Finally got around to posting pics of Cam from right before Dexter was born, including Cam's 2nd birthday.  Dexter was predicted to arrive right near Cam's birthday; we didn't want to have to rush to the hospital in the middle of Cam's birthday party so we had Cam's party a week early, on September 13 (Cam's bday is September 19).

Choo choo!

Sara and I decided to splurge on a gift for Cam's 2nd birthday - we bought him a toy train set table.  We actually played with this train table last Christmas when we stayed with Winston and Margaret, and we liked it so much that we decided to get it for Cam.  It was a huge beast of a box, barely fitting into the backseat of the Lexus.  I really should have used the Rogue to pick up the toy but I bought the train set from a Toys'r'us near my work and I use the Lexus to commute.  Anyways, we wanted to surprise Cam with the train set so we left the box in the car until Cam went to sleep.  Then I lugged it into the house, and two and a half hours later, the train set was fully assembled.  It was soooo much bigger than I remember, and we don't have the proper space for it.  We had to stick it against a wall so unfortunately there's a side of the train table that Cam can't really reach and trains sometimes get stuck there.

The next morning, when Cam climbed to the top of the stairs and saw the train table, he yelled "Choo choo!" and ran over to play with it.  At one point he was jumping up and down with excitement and said "Awesome!"  We made sure to give Cam a full day of the train set on his own, then the next day was his birthday party and it was a big hit with all the kids.

Cam blew out the candles on his own

Cam had a great time at his party, running laps around the house with the other kids and batting balloons all over the place.  He loved his Cars-themed cake, and when we brought it out all lit up, I leaned in to help blow out the candles but Cam didn't need me at all - he blew out the candles all on his own!  That kid constantly amazes me with what he does and says.

The train set was expensive, but we figured the cost will be amortized over the multiple kids that we will have.  :)  Cam has shown no signs of losing interest in the train set, which is good.  If anything, Sara and I have lost the novelty of playing with it and we don't spend as much time playing with Cam on the train table as we should, considering we've have it for less than a month.  I suppose having a new baby had something to do with that... :)

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We're starting up potty training for Cam.  The first couple days went well, as Cam did not fight sitting on the toilet.  In fact, when I was putting Cam to sleep, he would suddenly grab his butt and ask to go to the toilet!  That was just the first couple days, however.  He's fought it since then, and now I've fallen off the wagon in trying to potty train him.  In truth, I have no idea what to do, other than to encourage him to sit there.  Sara ordered a free potty training DVD and we've watched the first few minutes of it - just enough for me to know to use stickers as bribes-er, I mean rewards for using the potty.  I need to watch the rest of the DVD to really learn the science of getting Cam fully potty trained.

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That's it for now.  I've got one more set of pre-Dexter photos I want to post - our vacation to Scottsdale from May.  That's pretty much ancient history when it comes to the kids, but there are some great pics in there that I want to post... hopefully I'll be able to post that some time soon.

We welcome to the world our new little guy, Dexter Bodhi Tay!

Dexter Bodhi Tay, born September 23, 2009

As previously mentioned, Sara had her OB appointment on Tuesday and her doctor said Sara was ready to pop.  After experiencing the 5-1-1 contractions that night, we went to the hospital at 1am.  Nothing was really happening so they asked us walk around for an hour to stimulate dilation.  btw, I think it's completely sadistic to have us walk around for a full hour at 2 in the morning - *I* was tired, nevermind Sara in her very preggo state.  It didn't help that the hospital was very busy and did not have any open delivery rooms - we ended up sleeping in the uncomfortable triage room until a room freed up at about 6am.

