[day 128] life is crazy beautiful.

i'm still trying to recuperate from throwing my sister her baby shower, but it's hard. i ALWAYS have birthday parties, baby showers, family outings or events that makes up most of my weekends. thank goodness for the week days where i can stay at home and lay in bed a bit longer with my babies. even listening to them breathe more acutely can be relaxing. i could have said "nah" to both parties today, but i wanted to get out with my family anyways and knew both parties were kid-friendly. there was a circus themed birthday party and fabulous air ballooned baby shower. it would also give me a chance to enjoy laugh, love, and get fat with amazing friends, too!

after attending both parties, we headed home and took our second shower of the day (you know, how this mama feels about being clean before getting into bed). it was fabulous, plus we were pooped out from our non-stop day and the heat. we knocked out SO fast. yes, that was our sunday fun-day. then, it was straight to the in-laws house for our weekly dinner.

of course, i couldn't complete a post without a few photos. as a visual learner, i gravitate towards them anyways, but i'm sure you're drawn to the pictures rather than a sea of text that can be hard to read. plus, it creates mood and maybe, this would make you stay and read more. thanks to my iphone for the pics. i still can't believe these are my boys. i'm half way to becoming octomom. can i really topple her? hell no. 

all i know is that life is crazy beautiful when i have my boys in them. they're the love of my life.

love my boys. xoxo.

[day 127] for my daughter.

i'm exhausted! i don't know how i manage to pull this off and used my creativity to design a pretty in pink and mint "teacup" baby shower for my sister in nearly one week. i am forever grateful for my husband, sisters, and cousins who helped execute my plan. again, it looks like a fancy baby shower (OK, maybe it was), but half the items used were either borrowed or donated. it was inexpensive, but very labor intensive. we had a few DIY projects. I wished I was able to capture more details of the party, but I couldn't do it all. I couldn't be the planner, host, and photographer. however, i was able to capture a few on my camera before i left to get ready. the only downfall of this party is that it was so HOT and most of the guests were inside the air-conditioned house. my hard work detailing every bits and pieces of this party appeared like it went to waste, but i was OK with it. i just wanted to make sure my daughter, i mean, niece got thrown an uh-mah-zing party showered with lots of love. my prego sister truly deserves everything. she's the best and i love her to death. love is a commitment. i'll do anything for my sisters. i'm sure they know this is a FACT. :)

[day 126] postpartum checkup.

oh my goodness, has it really been six weeks since i had this little guy? time flies when you least expect it. i'm having such a great time and couldn't be happier now that he's part of our growing family. well, today was my postpartum checkup. it was somewhat emotional. i miss my doctor and she knows it. we talked and laughed while she was checking my breasts and feeling my lovely uterus. it looks like my uterus is back to normal. i haven't shed off all my pregnancy weight yet either and my blood pressure is adequate. i had no concern about baby landon. my husband and i stared at each other when she gave us the OK to have sex again. she asked us what contraceptives we plan to use. 

there was complete silence.

no answer. zip. nada. 

she said, "OK, then, i'll see you guys in six months"

oh my. we'll have to see about that. i'm actually scared to have sex again. first off, my vagina was not appealing when i delivered our son and the opening was probably the size of my fist. papa dang witnessed the entire delivery and now has to look at it again. i'll pass. JK. i actually feel like a virgin. when the timing is right, we can fumble like newlyweds again. however, i'm glad we can still have intimacy in other ways. hey,i could give always give the go-ahead tomorrow. no matter what, papa dang always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. it still feels like 1997 when we first got together. i'll let you know when i'm pregnant again. there will be a fifth baby in our family. stay tuned.

love my boys. xoxo.

video clip

day 114 video clip is up. even though it wasn't my day to shine, i had to, however, use B spears latest hit "oh la la" for the video. um...yeah.. it's B spears. i'm glad papa dang promised to never fall in love with anyone else but me the first month we dated. that was back in 1.9.9.7. my heart truly belongs to him. he's a great husband and father to our boys. what more could i ask for than an awesome, fun, and healthy family with lots of love and him being part of my life - he's pretty amazing. Thanks  for clearing all my worries out of this world. 

and, we're so FUN we took papa dang to chinatown + museum on father's day. haha!

i'll be back to update later tonight. enjoy this video for now.

love my boys. xoxo.

