are teaching me to try new things and ignore fear's weight in the equation.  I want William to tackle opportunities for the experience and not to consider being good a prerequisite for starting.  That starts begins with him seeing Nang and I do the same.  Kids these days and their expectations - sheesh!

Before

BEFORE the friends I am supposed to be joining in September blog-a-day tan my hide, let me say that I'm sorry.  I thought the peer pressure of others' expectations of daily posts would be enough to get me to stay awake an extra 15 minutes and write, post a picture, something.  But that peer pressure wasn't as effective as I predicted, and performance anxiety/writer's block took over.  Blog-a-day seemed like a great idea BEFORE I recognized the imminence of Baby Ngo #2's scheduled arrival date.  She hasn't been formally introduced...now for the uterus shots:

A wee bebe

20 weeks - we decided to find out the gender this time, and it's a....

GIRL!

The sonogram technician loved her role in the surprise and pointing out the details of #2's girly bits - she included three angles.  Nang opened the envelope with the results for Father's Day.

34 week profile - things are getting cramped in there

Whole body shots don't fit because she's so much bigger.  This is her foot.  The doctor says that the fluid level is on the low end of normal, and her weight is on the low end of normal, but not to worry until 36 weeks.  I tried to convince her that my husband is Asian, so a smaller-than-white baby might be expected...she didn't buy it.