The Generic 'Mimi is Cutest Baby In The World!!' Posting 2

Here is another installment of ‘Mimi is Cutest Baby In The World!!’. These pictures were taken by Annie after Mimi’s cover model shot with the new bag. You can see how much Mimi is growing up now, more like a little girl instead of a baby. I might have to change this posting title soon to ‘Mimi is Cutest Girl in The World!!’. You can check out the full pictures in my picture log page.

Annie's Cover Model

As many of you know Annie is very much into quilting and stitching. She recently finished a bag which took her only 1 day to do and, even from my unprofessional eyes, I have to say is quite impressive. So since Annie puts all her projects onto her blog, no one is cuter to be cover model for her projects then of course Mimi.

Hot Updates!

It is hot hot hot right now in Taiwan. The temperature is only around 90 degrees however with the humidity the heat index listed Taipei around 138 degrees! This heat makes it tough to take care of the average active 2 year old. During the day they are shut in in an air conditioned apartment with few physical activities and they have a small window of maybe 1 hour and a half between dusk and night in which it is cool enough to go out. So since life has become more boring I will give a few updates on other aspects of my life

1. Diet Update – Since I started my diet I have lost 15 pounds. I feel better, more fit, and confident. However the last week my weight loss has slowed down (only 1 pound) so maybe I need to do something to push though the plateau such as exercise more.

2. Bird Update – The bird is doing very well. It’s standing and moving around good and kind of flying. We have decided that it is probably time to release it. We will do so sometime this weekend.

3. Today is my sister’s birthday Happy Birthday Barbara!!! Your gift will be ready when you come over sometime this summer.

4. My mom will be coming over and visiting us for a while, yeah!!! I have to get plane tickets, I think she will be here in middle July and stay through August.

5. I have had my counter for 10 days and so far it is up to 518 hits. That is average 100 a day. Granted I say maybe 50 of those hits are me and my sister, getting another 50 hits from friends, family , and strangers are pretty cool.

Thats about it, not as interesting as my Mimi posts however just wanted you to know that there are other things revolving around Mimi that is my life.

Pants On!!!

I always tell Annie that if there is one part of Mimi’s personality I am very proud of it’s that Mimi likes to learn and do things by herself. Sometimes it is a bit frustrating because she is trying to accomplish something which is beyond her motor controls right now, such as changing her own diapers. Also she gets really mad if you try to help her or do the action for her. However I figure that of the numerous things a person can accomplish in this world, weather they fail or succeed as long as they have the wiliness to do it, it will be the first steps to achieving your dreams.

So this video is of Mimi learning to put on her pants for the first time. This is about the last 30 seconds of her 5 minute learning experience with a tantrum in between because we wanted to help her. In the end she learned how to do it and now she always wants to put on her pants herself. I know that learning to put on pants is a far cry from say achieving the Nobel Piece Prize, however if she keeps this up maybe she will learn how to accomplish those great things in the end.

A Baby Sense of Modesty

One thing about raising a baby is that you always are looking and preparing for their next stage of development. When should they are talking, crawling, talking, etc…. For Mimi it is time for her to start potty training. Every morning we put her on the toilet and sometimes she goes, sometimes she doesn’t. Usually she tells us when she is doing her business but only when she has already started. I heard that some kids get trained as early as 1 year and a half; of course some gets trained as late as 4. I am not really worried when Mimi gets potty trained though, I figure in the end we all figure it out. What is very interesting about Mimi is that for about ½ a year now she picked up this strange sense of modesty when she is doing business number two. She doesn’t want anyone around, doesn’t want anyone to see her, hold her or be around her vicinity. She usually finds a corner or goes to a room where no one else is and does it (however it is never the bathroom!). I am not sure where or when she decided that pooping is a private and personal matter but it’s really cute when you stumble on her while she is doing it. She will quietly tell you to go away and leave her alone. Watch this video and see…for those of you who don’t understand Chinese when Mimi says “Ba-Ba Jou Kai” it translate to ‘Daddy Go Away”.

Still Perfect!

When we take Mimi back to Hsinchu to see her grandma and grandpa, they always say that Mimi is a cute but too chubby. This is mainly because they compare her to her cousin Yankee who has a diet of junk food and formula milk so therefore is super skinny and majorly hyper active (kid is out of control at times!). Therefore to remove all their worries and doubts I have put upon myself to find out what how Mimi and Yankee’s weight and growth developments are by looking it up on the growth index. Here are the current statistics

Mimi –
Gender - Female
Age – 2 year and 1 month
Height – 86 cm or 33.85 inches
Weight – 12.8 kg or 28.219 pounds

Yankee –
Gender – Male
Age – 1 year and 11 months
Height – 87 cm or 34.25 inches
Weight – 10.8 kg or 23.81 pounds

Using the growth calculator, here are the results

Mimi –
Weight is 65th percentile
Height is 35th percentile

Yankee –
Weight is 7th percentile
Height is 51st percentile

So there it is…Yankee is 7th percentile in terms of weight, which is 7 percentage points from declared staving!!! So therefore…thoroughly proven…Mimi is still perfect.

BLAH!

Mimi the last 2 days when she woke up the first thing she said was that she wants to watch BLAH! So what is BLAH!? Watch this video and you will find out.

