The weekend trip to the mountain was really not well planned, in deed not planned at all, the decision to go was quickly made by the two decision makers few hours before the trip, fortunately Owen has been cooperative for the most part, he was sleeping most of the time on the road and didn’t miss too much of the action. Since we didn’t research well for the trip, we totally screwed up the timing (it was still a bit earlier than the peak season) and also missed several beautiful spots near Boone NC.

Not being first time to the mountains (remember our last trip report to Canadian rockies?), owen quickly adjusted himself from a city boy to a nature lover, and showed his profound love for the adventure, he even waved to the Elk next to the road.

As far as the highlight of the day trip, two things were stuck in my mind.. one is the great find of Thai Orchid restaurant near Hickory (the Spicy noodle and Thai chicken really broke my happiness meter), and the other being Four Point hotel at Asheville (it blew away my low expectation for a Four Point hotel by seeing the modern furniture and a big LCD screen, plus free cookies and drink)

As usual, enjoy the photos.

Owen helped someone broke the record - on the day he visited NC Zoo for his time, so call the largest nature habitat zoo - NC zoo had a a record day of visitors, totally 32K people visited zoo during the weekend.

It was a hot day, but obviously the 1.5 year old is not so hot about the zoo, he felt asleep before even seeing the sleeping lions (don’t know why, this is the 2nd time we saw the lions in NC zoo, the lions were sleeping when visited last time). Fortunately we get enough photos before he started day-dreaming…

So here is bit of advice, if you do plan to bring your little baby travel, make sure you plan the schedule to cover the things you want him/her to do/see in the morning.  Sleeping is very contiguous - by 2pm, we have seen most parents/grandparents were carrying sleeping children (in very many sleeping poses)…

The mom took Owen to have his routine check few weeks back, as usual, the check starts with the measurement. The result is somewhat interesting… based on some stats, I can easily draw a simple conclusion, Owen will be (at least for now) a very smart guy, why? because his 75% percentile of head size vs 25% percentile of weight size, i.e. a big head on a small body.

No doubt, we still have a large upside to fill without worrying about having an overweighted Owen.

“Gong Shi Fai Cai” (it means Happy New Year and may you have good fortune in this year, this is the No1 greetings when people met each other during Chinese New Year). For some reason, Owen just knows how to say these few words so quickly, turns out this very timely for celebrating the Chinese New Year, what a perfect timing to pick up new skills! Best wishest to everyone!

It has been a while since the last time the Dad spelled some “wise words” (in case you didn’t notice, I own the special column “Dad’s wise words). Looking back, I start to feel being (good) parents is the most difficult job in the world. You need skills, you need positive altitude, and the best of all, you need good patience. The child can pick up bad habits so much faster than learning the good ones (for one thing, we didn’t need to spend extra effort to get Owen *love* to eat American French Fries, compares this to the endurance needed to make Owen like nutritious Asian food, to this, hats off to all the parents reader of this blog

Follow the tradition of dad’s wise word column, here are some great celebration photos we took for this year of Rats (more to find after you visit the gallery). Now let me say this to everyone: “Gong Shi Fai Cai”.

Wish all the Owen’s fans enjoy a fresh start of 2008!! I’m sure you all had a great holidays, otherwise you won’t spend time browsing Owen’s blog.

The holiday season in the house is much busier due to the fact Owen can walk now, he needs be escorted all the time to prevent collateral damage - fortunately it is never a hard task to find a playmate for Owen. He is the favorite photomate, everyone wants to have him in the picture!! Check the photos below to share our fun.

The American tradition of putting Christmas gifts under the tree officially kicked off starting from this holiday season for us, naturally this year the biggest pile goes to Owen, but everyone else in the family did get gift, a mention worthy surprise to the daddy is a Wii system from mommy, which turns out to be Owen’s favorite toy as well. (yep, 1 year old knows how to play wii bowling)

If you have read the previous mom’s blog, you prob sweet a bit, even the brave dad (me) couldn’t keep my cool after seeing the Owen’s suffering. well, we hope that is once in a life time thing, to give you some relief after reading the mom’s long blog, I’d like you to meet the Owen after his full recovery (luckily, the fever subdued after one day). We didn’t go anywhere fancy, just take the road next to the neighbor. Obviously, he is loving North Carolina already…

Oct 31, I think everyone with children knows what that day is. (Jane said Christian is not supposed to celebrate it, but anyway, we have to make exceptions)
Thanks to Owen, now we are no longer the household that can only provide candies, we are also the consumers!! With Owen being the leverage, a so cute version after we dressed him in the pooh-bear costume, it is not hard at all to get candies.

Leaving auntie staying at home base to serve other children candy, five body guards (two parents, two grandparents, and jane’s cousin) escorted the King Owen to sweep my neighbor-hood. People nowadays are too generous, our little basket became full after we just visited the neighbors in the cul-de-sac, not wanting to waste too many candies since we don’t want to eat that, so we called it a day. Don’t think Owen knows what is the thing people given to him, too him, these are a full basket of “toys” which can kept him busy for a while (Owen likes to dump the candies from the basket and then put them back one by one, what a organized kid!!)

Owen’s weight has been going up and down for three month, and kept steady around 21 lb 10 oz for a while, I remember the earliest date that I saw him 21 lb was sometime in June, finally Owen has made stable passing 22 lb in the past few days. pew…well, maybe my worry was unwarranted, you know how first time parents think.

Despite the slow weight gain, Owen has grown very well in all other areas, his newly developed skills include (but not limited to) have short walk, say baba-mama (together in one word), operate my laptop (yes, we will let him blog soon), drive unmanned vehicles (as usual, we have photo to prove I am not bluffing), etc, watching him growing, and growing everyday is priceless. Luckily my new job relived my travel duty, so I can spent more time watching Owen.

It has been a while since I post Owen’s photos, hope this gap really gives you opportunity to appreciate the growth of Owen drop some comments if you like..

Since one year ago, we get one more holiday added to my calendar - Owen’s birthday, today is our first time celebrate it!

Yes, believe it or not, Owen is one year old boy!

The celebration is a very complex project, grandpa and grandma drove five hours from VA, uncle Chuck and dry-mom Tiff took the ride, auntie and her daughter traveled from Taiwan, mom jane went off buying fresh made birthday cakes, me busy setting up skype video conference to accommodate my parents and my brother to join the party from China, in total, we get 11 family members joined the party in real time.

Of course, we didn’t forget Owen’s loyal fans on the web, here are the captured moments happened on Aug 12, hope you can share the joy and excitement with us!

It is tough to live in a world without seeing Owen, I didn’t realize that until I had to travel to Japan for three weeks. It is even tougher to see so many Asian babies around me while I was in Japan because they keep reminding me of Owen.

Luckily there is a nice tool called skype which helped a little, but still I believe I must have missed some cute 1st times, oh well, I guess that is life.

The following are photos taken right before I went out, so they are about four weeks old, there should be new ones coming out very soon, stay tuned.