Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Tidbits of Naomi

I realize I've been a little melodramatic with my posts recently. And yet there is really so much to be thankful for because along with some of the struggles we've had this month, we've had some amazing times as a family as well. It really is a joy to watch Naomi grow and learn new things every day. Austin just finished up this video he's been meaning to put together for awhile, and I have to say, I cried after watching it. It's crazy to see how much Naomi has changed in just a few months. Anyway, here's the video, the first clip is of when she was just learning to crawl up steps, and here she is today, walking all over the house like she owns it.


Here’s to a better October.



It’s been a rough month for us in the Wei household. All within a month we’ve had to adjust to life without my mom around to baby us and taking care of Naomi, figure out scheduling with dropping and picking Naomi up from daycare, dealing with two colds Naomi has gotten from daycare, a nasty stomach bug both Austin and I got, being locked out of our house for 2 hours after a family walk when our garage keypad stopped working, a nearly lost finger, a car accident, a weird rash Naomi is getting on her leg and back, a spill backwards down some steps at a friends house, my credit card was stolen with $8,000 in fraudlent charges…honestly I think the list goes on.
The good news the month is almost over and I’m all for thinking that October can only get better. Afterall we have a trip planned for San Francisco for my cousin’s wedding which will be a great family reunion, followed immediately by a week in Cabo for Austin’s family reunion.



Thursday, September 24, 2009

This is the temper tantrum that never ends...it just goes on and on my friends


Naomi is an incredibly easy going kid. She has a fun tempermant and usually doesn’t have a ridiculous amount of temper tantrums, and when she does, it’s usually pretty easy to soothe, distract, or figure out what’s wrong and make her happy.

Yesterday was an exception. The only things that I could think of that might have made her difficult yesterday was that in the morning, after 5 straight days of me being home, I suddenly wasn’t. Then at daycare she developed a really bad diaper rash from all the explosive poopy diapers she’s been having due to the antibiotics the doctor put her on for her finger. When we’re at home, since we’re constantly watching her, we’re able to change her diaper as soon as we see (or smell) that’s she’s gone. At daycare I guess the change doesn’t happen as quickly and with the yucky diapers, the poor thing developed a rash.
Anyway, I digress….from the moment she woke up, Austin dealt with a fussy baby who didn’t want to eat breakfast, didn’t want to get dressed, and wanted to be carried all morning. When I picked her up from daycare, her daycare teacher told me that Naomi was a little bit up and down. I didn’t really know what she meant, but just assumed that Naomi was probably a little fussy, something her teachers haven’t really witnessed yet, other than the initial separation anxiety in the early mornings.
When we got home, I got to witness this “fussiness”, or what I like to call temper tantrum madness, first hand. Austin ended up having to stay late at work, so I was handling an overly tired, overly fussy baby all on my own. It was a hard night trying to get dinner ready, dinner fed was an even bigger struggle. Most of her food probably ended up on the floor rather than in her belly, as did her dishes and plastic ware. (thank goodness for sturdy ikea kids dinnerware!!) We managed to get a couple bites of mashed potatoes in only after I let her eat with my spoon out of my bowl. Bathtime was a struggle as Naomi crawled in and out of her baby tub and wrestled with me to put her clothes back on. Anyone listening in would have thought I was abusing her if they were to have heard her scream while I tried to feed her her antibiotics. Even drinking her milk before bedtime was a struggle as she refused to sit in her chair, and only wanted to sit in my lap, and I had to be sitting in the rocking chair, any other chair or heaven forbid, the floor, did not work.
Finally it was time to put her to bed, and my calm, happy, sweet Naomi came back. She cuddled up to me as I sang her her lullabye and kissed my cheek before I put her in her crib. She was so sweet, that I ended up holding her for just a little longer letting the calmness from the lack of crying melt away any tension I had felt earlier in the night.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Good child, bad child

