Nainai and Yehyeh in town

Last week, Nainai and Yehyeh arrived in Hong Kong for a visit. Natalie was super happy to see them! Although Yehyeh has left and will return to Canada soon, Nainai will stay with us for two weeks. Since their visit, Natalie's mandarin has already improved a lot! We didn't even know she could speak mandarin until they arrived :)

Look at how happy Natalie is with Nainai. She LOVES the new strawberry pillow they gave to her.

Natalie with Nainai and Yehyeh. She spent a whole afternoon by herself with them at the playground in Renaissance Hotel and had a great time. It was also great for them to meet Lauren :)

Natalie's first hair cut

Last week, Natalie had her very first hair cut! The front is still not growing very quickly and the back had a few strands which were long and a bit straggly so she had a little trim courtesy of me and Por-por.

Before - front view.

Before - side view. This photo really shows off her natural mullet-like style.
Before - back view. You can see the strands which have grown faster than the rest of her hair.
Natalie patiently sitting on her stool in the shower as I cut her hair. She was super and sat very still. Por-por did a quick clean-up job after me :)
After - front shot. She looks much cuter with her shorter hair :)
After - side shot. No more mullet!
After - back shot. Everything looks more even at the back, too.
Baby Lauren also had a hair make-over with a new spikey style :)
She seems to like it, too!

Nat and Nich

Out of all the cousins, I think Natalie gets along best with Nicholas. This is because he's the youngest of all the cousins who are able to play together (Michael and Lauren don't count) and he's least likely to fight with her and will actually follow along with her play ideas.

Here Natalie and Nicholas went to the park to blow bubbles together. They each had their own bubbles.

Here is Nicholas blowing bubbles. He's really great at this!
Here is Natalie blowing bubbles, too. She's an old pro.
Look how happy Nicholas is to be eating his own popsicle. You can really see personality differences at work here because Natalie cautiously licked at her popsicle while Nicholas bit right in and (we think he) experienced brain freeze. And then he kept on eating.
Natalie is happy to have her own popsicle, too.
Natalie and Nicholas eyeing each other and making sure they each have the SAME popsicle. It's a disaster if we try to give them anything different. Everything must be the same and "fair".

Super Grandma!

Today, Por-por flew home to Canada. It's been so great having her here. She has been a Super grandma to all the cousins and has been busy cooking, feeding, bathing, playing and taking care of all of them. After almost 2.5 months in Hong Kong, she's returning home for a well-deserved break :) THANKS for everything Por-por and see you next year!

Por-por with her two new grandchildren Lauren (left) and Michael a.k.a The Beast (right). Michael is only one month older than Lauren but more than double her size.

Por-por with her three daughters and a selection of grand-children.
Por-por with all six grand-children. It's hard to get a good shot of all the kids! For some reason, they won't look at the camera and smile when we tell them to.

Lauren making an ugly face

Lauren is usually a cute and angelically behaved baby most of the time. However, when hungry, she becomes a wriggly, squirmy, red-faced face-scruncher with flailing arms and kicking legs. See her below making her "ugly face".

She scrunches her face so hard she gets a white spot between her eyebrows.

She looks pretty "cham". They're so small and helpless!
Poor baby.

Here is the start of her full-out cry. So far, she still doesn't have tears yet :)

Natalie's coordination

Natalie's coordination has been improving! See Video 305 of her riding her bicycle all by herself.

She's also been drawing pictures that are actually recognizable! See her happy faces below. Before, the mouths used to be lines that ran straight across. Now she can curve them into actual smiles :)

More happy faces.

Lauren chilling at home

Lauren is almost 3 weeks old and it's amazing how quickly the time has passed. Let's take a look at what she's been up to while at home.

She is a super alert baby and when she's not sleeping or feeding, she looks like this.

Sometimes, she will also look like this. She opens her nostrils (I think) when she's peeing.

Here she has learned to sleep in the "baby sleep pose". Natalie did this as well. It's funny how similar little babies are!

She's also grown a little chubbier with her skin folds filling out a bit. Here, you can see how her skin is flaking (quite a lot!) as she grows.

She's also developed a nasty case of baby acne. Hope it clears soon... I'm sooo tempted to pop those cute little whiteheads. Nothing a little SKII can't fix. (Don't worry, just kidding on both counts.)

