49ers Practice!

The most exciting thing G's done lately, though, is go to a 49ers practice! This is what S was most excited about too, as it's her all-time all-sport favorite team (who cares that they've been in a slump for who knows how long, they are still the greatest team ever). I saw something on a parenting blog about open practices and while G is too small to fully appreciate it, I knew I would love it! And, of course, it's an excuse to get G her first 49er outfit and football! I was nursing her for much of the practice (I was able to sit in the shade in the handicapped section) but she still really enjoyed watching when she was out of the nursing wrap). Her second laugh was when we were playing with her raising her arms up and saying, "Touchdown!"

Here is G all ready to go Here we are waiting for practice to finish to get autographs

Our starting QB Alex Smith Eric Heitmann (Center) signed her ball and also interviewed us (maybe for radio?). Someone else later came by to take a pic of us and asked us our names and where we were from, so maybe G will be famous now in some 49er press photo, how cool would that be?!

Here is Cody Wallace (Center) signing G's ball.And here is LaJuan Ramsey (Defensive Tackle) signing G's ball, you can see her hand in the bottom of the photo Too much excitement for G, she fell asleep before we left (as Mommy was eyeing a signed Joe Montana photo)

5 Months!

G turned 5 months old on Friday! Every week we just feel that time is flying by us so fast.

What has G mastered lately? She can grab pretty much anything, bring her other hand to help hold, and transfer things between hands. She also still loves arching her back and does it all the time, she's learned that she can get more range of motion when she combines arching her back with pushing off with her feet. Her "G-g-g" sounds are really good, and she can kind of roll them when she's got some spit in her mouth too. I swear the other day I heard G say, "hallelujah!"

What has G been working on lately? She's practicing trying to get her toes into her mouth. She laughed again, and we can tell that she's still working on it, when she's got her mouth open wide smiling and that concentrated look on her face (kind of like her pooping face, but not so serious). She is also working on rolling from her back to her belly. Once in a while, she can make an "n" sound as well. I'm trying to get her to say "m" and "d" and "b" as well. G's also getting better at sitting up, but with her latest feet-pushing, back-arching thing, it makes it difficult for her to practice sitting.

We finally took off the infant headrest from G's car seat. She hasn't needed it in a while, but I just thought it would be more comfortable for her when she falls asleep. But she's totally outgrown it and it's sort of tricky to maneuver her into the seat with the headrest there. It's amazing how much she fills out the carseat from just a few months ago when we brought her home from the hospital! Check out the difference between the before (taken at 4 weeks, sorry for the soft focus, did it to blur out her nametags)... ...and now (taken at 5 months).

We also took her swimming for the first time. Here she is lounging in the "big pool". She didn't stay in the big pool for very long, all the other kids complained about it being cold, so we thought it might be cold for her too, so we put her in the hot tub, where she loved kicking the water. We had to take her sunglasses off because they are still a little big for her and didn't stay over her eyes very well. I debated about putting sunscreen on her (they used to recommend waiting until 6 months, and before that just keeping them in the shade). The pool and hot tub were shady, but it was patchy, so I worried, and in the end, we put some on her upper body that was more exposed (her lower body was further in the water and covered by us holding her or the inflatable). We gave her a quick bath at our friend's place, and she got spoiled by everyone holding her all night. She also got to sit in a high chair too, but only until the owner realized what was going on and put a stop to it!

Safe & Long-lasting & Fun(ky)

Not all toys are created equal. I tend to be somewhat obsessive when it comes to G's toys (for all things we purchase for her, for that matter). I research things to death, which is very easy to do with the internet. Things we stay away from, things that might have lead paint (yes, I've called several manufacturers about their products), plastics that might have PVC, BPA, phthalates, and other harmful chemicals, other things that may have harmful chemicals. Just because it's popular doesn't make it safe.

Recently, we bought a (used) Fisher-Price jumperoo. I didn't do as much research as I would have liked and on hindsight, may have preferred a different brand (I kind of liked the Baby Einstein jumperoo I saw at the store recently). When E brought it home and assembled it, he commented that it definitely doesn't "look" like G's other toys. I think it has something to do with the plasticy-ness of it, maybe the colors. I probably will not buy Fisher-Price again in the future, if I can help it.

So what toys do we like for her? We prefer to buy her toys that will help her developmentally, that are stimulating, and that can grow with her.