We moved to the delivery room and again waited for stuff to start...and waited...and waited.  Nothing was happening, Sara was not dilating any further nor experiencing stronger or more frequent contractions.  Sara's OB arrived at 9am, surprised that she had not been paged earlier.  She examined Sara and it turned out Sara had regressed overnight!  The OB decided that since we're at the hospital, we may as well deliver - she's pretty laid back about things like that :)   She broke Sara's water and then let things run their course.  Sara started to feel stronger and much more painful contractions... until she got Epidural, after which she felt nothing except happiness.  :)

The nurse came examined Sara a few more times through the day, and at 4pm expected that we'd deliver "around dinner time".  I went to the cafeteria to grab some food since I figured we had a couple hours, but 15 minutes later I got a call from Sara: "Get up here!  I've dilated to 9.5cm and am about to give birth!"  I quickly rushed back to the room to see the nurse prepping for delivery.  Everything was thankfully uncomplicated and unexciting compared to Cam's birth; it was all very calm and orderly with only Sara's OB and a nurse present.  The pushing stage was pretty easy -I know, I know, easy for the father to say.  Before you flame me, just know that I'm comparing this to Cam's birth- and after a few mighty pushes from Sara, Dex entered the world at 5:10pm on Wednesday September 23, 2009.  It was absolutely incredible to witness the birth of our baby boy.

As soon as Dex came out, I thought he looked way bigger than Cam and when they lay Dex on Sara, she felt that he was much heavier than Cam.  We were right on, as Dex weighed in at a very hefty 8lbs 3oz, almost a full pound heavier than Cam's birth weight of 7lbs 8oz.  I still can't believe Sara gave birth to an 8 pounder!!  I also think that Dex is cuter than Cam was as a newborn, most likely due to the fact that Dex spent way less time in the birth canal and so didn't come out all messed up like Cam.

That's it for now, I need to get some sleep.  I'll blog more later, in the meantime enjoy the pictures I've posted!

Ready to pop

Sara had her O.B. appointment today, and we're ready to rock.  Sara's dilated to 4cm so we are ready to be admitted into the hospital, but Sara hasn't had the 5-1-1 contractions yet (that's 5 minutes apart, 1 minute in length, for 1 hour).  So we've planned to have dinner, give Cam a bath, put him to sleep, then we're off to the hospital to have our baby.

...it all seems so organized, so civilized.  I suppose that's what happens on your second kid; we've been through it already so there's no fear, no sense of the unknown.  It's just a process we go through now.  Not that it's not exciting - I can't wait to see our new baby!!!

I've posted the final shots of preggo Sara.  She's not as large this time; actually let me amend that.  She was much bigger all over last time, but her tummy is larger this time - she's now at 45" around compared to 44" last time.  Her doctor expects our baby to be less than 7lbs, which will be smaller than Cam's 7lbs 8oz birth weight.  We'll see how it goes.

Don't forgot to keep an eye on my Twitter updates on the red box on the right (or follow me on Twitter) - I'll be tweeting from the hospital and posting pics that way, too.

Cam's become totally chatty, and of course it's all cute.  I had wanted to record every single word that Cam says, but I've totally lost track.  It seems like he picks up a new word almost every day!  Just the other day, we were playing with some other kids and they gave him a toy car, and Cam said "Awesome!"  I have no idea where he learned that, but he says it a lot now.

He was playing with a toy truck with a plastic crane, accidentally pulled the crane off, and goes "Uh oh!  Break it!"  He actually often says "break it" since a lot of his toys get pulled apart during the course of play...  he'll brings the broken toys to me and says "dada, break it" but really he's asking me to fix it.  I always say "do you want me to fix it?" so I think he'll eventually start to say "dada, fix it."

Cam's only recently started to say three syllable words, with the first one being 'chocolate', which he pronounces as 'cocolah'.  For awhile he was unable to say three syllable words, saying 'sickle' for bicycle, but now he is able to say "bicycle" and in fact often sings 'bicycle, bicycle, biiiicycleeeee' - I don't know why he sings that, but I guess it's a fun word to say.

