one year young

Samantha had a great time at her 1st birthday party. There was lots of food, fun, family and friends! Here are a few pictures from the party.













Now that she's "one year young," she made her first debut at daycare. She always pays close attention during story time.




She participated in her 1st Halloween parade!

won't be 0 for much longer...

Samantha's birthday is a week away. She can't wait to see everyone!
Here's some more pictures and videos for your viewing pleasure....

There's no waking her....

When Samantha wants to sleep, she is going to sleep.
Here she is passed out in her pack n play.


Earlier today, she wouldn't go to sleep, so I fed her an early lunch. After she finished, I went to the kitchen to put the bowl away, and when I got back, this is how I found her....

step by step....

Its been a while since our last post as you'll be able tell from the videos and pictures below. Samantha's hair has definitely been coming back in. She's made several trips to San Jose, and even a trip to San Diego to visit her cousins. If you didn't get a chance to see the photos Ami sent out, we'll post some here also. Enough talking, more looking!!

These are a couple pictures at a friend's house during a party for their newborn.




These are the pictures from our visit to SD.








This is a picture from a restaurant with Cau Jr.


A video of yet another of Samantha's special versions of crawling...



She did it! Taking steps on her own!



Up, up, and away.... Samantha's favorite activity around the house.



Boppin her leg to Old MacDonald...



More dancing...



Here's a funny krinkle face video...

There's no stopping her...

Here's some recent pics and videos of Samantha. She can move around pretty quickly by crawling now, and can pull herself up to standing if she has something solid to grab onto. She's also shown some rhythm when hearing music. She seems to like most any kind of music from classical, to jazz, to pop, even some 80s. She's not as limber a dancer as cousin Leo yet, but you can tell she's feeling it.







This was a vid Daddy took first thing in the morning when he heard Samantha moving around in her crib after she had just woken up.



Here's another morning video where she seems to be boppin to some MJ tunes.



Here's a short crawl.



Here's Samantha doing a pull-up and then clapping for herself (she likes to do that :) )

They learn so fast....

Here's the video of Samantha playing piano after her haircut and giving herself the applause.



Not too long ago, we posted about Samantha's side to side version of crawling.
Well, she has moved on and now does a kind of slithering move.



Her favorite form of locomotion though is definitely her walker. Here's a few videos showing how fast she can move around. We can't just leave her alone anymore!







Finally here's some closeup videos from the other day.

(Sa)Manta Ray

Samantha got to take her first dip in the pool last weekend at Cau (Uncle) Alex's house and she loved it. There was no diving because she didn't want to get her hair wet (more on that later), so she just waded around and got used to the water. Most importantly, there were no gifts left in the pool!








After talking about it for so long, we finally decided to go ahead and shave her head. It's supposed to promote a thicker mane, so hopefully she will be thanking us for it later. As you can see from the pictures above, she had a pretty obvious comb-over effect going on anyway.

Here she is contemplating what is about to happen to her....


She didn't like the process, but once it was over, she was all smiles. Her new 'do' should be nice for the upcoming hot summer weeks.






She's also probably happy to have the same haircut as her Uncle....


To celebrate, she decided to play us a song (a few of them actually) on the piano. We'll have a video posted of this soon....

On the move.....

Samantha is starting to become a little more pudgy and is very close to moving around on her own.
She can push herself to where she wants to go with her walker pretty well.

She can also do a pseudo-crawl when she sees something she really wants to get to.

Here's a video of her trying to get to the tv wire.
Here's a first person view of her crawling method.

Her two bottom teeth are in and here we have her getting used to brushing.

Finally, here is a hilarious video of how Samantha shows when she's really excited.

Here's a few more pictures from the last few weeks.....

Making friends...

Samantha loves playing with her stuffed animals...





But she's also trying to make new real friends too. Here she is with Jay Doctor (Annette's co-resident's son).



Recently, she celebrated her first Mother's Day with her mom and Ba Ngoai. Samantha's dad and Ong Ngoai joined them for dim sum too...