Lily & Leo

We had the most wonderful time yesterday at our baby shower thanks to our wonderful host Chi Hai!  So many of our friends and family came out to share this special celebration with it, it was almost overwhelming, but in a good way!  We truly felt the love and excitement for our baby Lily’s arrival and it was simple a happy day! There were such much details that went into this shower, I don’t even know where to begin!

One of my favorite displays at the shower was the dessert bar! Chi Hai bakes some delicious vanilla mini cupcakes and I made the green tea buttercream and fondant decorations. My cute little niece Brooke was our super helper in placing the flowers on the mini cupcakes and she did it like a pro! Chi Hai also baked vanilla cake pops and Alvina and I dipped them in pink chocolate and Chi Hai and I striped them with white chocolate. I made rose and green tea macarons, to go with our color scheme of pink, white and light green. The mixed berry cake was ordered from Givral Bakery where they did the piping on the sides and added the green ribbon border. I made the baby dragon out of fondant and arranged real light pink spray roses on the cake as well. We also had bowls of pink and white sprinkled animal crackers, mhmmm! The lovely dessert tower was arranged by cousin Chi Tu and friend Alvina! They did such a great job layering the desserts and I loved how Chi Tu placed the leftover spray roses inside the tiers! It just looks so pretty and tasty, I love it!


Our Party favors consisted of pink and light green frosted take out boxes that were filled with silver hershey’s kisses and a custom fortune cookie with a special message from our baby Lily! The boxes were wrapped with a decorative wrapping paper strip and then sealed with our dragon Lily Logo! The Fortune cookies are dipped in either milk chocolate, white chocolate, or dark chocolate with flat circle sprinkles on top. The fortunes in the cookies consisted of 5 different custom message:

1) I can’t wait to meet you! – Love Baby Lily
2) Thank you for coming to my mommy & daddy’s shower! – Love Baby Lily
3) There’s a baby girl named Lily in your future that can’t wait to meet you!
4) Love, joy & wonderful dreams are all the sweet things baby Lily will bring.
5) Roses are red, violets are blue, baby Lily can’t wait to meet you!

Our baby dragon Lily’s logo also made her appearance on the cheeseball cups, and the lemonade drink dispenser. We made custom water bottle labels with her logo on them as well, and had a custom super cute nutritional facts label as well.  In case you can’t read the nutritional label, you can see it close up!!  We also had custom made Bingo Gift boards with dragon Lily’s logo in the center as the “Free Space.”  We had Wish List for Lily that people can fill out for her.  We plan to bind all the cards into a small book for Lily and we can read them to her later!  We also have custom designed certificates of award for all the games where the certificates were presented by Lily with a special message for the winner!  We also designed a t-shirt for the onesie design contest winner as part of the prize!  The front says I*heart* Lily and the back had Lily Design INC. logo below the back neck line, and on the bottom right butt check there’s a “Lily Approved” stamp (Khoa’s idea for the back of the t-shirt layout haha!)

Other details of the baby shower consisted of an amazing GIANT diaper cupcake that Alvina made!!  The base of the diaper cupcake is a laundry basket wrapped with diapers, each tied with a pretty brown bow.  Inside the cupcake consists of cute and practical goodies that Alvina was compiling together since she found out we were having a baby!  She even asked Khoa for my bakery logo so she can hand draw the tag herself, so impressive the amount of work and thought she put into this gift for Lily!  She also made a beautiful poster with a thoughtful quote and framed it as well.  It will go very nicely on the wall of Lily’s dragon lair (nursery).  Chi Hai brought cute lanterns to hang up around the clubhouse, and thought up of hanging up sample onesies at the onesie design station as well!  I also crochets some stuffed dragon dolls for Lily as display and for her tohug and love.  Also, Bi-Ying couldn’t make it to the shower but she shipped over a lovely diaper cake for display and use as well!
Of course, another big hit from the shower was all the yummy Vietnamese food! We got food catered from 4 different Vietnamese restaurants for the egg rolls (@Thanh Long Deli), nem nuong (@Khanh Hoa), mi xao (@Tan Cang Newport Seafood), and banh beo (@Phuong Giang). My mom made her infamous pasta salad and clear noodles and my aunt made her delicious fried rice! We also had honeydew and watermelon balls, balled by Chi Hai and Brooke! We also had a tray of Logan, more watermelon, and pineapples! I wanted to have some dragon fruit too for our dragon theme shower, but unfortunately it is not in season right now. Regardless, the food was fabulously delicious and there were hardly any leftovers!