[day 120] yogi woMOM.

it happened. i had a baby about a month ago, turned into a dinosaur, and i'm still waiting for that one day of donning into my pre-pregnancy jeans again. i wished it would happen quicker even though i know it could take a few months. i just can't ever find a way to stop slipping into my tea addition or even nibbling on the endless luscious dessert that satisfies my sweet cravings. i really need to be that good woMOM who would say to her child whenever he/she tempts to do something bad and say "NO". well, today marks a new day. i went to my first yoga class after 10 months of eating tablespoons of sugar and guzzling on lard. i was physically dying. i am SO, SO, SO out of shape. 

I hate you, FAT!

love my boys. xoxo.

[day 119] a moment like this.

Today was gorgeous. Ahh- yes, nothing like life in Orange County. So, I was incredibly stoked to attend our boy’s end of the school year performance. I know they’ve been working extremely hard. Some days, Dilly would tell me that practice was boring since he had to patiently wait for the older kids to finish and why does it take so long. Um… I think he couldn’t wait to dance his heart out with this one girl.

Another thing is that I’ve been listening to them sing a Spanish song in the car for the past few weeks with so much passion. I knew it had something to do with their performance.  It’s always exciting to see how much they’ve grown throughout the school year. I wished I could have danced the night away with Aiden and Dilly for having a stellar performance though. No really – they made my heart melt into a puddle of joy! I loved the theme to the "Sound of Music"

Anyways, I’ll end with these two videos: (1) it’s a truest reflection of Aiden. He’s growing up to be so smart and independent. Thanks Jackie for the video! (2) I couldn’t think of a better way to end our time together on this Friday evening. “playing” at our favorite place. And I’m blessed to be part of what I believe in and I’m proud to use my flip to document these moments. Yes, I love being a mom. 

Love my boys. XOXO.

P.S. - first video is uploading. stay tuned.

[day 118] the wish.

To Evan’s credit, he knows how to make my heart melt everyday. Evan is just the type of person that you see from a distance and makes life a little bit more beautiful with his smile. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you his smile is contagious. It really is. He just makes you happy. And when he crawls into our bed with me and places his head on my chest every single morning and wants to cuddle, he reminds me that life’s moments are spent with those you love. OK. He loves me. All our boys are attached to me the same way he is, but today, I’m talking about Evan, my little batman.

well .... we finally made it back to Gymbo class.

This singular moment– yup, this very moment, as soon as I turned into Gymboree's parking lot, Evan kicked his legs and smiled out of excitement while sitting in his car seat. well, it was priceless. It has been a few weeks since we've been able to attend his Gymboree classes. Thanks to the birth of Baby L - adjustment had to be made. Anyways, this place appears to be Evan's pleasurable element besides home. I don’t want to forget this moment because I’ll have to one day go back to work and can’t take my little batman to class anymore. Argh. It's going to be depressing, but life is short and who knows, within a blink everything can change. I'm glad I was able to make him incredibly happy today.

Love my boys. Xoxo.

[day 117] newborn gowns.

i just love, i mean, love newborn sleep gowns! obviously, we don't wear them in public. heck, landon might be mistaken for a girl. everyone knows how badly i want a girl, but i'm still blessed with what i was able to conceived. anyways, these are awesome sleep gowns for baby landon. it's so convenient for frequent diaper changes late at night since you don't have to unbutton anything! it makes changing diaper so much quicker because you just have to pull up the gown. you don't have to unsnap, pull out their legs, change their diaper, then snap everything back up. believe it or not, this gown has been handed down from aiden and every single one of my boys have worn it. don't worry we have a week's worth of night gowns that aiden has passed down. 

these gowns are very inexpensive and if you have a newborn, i highly recommend it! you can pick them up anywhere - target, babies r us, online, etc.

