Merry Christmas!

We couldn't be happier on this end. It is a very special time with E&V and they are getting along beautifully. There is really not much more I can say- I think the pics sum it all up!

V's Special Day

V with her Godmother


V with Mimi, who made the beautiful gown






V was baptised at the same church were E was baptised and where we were married. V, who is almost always smiling and "talking" happily, cried for part of the service and especially during her baptism. E was very good for the entire service though.

Other news: V rolled over from back to front tonight (Monday November 5th)! Seemed like she was rooting around on the sheet looking for something to latch onto.

Halloween 2007

We had a great halloween trick-or-treating with the 3M's for the 3rd year in a row. Very very fun time! E was a VT football player and his buddy was a train engineer. V was a (good) witch and slept the entire time. The boys went up to a number of houses for candy- but E had to be persuaded somewhat. Everyone survived a haunted porch just fine- I guess that sort of thing doesn't become scary until a child is a bit older. Mommy and Daddy are enjoying E's candy which he thankfully forgot about.

Notice the patch on E's head? Fits in well with the big tough football image we were trying to create, but it covers a big boo-boo he got about a month ago when he ran into a kitchen set at school. The cut went all the way down to the bone and he had a plastic surgeon stitch him up. Boy was that ever a hard day!

Who Needs Tee-ball?

Tee-ball leagues don't start for another 3 years. The following season he'll be eligible to start playing the real deal in "little league". That's in the spring of 2011!

A Weekend of Firsts

V's 1st Minor League Baseball Game (Trenton Thunder)


E+V 1st On The Couch Cuddle


E+V 1st Trip to The Insectarium


E's 1st Putt Putt Experience


V's 1st Time Sleeping Through Putt-Putt


We had a great weekend with a visit from the Cadambi's (check out their blog for pics), a trip to the "Insectarium", a Trenton Thunder baseball game (Ethan paid attention the entire time!) and a round of putt putt golf. Ethan is turning into a real sportsman and also has a huge interest in entomology. He is also being very good around his sister.

Valerie is growing so fast, some of her newborn-size onsies are getting tight! She really dislikes car-rides but is a trooper once we have her on an outing. She likes the Sombat's moby wrap a lot! Valerie has started cooing more, particularly before feedings and is smiling more and more (still not caught on camera).

E=1st Major Haircut; V=1 Month Old

The haircut


1 Month Old!


Last night, I was putting Valerie in bed and I heard screaming coming from Ethan's room. His beautiful golden locks were gone! Or at least greatly reduced. He was in tears b/c there was a minor accident involving the scissorys and his ear, but he is okay despite having perhaps acquired a lifelong aversion to getting a haircut. Ethan eventually smiled though when we showed him his haircut in the mirror and told him how handsome he looks. Later that night, after Ethan's middle of the night transition to our bed, he was having a toddler dream and talking in his sleep, saying "Mine! MIne! MIne!".

Valerie is growing really nicely and her clothes are fitting her better. She has definitely started to smile in response to our antics, but we haven't yet been able to capture it with the camera. Today, her one month birthday, I noticed that she can intentionally kick things with her feet. I was tickling her feet and she kept raising her feet to my hand to be tickled more. Valerie does some things just like Ethan did- particularly the way she stretches. But she does many things differently, like the way she likes to hold onto her ears.

Happy Birthday Ethan!

The Birthday Boy


Young Tito


Peaceful Moments Watching Baseball


Valerie's Playtime


Today is Ethan's 2nd birthday and we will be having a quiet evening at home tonight with some of Ethan's favorite foods for dinner (Shrimp with Old Bay, baked potato fries, broccoli). We sent a cake to daycare today, so hopefully they had a nice party for him there. Valerie is doing well and is growing. She hardly ever cries (check back on this one in a few weeks!) and is spending more time awake each day. She frequently has an expression of amusement on her face and has given us some quick smiles that we haven't quite been able to capture on film yet.

Big Brother & Little Sister

There have been good times and some tough ones between Ethan and Valerie. But as each day passes, there are more good moments and fewer bad ones. These pictures say it all- there is a bright future ahead for this sibling relationship!