I'm still at home with Naomi today, monitoring her finger and making sure it's healed a little more before we bring her back to daycare tomorrow. I love being at home with Naomi, especially now that she's older and more interactive, I have so much fun spending one on one time with her, it's a treat that's so rare these days with our busy work and weekend schedules. Though now that Naomi's older, she is getting more and more willful. We've had days where Austin and I put her to bed exhausted after nearly a whole day of temper tantrums and whine fests. We've struggled on ways to discipline her mainly because she's just so little and honestly has no way of understanding what she's doing is wrong and is probably just frustrated in most cases.
Today however, as I was digging in the freezer trying to find a pack of frozen dumplings that I was going to cook up for her lunch, Naomi kept walking over to the freezer to try and play with the drawers. I kept pulling her away and trying to distract her (yea our freezer is jam packed and it took me awhile to find the dumplings). Finally, her bandage ended up falling off through all of her struggles, and digging, and despite that she still wanted to dig through the freezer some more with an open wound. I finally ended up picking her up despite her screaming and kicking protests and decided to try giving her a time out. I put her in the corner of our kitchen, which was a struggle in and of itself since by the time she had her arms and legs wrapped around me. After getting her stranglehold off of me, and having her on the floor, she sat there, but wailed and cried loudly. It broke my heart. I found the dumplings immediately after that, and in what was less than 30 seconds, had naomi back up and was carrying her back upstairs so we could re-dress her finger. She was clearly upset but just rested her head on my shoulder, almost in resignation and acceptance of her punishment.
After we finished dressing her finger, which for the first time, she sat absolutely still and held her hand out for me, Naomi was in a great mood. We went back down to the kitchen, and it was like I had a whole different kid. While I cooked her dumplings and broccoli she walked around the kitchen with her Izzy doll, played with lilo and stitch and literally sang and hummed the whole time. While we were eating lunch, she ate everything by herself with her own fork and completely cleaned her plates, drank some of her water, then smiled and signed "Thank You" to me. She was rubbing her eyes by then and we cleaned up and got ready for nap time. After a quick song she was in her crib, and hugging her toys and blew me a flying kiss and waved bye bye, and within 2 minutes was fast asleep. Have to love that little kid, even when she makes me feel guilty about giving her her first time out!! =P

Monday, September 21, 2009

An accident filled Sunday


This Sunday marked a milestone that I hope we don't have too many of...
At church, Naomi was playing in one of the rooms that had folding doors and without getting into all the details, she managed to crush her little baby finger in there. I was right next to her and had tried to get her away from the door, but I was too late and her little hands were too quick for me. I quickly picked her up thinking she'd calm down in a couple of minutes after the soreness went away. To my dismay I realized she was screaming and shrieking louder than she had ever screamed before, and when I looked back at her finger, it was dripping blood everywhere. Thankfully we were at church where people calmer and of clearer mind than myself were able to help us clean out the cut and bandage her up. And again thankfully, our pediatrician network has an office that was open on Sunday and only 5 minutes away from our church. We drove her to the doctor's office where they decided against stitches and chose to wrap her finger in a pressure gauze, and to keep her from pulling the dressing off, ended up wrapping up her whole hand. We learned that the cut was so severe that had it been any deeper or lower on her finger, she could have lost her finger entirely. As it is, she may not have proper sensation in that finger for the next year (not that she'd be able to tell us).
I never thought I'd be the kind of mom that cried when her kid got hurt, but seeing Naomi in so much pain,and not being able to explain to her what was going on, or that the doctor was hurting her and wrapping up her hand for her own good, and how close we were from facing real major trauma to her finger, was just too much for me and I totally lost it, I was bawling at church in front of everyone (what made it worse was when ppl tried to comfort me!!) and I lost it when our less than sensitive on-call doctor told us we were lucky her finger didn't get amputated. I bawled like a baby on the ride home, even as Naomi had calmed down and had nodded off to sleep, and I cried again when I saw her playing with her blocks with one hand and she adapted and quickly learned how to maneuver and stack her toys with out her dominant right hand.
To make matters worse, on our way home from Target while picking up my brother who was coming over to visit us that evening, we backed right into a parked car at the train station. Thankfully no one was hurt and the damage was relatively minor, but it definitely didn't help our day get any better!
The day finally ended with poor Naomi exhausted and with her hand re-wrapped unprofessionally by Austin and myself after she had managed to slip her tiny hand out of the dressing.
Since it was unwrapped, we ended up taking pictures and sending it to my brother so he could take a look and perhaps give us any other advise. I'll spare you the gore and not post that pic here.
Today after another check up by our own pediatrician, we are all feeling much better after learning that yes, the cut was extremely severe, but that she was healing up nicely, and that the doctor felt comfortable with us just bandaging up two fingers, so Naomi has the use of her right hand back.
Of course as soon as we got home, she ripped off the dressing that was covering her two fingers since it wasn't secured around her whole hand, there really wasn't anything preventing it from falling off. So now we're down to just wrapping one teeny finger up with a single Hello Kitty bandaid. Hopefully she'll keep it on long enough for her finger to heal!