Lamaze: Great developmental toys. We have the Octotunes (we've heard bad reviews that it's hard for little hands to get any sound out of, but it will be fun for us to play songs for her, and we just liked it anyways), and the other octopus activity toy (Octivity toy or something like that) where each leg has something unique, like crunchy sounds, different fabrics & ribbons, a mirror, rings, etc. She really likes the legs that crunch.

Manhattan Toy: G has the Skwish, which she loves, it's wooden, safe paint, and makes a soft tinkling sound. She can easily grab it and wave it around, and it's easy for her to keep holding on to it even if a few fingers open up. She also likes to suck on it and is really good at getting the balls on the end to her mouth. I also like several other of their toys that I haven't purchased yet, like some of their stuffed animals, which are just funky and cute. The Whoozit is very popular, and comes in many forms, but we don't have one for G yet, don't know if we will, I'm sort of on the fence about it, maybe just because it seems so trendy.

Kushies/Zolo: These are the BEST. We have their playmat, one of our first big purchases for G. It's reversible, one side just has lots of black/white patterns on it, the other side has funky colored patterns with different fabrics and toys that velcro on. There's also bars that arch across from the corners and you can hang stuff from them. In the beginning, we just used the black/white side for her tummy time. As she got better and started rolling, we used the colored side more. Then we discovered she likes to kick the arches in the corners in order to shake the stuff that's hanging. She's been using it since about week 3 or 4, and she definitely hasn't maxed out it's usage yet (just wait until she figures out the peek a boo toy). We just recently got her the stacking rings, Zolo Boa, (again, fun colors, lots of different fabrics and ribbons, and each ring makes a sound) and some stacking bean bags, Bean Stax, both of which are still advanced for G, but she can grow into them. Both have lots of parts to them, and for now, we have only given her one or two rings to play with, and a few of the beanbags (the one that crunches). Things I'm eyeing: the Hugbug, stuffed animal with funky fabrics/ribbons/colors, and the arms pull through, so that if you pull the left side, it makes the right side short, and then you can pull the right side to make the left side short.

Under the Nile: Good for clothes and toys. This is a locally based company that has all organic stuff. We have a few of the organic cotton fruits & vegetable teething toys for her. Some research suggests that babies/kids are more likely to eat stuff they are familiar with (have seen before) than those that are foreign. Granted, a toy tomato that has a head may not seem exactly the same as a real one, but it's closer than a ball or some other random toy. The fruits and veggies come in sets, but I've been cheap. A local store had some on sale that I've bought, so far, she only has the beans, banana, tomato, and mushroom. I'm eyeing the grapes, corn, asparagus, eggplant, broccoli, strawberry, and all the others for future purchases. BTW, the beans was the first one I bought, because it seemed like the skinniest for her to grab and get into her mouth. I somehow recall it being one of her first toys, but don't remember if I bought it before or after she was born.

There are lots of websites and blogs I read to get ideas and information about safe and educational/developmental toys.

If I feel up to it later, I'll put some links up so you can see exactly what toys I'm talking about. Amazon has a lot of them.

Gotcha!

I must have some hidden spit-up target on me that only G can see.

Last night, in our effort to bump up G's bedtime, we (again, royal we, it was only me feeding her) started feeding her at 9:15pm. At 10:15, I got her off one side and gave her to E to change her diaper and get her into bedtime clothes (we do this to wake her up more to finish feeding her). While they were busy, I got distracted on the laptop and started surfing. E was holding her for an extra 10 minutes waiting for me. The instant he passed her over to me, she spit up. Not huge, but just enough on her and me that we both needed to change clothes.

Me: Why does she always spit up on me, you were holding her for a good 10 minutes.

E: I don't know. (Hiding a laugh)

Me: Has she EVER spit up on you?

E: Oh, of course. There was one time...

Me: (interrupting) One time? Great.

E: Ok, never mind.

(In case you were wondering, the second half of G's feeding also took an hour and we put her to bed at 11:30. Part of the problem is that I fall asleep too. The trick is to have E be around to keep me awake but not disturb G, a tricky balance.)

My clothes regularly go in with her wash because of spit up. Take Saturday, for example. After our hike, we went to eat at one of our favorite restaurants. Between dinner and dessert, (G had been making gagging sounds which we assumed was just her gagging herself with her fingers) G had a major spit up all over herself, my pants, the bench we were on, and some on the floor E had been sitting right next to me, but he was completely untouched.

