The holidays

12/27 Thursday
We had lunch with Qi's middle school friend Rebeka at G. She brought her adorable 17 month old Sierra. Andy was really intrigued by the bubble blowing. Rebeka demoed putting Sierra into the Ergo carrier on her back all by herself, that was pretty impressive. The two went on backpacking trip when she was 7 month old.
Picture here.

12/30 Sunday
We went to my friend Rebecca and Tom's for hot pot tonight. There was a smaller baby tonight: a baby girl of 1 month. Oh wait, there is an even younger one, in Rebecca's tummy (due in March).
Picture here

12/31 Monday
Andy's first new year's eve was simple. I cooked up a few dishes for lunch, and we made dumplings for dinner (turned out really good). He was intrigued watching us making dumplings and eating. I let him tasted the soup a little and he was just ok with it. We went to bed before 10 when it felt like 12. Qi bought me a nice new bed, so we had a really good night of sleep.

1/1 Tuesday
We sent uncle Qi back to California. Andy will miss him. Qi is especially good at soothing and putting him to sleep by carrying and bouncing him. Qi says Andy is his 10 pound dumbbell so he hadn't needed to go to gym here. He admits to getting sore from this weight training.

Andy turns 12 weeks on Christmas and 13 weeks on New year's day.
Bi-Weekly observations:
- He stays awake for most part of walks now. He loves looking at the clouds and the sky. He is interested in all kinds of scenery as if he's trying to take it all in. It becomes more fun taking him on walks; I would tell him what's what and he'd just listen instead of falling asleep on me now. I started using the Baby Bjorn carrier Brian got me -- it is so handy!
- More hand gestures. I've been teaching him the baby sign language for milk that I learned from Rebekah, and Andy started doing that gesture now even though he doesn't understand it yet. I thought it was cute.
- He lifts his head periodically when doing his "worm crawl" now.
- More sounds and a lot of expressions. He somehow learned the one side nose wink expression that I do sometimes (to keep my glasses on the nose). After a feeding, he often sits in the bouncy chair, and we converse for a good 15 minutes each in our own language, but with the mutual understanding of smiles and face making. He continues to drool a lot and having a foaming mouth when he talks too much.
Some pictures here.