My dental coverage sucks!

today is the day that cherie and haley went back to taiwan. i can't blame anyone except for the dental coverages we have here in US. it really sucks big time.

last year, i had two dental insurance coverages and had to do 2 root canal + 1.5 crown. guess how much it cost me? that's right... try $700+. that's on top of the max. allowance possible from 2 dental insurance coverage. can you believe that?

well, maybe it's not only the dental coverage sucks, but the dentist here charges an arm and a leg just for the dental service. they always bill above the max and guess who have to pay for it... that's right.. me! sigh...

i'm starting to feel like there's no dentist i can trust... it seems they are all like an used car salesman. i've changed 5-6 different dentist in the past 5 yrs. the best of all, i trust those dentist farther than i can throw them, which isn't very far at all!

so back to the reason why cherie and haley went back.. cherie needed to get her root canal + crown done plus other dental works. it's cheaper to send her home with haley than to pay the dentist here and use the weaksauce coverage we have.

although that idea sounded good at first.. it sure didn't feel good when i have to wave goodbye to my daughter and wife. haley was giving me a kiss bye and just before they were about to enter into the custom's door, haley started walking towards me. i burst into tears and couldn't hold back from then on.

now... i miss both of my babies...

My First Halloween...

today is halloween, a day that i personally don't celebrate. but now as a daddy to haley, cherie encourages me to take haley out to explore. so today before daylight disappears, we took haley out for the first time in her halloween costume given by one of her uncle, uncle ted and auntie june.

haley is sooo adorable in this bumble bee costume.

here's haley doing her "Oh-Nooooo" gesture.


haley bee is trying to take off flying..... see how concentrated and focused she is?


she's such a happy baby... and a silly one too!


love this pose... look at that bumble bee... she just might sting you! hehe


click here for more photos.

Quick Shots of Haley

here are some quick photos of haley that was shot by me using our Canon Powershot SD750 point and shoot camera. who would've thought with a bit of editing, the photos would come out that great.

here are some photos of haley playing in the sunflower field next to some pumpkins...



isn't haley growing up sooo tall?


up close photos of haley picking the sunflower leaf..

Haley's First Pumpkin Patch

it's been a while since i last posted. i've been lazy.. and i can totally see my blog starting to collect cob webs, which i suppose is ok, since it's nearing halloween.

here are some photos of haley's first visit to a pumpkin patch. in case if ya'll don't know what a pumpkin patch is... well, it's basically a pumpkin farm. every year before halloween comes around, the farm will open up to the public for everyone to come and enjoy. it's kind of like thanksgiving, where the tradition is, after the thanksgiving lunch, the whole family will go out afterwards to pick up a christmas tree.

similar to that, you can bring kids to the pumpkin patch to pick out different types, colors and sizes of pumpkin to take home and carve into a jack-o-lantern. we had a lot of fun that day, because it was also the first time for cherie to visit the pumpkin patch as well. it was a very fun day with the family and my canon 30D. the only complaint was that we didn't bring enough cash to bring home a pumpkin and the weather was just too hot. at least we brought just enough money for parking, which was $3. thank God! otherwise, it would have been horrible trying to back out of the parking lot, when there's tons of cars waiting behind us.

2nd day after haley turns 14 month old.. her first photo with pumpkins. she's such a happy baby!


it got too hot, so cherie gave haley her hat to wear. see how haley is trying to steal that pumpkin?
doesn't haley look like a pirate!! AUGRRRR~~


ah... more pumpkins to pick and choose from. see that small pumpkin on the right side in the middle of the hay field? well, that's the pumpkin she took from another isle and now leaving it there to take others. haha..


here's the two beautiful ladies in my life... haley and her mommy, cherie.


there's more photos listed here if you want to see more. please click here.
all was taken by me... the master photographer.. LOL...

Tennis runs in the family...

recently, my doctor told me that my cholesterol is too high. more like 235 to be exact. so besides trying to eat more healthy and walking 30mins daily during lunch, i am also trying to do some exercise.

i come from a family that plays tennis, dad is a great tennis player, mom use to play before her knee injury. i use to play tennis a lot like crazy back when i was in high school. but then again, there wasn't much to do in Houston, besides tennis, fishing or watching TV. so i a tennis freak. since then, i rarely picked up a racket or a game or two, just seldom.

starting from last week, i started to play tennis with one of our friends, whom is very much into tennis. this week, we met up for our weekly tennis on sunday and today, cherie and haley came with us to the courts.

while i was playing tennis, haley was having so much fun running into the courts with a tennis ball. she was our offical ball girl.

later on, she went into my bag and start to pick up a racket and swing around. don't forget, this girl is only 13 months and 10 days old.