E went to the car to get her diaper bag and comes back just as dessert arrives. E says to me, "Can I take a bite first?"

I gave him that look that said, "Did you ask me that just to annoy me?"

Granted, it was a warm cobbler with ice cream, which slowly melted as we had to wipe down everyone and everything and change her.

Don't worry, E still managed to eat his dessert while the cobbler was still warm and some of the ice cream was still cold.

Photo Update

Here's E playing "airplane" with G (one of the activities suggested in our book). She loves being really high up in the air. The double bonus is that it's a good workout for the arms (E needs that "weight-bearing exercise")! We've also tried "throwing" her up in the air a few times, but we're not sure she knows what to make of that yet. We're also "supposed to" say "up" in a higher pitch and "down" in a lower pitch to teach her that voice can have different pitches. (If we spoke more to her in Chinese, she'd be able to learn that way as well.) She's already figuring that out, though, because she can make her voice go high and low.

We still have not pushed her bedtime as early as we would like. It seems that if we start feeding G earlier, she just nurses longer.

Here are some photos from our hike over the weekend. We ran into some friends from church, with their baby, which was kind of fun. I had to feed her in the car before we started out, and then again when we got back. We hiked to the waterfall (which was piddly) and then to the actual Castle Rock.

Here we are at the trailhead. Several pics were taken, this was the only one where G didn't have her fingers in her mouth!

This is how she spent much of her hike, looking up and all around, she loved looking at the trees and sky. Yes, it's a much better view than looking up at our ceiling at home.

Here is G asleep during the middle part of the
hike on the way to the Castle Rock.

Here we are at the Castle Rock, or one of them, at least...

Putting Pants on an Octopus

G loves to kick her legs, she does it all the time, in her crib, on her changing table, holding her, on her playmat (both tummy-side and back-side), in her carseat, etc. It's great exercise for her, but makes getting her dressed a challenge. This is what happens: Insert one leg into pantleg, insert other leg into pantleg, insert first leg back into pantleg, insert second leg back into pantleg, re-insert first leg back into pantleg, re-insert second leg back into pantleg, and so on. You don't realize until trying to put pants on a baby, that they actually have many more legs than you think.

She is still sleeping and we are waiting for her to wake up so we can take her hiking. Every week we try to do something intentional with her, take her somewhere different, let her experience something new.

We also gave her different things to smell this week, according to our cool new book (the activities really work, I tried an activity on a friend's 2 year old and he loved it). We think she liked the fruity lotions and the cinnamon and cloves.

Anatomy of Sleep

Like I said in a previous post, G sleeps 11-12+ hours at night now. What exactly does that mean? Just like adults, babies (and kids) have sleep cycles. For babies, their sleep cycles are 30 minutes long and get longer as they get older. Anyways, I thought I'd detail out how G sleeps (and how she spins).

Last night we put her to bed at 11:20pm (yes it's late, we are still working on shifting it earlier, I started feeding her at 10). She complained a bit, had one loud cry, then fell asleep by 11:30pm. All's good. Sometimes she is so sleepy she doesn't complain at all when we put her to bed and goes right back to sleep, I think the longest it took her to go to sleep was maybe 45 minutes, but it was mostly talking and complaining, no crying. If we put her down too early like we tried to the other day, she just complains and cries, and we (the royal we, which is actually just me) eventually (I think it was over an hour) had to just feed her again.

Around 12:30, we heard her cry. It was actually crying, mixed with loud complaining. We listened to her from the family room and waited (listening mostly to see if her crying would get louder or softer). E timed it - 8 minutes later, she was back asleep.

This morning around maybe 6 or 7, I heard G cry again. I have no idea how long it lasted, it wasn't loud enough or long enough for E to wake up. I laid in bed listening to her, to see if I needed to get up. Eventually she fell back asleep, and so did I.

When E left for work this morning around 9:30 (late for him), he checked in on her, she was partially awake, rubbing her hair. She cried for a few minutes, then I just heard her talking to herself (and maybe to the animal friends she has on her crib bumper), heard her sneeze a few times, she got the hiccups, and eventually went back to sleep again.

She doesn't always cry so many times during the night, in fact, last night was more on the unusual side. My guess would be that she might half-wake up 1-2 times. But E & I continue to agree that we are very lucky when it comes to G's sleep.