We would like to give special thanks to Chi Hai for hosting our wonderful shower, it was perfect!! Special thanks to Lily’s auntie Jennifer for documenting the shower and making a video.  I haven’t seen the video yet, but I know it’ll be great!!  Also, thanks to all our family and friends who helped us prepare and set up for this occasion, and to those who helped us clean up afterwards.  You know who you are, you didn’t have to help us set up or clean, but you did and we totally appreciate it!  Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate Lily’s upcoming arrival with us as well!  Most of all, extra special thanks to Khoa, without him, I would not have all these wonderful things in life to look forward too!  I love you baby cakes!!  We had so much and it was great to see everyone before our precious baby gets here.  We felt so much love from everyone and we are extremely blessed and lucky to have such a wonderful family.  We are so excited for what’s to come, we can’t wait to meet her!!!!!

Enjoy more photos from our baby shower here!

Here is the video that Lily’s auntie Jennifer made of our wonderful baby shower!!  She is so talented and captured the festivities so nicely, I cannot thank her enough for documenting this for us.  I can’t wait to show Lily this video one day!

Today I am 36 weeks and 3 days!!! I cannot believe I have reached the 9 month mark! By the way, I count months by counting 4 weeks to 1 month. I know there’s an extra 2-3 days added to a total month, but it’s just easier this way! =) So last Friday we had another growth ultrasound, most likely the last ultrasound before our Lily pad is here! She’s now in the 35th percentile, she’s getting bigger, still small, but growing, so yay! Also, the ultrasound specialist pointed out she’s growing more hair on her head as well, woohoo! She’s facing head down as well, ready to go, and as of Friday, she weighed in at approximately 5lbs 10 oz! She’s bigger than me than when I was born (5lbs 5oz), but then again, I was a twin haha. Her heart beat also measured at a fast pace of 153 beats per minute! Overall, things are looking great! Here’s her beautiful profile and close up of her little button nose and plump lips from the ultrasound!I had my baby check up appointment this week to confirm things are moving along smoothly. Her heart beat measured at 134 beats per minute (I guess she’s not an active morning person…haha), that could be a good thing for us! I gained 1 pound since my last appointment, putting me at a gain of 12 pounds total now. My belly measures at 33cm and the doctor measured my cervix for the first time and I am excited to say I am 1cm dilated and my cervix is starting to thin out! This doesn’t mean our dragon lily will pop out any minute, it just means the process has started! It can take a couple weeks, a few days, who knows! It’s exciting nonetheless!

So how am I feeling now that I’m 9 months in? Well thanks for asking! I’ve started to feel some Braxton Hicks Contractions, and it’s a little confusing because sometimes I’m not sure if it’s just her moving really strongly that made me uncomfortable, or if it’s the contractions. As for my belly button update, it’s nearly flat as a pancake now! I knew it was bound to happen, but it’s better than popping out into an outtie I guess, although I’m still waiting for that to possibly happen. Also, no stretch marks yet (that I know of) woohoo!! I sure feel lucky!! I feel great, but now and then, the contractions creep up and my belly sides feel really tight and uncomfortable. I tend to get a lot of back aches too when I’m working at my desk or driving in the car, so luckily when I’m work, I can just get up and walk around. Today is my last day working at work, then I get to work from home till she’s here! I have lots of trouble sleeping at night. I often have to sleep sitting up so that I don’t get acid reflux, and I wake up in the middle of the night a lot because I have to pee. I forgot what it’s like to sleep through the night, I guess that’s my body’s way of preparing me for what’s to come!! Other than that though, we are just super excited for what’s to come in a few weeks so these little back aches and pains will totally be more than worth it!

Here is my monthly photo taken yesterday when I was 36 weeks and 1 day!  Special shout out to my sister, Jennifer, for capturing me at my best!

Having fun with cinemagraphs!  Cinemagraphs are pretty much photos taken to a whole new level!  You start with a video clip, and end up with a unique image to show off your memories!  These are my first attempts at them, I hope you enjoy! =)