Saturday, September 19, 2009

15 Months


Naomi turned 15 months today. Though I didn't post an update on her 14th month, I feel like the difference we've seen in her development from 14 to 15 months was staggering. Although admittedly I probably tell myself this every month. One of the most noticeable is her willfullness. Naomi knows what she wants, and if she doesn't get it, she'll let you know through fits of tears and shouting. Right now we're trying to simply distract her. but pretty soon we'll need to have better methods of discipline!

Here are her stats from her 15 mth checkup, although all of these measurements are questionable (and probably on the high side) since she refused to sit still long enough to be measured.

Weight: 20 lbs (15%)
Height: 30 1/4 (60%)
Head: 48cm (60%)

Naomi's is pretty proficient at walking, she hardly crawls anymore. She's still very prone to falling down and for awhile was averaging a fall flat on her face every other day, and has the bruises to show it. She's bruised on her forehead, cheek, nose and even gotten a cut up and swollen lip. Surprisingly she hasn't skinned a knee or scraped any elbows or hands yet, but I'm sure that's next to come.
She's very vocal these days as well, most of what she says is gibberish, but she does know how to say a few words like
Mama
Mommy
Ah-ma (grandma)
Dada
Daddy
Stitch (our dog...although it sounds more like ditch, and no, she doesn't know poor lilo's name)
Hi
She can sign a bunch of words now too, which has made understanding some of her wants and needs a whole lot easier.
signs she knows are:
Book
Please
More
Drink
Thank You
All Done
Milk

She understands us more and more, we're finding ourselves having to spell things out, like M-I-L-K, S-T-R-A-W-B-E-R-R-I-E-S...

She can make the sound of a snake: Hsssss
She can make the sound of an elephant and do the arm motion of an elephant's trunk

She knows how to tickle, blow raspberries on daddy's belly, pick her nose (don't ask), point to her head, eyes, ears, toes, big belly and belly button.

She's obsessed with hats, socks, shoes, purses and jewelry

And she hates when I wear a ponytail and always tries to pull it out and sometimes cries until I pull my hair down, after which she starts laughing and smiling. silliness.







Thursday, September 17, 2009

Adjusting

Yesterday was Naomi's 5th day of Daycare. Every day when Austin drops her off, she kicks up a fit and cries as Austin tears himself away and heads off to work. Yesterday, when Austin dropped her off, Naomi went over to her daycare teacher Irina, asked to be picked up, kissed Austin goodbye, and didn't shed a single tear as he left. We're all slowly adjusting to daycare life.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Goodbye Ah-ma

My mom's leaving for SanFrancisco today, then she'll be heading to Singapore and then the Philippines. I can't even imagine how we're going to survive without her here. We've been so spoilt having someone home to take care and love Naomi while we're at work, and she even made dinner for us to boot! She's been here to take care of me when I'm sick, tired, and just demoralized or exhausted. I'll miss having her here to talk to when I get home; my best days are when Naomi and my mom are waiting outside for me when I get off of work. I know it's only for a short while and we'll see her during the holidays, but I still can't help but be sad. We're going to all miss her! Naomi has already learned so much from her, how to dance to silly songs, how to find her ears, eyes, nose, clap her hands...they've formed such a special bond and it's so fun to watch them interact. Thanks for taking care of all of us mom!!






Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Day care day 1

On Monday, Naomi had her first official day as a full time daycare kid. When she first got to the center with Austin, she definitely knew something was up; she clung to Austin's leg and her Grover doll and for a few minutes refused to even lift her head up to look around. She slowly got up and eventually was up and playing with toys before Austin left. Though she did shed a few tears when he got up to go, this was expected, and was no where near as bad as the tears we experienced her first time at daycare back in December. Her daycare teachers said she did great, after their morning walk at 10, she didn't shed another tear, not even when she was put down for a nap, or when she woke up in a strange new place. When I got there in the afternoon to pick her up, she scrambled over to me and gave me a hug. As we were leaving she walked out with her backpack, lambie blankie and izzy doll in tow, waved bye bye to everyone and blew flying kisses to all her teachers. The kid definitely won everyone over.

