Smiling Her Way Into 6 to 11 Weeks

Emery’s been growing day by day. She still sleeps a lot but when she is awake she is always looking around checking out the world. She’s looks at us a lot and is learning to smile when we interact with her. She also makes a lot noises just on her own, making baby babble noises. Here’s some photos of Emery:

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The Other Baby is Born

That’s a a long running joke but I think it deserves to be mentioned here that Ashley and I have been living in New York for over a year and a half because of a project that I have been working on during that time. My client is Allianz Global Investors and our job was to build a document and knowledge management system for them a long with a public website. The project took 20 months from beginning to end, with over 100 people contributing to it along the way. My role on the project started as the project manager but ended as the Engagement Lead. My Sapient team about 35 in India and 10 in the US at one time was comprised of Technologists, Creative Designers, Information Architects, Project Managers, and Quality Assurance Testers. It was a wonderful learning experience. I knew before I started that the project would be tough but never did I expect the kind of stress, pressure and long hours that turned out to be. However despite the challenge, it was the most amazing professional experience of my life so far. I got to see and lead a $5M project to the end and finally on August 2, 2010, we went live with the public website which was built upon previous 3 Releases of the Internal Document and Knowledge management system that we built starting Jan 2009.

There are so many memories from this experience, so many incidents and people I have come to work with along the way. The last weekend of launch was in of itself a memorable one and like Emery’s birth exciting and exhilarating. So after so long, my other baby is born and it’s live: www.allianzinvestors.com

Here’s some photos of my project team and our clients:

This was us in the war room right after the Go decision was made to Launch!
From left: Sudeep, Barry, Jomy, Josh, Sukhi, Rose, Paul, Catherine, Neal, Molly
The Evening We Went Live

This was my team in the US from Left, Josh, Sudeep, Sourav, Paul, Jomy

The Evening We Went Live

Pictures from Our Launch Cocktail Party (from left: Sudeep, Jomy, Josh, Brian, Alan, Paul, Neil)
Client Cocktail Party Post Launch Aug 2010

From Left: Inder, Paul, Neil, Neal, Brian, Alan

Client Cocktail Party Post Launch Aug 2010

From left: Henry, Kevin, Catherine, Neal

Client Cocktail Party Post Launch Aug 2010

The website: http://www.allianzinvestors.com
allianz new website

Ashley’s Birthday

Ashley loves seafood, especially oysters and shrimp.  So for her birthday, I took her along with Emery to “Fish” a great but reasonable seafood and raw bar in the West Village.  I excused myself from work early so we could avoid the crowds and we took a little family trip.  The restaurant was great, awesome food and we ate our fill of oysters.  Ashley was really giddy, she gets like that when there is seafood around, I love it!!

Pok’e wished Ashley happy birthday with a big hug
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Did I mention she loves seafood?
Ashley's Birthday

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We finished the night off with some little pastries from a local shop and spent the evening playing with Emery and taking an evening stroll through Times Square.  I have been super busy at work lately so it felt like a little holiday to escape and spend some quality time with my Huney on her special day.

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And ofcourse we need to include the gratuitous Emmy shot!
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Emery’s First Weeks

It’s been an eventful summer here for our family.  Lot’s of change has happened here to our little family with the arrival of Emery.

After Emery was born, my Mom came down for a few days to help us take care of her. It was good to have some help.  Our first night with Emery before my Mom arrived was an eye opener.  Little Emery cried every hour and even though we knew that we would have little sleep, waking up every hour to soothe her, change her and feed her, we kept asking ourselves, how long this would go for.  Then combined with people’s “get ready for the next 18 years of your new life” just added to our feeling that we would say goodbye to a good nights rest for good.

My mom arrived in the afternoon and stayed with us through the rest of the week.  It was nice to have her around to hold Emery and keep her company when we needed some time off to run errands or just nap.  Here’s some photos from Emery’s first week.

The New Grandmother

Emery Peng

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Emery with new Grandparents

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The following week, Ashely’s parents came to help out.  They were a huge help and stayed with us for 6 weeks.  Emery is very lucky to have such dotting grandparents.  Grandma Au would carry her non-stop, change her diapers and feed her like her own daughter.  They also helped us do a lot of grocery shopping going down to chinatown and making lunch and dinner for us.  Here are some photos of them the first few weeks.

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After one month, we had a traditional one month celebration for Emery.  Our families all joined and had Dim Sum in Chinatown.  I got a strawberry Shortcake for Emery from a wonderful Italian Bakery call Vineiros.  We all had a great time, except Emery decided to take a very deep nap that day and hardly opened her eyes through the whole thing.  Emery loves sleeping in her car seat!

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Here’s some photos of Emery Week By Week:

Week 1:

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Week 2:
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Week 3:
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Week 4:
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Week 5:
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Emery is Born!

Our little Emery born May 17, @ 8:20pm EST, 6lbs 12 oz at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital.

Here are the sequence of events that led up to Emery’s birth.

Friday May 14 AM: During our OB visit (now weekly),  Dr. Bradley tells us that Ashley is 2cm Dilated and she is doing well.  We start to feel like it could be coming soon!

Sunday May 16 Mid Day: I wake up late to find Ashley telling me that she thinks her water broke.  I call the doctor and we go into the hospital at 4pm thinking that it’ll most likely be a false alarm and that we will come right home.

Sunday May 16 5pm: The attending doctor look at Ash and confirms that her water broke.  Ash still isn’t feeling any contractions so they let us go home and see if we can start labor from home and go back to the hospital later than evening.  They encouraged us to walk and do a bunch of things that can induce contractions naturally.  We decided to walk home and on the way, there was a street fair. It’s the first one of the year and over 10 blocks on 9th Ave. closed for this all-day event. So our meal before the delivery turns out to be a variety of street food.  Awweesssomme!!!!

Sunday May 16 Mid Night: We check into the hospital, still no contractions.  The attending nurse helps Ash along with some pitocin at 4am the next morning.

Monday May 17 7am: Ash starts feeling contractions and over the next 12 hours goes into active labor.

Monday May 17 4pm: Ash can’t take the pain anymore and opts for the Epidural.  I am relieved!

Monday May 17 8pm: Dr. Bradley declares Ash is 10 cm dilated and she can now push!

Monday May 17 8:20pm: Ash pushes for a little under 20 minutes.  Ashley had a cough towards the end of the pregnancy and the cough turned out to be a blessing in disguise… it helped the baby come along considerably!  The doctor actually said that Emery was literally coughed out!  Little Emery is born!

Tuesday May 18 10:00pm: Ash and I check out of the hospital with our little Emery and we arrive home, our little family has begun!