I have the original 1986 Transformers movie on my iPod, and when Cam gets difficult during our restaurant visits I'll whip it out to get him to sit still.  It's his favourite movie and he often asks to watch it, but for some reason he calls it "Dehdehs."  He calls robots "ahbot" and I'm wondering if that's in part due to 'Autobot'.  His favourite scene in the movie is when Optimus says "Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost" and has the long transform sequence.  Cam uses a deep voice with a reverent tone when he says Optimus' name (which comes out sounding like 'eh-mus'), it's great.  :)

One of the cute things he does is he throws his hands into the air beside his head dramatically and says "Oh no!"  If Sara walks around the corner when he's not looking, he'll throw his hands up and say "Where go?"  He also says "Wha happen?" in a super cute way, I MUST record that on video!

He's unable to properly pronounce words that begin with 'sn' - he drops the 's' portion, so 'snake' becomes 'nake' and 'sneaky shark' becomes 'neaky shark'.

In one of Cam's books, Are You My Mother?, there's a large digging machine that is called a "Snort" due to the sounds it makes and subsequently Cam calls all machines that have a long neck-like protrusion like cherry pickers 'Snort' - or more precisely 'Nort' since he drops the 's' from sn words.  Sara's office complex has a couple of mini cherry pickers for window washing, and Cam gets excited to see them when we go pick up Sara.  If he doesn't seem them, he'll ask "Where the nort?"

I've gotta capture videos of all of the fun stuff he says, it'll be great to look back on it many years from now.

Happy Birthday Cameron!!!  :)  He turns two today.  We were worried that Cam's little brother may be coming today, so we actually held his birthday party last weekend.  He had a great time playing with all the kids, and we got so many great gifts!  I'm having trouble downloading the pics from the camera, as soon as I get that finished I'll post pics.

Newborn Cameron

In honour of Cam's birthday, here's the first post and pictures of Cam, and here's Cam's birth story.  Cam's birth was very interesting and makes for a good story, but I hope the new baby doesn't have such an exciting birth for Sara's sake.  Let's have an uncomplicated (ie. safe) birth, okay baby?

Speaking of baby #2, his due date is September 29, but Sara's OB expects the baby to be 2-3 weeks early, which means it'll be any day now.  We're ready to go: the hospital bag is packed, I've installed the baby seat, and Sara's mom is in town to stay with Cam when Sara and I head to the hospital.

Unfortunately it'll be difficult for me to blog while we're at the hospital.  I'll be tweeting instead, including posting pics to twitter.  You can follow along in the little red box on the right of the site.

Wish us luck!

I'm catching up on pictures, decided to post recent pictures from August events:

Cam was invited to Willem's first birthday on August 1 and we had a great time at a park in Berkeley.  There was a wagon there and Cam loved getting wagon rides, luckily other kids had fun pulling him around the park - Sara and I got to actually sit and enjoy eating and chatting with other parents instead of keeping Cam busy.

Just hanging around

Next up on August 8, Brian and Sooji visited us in our new townhouse, and we spent an afternoon playing in the nearby playground.  The playground is brand new, built less than two weeks before we moved in.  The equipment is soooo clean and shiny and it doesn't seem like parents really know of this new playground yet, as it's not been very busy.  Cam hit a kid milestone at the park: he hung freely for the first time ever!  He was holding onto a railing, then suddenly decided to lift up his legs and hung free!  He had the biggest grin while everybody clapped and cheered his accomplishment.  Haiden ran over to join in the fun, and the boys had great fun "hanging around."  :)

Then on August 9 we visited the San Francisco zoo's petting farm.  Cam was a little nervous around the sheep and goats, but got into it as soon as he saw a mini-tractor riding toy.  He very patiently waited his turn while a couple other kids finished playing in it, then had a big smile while he rode it around the farm.  Then we hit up the zoo's steam train and of course Cam loved that, since he's developed the fascination that all boys get for trains.

I've also posted pictures from as far back as April, but I'll blog about those pictures another time - it's late and I want to get at least the August pictures up.  Keep an eye out for the blog posting about the older pictures soon.