Valerie Dianne

Born on July 24, 2007 at 11:08 P.M. 7 lbs, 12 oz. Valerie is doing very well and Ethan is adjusting to being a big brother. Mom and Dad are incredibly proud!

Where are you?!

Ethan's sister's due date is here, but his sister is not here yet. We are anxious and excited, but in truth could probably use the extra time to get a few more things done at home & work. Mentally though, having our second child is almost as incomprehensible to us as having our first!

Not yet! But soon!

He likes ice cream now


July 4th in Philly


Grocery Shopping at the Please Touch Museum


Happy he's going to be a big brother?




The baby is due on July 18th. She is supposed to be a girl, but Steve and I have both had dreams that the baby is a boy. Also, some familiy friends were expecting a girl and their baby surprised them by being a boy! I personally think she feels like a girl- her movements are more graceful than Ethan's were. Been having plenty of painless contractions and doing lots of cleaning/organizing.

In case you are interested, I started a new blog about my attempts to maximize our genetic potential (you can find it in the
"links" section of this blog).

3 Zs

I guess by now any family/friends that read this blog have probably given up on seeing a new update! Life is busy but extremely good. I wish that we could live in these moments forever.

We have had a bunch of fun times recently- including a surprise baby shower for our little girl, a nice birthday cookout at my parents, a big 60th birthday party for my mom, a trip to Van Sant Airport ( a grass strip with a nice cookout), visits from the Sombats, and Alvin+Malina (with a trip to the zoo), a trip to Lakewood NJ to a minor league baseball game/Ethan's first fireworks/going to the beach at Seaside Heights, a trip to Lancaster with the Stragands w. a ride on the Strasburg railroad, cousin Maggie's graduation party, and nice mother's day celebrations. Soon, we will be having just as much (or even more) fun as a family of four!

We have 1 month to go before our little girl arrives and have never been busier with work and with Ethan. Right now, I feel reluctant to switch gears from research to baby care, but I know that once she arrives I will feel completely different. That is what happened with Ethan. I have been cooking a ton during this pregnancy. I've especially enjoyed cooking from "The Silver Palate" cookbook. Their recipes for zucchini bread, "Quick" tomato sauce, chicken Marbella, raspberry chicken and green beans w. tomatoes have been some of my favorites so far. The only cravings I have had were spicy food (early on) and generally healthy home-cooked meals.

The pregnancy has gone very well and now she is head down and "very low". Her movements occur with about the same frequency as I remember Ethan's but hers are what I can only describe as more fluid and graceful.

Steve must be pleased right now that Ethan has become a total daddies boy! He is busy at work though. His research has really started to take off and his boss (who calls him a "drill sergeant") has given him 3 students to mentor; an unprecedented number in my opinion. He is still flying traffic once per week but has cut back to only one flying student.

Ethan is learning new words each day and has started to put two words together. My favorite is "I got you"! Or he will say "Bye Gack Gack" (= bye bird) or "Bye room room" (Bye truck) and "Yes please". He also says "No way!" a lot, but we are trying to get him to say "no thank you" instead.

Ethan didn't have any comfort objects (aside from holding our fingers), but now it definitely seems that he has adopted having a ball and a sippy cup of water at bedtime as his comfort objects.

Ethan has started really getting good at baseball. He can swing a bat and actually hit a ball if it is pitched well to him. And he can throw really hard with pretty good accuracy. We all need to work on our reaction times! We are already scouting out the high schools with good sports programs! He also likes jumping in the air and likes jumping off of things, which scares us to death b/c he pays no attention to the heights he jumps from.

We think that it might be a really difficult transition for him when the baby comes. He doesn't like to share our attention one bit. When I was at his toddler graduation and another little girl came to sit on my lap, he totally lost it. He wouldn't even settle for the little girl sitting on one knee while he sat on the other. Also, when we were with our friends, the Sombats, his behavior totally changed when much of the attention was focused on their son, Luc. You could practically see the thunder-clouds in his facial expression. He even gets a bit jealous when our cat sits on my lap. He still thinks the baby is both in my tummy AND in his tummy, so he has no idea what is about to hit him. Ethan really likes helping me around with household duties though, so maybe he will relish his role as the big helpful brother.