check out the gown + landon (taken from this morning when he woke up)

ever wonder what it looks like when you say "no" to a toddler? here you go. poor evan. he wanted my camera and i offered another toy for him to play with, which eventually stopped his tears. so sorry, but mama's camera is not a plaything.

anyways, we made our daily "tea" run in the evening. i vowed to stop drinking tea daily due to the sugar content, but i'm so addicted to it and need my daily dose. i love drinking 7 leaves jasmine tea, but tonight, i had black tea with lychee jelly from lollipop. it was SOOOO refreshing. afterwards, we stopped at the park with our boys for about 45 minutes before we called it a night.  

love my boys. xoxo.

[day 116] sew crazy.

yup, i am that mom. 

my-oh-so-talented cousin, diane, (she can basically make anything) sewed a bunch of bow ties and sock monkeys for her son's 2nd birthday about a month ago. she inspired me to pull out my sewing machine today to sew my own bow ties for our boys. i used some scrapped fabric i had laying around the house to make the one you see below. you can find a bunch of tutorials online and it's very inexpensive. it took me about 10-15 minutes to make one. i'll have to say, i will never buy another bow tie again! i picked up quite a few different fabric designs today from joanns as well and can't wait to sew more this week. i'll post pictures of our precious boys wearing them next week. if you're a mom, try making them. it's a stress reliever. you don't need a sewing machine either - there are ways to make a bow tie without one. DO SHARE once you're done. trust me, you're going to become "sew" crazy after your first one.

anyways, i was talking to papa dang the other night about "romance" and what makes your wife "happy". i tried explaining that when he randomly brings me home "tea" (it's my addiction) that cost approximately $3 bucks is VERY romantic. OR a random corny text from him during the day is again very romantic. this one time he cleaned out the refrigerator (clean as in deep clean - my kind of style) is romance to the highest level. it was an extraordinarily nice gesture from papa. then, i went on saying that i don't ever want nothing more than for us to love and laugh every single night. is that possible? HELL YEAH. and for holidays or birthdays, i don't ever ask or want any gifts from him because it's not romantic. he normally just gives me a thoughtful card that never cease to make me cry and laugh. he's uh-mah-zing. this is the reason why we've been together for 16 years.

welcome to our life.

love my boys. xoxo.

[day 114] happy father's day.

last year, all our boys wore t-shirts that said "papa dang rocks" to publicly express how awesome he is! but this year, i was so busy and decided to cut up letters on plain white paper that took nearly five minutes and posted the image i took with my iphone on instagram. i want the world to know how appreciative we are to have him.

it always feel like we've scored the mega-million dollar jackpot when we think about papa dang. he's the best daddy ever and life just doesn't get any better from here. it is as good as it gets. he is definitely the wine to your cheese. he's a dad that make sure he spends the majority of his time with his sons because he doesn't want to ever look back and regret not having had spent MORE time with them. he's a dad that wants to show his sons how it's supposed to be done. like they say, "behind every good child is a good parent." he's a dad who has his own set of fear of fatherhood, but i must add that he's doing a damn good job. he's a dad who keeps thing simple and never complains. he never worries about the non-important things because he always say there are more important things in life to worry about and that's family. he's a dad who support his sons in what they love to do. he's a dad who make sure his sons get their doses of laughter every day. he's a dad that works full-time and hard to provide a life for his family. he's a dad who wants to look good and works out when his family are asleep to make sure he doesn't miss out on anything during the day. yup, gotta work on that six-pack! he's a dad that never fails to say "sorry" or "I love you" every single day. he's a dad that still make sure his sons get their potent kisses and hugs daily. he's a dad who loves being a dad. he's a dad that we call our number one hero and man! 

happy father's day to all the daddies out there, but especially to our very own.  

p.s. i'll work on the flip video tomorrow night to show what we did on father's day.

