Naomi, what's your name?

When we ask Naomi what her name is, she responds, "Ella" and then laughs hysterically. Ella is a girl in her daycare.

Anthro for kids!!

It's a slow day at work today, so I snuck up to Anthropologie to return some things. I've been on a bit of an anthro spree the past month, and seem to have a problem where I can't walk into the store without buying something. Even if it's to return something, I always come out with more stuff! (crossing my fingers, really really really hoping for a good bonus year). Anyway, this time I came out empty handed...for myself. But I picked up a couple of cute things for Naomi since their kids stuff was on sale. Too cute!

18 months

Naomi turned 18 months on Saturday. That's 1.5 years old! Hard to believe we have a toddler living in the house. Gone are the days where Austin and I would turn to each other and say, "you know, she's so quiet and sleeps all the time, sometimes I forget we have a baby". This past month has been incrediblly exciting and yet incredibly challenging as Naomi becomes more and more independent and more aware of her needs and desires.
She can understand almost everything we say to her, and can resond in 1, 2 or 3 word phrases.
She's become very picky with what she will and won't eat...there are days when all she'll eat is rice, and will keep saying "rice rice rice rice, pleeeease rice!!!" She also went through a strawberry phase, a blueberry phase (bebees and boobies, oh and by the way, eyeglasses are asses).
She absolutely loves to dance, as soon as I pick her up from school she starts moving her arms and asking for music, particularly "Down" (by jay sean). yes we have Wei family dance parties everynight before bed now.
She's a great imitator, and mimics everything we do. eeks time to be careful here! She even knows how to use our iphones and can switch from app to app, and knows how to operate the games we have on the phones for her. She also knows how to say iphone (i pone, sounds almost like how she says apple).
She adores her grandpa and has given him his own nickname. In chinese she would normally call him "Gong Gong", but when she was just learning to talk she couldn't say G's, so she called him "Do Do" and the name has just stuck. Terribly cute.
I used to think Naomi wasn't the cuddly or affectionate type baby since when she was little, and you tried to hug her, she'd stiff arm you in the neck. These days, she loves to give you unsolicited kisses and hugs, and her hugs are real embraces now. Best thing ever.
I suppose the biggest change in Naomi this month has been her vocabulary explosion. The number of words she knows now has easily tripled. My mouth literally dropped open the day she asked me for my iPhone. And when we put up our christmas tree, she ran right up to it and pointed at the tree topper and proclaimed, "STAR!!".

With Christmas and the New year coming up, I'm excited to have some time off with Naomi and Austin. I'm utterly amazed at how much my little girl can learn in a day, and it makes me sad to think that I'm missing a lot of these new milestones while she's at daycare. Although I'm grateful we've found a center where the teachers adore naomi and naomi adores her teachers.

Faux sho!!

In my quest for cute/affordable and practicle winter wear for Naomi, I stumbled upon these boots from Crazy 8

Faux fur boots!? Yes please. They're so cute, ok probably not practical since they're not water proof...but I like that they're all white, Naomi will look like a little marshmallow princess. I know I couldn't pull of a look like this, so poor Naomi might just have to wear them for me.

Construction of a tower

Taking a break from our regular sleep updates, here is a video of
Naomi working on constructing the worlds tallest block tower

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Iron will and legs of steel

Naomi woke up at 9:30pm last night, jumped up, hung onto her crib railing, and didn't lie down. When I left for work this morning at 5:30 I snuck into her room, and she was out cold, head on the crib railing, butt sticking out, her legs must be completely exhausted. I dont even like standing up for 30 minutes at a time! (the good news is, since she's so used to standing up, maybe she'll hold up well in the lines when we go to Disney World next year). Since I knew she was asleep (she was snoring), I tried shifting her again so that she would be lying down. She woke up as soon as I moved her (proof that even though she's asleep it't not deep enough to really be giving her enough rest). She pointed to her rocking chair and told me to "sit". I tried patting her hoping she'd fall back asleep, but she didnt. As soon as I left she was back up on her crib rail, cried for 2 mins, then was quiet (and hopefully asleep).

update: I just got off the phone with a nurse at our Pediatrician's office. She told me to keep doing what we're doing. Don't go in there and let her stand up. Each night she'll stand up a little less. (NOT TRUE). I told her it's been about a week of this, and she said she highly doubts she's been standing up 9hours at a time. I told her she does, I'm literally up all night watching her on the monitor, I HAVE THE MOST STUBBORN DAUGHTER OF ALL TIME. she said, it didn't matter and that I absolutely should not go in and take her out of her crib until morning time

Ooops she did it again...

Yup folks, she stood up ALL night again. Lets just say a good portion of today was NOT fun as we dealt with a clingy, uber fussy baby. We finally gave her motrin cause she started to feel warm...and like a miracle drug..it kicked in and we had our happy baby back. I think she's teething...she's extra drooly, keeps putting stuff in her mouth, extra irratible, having trouble sleeping, runny nose, pulling on her ears...hopefully this is all just a phase!

She's sleeping right now, on time, at her usual 8pm bedtime, so we already have a one up on yesterday's performance. Here's to hoping for a good night of sleep.

Still Standing..

