On Becoming Babywise

"For all things are possible with God." - Mark 10:27

For the last couple weeks, I've been reading the book On Becoming Babywise. The book is really informational and encouraged me to establish a routine for my baby - because babies like it and good for training them to be independent. For two days, I was trying really hard to implement the feeding routine. Mercedes was doing really well during daytime naps, but then when real bedtime rolls around, she would cry and scream for hours. I was a little discouraged about the results of my plan... and was in doubt of my decisions and actions.

Then the Lord reminded me how much I need to trust Him in all things, including raising this child. I was trying so hard to follow the books but was discouraged that her responses are so different everyday. (DUH...) I didn't fully realize that she is still an individual and not a robot/computer - her output won't always match my input... (LOL, forgive me of my engineer talk.) I also was reminded of the fact that God is completely sovereign in "all things". He didn't give us a baby that is sleep trained and without sin. He didn't give Mercedes to some experienced parents but rather Lance and Shu - the imperfect/sinful parents that are perfectly chosen by God for Mercedes. Oh how I need to trust the Lord before the books and internet!

After God changing my attitude and me letting go of the book theories, God has made everything work out miraculously! Mer not only goes to naps without much difficulties, her bedtime fussiness hasn't been bad at all! She is also sleeping through the night (from 6 hours to 8 or 9 hours)! We have a happy little angel while she's awake, and a snoring Lumberjack while sleeping... It's very cute.

Praise the Lord for His sovereignty in all things! Babywise is absolutely possible with God!

A picture of our sleeping Mercedes.

This picture is about 5 weeks old, and she's already 2.5 months now.

Low Balling My Expectations...

Yesterday this thought suddenly came to me - how wonderful it is to low ball my expectations. To me it's not quite the same as being pessimistic or not hopeful for something better. Rather, it's keeping a realistic perspective and be surprised at God's provision and generosity. Two of the biggest surprises that God totally caught me off guard with the last couple years:

1. When Lance proposed to me - Even though everyone else told me that he's going to propose anytime (I even arranged the phone call for him to ask my dad's hand in marriage), I convinced myself that he wasn't going to propose for another year... Totally shocked when he gave me the ring... LOL!
2. The recent birth of my precious baby girl! - Over and over again, I told myself that my baby is going to be ugly, according to some moms' experiences and baby books. When the baby was placed in my arms two months ago, I was just in awe of how beautiful she was, and couldn't stop praising the Author of Life!

Maybe this is a little stretch from my original theory, but I thought of the Gospel... How sinful I am through and through, and how could I expect anything good from a Holy God that can't bare with any hint of sin? Contrary to this thought, He is the most loving and glorious God that He came down to earth to live with us sinners, and died on the cross for our sins so that we can now approach the throne of God covered in the blood of the Lamb! What a shocker! What a surprise! What a hope to a desperate wretched me!

Here are some pictures of my precious little gift from the Lord!

Sweet little face from Day 1!

Dreams and Ambition

Lately I've been having some random thoughts on all sorts of things. They are not necessary organized, but maybe by writing them out, they can be organized.

Today I got to talk to my family about dreams and ambition. I was reminded of many verses in Proverbs:

16:9 - In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.

19:21 - Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails.

When I was in college, I made lots of plans of my future, regarding my career, my future husband, where I want to live, to travel... etc. However, the Lord's plans are different than mine, but much MUCH better than I could ever plan on my own. As the Buffalo and I make different decisions or "dream" about the future, it is important that we always factor in how we can first glorify God in our steps before trying to make ourselves look good or live comfortably.

Pray that God will continue to stimulate my desires to be challenged and not be a sluggard on the other extreme.

Marriage-2 Years, Pregnancy-27th Week!

First of all, the Buffalo and I celebrated our 2nd Anniversary about a month ago! We went back to the cottage where we stayed for our honeymoon, and it was very nice to rekindle a lot of the first memories of our marriage. We ate a lot of the same foods as our honeymoon: eggs, hashbrown, and bacon for breakfast; frozen pizza and ramen noodles for dinner. Time did not allow us to put together another 1500pc puzzle this time, so we decided to visit some of the state parks around the area and was able to enjoy the leftover fall colors while we were there. Two sad notes for us: 1) Our favorite Italian restaurant was closed this time around; 2) The owner of the cottage is trying to sell it. I secretly hope that he won't ever get to sell it, because we like the place so much, and it's a great deal if we have a bigger family with us.

I have to admit - I have been thinking/planning about the arrival of the baby way too much lately. I caught myself many days reading and planning about all the baby gadgets that we might not even need, and the poor Buffalo had to come home from a long hard day to me renting about all this stuff. Nevertheless, God is keeping me in check with my heart and motives (so is my Buffalo), and I hope to continue operating this house along with the arrival of the baby using "lean engineering."