[day 113] saying good-bye to original sin.

we're quite fortunate to have my bro-in-law as a catholic priest. i'm sure he's getting used to coming home and performing the sacrament of baptism for his nieces and/or nephews. it's starting to become a new trend. today, we had a private ceremony for baby landon and his cousin emme. they were both baptized and welcomed into the catholic faith and freed away from original sin that they were both born with. my bro-in-law, steve, was recognized as landon's godfather, in which he would faithfully practice the catholic faith and would be a good role to our son. congrats baby L. you now see light!

anyways, i woke up this morning and found aiden on our floor working on his lego pieces. he put this together in an hour. we didn't let him work on it the night before because it was too late and past his bedtime. he was sad as can be. you see - he's just like any typical kid who's excited about a new toy and would elect to lose sleep just to play with it. 

here's our awesome family picture. we're really good at taking pictures together. haha.

[day 112] finding my way

i've adjusted to having four ferociously handsome little boys in our house and to keep things orderly, we've developed our own family routine. it makes our life easier and more manageable, but it also helps that papa dang and i are on the same page with our life. sometimes, i'll read through my old post (even though it only gives my reader a piece of my day), but it keeps me on track of our family development. and you know, i'm glad i find happiness (it could get crazy at home) through my family. how couldn't i? with every child, i'm walking with my head held high because i'm learning to be a stronger mama by working on my weaknesses. i'm no longer afraid of going through labor and i enjoy every moment when i'm surrounded by our boys. i don't want anything more than having them in my life. pure awesomeness? i think so. they're all i need plus my husband. 

anyways, here's baby landon at 3 weeks old. he's my future bookworm and business strategist. i'm so in love. excuse the books i've read, i just find them interesting. and they really are. i wished i had more time to escape in la-la land to read and where life becomes invisible. i'm just too busy managing my family, but still squeeze in a good book here and there. it just takes me longer to finish. besides, there's a slight chance baby L might be captivated by some of my good reads one day, too!

love my boys. xoxo

[day 111] special thanks.

everyday i get to wake up to this little man, evan. he keeps me busy every single morning until he goes down for his nap around 11 a.m. he literally brightens my life and i love him more than i love black tea! and that's a lot, but i have to give a special thanks to him for learning how to tell me he has to go number #2. you and i know that a simple gesture of saying "thank you" can go a long way. yeah, he's not completely potty trained, but at least i wont have to clean another poo-poo diaper from him (given there may be some accidents). hallelujah! we knew he was ready from our previous experience with aiden and dilly. it was always around 15 to 17 months old that our boys stopped doing number twos in their diapers. good job, mup!

so, evan has several different cues to alert us, but he normally points to his diaper and say poo-poo! he knows how to walk upstairs and grab his toilet seat from underneath the sink. it appears that this toilet is his sanctuary. i'm constantly reminded that this is yet another milestone in his life and time is just flying by fast. it makes me become melancholy, but i always find solace when i put my mind back to reality and realize he's still my baby.

besides this, i am still the multi-tasker and OCD mom who is known to simultaneously have tons of things going on at one time. it's not always easy, but i'm still happier than ever before with my life. 

love my boys. xoxo

video clip

day 92 - go kart fun.

[day 108] what goes on in the morning.

this little man with the smiley face below cracks me up. if you're ever wondering, my boys are shirtless most of the time when they're at home except for baby landon. so, do you ever wonder what it's like in the morning for me? well, my day starts at 7 a.m. i get up to pump, open the blinds, prep snack for aiden and dylan, wash my never-ending load of laundry, then, i'll head back upstairs to get our boys ready for school. in between getting them ready, i'll make the bed in every room and eventually would make my way back into bed with evan to catch a clip of sesame street. he crawls into our bed when he wakes up and normally doesn't get up until aiden and dylan leaves for school or sometimes, he'll stand by the window to look at birds or cats.

after breakfast this morning, we headed back upstairs. evan has the tendency to dance every time he hears music. i had pandora playing and he was dancing to the wheels on the bus goes round and round. i don't think baby landon cared so much. i couldn't stop laughing at him. honestly, he just makes me smile and laugh so much! 

so we basically spend about an hour in landon's nursery when he's awake - we're always playing or i'll tell him to grab me a book to read. evan is like the energizer bunny. he keeps going and going - he'll stop once it's his nap time and by that time, i'm exhausted. hence, i take a short nap before i wake up to finish some housework. you know - it's nice to keep the house maintained as in clean. well, sort of! haha.

love my boys. xoxo.