Clark put Lauren to rest in this little U-shaped travel pillow. It's a perfect little baby recliner!

This photo was taken 3 days ago. She's still on the skinny side. Look at those chicken legs!

Lauren also spends a lot of time being carried by big sis Natalie. Natalie asks to carry her at least once every day.
Lauren has also been getting regular baths in the bathroom sink by Porpor.
She seems to enjoy bathing and is alert and calm in the warm water.
Lauren has also continued to have visitors, including Vivo Yee-yee here.
Doesn't Lauren look super comfy and content wrapped in Vivo's shirt?
Here is Lauren in the expert arms of our Sen-sen (Clark's aunt).

Last week, we also had uncle Brad and Corine, Jason and baby Olivia visit as well.

Yesterday, Serena Yee-yee popped over for dinner and shared some cuddles with Lauren.

What else have the cousins gotten themselves into?

With Porpor in town, Natalie and her cousins have had extra incentive to meet up and play together. It's great because they are super interactive now and even hold conversations together! (Not that we always understand what they're talking about.) Here's what they got up to last weekend.

Watch Video 304 of Natalie and Victoria playing ball together. Vanessa is in the background playing with the kitchen set.

Victoria was very happy to carry Lauren for a little bit. She seems really fascinated with little babies.

Every time the cousins get together, we like to throw them into the bathtub together. They can play forever in the water together and it's a "contained chaos". This weekend, they had a special treat... bath & strawberries! The strawberries are messy and stain their clothes so Clark came up with this brilliant solution :) Not sure how we're going to fit SIX kids in the tub... we need a bigger tub.

Porpor also got a special treat... a back massage from Victoria, Vanessa and Natalie! She lay on the floor and let her grand-children walk all over her. They're the perfect weight (for now!)

Later, the kids were playing with the camera and making funny faces together. Here they are showing their "big mouths". After each photo was taken, they would scream, "LET ME SEE! I WANNA SEE!"

Vanessa was able to open her mouth the widest :)

Smile!

This morning, we managed to capture BIG smiles from Lauren and Natalie.

Ok, Lauren was falling asleep and this is reflex smile, but it still makes US smile :)

Natalie is just recovering from an ear infection (temperatures hit 40.4 oC!) and she is finally in a good mood (without meds). Here she is enjoying one of her favourite breakfasts of peanutbutter bread.

More tennis lesson exercises

Two weeks ago, Natalie and her cousins Vanessa and Victoria enjoyed their very first tennis lesson. Last week, they began their first official lesson and it's been great because not only are they working on their tracking and coordination skills, they're also getting great exercise!

See Video 303 of Natalie performing another great running, tracking, catching and throwing exercise.

The cousins all bought their own tennis racquets, too. Natalie was very proud and excited to show hers to me over and over again at home.

Lauren at home

Lauren has been home for 8 days now and a lot has been happening in her little world during that time.

First, she has a massive case of the hiccups at least two or three times every day. See her hiccuping and wondering what's going on in Video 300.

Next up, she enjoyed her very first bath at home in big sister Natalie's pink bathtub. She seems to enjoy baths (for now!) and just kinda chills out in the warm water.

Natalie helped her to bathe, too. She's a great big sister!

Lauren has also been "carried" by Natalie many times. I love the below photo!

Here is a comparison of their feet sizes. Lauren's feet are TINY compared to Natalie's now. Hard to believe Natalie's feet used to be so small!

See Video 301 of Natalie singing a song to Lauren. It's so sweet!

Lauren is one of the most alert newborn babies I've seen. She has two wakeful periods during the day now and spends about an hour each time looking like this: see Video 302 of her looking around.

Lauren is also one of the smiliest babies I know. Whenever she is feeling a little bit sleepy, she gives us HUGE smiles all the time. We just pretend they're real smiles :)

She's also almost mastered the art of drinking milk, but we've had a few incidents along the way. Once while feeding, she coughed and milk came out of her nose! Instead of cleaning her up, of course I reached for the camera first...

Lauren has also had some quality time with her cousin Michael. Michael is exactly one month older than her, but he's now DOUBLE her size! While Lauren weighs in at a modest 6 pounds, Michael is now over 12 pounds heavy.

Besides being longer, see how much thicker he is, too!

This past week, Lauren has also had her fingernails cut and her belly button fell off 4 days ago!