Tag Archives: Milestones

A Special Valentine’s Day Post from Dad

It was exactly one year ago today when Jeni (39 weeks pregnant) and I finished an exciting-but-romantic dinner at our favorite DC restaurant in a most ceremonious celebration of many events: First, we started dating 5 years ago (on the 15th of February), due to months of many insistent phone conversations from my end. I knew I had met the woman of my dreams, and she had swept me off my feet. I wanted to start the rest of my life, but there was some disbelief on the other side. Secondly, and most obvious, was that it was Valentine’s day, and we always made a point to share a lavish dinner together and reflect on where we’ve come and what lies ahead. Third, as my wife was “with child” as they say, we were tipping our caps to the lives we had put together as boyfriend and girlfriend, and husband and wife. We had to say goodbye consciously, because the birth of a child changes everything.

We had scheduled an induction (due to “pre-eclampsia” watch) late on the 14th of February, 2014 for these three reasons as well. (That and my having my my hand in the baby shower pool for a 15th of February due date, too. Bragging rights, no prize) Continue reading “A Special Valentine’s Day Post from Dad” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Mommy’s Little Love Pug

So, not a lot to talk about this past week, really, but here’s a recap:

Bounces up and down on her crib mattress. She’ll actually do this if I say “Bouncy Bouncy!” She’ll look at me with a huge smile on her face and start bouncing. This is probably not a great idea to encourage her to do this, but for now I’ll go with it.
“Daddy” is coming along much clearer. She used to just say “Dada” but she’s now making the “E” sound at the end!
Pets the doggies REALLY nicely now. Pats them softly on the head only OCCASIONALLY pulling their fur. Such nice, patient little doggies we have.
We are BACK TO EATING BROCCOLI CHEDDAR BITES! Yay!!! She ate 2 whole bites one morning for breakfast (used to only eat part of one a long time ago, after I baked them originally)!
Chows down on yogurt + cinnamon. She’s also up to downing an entire (completely peeled) mandarin orange at breakfast and really loves popping plain simmered peas and sweet corn kernels (no seasonings or anything).
She’ll now eat the Happy Baby Rice Cakes that I got her a few weeks ago, too. I think eating crunchy wafers (like those Happy Baby Teething Wafers) and the rice cakes have gotten her more accustomed to the texture, so eating the Broccoli-Cheddar bites wasn’t as unfamiliar.
Plays tug of war with Mei Mei as she holds onto her rope toy
She picks out her books to read for story time. I usually default to “Won’t You Be My Hugaroo” and “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” for our pre-nap story, but lately she has been pointing to other books for me to read instead. Like, today she pointed and reached for “Count My Kisses, Little One” because she didn’t want me to read the Caterpillar.
She discovered a baggie full of pacifiers that she never liked. Now she’s found minutes and minutes of happiness rifling through them and try them all out, spitting each one out trying a new one out, spit it out, repeat. She gave one to Mei Mei and Mei Mei actually liked it and kept it in her mouth haha… Yes yes, we washed it off.
Here’s looking at you, Daddy! When daddy winks at her from across the breakfast table, Jia does her version of winking back. It’s just the cutest thing ever, she scrunches up her nose and squints both of her eyes. I’ll have to try to catch that on camera somehow.

Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Mommy’s Little Love Pug” »

Sleep Training Part 2: Sleeping Through The Night

(Excerpted from Sleep Training Part 1) To SKIP this section and go straight to Part 2, Click Here

Sleep Training isn’t new. The formal rules/guidelines are rather new, but I asked my mom what she did with my brother and me, and she said she didn’t train us to sleep. She had me in my nursery room, they didn’t have a monitor, and she closed my door and closed their bedroom door. She said “Yeah you probably cried, but you were fine.” ha!

Some parents choose not to formally sleep train and to let their baby grow into their own natural rhythms of sleeping and needing comfort through parental intervention. That’s completely fine and each and every family goes about the topic of sleeping at their own approach. After hearing some horror stories of non-sleep trained babies, we decided before Jia was born that we would read up, take notes, and train Jia.

So what’s “Sleep Training”? Continue reading “Sleep Training Part 2: Sleeping Through The Night” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: “Little Toddles”

“Little Toddles.” That’s Jeff’s new nickname for Jia, along with “Boogie-Boo” because she is always dancing or boogying. 🙂