Prayer and Hope for the Hokies

Prayers- especially for those who are injured and grieving. Hopes- may current and future students at VT have a safe and deeply fulfilling college experience.

It's a .....

It has been really hard for me to shift gears from my previous posts. This year, we have lost our friend Hoon, a dear family member- Ruth, and a former neighbor- Ken. You really never know what life has in store, for better or for worse. Please keep the No family, the Remington Brittles (Nancy and Betsy) and Tina (Ken’s wife) in your thoughts and prayers. It is surely such a sad time for them.

On a much more positive note, we found out a few weeks ago that we are having a girl! I originally didn’t want to know, but I absolutely couldn’t resist when the day came and Steve only just barely twisted my arm. Seems like with our first pregnancy all of our relatives and friends wanted a boy and with the second pregnancy, everyone wanted a girl. So it has worked out really well for all of those who let themselves hope for one or the other. I am personally excited to be having a girl and am imagining all of those mother/daughter things we will do together. Hopefully we will be good friends, like my mom and I are.

I don’t have access to a working scanner, but I can say that her profile is nearly identical to Ethan’s was at his 20 week ultrasound. She likes to hold her foot over her head and touch her face. And she either really likes/or hates Carmina Burana (a strong reaction, whichever way-she moved around more during a recent performance than she has ever moved), so she may have Ethan’s music-loving genes. Oh- and another thing- she looks beautiful already, even just from her ultrasound picture.

Ethan is doing well despite some serious teething troubles. He has been chewing on his fingers and various toys and having frequent night waking, so we think he is getting his 2 year molars. His vocabulary is expanding quite a bit. He understands much of what we say and can respond to yes or no questions, which makes figuring out what he wants a lot easier. He calls our cat (Wendy) “Nenny” and Elmo “Ma Mo”. Ethan is enjoying reading more and more, especially pop-up books and lift-the-flap books. He loves throwing balls, looking at birds and airplanes. He’s eating pretty well but likes us to feed him instead of feeding himself (which has become a problem in daycare). I still have to snuggle Ethan to sleep every night, which is a mixed bag- I love the closeness but dearly wish I had that time to get the apartment in order/play trumpet, etc. Plus, we will probably need to get him used to other arrangements well before the baby arrives to make the transition less traumatic for him.

Work is going well for me. I have had to make myself put a halt to the ever growing list of experiments on the HSV-1 vaccine so that I can devote more energy to the HSV-2 vaccine. Still playing trumpet as much as possible (almost always with a practice mute though) and have lined up a couple of performances at church. I am sad though that our little girl won’t get the exposure to the live orchestral and brass band music that Ethan did.

Steve’s grad school projects seem to be moving along nicely. Don’t ask him when he’ll be finished yet though. Speaking from experience, you just can’t tell when you’ll be finished until you are pretty much finished. That’s how science is. Experiments are working though, and that is the key! Steve’s flying is going well too- he’s got 800 hours now! I joked with him that I have 800 hours too. He’s also got some very good students, which helps keep flying interesting/educational.

Memories of Hoon (a few of many)

I met Hoon the first day of classes our freshman year at Virginia Tech. We just happened to sit together, in the front row of the class of several hundred students. And from that day forward we were great friends. It was immediately apparent to me that Hoon was a funny and intelligent guy- and that he was so incredibly open minded and accepting of others. Everyone that knew Hoon, knew how generous he was with his friendship and with his time. While he didn’t wear it like a badge, he regularly helped others less fortunate than himself.

Some of my memories of Hoon- in those early college days, I remember getting into my car with him for the first time- he tuned the raidio to a hip hop station, turned it way up and started chair-dancing right there in the passenger seat, so much so that the car was swaying right along with him. I thought- this time and many others- Hoon makes college so much fun!

We studied together for our classes. Not that Hoon needed to study. He had a truly brilliant mind. I remember once he said “I thought of a cure for AIDS.” “What’s that”, I said skeptically- “Just give the AIDS patients Toxic Shock Syndrome” he said- then proceeded to give me a technical account of his rationale- which was far beyond my understanding.