[day 107] 3 weeks.

i've been out on maternity leave for 2 months exactly today. i've made promises to myself about accomplishing things during this time away from work. my list is sort of crazy, but i'm glad to have welcome this man into our life 3 weeks ago! yes, it was an exciting moment. yes, i'm tired, but i'll continue to live in the moment and enjoy spending the next 3 months at home with my boys before i head back to work. speaking of which, aiden and dylan will be out of school the 28th. oh that means, i'll be home with four boys ALONE by the end of this month. you me what? yup, four boys alone. no problem. wait, i hope i survive, hence, i'm working on a plan, otherwise, i'll drain myself out.

anyways, i've finally figured out baby landon's sleep and eat schedule. it has been consistent. he stays awake for 2 hours during the day and 2 hours at night (he's asleep by 11 p.m.) he wakes up about every 4 hours at night, which doesn't bother me because i have to wake up to pump. i hope we're lucky enough to have him sleep through the night by 2.5 to 3 months. we've been fortunate in the past with our other 3 boys. i'm going to keep my fingers crossed. so far, he appears to be quite mellow. 

here's baby landon at 3 weeks with papa dang.

here's a picture i snapped when we were relaxing together except i'm not in the image.

love my boys. xoxo

[day 106] creativity is contagious.

"when i make art, i think about its ability to connect with others,

to bring them into the process. - Jim Hodges"

for the first time in awhile, we didn't have anything plan and it actually felt great to be home for the most part. we decided to make a trip to michaels to pick up some art items for our boys. we decided to make it a craft night at home because it's important to enjoy the moment but mostly to associate their finished product to an accomplishment. plus, it's nice to change it up once in awhile away from baking or engaging in kumon workbook activities. evan was too exhausted to join us and knocked out early. of course, baby landon is too little and was doing what he does best - sleep! it was just us and our two oldest boys. 

for 5 dollars, we made sea creatures since aiden just recently learned about them in school and how certain ones live in different sea levels in the ocean. heck, he asked papa dang if he knew which creatures lived in the ocean and at what sea level. of course, i didn't have an answer either and decided to revert the question back at him - hilarious, indeed! 

anyways, we worked together as a family for about 30 minutes because contributions have value and our boys can practice working together. it also kept them mellow out. i've learned that they do less teasing when we're doing things together and if they're not sleep deprived. it worked out in the end. i didn't even yell at them once during the evening or had to put them in their thinking chair, which was a miracle! it was a night well spent!

love my boys. xoxo

[day 105] why crochet.

I've resorted to crochet in the car while Papa Dang drives because I could never find time to do it. It's quite simple to provide justification. I rather utilize my time for the important things in my life right now (when I'm not in the car) and that is my family. At least I can multi-task and talk to my boys, but they're usually too busy talking, singing, fighting, or teasing amongst themselves. 

I've been crocheting on and off for about a year. Yes, I've turned into that mom. I remember the first time when I started to crochet, Papa Dang was fascinated and joined me. He eventually gave up since its too time consuming. I've never looked at it as though it's wasting my time, but the accomplishment of making something that emerged from my own fingertips always made me smile and proud!. I love the risk that is involved with crocheting as well. Crochet is all about risk if you think about it. You have total control over what you're making and frankly it could possibly be a disaster in the end if you didn't make the right stitch in the right place. 

Honestly, I love how crochet relaxes me because it gets my full attention since I'm absorbed by the stitches effortlessly falling from my hook. You'll be surprise at how it soothes me from my hectic day from being a mom, wife, friend, sister (you name it). My family is very important to me and again, they're my priority right now from all my hobbies I enjoy doing. To sum it up, I wished I had more time for crocheting, but for now, I guess I'll be completing my projects slowly in the car while Papa drives our family around. 

Love my boys. XOXO