America's Next Top Model

recently, i've been feeling very proud to be haley's daddy. especially during the weekends when we take her out for grocery shopping or going to the mall, there's always people stopping to say "she such a cute baby". it is at that very moment, i feel proud and very thankful to God and cherie for giving me this beautiful and healthy angel.

haley's been growing up really fast and i try to capture every moment possible of our little angel growing. like the show America's Next Top Model, i really think she might be the next top model.

she's such a big girl now. here are some recent photos of haley that i really love.

mommy and haley



isn't she precious...?


i'm posing for my daddy... Tyra Banks eat your heart out girl~ now THAT'S FIERCE!


haley in her deep thoughts...

kisses for my daddy...

recently, i've discovered that haley loves to kiss her daddy. one day after work, i was sitting there watching tv while eating a popsicle and all of a sudden, haley made a "AH!" sound and started crawling towards me.

after she stood up she slapped my legs with her little palms and said... mum mum. she wanted to eat my popsicle. good thing the popsicle wasn't very sweet, because it was one of those chinese taro flavored popsicle.

at first, she didn't like it because it was too cold. but shortly thereafter, she started to want more and more. here is where i've found out she loves to kiss her daddy.

i noticed that when i don't pay attention to her and just enjoying the popsicle myself, she tries to get my attention by kissing me. then whenever she wanted to eat more, she would just kiss her daddy to let me know that she's finished and wants more.

of course, being her daddy, i'm very happy that she's finally learning to kiss her daddy. especially since she will always kiss her mommy and not always her daddy. but now i have the popsicle trick and she'll always kiss me as long as i have ice cream.. hahaha...

cherie got jealous and couldn't take it how haley keeps kissing her daddy to get more ice cream. plus she said i sounded like a piggy eating ice cream, but i think cherie's just jealous.. haha

so she captured haley in action kissing her daddy...

i love my daddy... NOW GIVE ME ICE CREAM!! mum mum!!

happy father's day to me...

today is actually my first real father's day. well, of course i had a father's day celebration last year when haley was still in her mommy's belly. we had went to Black Angus Steakhouse to celebrate, but mainly was because i wanted to make sure haley was getting enough protein to grow big in her mommy's belly.

but this year is different. we didn't go to a fancy steakhouse, instead we went to Ringer Hut; a local japanese ramen restaurant, to celebrate. we ordered tonkatsu (deep fried pork chop) curry rice and miso champon (mixture of various items) ramen with gyoza (japanese potstickers).

to end the lunch.. cherie took a couple photos for haley and i. usually, i'm the photographer, so i'm not in the photos as often. but since today it's daddy's day, i wanted a photo of haley and i to remember for life.

10 months old...

today, haley is officially 10 months old. can't believe how fast time flies by.

as usual, she's been eating a lot these days and growing taller and taller each and every day. i still remember when she was only 3 months old, she would say "nee-nee" whenever she sees the bottle. at 5 months, she knew how to say "mum-mum" for food.

when she was still in her mommy's belly, cherie had cravings for momo; which means peach in japanese.

haley loves all sorts of fruits, her favorites are banana, peach, bing cherie, watermelon... humm... pretty much everything we give her.

she is definitely our baby and has our traits... because we all love to eat! it's our passion, our hobby, it's what we love to do the most~!

we have a silly monkey...

not sure if cherie gave birth to a baby or to a monkey. but haley has been very very curious these days and are learning and experimenting with various things.

she's been teaching herself to stand without holding things, walk around while holding the table or chairs, and now... acting like a monkey climbing the stairs.

who would have thought she's such an explorer? more like a silly monkey to me.. haha

raving and clubbing haley???

wednesday night, we went out to the mall to grab a quick bite to eat for dinner. afterwards, we went to BabyGap to see if we can find some great deals on clothing for haley.

inside, there was some club music playing in the background. haley was feeling sleepy at the time, so i was trying to keep her awake. suddenly, the song from Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out Of My Head started playing and haley started to wave her hand in the air.

best of all, she was waving to the music like she was clubbing. the quality is not that great from a cell phone.. but it's still funny nonetheless.

dance dance revolution...

remember at the arcades in amusement parks, there's an arcade where people would jump on the dancing pad and step to the music?

well, ever since we noticed haley loves music and knows how to wiggles her body to the music, it was a matter of time before she can dance her head off.

you'll hear some background music, which would be from her daddy singing. oh and if you are wondering what's up with the slapping sound... well, that's her daddy slapping his belly to make the clapping sound while trying to hold the camera steady. haha.

ready.. get set.. dance baby, dance!

watch me wiggle...

after dinner, we usually find some time to go out for a walk. so when we're pushing haley around in her stroller, we try to keep her entertained.

so today, we yanked on her toy that plays a very cute melody. shortly after that.. haley started to wiggle like a silk worm in a cocoon. the way she wiggles around is hilarious, especially when she's strapped down on her stroller. haha.

what's funny is that haley knows she's being recorded and is very reluctant to wiggle. but once she's finish wiggle, she props up her foot like she's a boss lady .

slurping noodle trick~

haley has been eating solid foods for a while now. but her favorite is still noodles. one night, we went to a korean restaurant for dinner and they gave us free chap-chae; which is made of clear rice noodles mixed with veggies and other good stuff.

