Happy 1st Birthday, Lauren ... continued

As promised, a few more photos from Lauren's big day!

A little Korean trivia for you: Lauren is wearing a hanbok which is a traditional Korean costume worn on special occassions including receiving your first one on your first birthday (Thank you, Grandma & Grandpa Lee. Lauren looks beautiful!).



As you can see, turning one year of age is a highly celebrated milestone in the Korean culture. The food for the party was a Chinese-Korean fusion and consisted of ten courses. And that's not including the cake! Let me take a moment to explain the head table as well: it is customary to display a wide range of bountiful food from stacks of numerous fruit to different types of traditional rice cakes - all of which symbolize a full and robust future life. At the end of the party, this good fortune is shared with all the guests as parting gifts.



The Lee Family: Aunt Helen & boyfriend Bruce, Grandma & Grandpa Lee, The Birthday Girl, Mommy and Daddy, Aunt Dawn & Uncle Johnny





The birthday girl with her daddy



The birthday girl with her grandpa



Bruce & Aunt Helen, Aunt Dawn & Uncle Johnny
(Check out all that food!)



Lauren is all smiles while in Kiersten's arms



The yummy cake that Aunt Helen had made for the big day



It came as a surprise when Lauren didn't want to dig into her birthday cake. She touched it with her hand but didn't even lick her fingers. I guess she doesn't have Mommy's sweet tooth!



It was a wonderful day and Lauren was a very happy little girl being the center of attention!

Happy 1st Birthday, Lauren!

Though Lauren's official first birthday is today, we celebrated it yesterday (Sunday) up in LA (in Koreatown) with family and friends. It was a beautiful event hosted by Grandma and Grandpa Lee with the help of Uncle Johnny & Aunt Dawn and Aunt Helen & Bruce. We are so thankful today and every day for family, for friends, and for our sweet little girl that is so happy and healthy. Lauren is our treasure and feel truly blessed that she has been thriving her first year of life!

I'm running out of time with this entry because the birthday girl just woke up from her nap so here's one picture for now ... check back later as I'll have more posted for everyone!

Happy 1st Birthday, Lauren Sohl Mi

for lauren's locks debut

In my “spare” time (aka after Lauren goes to bed), I started creating hair clips for Lauren after too many unsuccessful hair clip and barrette purchases continued to slip out of her hair. So, I found some great modern ribbon, some hair clips from a beauty outlet, and coordinating sheets of foam to prevent slipping in baby-fine hair like Lauren has, and voile! Modern slip-resistant hair clips for my sweet baby girl!

My friend, Kiersten, who owns Mod Mom Furniture and makes amazing children's furniture, said, Hey, you should sell these! She is involved in organizing The Little Monster Market which is a craft show geared towards kids that occurs about four times a year and invited me to tag along in her booth at yesterday’s market. She even made me a fantastic display to highlight my hair clips (thank you, Kiersten! You’ve been wonderfully supportive!!!). So, yesterday, for lauren’s locks debuted up in Studio City, CA, and it was so much fun. Everyone that stopped by to check out my hair clips purchased at least one pair and gave me great feedback so I couldn’t have been more thrilled! I didn’t make a million but it was something about making something that people were excited about was very invigorating for this little stay-at-home mommy.

There is another market next Saturday near Beverly Hills in LA so stay tuned! Until then, here's a few photos from yesterday's event.

for lauren's locks display that Kiersten made!


Kiersten's amazing children's furniture


My cheering section


Lauren loves Kiersten


Kiers and me

Happy Thanksgiving (Lauren's First)

Apologies for letting so much time pass since our last post. There's been so much that's been happening as we approach Lauren's first birthday (12/10). She's been blabbering in some foreign baby-tongue complete with intonation, varying speech patterns, and even pondering looks before responding when she's asked a question. Lately, she's been taking 3-4 unassisted steps at a time before realizing she's walking and then sits down. Anyway, we'll keep up our post more frequently. Since this is the year we go to Ohio (and JohnDawn go to Indiana) for Christmas, we had a California Thanksgiving-Christmas in one...

First the turkey:


Then Christmas gift time...


















We even had a fitting for Lauren's "hanbok", a traditional Korean ceremonial costume, which she'll wear at her first birthday party...

Princess:




The remote control was a diversionary tactic:


Finally, she had enough:

Happy Monday

This past weekend, Henry and I were discussing how quickly our sweet baby girl is growing up. On Saturday, Lauren turned eleven months old and I think this caused us to reminisce a bit ... coupled with the fact that her communication skills are emerging and she is showing signs of some serious independence. For the past month, she has been walking about the home while holding onto things, chattering away, and enjoys saying "up", "Oppa" (Dad in Korean), and Mumeeeee (Mommy?).

Yesterday, Henry took Lauren to run an errand with him and as they were leaving, I waved goodbye to them and she waved back. Big deal, right? Well, it was to me ... because it was the first time she has ever responded to someone's wave.

Being able to see her "firsts" is one of the most amazing gifts I'm given as her mother and she just melts my heart with each one.

A few photos from the weekend:

Lovely photos

A few photos taken lately that I just love...

Lauren & Daddy



Lauren in her pretty outfit given to her by The Deeble Family:



Lauren studying Mommy's real hair color ... yes, the blonde is gone!



Lauren taking a snooze next to Grandma at the pool in Palm Springs:

Crappy Halloween

Traffic, traffic, traffic. This is California, I realize, but come on! We had plans with my friend, Sueann, and her family today on Halloween to trick or treat together at theirs ... we never got there.

It took us an hour and twenty minutes to travel five miles and we still had another fifteen miles to go. It was so frustrating ... and a massive disappointment as we turned around to go back home. When we got back to ours, it was beyond Lauren's bed time (she was in a bit of a state due to being in the car seat a little longer than she would have liked to be) so we quickly dressed her up in her flower costume before bed and had a little trick or treat of our own but it certainly wasn't the same without the Andraso crew. We missed you tonight, Joe, Eve and Sam (Sueann & David, too!).

Happy 1st Halloween, Lauren!

Here's a few photos of our pretty little flower:

Doctors and Palm Springs

In all the madness that passed between our last two entries we forgot to give a shout out to our two doctor friends from NY and NJ, Teddy and Mike. Between the two of them, we have our questions about Emergency Care and Obstetrics covered.

Teddy and Lauren:



Mike and Lauren:





I've been in NYC on Wed-Sat this past week, and we had a mini-reunion of the old NY crowd, to include Teddy and Mike. Sun-Tue before I left for NY, we packed up the family and with my in-laws (the Goias') from Ohio, we visited Palm Springs. Tom and I played golf and the women hit the pool:



Tom and Elaine graciously flew over to keep my girls company while I've been on a manic work travel schedule (Boston one week, Chicago the next, and NYC the third week). Lauren's had a great time with her grandparents: