Welcome Harrison!

Baby boy Thao arrived 10/15/2015 weighing in at 9 lbs 1 oz! Yes he was a big boy - even the doctors had to do a double take. This little man is more of a handful than Lillian but I'm so grateful for him. He saved me. Saved me from becoming depressed - he was my distraction from all the craziness that happen while mom was sick and as she passed. We buried mom on Monday 10/12 and the whole funeral weekend I was dilated to 5 and could have went into labor at any second. I almost thought I was going to on Sunday but I kept telling baby to stay in and come out big and healthy. Well, I got what I asked for!

He came out big and healthy and with a head full of hair! I love my Harrison Chakong Thao!

We also took family photos a month later since Lillian and I got sick right after having Harrison. We will be using these for our holiday cards this year. 

I am so blessed to be the mother of these two beautiful angels. 

Always in our hearts. I love you mom.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=9rzi61iv9vA

Mom's funeral

Tomorrow 10/9 will mark the first day of mom's funeral. Monday will be the burial. I am still pregnant and due literally any day. I am torn because I'm still not ready to say goodbye to mom but I'm also so excited to welcome my baby boy. This weekend is going to be tough for my entire family and I hope I can make it through, but if baby Harrison decides to come and distract me from sadness I will gladly oblige. I've done all I can at this point with prepping for mom's funeral. I have no regrets and I know she's proud of me. 

Let's get this weekend started. 

Mom.

The past month has been a blur, literally. We found out my mom has metastatic cholangiocarinoma stage 4. The docs are giving us 3-6 months, but warned us to prepare for the shorter end of the spectrum. They told us to live day by day and week to week until the time comes. 

My baby boy is due to arrive in mid-October. All I want is a safe delivery and for my mom to be there to hold her grandson. These layers of emotions are hard to take in. 

The sad reality is that we don't have much longer with mom. I only hope that she's proud of the woman I've become and will look over our family when her time comes. Seeing her in pain is the hardest thing to witness. Seeing her get frustrated at herself for not being able to feed herself or walk by herself is even harder. 

Mom, just know that we all love you. You will never be replaced. Until the time comes, I promise to do whatever I can to put a smile on your face. 

Love,

Your daughter 

What has been going on? Life.

Left Target a few months ago and joined General Mills. This has been the boldest career move yet but I'm happy with it! 

Lillian is more spoiled now than ever. She received an unfortunate haircut from grandpa that I wasn't aware of until she came home - I was not a happy camper. Now her wardrobe consists of headbands everyday!

The holidays are right around the corner and I'm taking practically 2 weeks off! Never in my life have I taken that much time off besides maternity leave!

Life finally has turned around and I can't wait to see what the future holds!

2014 you have been good to me, 2015 I'm excited for you!

All about Lillian

I am obsessed with my little girl. I miss her when I'm away from her. Every decision I make I think about her. It's true what parents say about the kind of love you have when you have your own baby. It's unconditional and so overwhelming sometimes. I never knew I could love someone so much until Lillian came into my life. I am just so happy that I am her mommy... forever. I wonder how it'll be like when we give her a sibling! 

Anyways, here are photos of Lillian from this weekend. 

I literally had to buy more storage because I take too many photos!

Goodnight. 

DIY boho teepee

Lately I've been more inspired than ever to finish decorating Lillian's room. Now that her changing table is put away, there's more space. 

I've been eyeing this floral land of nod teepee for quite sometime now but couldn't justify paying for it. 

Therefore I did the next best thing, went to my local Home Depot and fabric outlet and voila - done!

Lillian's loves it and we use it as her new changing area, play house and reading nook. I even made DIY throw pillows for the inside!

What you need:

4 6ft wooden dowels cut to size from Home Depot- $12

5 yards of canvas fabric- $30

4 plastic table leg ends- $6 from Home Depot

I used my old red cloth belt to tie all the poles together and an old white drawstring for the ties in the front. 

1. Tie the top of all the wooden dowels and stretch out each leg until it is your desired size teepee. 

2. Measure the bottom of one leg to the other. All spaces between each leg should be the same for consistency. 

3. Measure out length, height and width of one triangle side and cut fabric to measurements. Cut 4 triangles total. Make sure to utilize as much fabric as possible. 

4. With extra long pieces of fabric, cut 4 rectangles measuring the length of one side of each triangle and about 5-8 inches in width depending on the dowel width size you bought. 

5. Fold the rectangle piece in half nice side out and sew the two ends together. 

6. Sandwich the sewn end of the rectangle in between two triangle ends with the nice side of the triangles facing inwards and sew all 3 piece together. 

7. Repeat for all pieces. 

8. For the last triangle before you sew it onto the rest, measure out the middle and cut an opening from the bottom to midway. This will be the opening of the teepee. Next fold the frayed edges inward and sew it in. 

9. Compete the teepee by sewing the final triangle in. 

10. Slide each leg of the teepee skeleton into each rectangle opening. Then fan out your teepee and re-tie the wooden poles together. 

11. Slip on the table ends to each leg of the teepee and voila!!!

Lillian loves this play teepee and we have been using it every night to read books before bed... and yes it's big enough for both her and I to snuggle and read together. 

Also, with my left over fabric I put it in an ikea frame for decor as well & will hang it somewhere in the room. I love this print!

Easter weekend

Spent the weekend mostly in Wisconsin. We had an uncle who was retiring so went extra early to help cook and help with the party. The color theme was gold and I was (along with everyone else) worried about finding the right dress. I ended up ordering mine. 

Lillian was a doll as always. 

Here are more photos from the party. 

Anyways we just got home this morning and today is Easter! I wanted to take a picture of Lillian to compare herself to last years photo... turned out hilarious. 

When we got home we went for a nice walk and played around the park nearby. 

Lillian loves being outside. The sun was shining and everything was perfect!

Ending my night on the couch waiting for laundry to be done. Almost perfect weekend. I love my family, I just wish I can enjoy and spend more time like this instead of stressing out over everything and everyone. 

Goodnight all. 

First real day of spring.

Started out the morning by making a quick breakfast then went off to meet a guy from Craigslist and ended up purchasing a new car! 

Yes I know. But we do need another car. 

Anyhow we finally had time to take a nice long walk around the neighborhood and played in our back yard. 

 

Lillian was running around having so much fun!

I'm loving this beautiful weather and I'm so excited to do fun activities with my baby bear!

Hallelujah!

I just got an iPhone tonight and there's so much to catch up on! I'll start blogging again soon!

Without my iPhone

Long story short, I accidentally washed my iPhone in the washing machine. Fail, I know. I have to wait until April to be able to upgrade, until then I'm using a prepaid phone.

Anyways, Lillian is now crawling! Well, kind of, she is sliding everywhere. This little one is strong.
Our baby sitter got a job down the street so now Soua and I are stressed about babysitting.
Work sucks. Super busy, everyone demanding everything, and I can't get to where I want to be next because of the economy!

One bright thing in my life right now is a new found hobby! I am borrowing a friends sewing machine and started crafting. So far I've made 10 pillows and diy-d a coffee table and turned it into an ottoman! I will post photos another day since I'm blogging on this prepaid phone in bed.

Goodnight!  Tomorrow is Friday!

Busy!

Everything from A to Z has kept me busy. We took Lillian to get her ears pierced last Friday. My silly bunny was mad at home and reused to look at me on the way home. 

Besides that we were busy at my inlaws all weekend. All week was filled with work. I'm still trying to get promoted so I've been putting all of my free time getting to know people. 

We are trying to trade in our civic for an SUV this weekend. We are going to wake up early and head to the dealerships. 

Here's some pictures of the past week. I am really getting into diy-ing projects. I made 10 pillows and 1 pullow case for my booger. 

And I'll update another day... we want to have a family night. Here's a cute photo of Lillian to end your night!

Hmong Blessing Ceremony

We prepared all week (more like all month) for today's event. We even took off Friday to buy veggies and prep the house. We managed to squeeze in the state fair early in the morning then headed off to purchase everything else. 

Basically what a blessing ceremony is is a Hmong version of a baptism. We cook a lot of food, invite family, a shaman performs the blessing ceremony and everyone ties a white string around her and our wrists to wish is luck in life and give Lillian gifts (money). 

After every new mom has a baby, our culture requires us to do a "spirit calling" ritual before the mom-to-be gives birth to make sure both mom and baby arrives safely. 3 days after birth, the family calls the spirit again, just for the baby this time, to ensure the baby's safe arrival to our world. Then when the family is ready, a big gathering is done to bless the entire family. 

Our culture believes in spirits and that every person, whether unborn, born, alive or not, forever has one. We also believe in reincarnation which cycles through the same spirits. 

I find it beautiful how much support our culture has on family and the bond that ties everyone together. It's always family first. However, being that we live in the US, it is quite difficult for us to find a balance between the two. I'll explain more in a later post, for now, enjoy the photos from Lillian's Hmong Blessing Ceremony we had today. 

My good girl was sleeping during the hand tying ceremony. Such a silly bunny!

The last piece of cake...

I made sure I had it!

It was a long and stressful day. I woke up at 4:30 am to make rice. My sweet sister in law and brother came over at 5am to help and it was just us until about 7:30 am. 

I am so blessed to have such an amazing and supportive family. Everyone lent a helping hand and the party was a success. Thanks everyone for coming! We love you all!

Prepping

This weekend we were prepping the house and buying a million things at SAMs club for Lillian's blessing ceremony next weekend. We both took off Friday so we can clean the house and prep food. Ugh, I'm going to be so exhausted. 

So anyhow, I plan on ordering a cake for her ceremony so I decided to dress her up and take a current picture of her so I can put it on the cake. 

....... Look at my pretty princess!!!

5 months!

Lillian is 5 months old today! She decided to wake up at 5 this morning so I let her sleep with Soua and I. 

As you can see, she sleeps horizontally. Soua and I are left with about a foot of space to sleep on. 

Work today was long. I had an awesome informational with this old coworker of mine. I really need to get out of my pyramid and do something else... something new. I also embarrassed myself today by dropping and shattering my Pyrex lunch container because some girl decided to creep up behind me and scared me (unintentionally of course).  I had to run to get help to clean it up ad stood by my mess for a good 15 minutes. Good times... not. 

Came home later than usual and went straight to Cub Foods to buy state fair tickets and dinner. We celebrated Lillian's 5 month with cake! We ate it of course. 

We plan on attending the state fair next Friday. We both took the day off to prep for Lillian's blessing ceremony the following Saturday. 

It going to be busy. 

Milestones so far.

Lillian started rolling over completely about a couple weeks ago. This weekend I wanted to start introducing baby cereal to her. Silly girl made the silliest faces but she's getting better. She's actually eating and enjoying it!

I am also switching her from her nook to this new pacifier. She likes it too.  Luckily Lillian isn't too picky when it comes I these things and she doesn't rely on sucking on a pacifier to calm down. 

 Lillian will be 5 months on Wednesday and I really want to take her to get her ears pierced. Maybe Friday? We will see.

Overall, exhausting yet great weekend. Spent a lot of time at relatives' houses so it's nice to be home. Anyhow, I'm catching up on this new show on Netflix called "Orange is the New Black." So far it's not bad. I'll give an update when I finish the series. 

Lillian's up and rolling around now so I will check in another day. 

Capturing Life

I decided to start this blog to share my life as a new mom and also to document my daughter's growth.  I've noticed that I take tons of photos and want a place to share them along with quick memories and stories behind them.

I'll start from the beginning. My husband and I have been together since December 2013. I just turned 15 and he was 17. Who would have thought that almost 10 years later we'd still be together, let alone having our first child? We got married on 9-10-11 and started trying to have kids pretty much right away. We finally got pregnant June of 2012. We went through a lot together in trying to have a baby. When I found out I was pregnant, I was in disbelief. I was so happy yet nervous at this same time. Throughout my pregnancy I had a lot of extra doctor visits due to my family history. Everything turned out great at the end and my baby was as healthy as can be! We were ecstatic! My awesome sisters, sister in laws and friends threw me the best baby shower ever.  The theme was Candyland. Our baby was and is so loved and we are so blessed. 

Come March I was already in my final month of pregnancy. I had her on March 21st, 2013 at 6:23 pm.  We named her Lillian Gaonah Thao. She was 6 lbs 13 ozs and was 19 1/2 inches long. She was beautiful. 

It was a long 12 hour labor but was totally worth it. My contractions weren't bad up until the hour before she came out. I did it without any drugs, only IV. After giving birth I blew up. I was carrying so much water! Luckily I lost it all within the first month. 

We are finally complete. I'd like to introduce my family: Soua, Lillian and me, Kan.