Says “Up” when she goes up the stairs and when she is standing up after a diaper change on the table, mimicking the word “diaper” pretty well, too.
Says “Shoes” uh oh, this could be a problem haha… Saying “Mei-Mei” is getting better. When she sees Mei Mei enter the room, she actually says her name.
She excitedly digs into her toy box and can spend a while just sifting through it.
Can feed her Chomp and Count Dino toy (can’t quite push the food far enough into his mouth to the point where he recognizes the food, but she understands where the Dino’s mouth is and tries to feed him)
Free stands for longer lengths of time while holding something, does this more frequently nowadays. If she doesn’t realize you’re not holding onto her she stands for a decent length of time.
Throws tantrums and pieces of food when she gets frustrated.
She’s VERY vocal, I love hearing her voice. She vocalizes all the time, especially when she reaches to try to get something, it’s like she’s talking her way through it. It’s so endearing, I love it.
Points meaningfully at items that she wants. For example, when she’s eating she points to her sip cup because she’s thirsty.
Loves pears (this is good, because even if she loved a bunch of vegetables, meat, and all sorts of fruit when it was pureed, if you’ve been keeping up with these WSDW posts, you’ll know that it’s a gamble on what she wants now), ZUCCHINI (I chopped into small pieces, put on the stove in a pan with olive oil, sprinkled with thyme and cinnamon… it worked. And it was better-received when it had been refrigerated!), and (de-skinned) mandarin oranges but *sigh* she may be tired of deli turkey! What now?! That was my old faithful backup meal that I knew she would take. Well that was a good three week run.
Her feet are ticklish! So cute watching her smile and pull back her feet when I tickle her. She’s especially ticklish in the bathtub haha!

Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: “Little Toddles”” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Busy Bee

Oh boy, I remember when I thought having a newborn was tiring, then it got busier. Then I thought having a 5 month old was tiring, with her eating solids and moving around some. Fast forward to now and she’s crawling super fast, and before I know it, her hands are splashing water in the dog’s water bowl!

Here’s what she has been up to:

Loves closing doors, even if it hits her in the face as she closes it. Thankfully not quite reaching the doorknob yet.
The dog’s food bowls are great cymbals to bang together to make very loud music and now so are the 6″ baking pans I bought for her birthday cake.
My singing “Locked out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars keeps her entertained during diaper changes (some of the time). “Oh yea yea! Oh yea yea yea yea…!” and she tries to mimic me, haha.
She loves smoked gouda cheese!
Scrambled egg yolk with whole milk yogurt and a tiny sprinkle of cheese is our new breakfast! She loves scrambled egg yolk! (I’m staying away from egg white just in case of an allergic reaction)
YES to Trader Joe’s Chicken Chardonnay Apple Sausage boiled, then cooled in the fridge was a success two days in a row! Whew.
Other than that, we still only like deli turkey.
Loves cooked sweet peas and corn, thankfully, since she doesn’t eat my fun sautéed veggies in herbs and spices, haha..
Does not like any yummy creative pancakes or snacks that I’ve made now, like those yummy zucchini spinach and apple pancakes or broccoli cheddar bites. Sigh.
Loves Happy Baby Teething Wafers! We tried Plum Organics teething crackers but the texture isn’t as preferable. Loves her purple carrot and blueberry wafers, though. I’ll have to try peanut butter on these wafers because she doesn’t like PB on crackers or toast.
Definitely doing only 1 nap per day, still sleeping 11 or 12 hours through the night. (Visit this post here for sleep training tips) She’s completely happy to be awake and playing up until about 6:15ish, so I think we are in her 1 nap routine.
We have to either take the pugs outside while Jia eats or put them behind the baby gates away from the kitchen, because generous little Jia wants to share her food as soon as she sees hungry looking faces look up at her from her high-chair.
She’s much better at playing independently, now that she is a crawling expert. Basically the entire room is full of entertainment and mischief, so now I can actually run upstairs to the bathroom, go downstairs and throw a load of laundry in the washer and dryer, pack up for an outing, etc. while she happily plays and explores. It warms my heart instantly, though, when I see she misses me and speed-crawls over to me so I can pick her up for nuzzles and cuddles. Mmmm…
She can flub her lips. You know, when you take your index finger and you move it up and down across your lips and you can make funny noises that go, “blublublublub” She gets a kick out of this now.
She knows how to sniff something. I would take her feet, sniff them and go “pew!” and she would laugh. Now, she leans forward and curiously sniffs whatever I put in front of her face. This may or not be my toes.

By the way, I can’t believe there are this many things to write in just a 7 day span since the last post!

Mom thoughts: Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Busy Bee” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: My Little Chatterbox

In the past week, this is what Jia has been up to:

She now knows how to say her name (through mimicry). It sounds more like “Zshee-ya” but we’re working on it!
She eats yogurt now! Yay! It took us about 5 attempts, and the success came from her eyeing me enjoying my regular yogurt. I would give her TEENSY tastes of my yogurt (like the size of a grain of rice) and then my mother-in-law came up with the idea to have her try her plain yogurt in between tastes of mine. No scrunched up face, nothing! She flat out started sucking it down without needing to try mine again! Win!
Mimics lots of word sounds and faces, still amused by sticking out tongues. 😛
Stands alone for anywhere from a few seconds to 20 seconds and once she realizes she’s doing it, she sloooooowly squats back to a seated position.
She’s starting to subtly learn right from wrong by doing “bad” things slowly. For example – I think it’s so adorable – when she has found, say, a Christmas tree needle (yes because there are still hundreds of them hiding away in the crevice between the carpet and wall), I’ll say “Jia, whatcha doing??” and she’ll look at me, and put it up for me to see so I can take it. But she has had it in her hand for a long time, so that I can “catch her.”
Has learned how a rocking chair works. She shook the rocking chair and watched it move Mei Mei who was seated on it. She was belly laughing over this!
Doors open and close, and she really likes closing them and giggles when we say “Open!” “Close!”
Look away from the hungry beast! Looking away from Jia helps her concentrate on eating. This is counterintuitive, but it’s something I think a lot of us moms are learning as our kids enter this similar phase in life – if you stare at them and hand-feed each bite to a toddler who refuses to look in your direction and open their mouths, they (maybe) won’t eat. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. But, as of late, if I am looking at this computer as she’s seated in front of her new food, I see out of the corner of my eye a daughter who is devouring her zucchini/spinach/apple pancakes. (recipe below) That being said…
She knows what we mean when we say “In your mouth,” when she threatens to drop the food morsel on the floor. Does she always follow? Well, “60% of the time it works every time…”

Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: My Little Chatterbox” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Tongue Twinsies!

I really enjoy writing these posts. They’re so much easier to write; stream of consciousness writing at its best. I mean, I see why there are so many moms out there in the blogosphere writing about their kids these days. It’s so easy to write about your fascinating child, sharing with the world how your day-to-day is changing, what s/he is doing now, what challenges you’re facing, etc. No research, no citations, not having to make sure what you’re saying is backed by legitimacy. And, judging by the numbers I’m seeing, you guys enjoy reading this type of post, too! So I think I’ll be able to keep up with this What’s She Doing Wednesdays thing! (I’m definitely NOT going to start shifting away from the health-topic posts for Sproutings Saturdays!)

I found out that not only does she love mimicking certain things we do, but she LOVES sticking out her tongue and watching me do it back. As we stand in front of the mirror, she sticks out her tongue. She looks at me (in the mirror), so I stick mine out. She smiles then turns to look at me face to face to make sure I was still doing it. She laughs and continues to stick her tongue out in all sorts of directions. So cute.
She’s discovered how doors open and close. I was in the bathroom and she was kneeling on the ground one hand on the door, moving it back and forth. She realized if she pushed it enough, she could close it completely.
We can self-feed pouches! The picture above is of her first time holding and sucking down a pouch on her own! Now, deciding to finish it is another story. She only wants to eat from the pouch if she’s holding it, because if I hold it (after she gets going) it’s just not as appealing 😉
“Pacifier Pop” is what I’m calling this new game that Jia finds absolutely hilarious. Jia is the squirmiest most stubborn little booger during a diaper change, writhing and refusing to lay on her back while I remove sharp diaper pins, fold a diaper, or even take off her pants and socks. She turns on her belly and gets on all fours trying to grab at anything she can, whether or not that would cause her to fall off the changing table. She sometimes even cries because she doesn’t feel like getting changed. So, today she was crying, so I got her pacifier (Wubbanubb) from the crib and I brought it to her face then thought – I’ll put it in my mouth! So I did. She started reaching for it, lying down nicely on her back. I turned my head away dodging her hands and she starts laughing. Then once she grabs ahold of the frog, I refuse to let the pacifier go. Then I let her “POP” it out of my mouth with a loud pop. She CRACKS UP!!! I struck gold. At least, for today.

Mom Thoughts:

My car needed maintenance done so I was driving Jeff’s car to Trader Joe’s. With the shopping cart cover in the back of my SUV, I realized she would have to sit in a shopping cart without a cover. It actually turned out even better than using it, because the seatbelt on the cart does a much better job at keeping a squirmy Jia well-seated. Thank you, Trader Joe’s (and Target!) for having sanitizing wipes. (I usually bring a ziplock of Lysol wipes in my mom-bag but didn’t take it with me to TJ’s since I thought I remembered them having a bucket of wipes near the carts) This is nice to learn since TJ’s and Target are my second and third homes.
I finally took out the newborn insert from the Infant Car Seat. I’m probably really late on this one but my little girl is *sniffle* growing up so she doesn’t really need that head support anymore. Sad day. She is already 1.5″ away from the top of the seat, soon to be outgrown.
I learned a lot about carseats in the past 7 days. I think a purchase of the Graco Milestone or Diono Radian 3-in-1 carseat is in the near future. Once Jia outgrows her infant car seat, she’ll need a seat to continue rear-facing until 2-4 years old. Two years is the absolute minimum the AAP recommends, four years is preferred. But, I want a seat that will be more-inclusive, meeting requirements for when she turns forward-facing in a harness (until 5 years old), and then with a normal seatbelt in the high-back booster (from 5-10) and then a backless booster (at least 10 years old). I had no idea before THIS WEEK (thanks to Car Seats For The Littles!) that you needed that many car seats. Am I the only one? My gosh. This also means my in-laws will need to get one for their car since the big seats aren’t meant to go in and out of cars all the time. Why can’t they make infant car seats slightly larger so that it can hold them til 2 years old? Like an Infa-Toddler Car Seat. Then we can bypass getting another rear-facing seat and just get one for front-facing? I know there’s the Graco 4ever and a few other types that go from infant seat to backless booster, but I’ve learned those are super bulky, really heavy, hard to install, or don’t allow for much room in the back for other carseats or people.

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