We have been so blessed to receive many hand-me-downs from friends and families, and I look forward to collect some more this weekend at our Thanksgiving gathering. My parents also brought many baby items when they came to visit last month. We are so thankful for the ways that God has blessed us in this process.

As I was typing this entry, I continue to realize how mentally consuming the baby already is to me. Is it necessary or prudent? Some people said that it's my nesting mode or that it is necessary because the baby will be a life changing factor to our lives. God continue to remind me that the baby is ultimately not "mine", and I am only a manager/keeper of this new little life. First of all, I do not have control over the baby's life or death. I could do nothing and God decides to take it away, or I could hurt myself badly but God continues to sustain it. How helpless we are but at the same time it's so freeing to know. I also continue to remind myself how important it is that I don't worship my child or let them become the purpose/meaning/focus of my life, but rather I should strive to keep Jesus Christ my focus. God could bless me through my children tremendously, but that should drive me to love the Giver more than the gifts.

My dear friend shared this video clip with me couple days ago: Death is not Dying. I was reminded of the importance of knowing these things: God, myself, the Gospel, and my purpose. As we face death, it's so clear what really matters at the end of our lives. If you have sometime, please watch this clip. It is long, but totally worth the time.

5-Month Update... what... 5 MONTHS!!!

I guess I am really not that great with updating this blog... however, I did find another friend who also started blogging, and that encouraged me to write something here. :)

So many things have happened since the last post.

First of all, I got a hair cut! God has always blessed me with my wonderfully low-maintenance hair, so I decided to share that with others. I started growing it out the last year, and decided to get it cut about a month ago. It was getting really long and heavy, and I wasn't a happy-camper carrying those around. Here is a picture of my new short hair. I do miss having long hair, but this feels different. The buffalo likes it too. :)

Another thing that is new (well, really not that new now...) about us is that we are expecting again! After the most miserable summer overlapping my first trimester, I am now finally seeing the result/fruit of my all-day-awful-sickness. Here is my 21-week belly picture! Most of the time the baby is not that visible, but it's certainly there. I have been feeling the baby move for quite some weeks, and the exciting thing this morning is that I could actually feel the kick/move through my skin! I think this is very valuable to the Buffalo, so he can enjoy the baby's presence with me as well. (I like sharing everything with him.)

That's all for now... gotta get back to the rest of my day...

Welcome Back Blog...

I was recently inspired/motivated by my friends in keeping up a blog to update friends and families about their lives. I figure this would be a convenient way to keep everyone in the loop about us, without having to write chapters of my life to others all the time... I tried to keep Facebook up-to-date, but a blog seems to be more meaningful than brief comments on FB.

Other than updating everyone about what's going with our lives, I will also try to share my thoughts about the books I've been reading from here. (mostly Christian books tho) God has richly blessed me with many wonderful readings in my free time, and I'd like to share them with others. :)

So we'll see how diligent I keep up with the blogging this time.

Below is a recent picture of the Buffalo and I next to the Dome in Freiberg. We recently traveled to Deutschland. It brought back a lot of wonderful memories from the past, but the best part is still making new memories with my favorite travel buddy, my BFF, the best husband in the world!!!

Very Fun Park!!! Part 2

Okay... so the art show is not like the typical exhibition we know. This is a contemporary art show, and the display of the pieces was scattered around the East Metro Taipei! It's like a treasure hunt for me! We had to find out where all the pieces are located around the city by reading the map and walking all over the place.

We started off at one of the service station, and there we bought our guide book along with maps in the guide book and on a fan. We followed the map and went to the first and second display of section B.

This little yellow boy is called "Shout from Asia." It is placed in a really small toy/model store, which is also hidden in some tiny streets on the second floor...

Field - When touching with two hands on different pieces, it would make different squeaky sound. It uses the principle how charges are formed between different human bodies and through electric traction creates sound. (I'm totally no an EE, so I'm not really sure if I have explained this correctly...)

This me taking a break at one of the rest stop. It was actually pouring rain outside at that time, and we couldn't continue our journey at all. My shoes were drenched, and our stuff were pretty much wet. My friend was laying out her stuff to let it dry before it gets ruined even more...

Love/Hate - This is a display of different hats that were connected to each other. On the other side of the wall, there were pictures of different people wearing the hats at various occasion... many emotions played out by these connecting hats...

Sitting and Watching - This is one of our favorite display for the day... We walked in this bar that seemed to be quiet and slow. I figured that I'd try to sit on the chair next to the curling tree to see if I can make anything different... Then as I sat on the chair, the curling tree started to whistle!!! It was made of those beeping blowers people use at birthday parties... I was really shocked in the beginning, and thought that I broke something... It was a lot of fun...