When we got home, ah-ma was waiting eagerly for us, and Naomi was so incredibly happy to see her grandma, lilo, stitch, and all her toys. For the new few hours before bed time she was all over the house, dancing, chatting (it was almost as if she was telling us all about her day in her own secret language), laughing, and shrieking with joy. I think she was happy to be home. =)

My mom and I kept pointing out how she seemed so much older than when we had seen her before daycare. Is it possible my little baby grew so much in just a few hours away from home?

Happily things went smoothly and she seemed to enjoy her day at daycare. It's definitely more exhausting to have her out of the house though, between earlier wake up times, extra driving/commute times, packing her snacks, clothes etc...definitely makes me realize how spoiled we've been with my mom here taking care of us.

dressed and ready for day care.

clingy at daycare

excited to be home!!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Salon les mommy

In preparation for daycare, I decided to trim Naomi's hair again. Her bangs are always in her eyes, and while that's something easily remedied with a cute little barrette, I know the likelihood of her coming home with any clips we put in her hair are close to none. So Sunday night we turned on the tv to elmo, plopped naomi in her high chair and I went to town on her hair. The end result was more uneven than I wanted and definitely shorter than I had originally planned on going, but the baby makes it work =)








Monday, September 7, 2009

Day Care

Naomi starts her full time spot at daycare tomorrow. I know she's more than ready, she's been doing so well at the church nursery and hardly even cries when we drop her off now. I also know how much she'll benefit from the stimulation and socialization from all the other kids there. Still, a part of me is sad that she'll be out of the house every day. That someone outside of our family will get to watch her as she grows up and develops on a daily basis. And I'll miss being able to call my mom during the day whenever I miss Naomi to get an update on how she's doing, or to talk to Naomi on the phone. Thankfully this is a short week and my mom doesn't leave til Saturday, so we all have a little breaking / transitional period. Not looking forward to tomorrow though. And even more so, I'm not looking forward to when we have to take my mom to the airport on Saturday. ugh

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Dancing queen II

As you may have noticed, Naomi likes to dance. Doesn't matter what music you play, it could be Happy birthday, or beyonce, she'll start shaking her booty. Well on Friday we received a beautiful skirt from auntie jen from her new girl's clothing line. Naomi LOVED it and as soon as she had it on, and ah-ma started singing, she started breaking it down. Thank you for the skirt auntie jen!!!






Friday, September 4, 2009

I wish I could sew...

I have a sewing machine I bought a couple of years ago. I shelled out for it after paying $10 to hem yet another pair of pants. Seeing that I have to hem every pair I buy (thank you parents for giving me the short and stubby gene), I thought I could save money and time if I learned how to sew. With some help from my sister in law, I figured out how to use the machine, and actually hemmed a couple of pants, and even fixed one of austin's messenger bags. But alas, that's where the skills, if you can call them that, end. And recently, it seems I've even lost the capability to hem my own pants, the machine just refuses to cooperate with me (to be honest I've stopped trying and have started a relationship with my tailor again). I did think about trying to learn to use the machine again; I bought a cute pattern for a little girls dress and even bought some cute pink material to make it with. Both are on my dresser collecting dust.
Anyway, even though I can't sew (YET) I love reading about other's who can, and I love seeing projects that others more talented than I come up with so I was ecstatic when a friend of ours started her a new store on Etsy. She has the cutest dresses, skirts and tops for little girls...and her model is adorable!
Check out her etsy site!! (http://GrowingUpWCharissa.etsy.com)

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Walking walking walking

Naomi is officially walking, meaning she's not just taking baby steps where she'll walk 2-3 steps and plop down. She walks to get places! She's still so incredibly proud of herself and probably still shocked at how much she can do when she walks from place to place, as evidenced in the huge, toothy smile, sometimes with her tongue hanging out, that spreads across her face as she's moves around. She's still incredibly unstable though and falls and stumbles whenever she starts moving too fast. Because of this, we insist on holding her hand while we're outside. Usually she's happy to hold one of our hands, but lately in a show of independence, she's been shrugging our hands off, wiggling to be free so that she can explore the world on her own. Usually not a problem in our backyard, but when she's in the front and barrelling straight towards the street...well, you see the issue.