Shadows, what scary things they can be

Last night, Naomi was playing in the living room when she saw her shadow against the wall. She asked, “Who’s that?” and pointed at it. I told her it was her shadow. “my shadow?” she said. For the next 5 minutes she ran around trying to touch her shadow, finding it on the floor, under her feet, on the wall. She would laugh as she exclaimed that she was stepping on her shadow. She found out that mommy and daddy had shadows too. Then at one point, she threw her blanket on top of her head, and Uncle Chris who was visiting, said, “Naomi, watch out your shadow is going to get you!!” Faster than any of us could have expected, she chucked the blanket on the ground and RAN her little legs over to where Austin and I were sitting, and started crying. Guess she’s really learning how to be scared of things. We spent the next few minutes convincing her that shadow’s weren’t scary and they kept us company. Austin and I gave our own shadow’s high fives on the floor, and she eventually followed suit and managed to get excited over the game.

Pose

Naomi posed for this shot.

Also note the shoes. She picked them to match her outfit...it starts already.

Coming Soon...

Baby Wei #2 is due January 15th. We just found out the gender last night. The first thing I did at work this morning (yea it's a SLOW SUMMER FRIDAY) was check out new baby clothes. Afterall Naomi was born in the summer, and baby 2 is due in the winter...a new wardrobe is a must.


Can you tell what we're having!??

Beach Day

A couple of weekends ago we went to Point Pleasant to live out our Jersey Shore dreams. Naomi was a little apprehensive of the sand at first, but quickly got over it and had fun digging a huge hole with Austin and Auntie Priscilla. The water was too rough to really go swim, but she loved jumping in the waves at the edge of the water. She would squeal every time a wave would come and hit her feet. She also yelled out that lots of the swimmers were "Naked", and cackled like a hyena whenever the waves would wash out any of the other beach-goers enjoying the waves.

First sips of Soda

Last night Austin and I were drinking a chinese apple soda. Naomi saw me pouring the soda into our glasses, and declared, "I want some." Austin informed her that it had a lot of bubbles in it and might be too spicy. She decided she still wanted to give it a try, so I figured I'd let her have a go. See what happens next.



Transcript:
Naomi: "it's bubbles?"
me: "yea there are bubbles in there"
Naomi: "HEY it's spicy!"
me: "it's spicy? it's not spicy, it's apple soda"
Austin: "do you like it?"
Naomi: "it's not soda..."
me: "it's soda. do you want to try it again?"
Naomi: "No....yes"
Naomi: "I just want ice"
drinks...
Naomi: "aeijfei bleh bleh iofwjaofe. I don't WANT soda. It's too spicy!"

Naomi in the city.

Austin has the day off today and is taking Naomi into the city for the day with our friends Rob, Susan and their daughter Emily who are visiting us for the day from Chicago. I'm unfortunately stuck in the office on this beautiful Friday morning.

Naomi on the big train into the big apple

26 months.

Naomi is 26 months today. I totally missed her 25 month update. Now that she’s 2, are the months less important? Well I’ll try to keep doing these for as long as I can remember!

As usual another month has gone by and in this month I feel like Naomi has grown by leaps and bounds. Every night when I pick her up from daycare, I feel like she’s a little more grown up than the night before when I kissed her goodnight. It’s completely bitter sweet, and I find myself wishing time could slow down all the time.

This month, we had our first parent’s teacher’s conference since Naomi started attending Bright Horizons. Come labor day, it’ll have been exactly one year since she first started. I feel like she’s been there for so much longer! Her teacher had incredible feedback for us, and told us how much she loves having Naomi in her class. Naomi loves music, she’s always the first one to run to the middle of the room for “circle time” where they sing group songs. She quickly picks up on all the songs, and claps along and does all the actions. She also loves loves loves to dance (yes these are all things we know but it was still nice to hear). Loves to draw, paint, and basically do anything artistic. She’s advance in her verbal communications skills and is extremely independent, (sometimes frustratingly so since she wants to do everything “by myself”). She can open up all her own food during lunch time, pour her own glass of water, eat all by herself, and even wash her hands with soap all without help. She’s a good helper and likes to help clean up during the day. She’s getting much much better at sharing and understands that she has to take turns with her friends. This is a HUGE improvement over her early days in the toddler class where she got into fights with classmates, and even pushed her friend Alli at a playdate we were at, at Alli’s house! The coolest thing, other than hearing all these amazing comments from her teacher, is that they gave us a portfolio book to take home and look through. It’s basically a big binder that they started maintaining for Naomi from day 1 of daycare, back when she was in the Infant room. It includes pictures of her, pieces of artwork that she’s done, and observations about her development from her teachers. One of the observations that sticks out in my mind was written by her infant teacher when she was 18 months. It said “Today Naomi saw her friend crying, and went to give her a stuffed animal”. I didn’t even know that happened. It made my heart swell with pride to think that my little girl who was literally just learning to walk at that time, was able to empathize with another child and try to bring comfort to them. She really is a sweetie. I’m so glad we made the decision to use the day care center that we do. It’s so incredible that they work so hard to keep us in tune with what our kids are doing and learning on a day to day basis. So much of this is what I ache and long for when I’m at work instead of being with Naomi, but it’s a little easier to swallow knowing how well she is loved and cared for by all her teachers.