Universality - This is one weird piece... There are other drawings on the side... but this center piece is a black egg-shaped thing with the Chinese character of "love". People are supposed to worship this thing by kneeling on the black round pad...

Eating Soldier/Ice - This needs some Chinese knowledge to understand the funny part of this display. In Mandarin, the pronunciation of soldier and ice is the same. Can you see the little black dots scattered around on the bottom of the cone and on the top of the ice cream? Those are actually little GI Joe's! That's why it's called "eating ice/soldier".

Paper Doll - This is also one of my favorite. There are 4 models set up in his room, and they have different clothes sticking to the wall of this room. People are free to take off these huge doll clothes and change the models to their taste.

Here I stole this lady's huge skirt... Doesn't it fit me?! ;)

This is a ATM room decorated as it were in the ocean... Isn't that cute?

Very Fun Park!!! Part 1

I went to a very interesting art show in Taipei last week, and it's probably the most interesting thing I've ever done this summer.

First my friend, I call her Sesame, went to have Sukiyaki for dinner! They are like a timed buffet, and I can eat unlimited meat, vegetables, or whatever for 1.5 hours. The cooking process is a little bit different from what I learned before. It was both our first time at the restaurant... the waiter just threw us the pot, some water and soy sauce, meat and vegetables.... We were clueless how to start our pot... But we still managed to make our own soup and cook our own food. We were so full by the end of the 1.5 hours... Yummmmm.....

Sukiyai pot and thin layers of beef... very soft and delicate...

There is also a kind of tofu that I've never had until this summer, and it was soooo good in the pot!!!

My friend "roaring"...

Eating by the busiest street in East Metro Taipei...

I'm a bit confused with how this Blogger functions.... so I'm going to break this trip into many parts... I'll talk more about the actual art show later...

Typhoon Sepat...

So the typhoon swept through Taiwan this past weekend. Except the baptism class got cancelled (moved to Sep. 1st), our family weren't affected much. We stayed home most of the time watching a couple movies we rented before the typhoon came. It was really windy... I can hear the wind whistling through the window the day it arrived, but not so much rain around my city. There are many parts of the nation were flooded and landslide over some highways... trees pulled up or broken from different places... street signs got broken off as well as store signs...

The tree got broken during the storm...
the pink tall building on the left hand corner is my home!

The other thing that affected my family is that we won't get much vegetables the next couple days.... Vegetables, especially ones with leaves, are extremely expensive after the storm. It's like a head of lattice is equivalent to $8 US.

I wanted to take a video of the storm, but I guess I'll have to wait for the next one to do so...

Trip to Meow-Li

I just went to visit my grandparents in Middle Taiwan these past two days. My aunt (my mom's sister) drive down with us on Wednesday, and she and my grandparents became our tour guide during the trip. We made fun of our tour guide during the trip, because the grandparents didn't really know where to go, and took our long and big Lexus to some tiny country road. It was a real trip riding with them, because they would be yelling at my mom for the next direction then not knowing where we're going the next second.... -_-;;;

We still visited many sites tho... First day we went to one of the fish port by that county. We were supposed to see some water show there, but my aunt didn't know that the show was over by July 11th. So we just walked along the beach and took some random pictures there.

My mom and I....

My grandparents in front of the sea port.

Then we went to a tiny animal park. We saw some ostriches at the entrance, and later we found out that they actually sell ostrich meat there. They're like $80-$100 for one. We also saw some Taiwanese goats... some pigs that would smell really good when the weather gets hot... some baby pigs... Then, I went feeding some fish in the pond. The fish looked like they were starving. They would go crazy when people approach the pond, and when I do drop some snacks for them, they would fight with each other for them... it's really scary at times... I also made cotton candy there, and had some cactus sherbet there (the purple ice in the picture...)

This baby pig is so cute!!!

The second day we went to one of the national park there. The mountains reminded me of some parts of Europe (Austria and Germany) and the US (PA and WV.) I really like mountains! They remind me of how majestic God is that can form these beautiful scenery for us. I didn't get to hike much there, because the weather was way too hot... We also went pick some flowers there, even though it should be illegal to pick anything in national parks... The flowers smells really good! I don't know what the name is in English... many people would sell these flowers in buds on the street or on the road for people to hang them in their car.


Then, I had some pig intestine for lunch along with my noodle soup... YUM! I love it! We went to a wood carving museum after lunch. They have some pretty cool exhibition there. Some of the art work there are definitely impressive.... using the color, pattern, and the texture of the wood to bring different lives to each piece of wood.

We had to end the trip early, because there is a strong typhoon landing Taiwan starting tomorrow... I'm taking a baptism class this Saturday, but I don't know if it would be postpone because of the typhoon...

I should be getting some rest tho....