so after rinsing the noodles off in hot tea, because we didn't want to give her greasy foods, haley started to slurp the noodles in. i guess she was really hungry and didn't want to wait for her mama to put the noodles in her mouth. haha.

presenting haley's new trick...

see if you can slurp a noodle faster than me~

itchy ear... kimochi~

during haley's bath time, i would use a towel and gently wipe haley's ear. but every so often, she would put her wet fingers in her ear while playing in the tub.

so, when that happens, cherie and i would use a baby ear swap to remove any excess water from the inside of her ear. like us, when we use the ear swap, it provides a very tingling sensation as it's cleaning our ear.

but when cherie was cleaning haley's ear, we weren't expecting this type of reaction. the tingling sensation makes haley wants to go to sleep. look at her eyes and her expression.

an expression of kimochi~ (means feels very good in japanese)

e-na~ mecha kimochi e~ (pronouce it in kansai ben 関西弁)

messy, but very yummy noodle...

tonight, haley was eating her usual dinner with noodles. but for some reason, she was very fussy, hungry, and sleepy.

now when you mix all those combinations together, you get a very short tempered baby.

we teach her not to play with her food and she's usually very good at that. however, for some reason, tonight she just felt like playing with the noodles.

some of the noodles got stuck on her face and when we try to remove it for her, she just ends up getting very fussy.

at 9 months old, she has a lot of opinions on how SHE wants things to be done. so she tries to remove the noodles from her face and mouth. it just ends up getting all over the place even into her hair.

these are very cute and funny moments...

haley is 9 months old already?

yup, that's right folks.. haley turned 9 months old on 5/19/09. it's amazing how fast time flies and how big haley has grown.

yesterday, haley went in for her 9 month baby check up and had to get shots and some blood work done. cherie and my mom in law took her there and haley cried like there's no tomorrow.

when i heard about it after i went home late last night from work, i was heart broken. how dare they do that to my baby girl~ :(

besides that, recently we wanted to get cherie and haley a passport before the price increase. so, being the photographer that i am, i wasn't about to go and pay $15 for 2 passport photos that are horrible in the color, exposure and end up making the subject look like a corpse.

thus, i busted out my 30D and took their photos. taking haley's photos is much harder than i thought. when she was 6 months old, she was moving around a lot.. but at 9 months old, she's worse than the energizer bunny on 12 packs of redbull. (redbull gives you WINGS~)

after a while, i got the photo that i think would be the best for haley's passpost. it really does bring out her playful charactor.

voila~ here's our baby haley at 9 months old~

Haley Stands-up

today, i'm a proud daddy. haley has been trying to stand up since she was at 7 months. but we tried not to let her stand to early in fears of her not being able to grow up tall.

today at 8 months and 11 days old, lookie what haley can do. she's holding herself up against our futon pillow.

she's able to stand for about 10-15 seconds, but at least it's a start.

man, when they say baby grows up fast.. they weren't kidding at all. everyday as i see my daughter grows, i also noticed more and more wrinkles around my eyes.

Who's Daddy's crawling baby?

when ppl said time flies by fast, they weren't kidding. it seems like only yesterday that haley was born and already she's growing so fast.

- at 4 months, her bottom 2 teeth came out and learned to turn her body to the left side.

- at 5 months, her front two teeth came out and learned how to turn in circles while laying on her tummy; while being able to sit up straight with a slight wabble.

- at 6 months, her tooth next to the left front tooth came out and started to sit up while doing a split and learning to crawl.

- at 7 months, her tooth next to the left bottom tooth came out and started to try and stand up doing an upside down pyramid (for those of you that does yoga, you'll know what that means.)

- now at 8 months, she's able to crawl consistantly but at times, it seems like she just wanted to stand up instead.

time flies with a blink of an eye. or in my case, wrinkles around the eyes, white hair, and wrinkly skin. next thing you know, they'll probably be boys coming to my front door asking to take haley out on a date. yikes!

here's our princess...

3, 2, 1, ACTION

Haley Obachan wa Kawaii~

the term obachan means grandma in japanese; which in this case, haley is 1/8th japanese since her daddy is only 1/4 japanese. nevertheless, i'm proud of my 1/4th japanese heritage and likewise so is my daughter.

so as most japanese grandma shown in japanese anime that you see, they will often time be drawn with a towel or something over their head to block the sun. well, today i needed some new materials.. so decide to play dressup haley like a obachan~

this is the deer caught in headlight moment as she sees her daddy with a camera



here she is wondering what i'm about to do...



ah~ photo time.. isn't haley super photogenic even when posed as obachan?



later that afternoon, she feel asleep in the car. and as usual her mommy will alway find new things about haley. look how peaceful haley is sleeping... i'm sure she'll be angry at her mommy later on for taking such a photo. haha... even worse mad at her daddy for posting it.. lol~ ;)