Blog Battles

Annie has her own blog; you can get to it by following my links list. It is in Chinese and it is mostly about her hobbies cooking, baking, stitching, and quilting. When Annie bakes something she usually takes a picture of it and puts it up, the same also when she finishes a quilting project. Well on any particular day Annie will get around 150-250 people visiting her site. They will leave comments and ask questions about how beautiful her finished projects are and also how to make certain things. Annie’s friend Lynn who is quite good with quilting gets about 1000 hits on her site a day!

Annie is quite proud of her 150-250 hits per day average and flaunts it to me periodically. She says my site, this blog is quite boring and that no one would want to read it besides family. I guess to her it’s like a blog battle on who gets read more. She was quite distraught when I told her that probably 100 of her hit are from me.

The fact that probably no one reads this blog is ok with me, however I am very curious on how many people actually read this blog. The only person who ever left a comment has been my sister, and besides her, my parents, and a few friends…I am not sure who else would take their interest in reading some random writings of random events of a random family. I probably get like 2 hits a day and 1 of them is me. However curiosity has gotten hold of me and I have added this little ‘Free Counter’ (as proudly advertised by the free counter website I got it from) at the bottom of this blog. Maybe I am an internet phenomenon and didn’t know it…HAHAHA!!!

Mimi, Banana, and Strawberry

When Annie and I were dating she told me that she would like to have 3 children, 2 girls and 1 boy. In fact she had already picked out nicknames for her children which are Mimi, Banana, and Strawberry (guess which one is the boy’s). Well after the joy of an 18 hour labor and her having to shove a bowling ball through an apple sized hole, Annie’s desire for having 3 children dwindled to 1.

Recently though, everybody from my friends, family, strangers from the streets, overly friendly taxi drivers, have commented 2 things to Annie and I, that Mimi is very cute and when is baby number 2 coming. My feeling and response in the past has been this. With Mimi I really feel like I hit the jackpot. She is perfect in everyway and I can’t imagine the love I have for her be duplicated or shared with any other baby. Therefore, since lighting doesn’t strike twice in the same place, I have always said Annie and I probably will not have Banana or Strawberry.

However, as Mimi grows up, we have seen how happy being with our children makes her feel. One of Mimi’s playmates is her cousin Yankee. Yankee is younger then Mimi by just 2 months and they both love playing together. You can see how excited Mimi is when seeing Yankee for the first time when she returns to her grandma’s house in Hsinchu.

Seeing Mimi’s interaction with other children, plus the fact that time dulls the memory of labor, has definitely softened Annie and my stance on just having Mimi. This doesn’t mean of course Banana or Strawberry will be coming anytime soon, however it does mean we will not rule out ever having them. After all…when we ask Mimi if she wants a little brother or sister…she always says yes.

Un-Naturalization Process

Annie left last night for U.S. to fulfill part 133 of step 356 in the manual called the United States Naturalization Process. It's quite an understatement when people say it is harder to become a U.S. citizen nowadays. In total I believe I have spent at least $30,000 USD in travel and application fees to get this far, and supposedly Annie has the easy route in becoming a U.S. citizen by marrying an already U.S. citizen and having an already U.S. citizen child. Unfortunately we did not compute how my ex-pat stay overseas would impact this process. From what I have learned so far is that if this is a normal situation in which I lived in U.S. and Annie and Mimi is living in U.S. it would not be too bad. However anything out of the ordinary such as the person applying for the Naturalization is living outside the U.S…..things get hard and complicated. In these situations no one understands the laws fully and there is no document or manual to tell you what to do. Luckily I think Annie and I are near the end of this process which we started 3 years ago. She left yesterday for biometric fingerprinting (her second) and will be back to Taiwan Saturday morning. She will spend a little of 44 hours in Boise and about that much in planes and airports. The next step will be the citizen interview/test which we will get an appointment after the fingerprinting. If Annie passes the test then she will finally get an unconditional green card which allows her to travel back and forth from America freely.

On the way to the airport I bet Annie $100 NT that Annie’s mom would cry even though she will only be gone 4 days total. Then I bet $50 NT that Annie would cry. Then $10 that Mimi would cry. Annie owes me $160 now.

Mimi cried a lot when Annie left. She said ‘Mama, mama’ over and over. It was very heart breaking.

Mimi and her Pet

Here is a video of Mimi and her pet bird. We don’t' really let her play with the bird since it is still small and can be easily hurt accidently. Plus it’s a bird…you can’t really play with it. Mimi and Minnie are going to take the bird in its nest to the park today. They are hoping that it will meet its mother and be able to tell her that she is ok....

Home for a While

It looks like Mimi’s bird will be staying with us for a while. It had an incident with an evil evil kid last Friday (not Mimi) which when I think about it still makes me boiling mad. Needless to say it wasn’t an accident and now the bird who was starting to hop around Friday morning cannot walk. To move it uses its beak and butt to scoot itself around. It’s pretty sad to watch. We took it to the vet on Sunday and luckily the wings are still fine however one of the leg is hurt and the bird can’t use it. It is still eating well so it is a good sign that it will recover. An interesting thing though is that the doctor said that birds do have a sense of cleanliness and they try not to poop inside their nests. This poses a problem for us because since it can’t walk, that means we have to take it out of its nest for it to poop periodically. This reminds me of my friends with dogs, in which during the day they have to go back home and let the dog out to do it’s business however I never heard anybody doing the same thing for a bird. Well since Mimi's bird will be here for a while it is probably time to pick out a name. So far 'Latte' and 'Decaf' has been rejected...