Here are some pictures of how she spins herself around:

G's starting position (actually, before I got the camera, her feet were pointing towards the giraffe)

Leg lift & Ab crunch #1

Back arch #1, check position

Leg lift & Ab crunch #2

Back arch #2, look around

Insert fingers and go back to sleep

20 weeks

It's official! G can laugh! Yesterday afternoon while we were taking a walk, I thought I heard G blow a raspberry, then I thought I heard her laugh. Later that night, E and I were playing with her on the couch, making funny noises and faces at her, and she laughed! We both heard it, it was so exciting, but of course, she refused to do it again, no matter what we did. Oh well.

She continues to love grabbing everything she can. I also think she's learning that when she's in her carseat, that means trip outside, something exciting for her to try as hard as she can to stay awake for.

The other day, G didn't want to nap, so I put her to work on her play mat (tummy-time). However, being the mean Mommy that I am, I blocked her right side so that she could work on rolling to her left. G struggled, complained, and finally laid down to take a finger-sucking break, and fell asleep. E and I debated what to do with her, leave her on her belly (a SIDS no-no, always put them on their backs to sleep), move her to the crib (risking that she might wake up), or put her in the carseat so we can go out. Anyways, it didn't matter, by the time we finished taking pictures of her, she woke up on her own.

Our latest project with G is to shift her night-time sleep. She has officially hit the 12 hour mark, but we are trying to get her to bed earlier, so she can wake up earlier, allowing S to get out of the house with her to run errands.

Here's G pausing from her workout to pose for a picture.

Oh, and we've figured out the spinning baby mystery. G spins both while she is sleeping and when she half wakes up. We spent several days often peeking in on her when she's sleeping in her crib. After hearing her make some noises, we peek in to see what position she is in. Sometimes we peek in without hearing her make any noises. In both cases, she has often changed positions. Sometimes she will be in an L-shape, with her legs bent. Our tricky baby also will be shifted when E checks in on her in the mornings before he goes to work, and by the time she wakes up, she'll be back in her original position (hoping Mommy and Daddy won't know about all the fun she has in her crib at night!).

19 weeks

G has become a spinner baby. She spins in her crib on her back (while supposedly sleeping) as well as on her tummy during her "tummy time" work outs. It's been quite funny for us to sneak in to her room to check what "position" she's rotated herself to. Sometimes she can rotate 180 degrees in just 15-20 minutes, and yes, oftentimes she will get herself back to the 12 o'clock position by morning (though we know better that she wasn't like that all night!).

The weather has been so incredibly hot again. Yuck for heat waves. Makes us wish we hadn't been so environmental when remodeling our house and refusing to put in A/C. But some friends of ours just got back from a missions trip to Mexico where they were building houses (The same trip E & S did a few years back), and it reminded me of how there are so many other parts of the world where A/C is totally unheard of, where they don't even have insulation either, where it's much hotter, where they can't drive in a car with A/C to a nice cool mall with A/C. This is an especially hard lesson when G won't sleep and so I end up having to hold her and nurse her all day long (which happened yesterday). She took one normal nap in the morning (1.5 hrs), then the rest of the day, she wouldn't sleep on her own, and so I ended up having my own little 12-pound heater during the heat wave (not to mention she smelled like sour milk from her spit ups).

So what has G been up to besides spinning? She loves to jump and kick in her new toy.

She might be starting to prefer her thumb to fingers. And she's starting to wear hair clips that both of her grandmas have given her.
Here we are at a park with friends for a picnic and fireworks. It was warm when the sun was still up, but it got chilly later. She had so many layers on, plus my nursing wrap over her head to keep the heat in. I tried to nurse her to sleep before the fireworks started, but of course once the noise started, she wanted to see what was going on. I covered both her ears with my hands and let her watch. She wasn't scared at all and watched the whole thing with her eyes wide open! Our curious baby!
G touched grass for the first time. She totally loved it, stepping her feet back and forth, she totally didn't know what to make of it!
G's quickly approaching the 12 hour mark (she's had several 11+ hr nights) for night-time sleep, pretty amazing. And she's still talking up a storm, she especially likes to talk during church, when my women's group is sharing prayer requests, and when we pray.

Photo Update

This is how we put G down in her crib:

This is how we sometimes find her:

So the question is how many times each night is she spinning around in her crib? Does she do it in her sleep or when she semi-wakes up? We'll need a night video or video monitor if we want to find the answer. Last night I went to check on her about 20-30 minutes after I had put her down for the night and she had already done her 180. She unfortunately woke up about 3 hrs into the night, but was still able to get her 10.5 hours in after that.