We had a couple of good nights of uninterrupted sleep. Then Naomi caught another bug, I'm guessing from daycare. So she has a runny nose and a bad cough again (and guess what so do I...I stand by my claim that daycare is full of carrier monkeys). With the sickness, Naomi's had a harder time getting to sleep since her nose is so stuffy, and as soon as we leave the room, she pops up, props herself up on the crib railing, and falls asleep standing up. As soon as I go in to try and lay her down, she wakes up and cries. So consensus amongst everyone we've asked for advice, says to just leave her. (someone actually told me to chuck the video monitor and go to bed,..which I did, and found her asleep, standing up, at 4am when I woke up for work). So i'm taking consensus' advice, and leaving her be. She might be uber cranky tomorrow, but hopefully it'll help her decide that sleeping lying down is a lot more comfortable.

Baby Gap luxe!!

I've been really good about not buying Naomi new clothes this winter. (let's not talk about shopping habits for myself of late...hey but at least I'm not growing anymore!)

Anyway, if I WERE to purchase anything, it would be these cute pieces from babygap's winter luxe line.

Love love love these shoes.....but anyone that has been to our house knows, Naomi has more shoes than most adults. Thankfully her feet are tiny and dont seem to be growing much, so she gets tons and tons of wear out of them!

Ok a faux fur coat? Too cute, and totally impractical. I could see Naomi chomping and licking the fur so she ends up looking like she's wearing a matted dog.

Love the silver brocade material. Do they make this in adult sizes?

She fell asleep standing up...

Yes that's right. Standing up. We've been lucky to have several days of excellent sleep. Even though she was sick, Naomi's sleep patterns were back to normal, in bed by 8, sleeping through the night til 7 or 7:30. Last night, the first night she was feeling better and fever free, she didn't want to go to sleep. She ended up crying for around an hour before finally just deciding to stand up and talk to herself in her crib. At 10, 2 hours after I had put her to bed, I went in to try and get her to lie down and settle down. Big mistake. She was fine while I was in there, but afterwards she was all worked up and started crying again. After a little bit of back and forth with me then Austin going in, we decided to try and let her work it out and hope she'd fall asleep on her own. The last time I checked on her on her monitor, was around 2am, and she was STILL standing up. My heart was breaking and I wanted to go in and tell her to lie down, or at least to rock her to sleep. But I knew if i went in, she'd get worked up again, plus I was woozy from some cold tylenol pm I had taken since i've been feeling under the weather myself. Finally I woke up to get ready for work at 4am and saw that she was STILL STANDING. I finally went inside figuring if she was awake I'd just rock her. When I went into her room, I felt my heart break into a thousand pieces. she had fallen asleep with her arms up on the crib rail, and her lambie cushioning her head. She was wobbling around, like you do when you're about to fall asleep on the train and catch yourself. I picked her up and lay her down in her crib. She looked up at me for a second, and then fell back asleep, this time in a deep sleep. The poor girl is probably going to be completely exhausted today, and possibly sore from standing up in that terrible position all night long.

The best part of my day

Is when I first see Naomi after a long day of work. She's been sick with a fever the past couple of days, so she stayed home with Ahma and Gong Gong yesterday. When I walked in the door, i heard her little voice call out, "mommy!!?" Then I saw her head peek out from around the corner, right before she came running towards me with her arms open wide and a huge smile on her face. You really really can't beat that.

Who needs sleep anyway

Naomi has decided that after almost 18 months of giving us very little problems in the sleep department, that it was time to start challenging us. We've been having a hard time getting her to sleep on her own at night. And when she wakes up in the middle of the night she hasn't been going back to bed on her own unless we go in to soothe her. Last night was the worst when she decided she didn't want to sleep from 1am til 7am!! We definitely got her out of the routine of sleeping on her own when she was sick and we'd stay in the room with her til she had fallen asleep. But now that she's better, Austin and I decided it was time to for sleep training. We had used the cry-it-out method when she was a baby and it had worked really well. She never cried for more than 20 mins and within a few days was going to bed without crying at all. Now, she could probably cry for hours and hours if we let her. Seems we usually end up caving in and going into to rock her again. Maybe we're just perpetuating the problem here, but it is SOOO hard to let your kid cry when she's screaming out mama and dada!! Today I checked out 4 books from the library with various titles such as "the no cry sleep method", "baby whisperer" etc. So far most of them are kind of hokey and stuff we already know/do, like set a good bed time routine etc. I just hope we get her to get back into a good sleeper soon!!

Shiners and runny noses

It's been a long time since I've posted...I'm finally back to full form, back at work and Naomi for once does not have a runny nose or a cough! Austin however has taken his turn in the sickness department and was running a fever before he conked out at 8:30 this evening (gasp he even fell asleep before Glee!!!).

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with over 25 guests, and thankfully enough food to feed everyone! Pictures to come later (yes I still need to post pictures from our vacation in Cabo and San Fran). For now, I'm just sharing a picture of Naomi's most recent accessory - her shiner. yes yes this is indeed the SECOND black eye that she has gotten in her short (less than 18 months). Although i argue the first wasn't REALLY a black eye...this one is unquestionably, and unfortunately a black eye. According to her day care teachers, she was "NICELY" playing in daycare, and lost her footing, and fell straight on a toy kitchen set. She banged up her cheek, and two days later has a couple marks on her cheek, and a nice black eye to show. Ironic that I was considering getting her a toy kitchen for christmas this year. I may reconsider that choice...just because.