We studied in a part of the library called the “quiet zone”. It didn’t take long before we were laughing uncontrollably and after getting evil glares from all of the others in the quiet zone we would retreat to a less ridged study spot. We would walk over to the lecture hall to check our grades. Usually he would have the very top grade in the entire class- and these were BIG classes- and- wasn’t English Hoon’s third language? Well, once or twice, my grade was just ever so much higher than his and he would say, in mock anger “Awe you beat me- I’ll have to study harder next time! How did you beat me!). It was all in jest though, Hoon was the first to congratulate you on any success.

One of my favorite examples of Hoon’s generosity and friendship was this incident I had with my roommates boyfriend eating all of my havarti cheese. Cheese is expensive and I called Hoon to complain- hours or so later- Hoon came over- with what must have been over 15 pounds of cheese! He could have just told me to get over it, but instead he made me feel better and gave me a good laugh.

Hoon joined us regularly for our family gatherings and my whole family loved him. When I introduced Hoon to my grandmother, I said “Nanny, this is my friend Hoon.” She said, “Who?”, I said, “Hoon!”, “Who” she said, “HOON!” I said. “Oh hi Moon, she said finally with a smile.” And Hoon just chuckled- and he didn’t mind that my grandmother called him “Moon” from then on.

When the year was turning from 1997 to 1998, Hoon came over to our house for our New Years celebration. That night he said, “This is going to be my year this year- it is the year of the tiger.” After our watching the ball drop, Hoon left to go home, confident that it was the beginning of a great year for him. On the way home, just past Damascus, he hit a patch of ice and ran into the curb of the median, breaking the wheel off the axel of his brothers’ nice new car. He called us to come and get him and as we were pulling up, a cop was writing him a ticket for wreck-less driving. On the bright side for 1998, Hoon graduated from Virginia Tech that spring with honors degrees in Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry.

We stayed close friends during college and afterwards. Hoon was always there to celebrate when something needed celebrating. When Steve and I had our first child, Hoon and Amy drove down to meet our new guy- armed with Philly Cheese Steaks from two of the most famous Philly Cheese steak places, and Cigars and lots of smiles. Our son Ethan, who is 1 and a half now, loved Hoon and couldn’t take his eyes off of him. Hoon would have been a wonderful father some day, if his life hadn’t been cut so short.

I think Hoon was everyone’s best friend. He was somebody you could always confide in. If you were down in the dumps when you called him, you were smiling as soon as you heard his voice. I’d be at work, perhaps having a dull or stressful day, and I would get an email. “Hoon has sent you a Washington Post Article”- and there would be the article and a brilliantly insightful and hilarious one liner from Hoon. Like one with one science article he forwarded to me recently “ I’ll take one child and a dose of longevity”. Or the trailer to a new years email “Happy new years, though it'll be a second late or early depending on your perspective of relativity on non-relative motion related to the space time field.”.

What is Hoon doing now? I have always thought that when you die you get answers to all of the unanswerable questions you had in life. Hoon is learning about why we exist in the first place, how we got here, explanations for string theory and alternate dimensions. He is discovering how incurable diseases could be cured and why people behave the way they do for better or worse. Hoon is picking the brains of great thinkers like himself, laughing with Einstein and Aristotle and singing and dancing with Ella Fitzgerald.

Lets all keep with us for the rest of our lives Hoon’s curiosity, generous spirit and open mind. Hoon had an endless supply of love for his family, his friends and his community. Lets all try to pass that on to everyone we know. Hoon has touched so many lives in such a positive way- and his impact will continue to be felt for many years to come. We love you Hoon
.

Hoon No (September 24, 1974- January 27, 2007)

Hoon and I met the first day of classes at Virginia Tech and had been close friends ever since. He had such kindness and compassion for others. Hoon was funny and brilliantly smart. He could have been a nobel prize quality scientist if things had turned out differently. I have pasted the references for two articles from The Washington Post about what happened. There is so much more to Hoon and to his life story than you can get from these articles. I would like to share his life story and stories about the fun times we had together with each of you, when the time is right.

Liquor Store Clerk Killed in Daytime Robbery
By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 28, 2007; C03

Bouquets, Prayer at Site Of Md. Slaying
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 29, 2007; B01