Here is G in her new bathtub. Bathtime is Daddy-time. Now we need a collection of bath toys for her. Notice her ball, which used to be tied to her stroller has now been reallocated for bathtime use. A few of her teething toys that we used to link things off her play mat have also been reallocated. I'm excited, because I've been eyeing this since before she was born, and now we have an excuse to get it. I thought it was so cute (and functional as well, easy clean up and has a drain hole too! I don't care about the mounting issues from reviews because we have to eventually remodel this bathroom to put in a proper showerhead instead of the handheld we installed, or at the very least, re-tile it because it originally didn't have a showerhead, so the tile doesn't go up very far).

I realized at some point that all her toys were unisex. That's not a bad thing, I'm actually a big fan of unisex toys (why push the whole gender stereotype stuff on them? I want her to do and be whatever she can dream, without being hindered by gender. Growing up a tomboy, I was never into the girly/doll thing, my toys of choice growing up were legos, back when you actually needed imagination to build stuff, not just following instructions to build what's on the box, but that's another rant). Anyways, so I liked this one because it's not all girly. Notice the natural wood rings at the arms, and I picked the blue one, it also came in a pinky-purple. Supposedly it smells like lavender too, but who knows. When she gets older, I will probably get her these dolls, they're un-stereotypical & multi-ethnic, if she wants dolls to play with.

When E's parents were in town last weekend, we took a little trip to Hakone Gardens. G handles her paparazzi very well. At one point E was holding her and Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom (me) were all taking photos of her.

Several people have commented over the last few weeks about her eyelashes being curly. No, I'm not curling them, they are naturally growing like that. And no, I'm curling her hair either, it's also natural, comes from S's maternal grandfather, who has wavy hair, as do all of S's maternal uncles. S's hair didn't become wavy until post-college.

It's been ages...

I know, things have been crazy around here.

Last week, G turned 4 months. That means that she got loaded up with shots at the doctor's office. The last time she had shots, she slept through the next two days. We were told by her ped. that typically babies will react the same way for all their shots. She did sleep, and seemed really sad and wimpery all day. But she also seemed hot. As the afternoon wore into evening, she seemed to get hotter and hotter, and I got more and more worried, and had E pick up some baby Tylenol from the store (the normal drops kind, last time he picked up some in rectal suppository form, eeww!).

When he got home, we prepared to give her some after debating what exactly 0.8 dosage meant (0.8 of the dropper not full but where the line marks the full dosage, and not 8 drops). I squeezed it slowly, just like they did at the dr's office for her oral vaccine (which I failed to mention that she promptly spit up and they wanted to re-give it to her, but we became concerned about overdosing so we dressed her and left without the second serving). For some reason, maybe because it was taking a while, I squirted the last bit in. G promptly spit up all of it. We called the dr's office advice line (our first time, not bad for 4 months and first time parents!) to find out if it was ok to give her another dose since she spit it up. We got the go ahead and did another dose, this time very slowly. G spit that up too. Second call to the advice nurse. But by the time they called back, her fever seemed to have gone down and she was nursing so we just decided to forgo the Tylenol. The nurse suggested if her fever went up again to use the rectal suppository form (great, we already have that!) and walked me through the instructions on how to insert them (apparently flat side in, not pointy side).

By the next day, her fever was definitely gone, but G was not her typical self. She nursed longer each feeding (and spit up more), still seemed sad and wimpery, and for the next few nights woke up at 5-6 hrs instead of her usual 8-10 hrs. After the few days passed, it seemed like all the vaccines had messed up her immune system so that she ended up catching the cough and congestion that E had earlier, and that S was beginning to catch. It's a dry cough, that makes S gag, but poor G hasn't mastered the ability to control her gag reflex yet, thus all the spit ups. We've broken out the nose sucker to use (yes, G hates it) once or twice a day. We are prepared to put saline drops in her nose also, but she seems able to breathe fine, so we are holding off on that.

Anyways, that was my last week, and my reason for not posting.

Also, E's parents were in town this past weekend visiting. We went to Hakone Gardens with them, which was pretty and peaceful (there was one wedding party there taking pictures and another one that had rented out the gardens for their ceremony/reception).

Pictures to follow later when I get a chance to go through and upload them.