Happy birthday daddy.

To the best daddy and husband out there, Happy Birthday. Love you more than words can describe!

Take 1



Take 2

Blogging

I had read about printing out blogs, but never actually looked into my self. I knew eventually I would want to print this blog to give to Naomi and baby #2 as a keep sake, but always figured I'd do it later on when they were much much older. But the other day my brother and I were talking about it and we decided to check out a couple sites. I must say, I never realized how EASY it could be to print out your blog!! I found one site (Blog2Print!)where I literally just typed in the url to the blog and clicked go. In 5 minutes I had a layout sample of my entire blog as a book! Too cool. I might end up printing it out every year.

Naomi's acting skills.

Naomi is quite the queen of dramatics. When she sees a character on TV crying, sometimes she'll put her head down in her arms and pretend to cry. When we're with a group of friends and start laughing, she'll run into the room and throw her head back with laughter just to join in. Here's an attempt at getting her on video, she's a little under the weather as you can see from her coughing fit, but still cute non the less.

Happy Friday the 13th everyone.

Happy Thursday xoxo Naomi

Naomi-ism's

I've said it time and time again, I'm constantly amazed by how much Naomi is talking these days. It seems like every day she learns more words and is stringing longer and longer sentences together. Half the time I'm cracking up at the silly things she says, half the time I'm wondering where the heck she picked this stuff up. Here are a few examples.

After washing her hands, Naomi looks in the mirror, holds her hands out and says, "All clean doggy!!" I think she originally heard "okie dokie".

When I pick her up from daycare, the first thing Naomi does is check out what jewelry I'm wearing. Recently I've only been wearing a diamond pendant that Austin gave me for our anniversary, and various pairs of earrings that my friend Haewon made. She always takes my necklace and says, "Daddy gave you this necklace?" Then she'll look at my earrings and say, "Oooh mommy I like you're earrings. Aunt Haewon gave you?" Of course when I do forget to wear earings she'll pull my hair back to double check, then say, "hey where'd earings go?"

When reading her Cinderella book, Naomi points at Cinderella and says, "Hi there beautiful".

One day she passed gas, but it sounded and smelled like it could be a lot more than just gas. I asked her if she pooped and needed to change her diaper. She smiled and said, "no mommy. naomi just farted..and pee pee'd too"


At the end of the Barney song when the phrase goes, "won't you say you love me too?" Naomi says, "I love you too!!"

After leaving a room (for example to go get her diaper changed), Naomi will proclaim to the room upon arrival, "I'm BACK now!!!"

Here we go again.

Yup that's me at 17wks pregnant. Excuse the sleepy face and the mess. It was 5am on my way to work. We're expecting a new arrival early January 2011.

It's been a crazy past couple of months, but we're all excited for a new addition. So far things have been ok with the pregnancy, other than the complete exhaustion and 24/7 morning sickness. In some ways the pregnancy has been a lot easier; I don't freak out everytime I feel a cramp in my stomach, I'm not being as strict about cutting out all the garbage I eat (probably not a good thing), I have a new OB in NJ, so I don't have to trek all over manhattan in the middle of a work day...

But in some ways, this pregnancy is beyond belief, difficult. I'm no longer able to be completely selfish and just take care of myself. I now have to consider Naomi and make sure she's taken care of. Thankfully Austin has been great and has been able to get out of work relatively early for the most part, and he's been taking care of Naomi at nights, getting her to take her bath and in bed. The only problem then is that I feel like I'm missing out on some of the last few precious one on one time I'll have with my baby girl. Everyone keeps telling us to cherish our time with Naomi right now while she's still the only child, but literally every waking moment when I'm not at work, I want to collapse and fall asleep. Thankfully my energy level has slowly been coming back as I hit my second trimester, so hopefully I'll start feeling a little better.

I've also been more stressed at work these days though and that's not making things any easier on the exhaustion or morning sickness front. I'm gaining weight much faster this time round, my stomach has definitely already popped, at only 17wks. I was looking back at old pictures from when i was pregnant with Naomi, and by comparison, I'm about as big now as I was at 27 wks with Naomi! Grrr.

We're also busy getting Naomi's new room ready. We've decided to keep the nursery a nursery, and move Naomi into our old office. We re-painted the blue walls to a light gray. The whole theme is going to be different shades of pink with gray. We already set up her bed and bedding, have a separate play area, and even painted a huge chalk board wall in the play section. We struggled with the room at first because it is so big, but decided to split it into a bedroom and a play room. We're using low shelves from Ikea to split the room up visually. While she hated the idea at first, and kept insisting that the nursery was "Nomi's room", with the addition of a play table and chairs, her princess tea set, some books and other toys, Naomi is quickly warming up to the idea of her "new room". She calls the room, "Nomi's new room". She loves playing in there while we set things up, and could spend all day in there if we let her. We're just waiting for some rugs to come in (from www.flor.com) and her curtains, we also need to get bed rails for her new big girl, full size bed. As soon as all of that is ready, we'll start transitioning her for real into the new room. It's scary and sad to think that she'll be out of her crib and in a big bed very soon. My baby girl is growing up. sob.

Nightly Prayer

Last night for her nightly prayer, Naomi said, "thank you lord for delphia (Philadelphia), Uncle Fish, and Naomi".