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Archive for April, 2010

I may need some backup

Bubba at Play

Apr 10th

Posted by Chris in Family

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Now that he’s at an age where he can really get around, Thomas is totally entertaining to watch while he plays. Not only does he motor around the tot lot or the gym, but he says and does some of the funniest things.

I never thought sitting at the playground doing nothing for an hour would be much fun – no Web access, no music, no stock quotes — nada! But watching my little man is better than Sunday afternoon TV.

I wonder how he’ll play with Sarah when she’s able to keep up with him. I’m sure it won’t be all good times and rainbows between the two of them, but watching it will be fun either way.

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Sarah is alright

A Natural Big Brother

Apr 9th

Posted by Chris in Family

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During the final months leading up to Sarah’s arrival, Alex and I were worried as to how Thomas would handle the new kid on the block and what we would do to ensure he didn’t feel like he was second fiddle. He’s always been curious and quite interactive, so we decided that asking him for help with Sarah would make him feel that he was getting the attention he otherwise had focused on him.

Well lemme tell you, it’s working like a damn charm.

He has naturally (or oddly?) embraced Sarah and is extremely gentle and expresses great concern, with his trademark “UH-OH!”, whenever she cries or makes a peep otherwise. He’s quick to drop whatever he’s into, run to her side, and find out what’s wrong. It’s really something. And although he’s a bit shy to sing, we’ve caught him on occasion serenading his little sister with his signature muted-under his breath vocal stylings. I haven’t caught that on video yet, but trust me, it’s RE-DONK!

In this video, Thomas gives his little sister a much needed bottle of ni-ni (milk), while sneaking in a few feels of her head (his signature move first witnessed with cousin Xavier)

Sarah is settling in nicely so far. We were all geared up for sleepless nights and marathon cluster feedings, but she’s quite different from Thomas in this respect. She eats quickly, sleeps for 3 hours thereafter like clockwork, and does this around the clock! Almost makes me think a third one would be fun. Almost.

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Cozy

Introducing: Sarah Alexandra Chen

Apr 5th

Posted by Chris in Family

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I was right! For the past 40 weeks, Alex was walking around with our baby girl in her tummy, and I called it! It’s nice to be right since it doesn’t seem to happen as often as I think it should :)

Sarah was born April 3, 2010 (a full ten days late) at 12:50pm, tipping the scale at exactly 8lb, 6.9oz, 53cm long, after few hours of really hard labour and 10 minutes of amazing pushing! Ladies, I don’t know how you pop those kids out, but I take my hat off to each and every mother.

Our morning started off casually as we knew Saturday was induction day. We planned to wake up, have some breakfast, drop Thomas off at Grandma & Grandpa’s, then make our way to Lions Gate Hospital to get the show on the road. But after all the waiting for Sarah to kick the contractions into gear, Alex’s water broke around 3am Saturday morning, and our casual morning turned into a flat out race to the hospital. Our doctor advised us that after the short labour with Thomas, should Alex’s water break this time around, things would likely happen very fast. So we made it to the hospital in record time (about an hour), this included getting Thomas and ourselves ready to go, dropping Bubba off at my parent’s place, then ripping off to the hospital. I felt like my years of watching auto racing and episodes of Dukes of Hazzard, A-Team, and Knight Rider were all for something after all!

After getting setup in the delivery room, it wasn’t long until Sarah came into the world wide-eyed and curious, barely a whimper or a cry, and very hungry — a stark contrast from her big brother Thomas. She took to Mommy immediately and it seemed like she was really checking out the faces of her family present in the delivery room: Mom, Dad, and Aunty Allison. Shortly after, I was on the phone to relatives and text messaging Jeremy, Scarlett and Xavier who were in Philly on vacation.

We hung out in the delivery room for a few hours then made our way to the Maternity ward and our new room for the next 24 hours. The evening and night went quite well, compared to our experience with Thomas. I think this was partly because of our past experience and partly because Sarah is more developed than big brother Thomas who was three weeks early.

We’re now home and settling into life with a newborn again. It was a real whirlwind few days, but we’re trying to find our groove and look forward to introducing the little one to friends and family in the coming weeks.

And as always, future pictures of Sarah and the rest of the family are on our family album at http://www.chendynasty.com

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