It's been a while...

E asked me this morning (3 days ago when I started this post) when was the last time I posted. It took several attempts to "fix" the problem of not being able to upload and access photos, but it's done. E also cleaned out the virus/spyware that I apparently downloaded trying to get the second part of a tv show (Criminal Minds, in case you wanted to know).

Chinese New Year, G wore a dress that E's cousin brought back for us from Hong Kong. It came with a matching jacket and purse (for all her red envelopes!). Speaking of red envelopes, G really loved them, so bright and shiny, and they made a great sound when crinkled. Here she is w/ her buddy from church who is 2 weeks older than G. I think they look like the Emperor and Empress of China!

For the Superbowl, we shuttled between two parties, and luckily, G fell asleep in the car and slept through most of the second half. Yes, because we were party-hopping, we missed the big 100 yd interception/touchdown. If you look carefully, you'll notice that G's wearing her 49ers shirt, just to show her loyalties. For the week before the game, we prepped G with a trick where we say "Touchdown!" and she raises her arms up. We had to alternate watching her and watching the game for the first half, but since she was sleeping later, we both got to watch. BTW, that's the camera lens cap in her hand.

G loves being flung into the air! E can't wait until she's old enough for roller coasters.

These are her cool climbing blocks that G got for Christmas. Now she can really practice all her Little Gym moves... except for the rings, bars, and balance beam. G's standing on her own briefly and amazes us with her great sense of balance! 

While I do tend to be picky about her toys (natural materials like wood, BPA-free, phthalate-free, PVC-free plastics, etc), we are also creative with some of her toys too. This was her diaper box, and I cut out a bunch of different shaped/sized holes for her to drop stuff into and take stuff out.  She thought it was really funny to be in the box too! (BTW, not that we're looking for gifts, but if you're ever wondering what to get G, our favorite brands of toys are Plan Toys and Haba, both make great wooden toys with natural paints, Manhattan Toys is also a great company.)

We are still waiting for G's 3rd tooth to come in, we keep thinking, any day now... but despite only having 2 teeth, G is eating lots of table food, but continues to be really picky about what she eats (we found out at our Chinese New Year dinner that she likes the chinese wood ear mushrooms, weird!). We did discover a great trick from another mom friend who suggested we read to G while she's eating. And funny thing, it works! I guess she's distracted enough by the book that she forgets that she's supposed to be refusing to eat and actually opens her mouth. She only feeds herself stuff she really likes, and even then, she stops after a while and waits for us to feed her. Notice the corn on her chin and the strawberry in her mouth!

G's latest tricks? Her best one is that she can tell you where her brain is. She can also tell you how a lion sounds, and blink both her eyes. We're now trying to change over her "Touchdown!" trick to a charismatic "Hallelujah!" trick. 

Her current schedule? G has two classes now, a multicultural/lingual music class where we sing songs in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and maybe some other languages too. She also continues to take her Little Gym class. She's adjusting to the nursery at my Wednesday bible study too, doing a lot more playing and  a lot less crying. We haven't been going to the library because of her new class schedule, but are hoping to start going to a different library for story time. It makes for a pretty full week, especially when you start to add in the playdates that she has almost every week too!

technical difficulties...

We have been having some difficulties with our computers and have been unable to post photos. 

What's been up with G lately? We went up to Tahoe last weekend for our first Tahoe SNOW trip (she has been up once just visiting and once camping both were in the summer). We were lucky and our friend's dad volunteered to babysite G for us so we could both go snowboarding together (it was already 2pm by the time we got her settled in with lunch, nursing, and down for her nap). It was great to be up on the mountain together, even though we spent most of our time going to watch our friend race a slalom course. We found out later that our friend's dad gave G a chocolate m&m after she woke up from her nap, because she was watching him eat them. Sigh.

Then, on Friday, we were at a friend's house, and I was telling them the m&m story, and one of our friends wanted to give G a strawberry, even though they are supposed to be high on the allergy list and you're supposed to wait a while. Well, our friend ended up giving G a strawberry, and she LOVED it.

We've added a Music Around the World class for G, which is music with other babies and kids. Most of the music is in English, but some in other languages as well, which is why we decided to take the class. I think I was somewhat disappointed with the class initially, because I thought it was something I could do with her on my own, but oh well. She continues with her Little Gym class, the last class of the semester is this week, but we signed up for another semester. Last week, she got to hang on some rings, and she has also learned to flip around on a bar! This might be our last month of the library lapsit/reading time, because it only supposed to be for babies up to 12 months. We have a pretty full schedule, with something scheduled Monday through Thursday, with Fridays often taken up by playdates.

G's milestones: she's cruising pretty well (walking along furniture) and standing alone for brief seconds. She can now put things into boxes/containers (in the past she has only been able to take things out).  She's also eating a lot of table food, as well as spitting it out and dropping it on the floor. We wipe her chair, table, and floor 3 times a day.

Stay tuned, we are planning G's Baby Dedication and First Birthday/Red Egg Ginger party for the weekend of February 21/22. Both sets of grandparents will be in town. 

G's New Year!

G had a quiet New Year, as she developed a cough a few days before. So far, she's only slightly congested and still coughing, so we are happy that she has not developed a fever, as her dr thought might happen. But despite her cough, she is still eating and sleeping and playing fairly normally (she is still waking up once every night, usually between 2-4am, but it can vary). 

G is now eating more and more table food. Recent table food she's had: nai wan bao and (unsalted) french fries, mushrooms and cheese from S's hamburger. The reason she only had nai wan bao at dim sum, was that she slept through most of the meal, so by the time she woke up, there wasn't much available for her to eat. I still have not given her boba, though I've thought about it the last few times. Her typical diet these days: For breakfast, she has yogurt or cottage cheese with pureed fruit (pears, apples, and/or prunes), maybe some fried egg yolk. For lunch, if we are out, more finger food type stuff like olives, grapes, tofu, chunky soft veggies, egg yolk, bao (bread) or crackers. For dinner, multi-grain puree cereal mixed with two kinds of veggies (usually one green and one yellow/orange) and maybe some meat. She has now had all the main meats, turkey, chicken, pork, and beef (in that order). She has bao (brioche dinner rolls) or crackers at almost every meal because we can give her some to start eating as we are preparing her other food. Foods she's not allowed to have yet: fish, egg whites, nuts, honey. We've also avoided citrus fruits and tomatoes for their high acid content. 

A few days after she learned to feed herself, G also learned how to spit food out. Now we have a constant battle of her pushing food out with her tongue. The funny thing is that it's not necessarily that she doesn't want it or like it, it could be stuff she likes, and eventually she will eat it if you put it back in her mouth enough times.

In other news, G also got a new car! New Year's Eve, we took a family trip to a Subaru dealer, and 3 hours later, drove away with a used 2008 Subaru Outback wagon, Blue. G loves that it sits a little higher than her old car, so she can see more, and also that it has the LATCH system making her carseat a little easier to install and maybe making it a little safer too.  Her new car also has more storage/trunk space so it easily fits her stroller, portable high chair, spare diaper bag, with plenty of room for groceries and Costco shopping, and room for small family vacations like trips to Tahoe for snow and trips to Yosemite for camping.

G's First Christmas!

Besides giving us an early gift of self-feeding, G also gave us the gift of sleep Christmas morning. For the past few weeks, G has been waking up at least once during the night... every night. We've commented that it feels like we have a newborn all over again. Anyways, this morning, G let us sleep until around 8, then went back to sleep after nursing (her usual routine for the middle of the night feeding as well as the early morning feeding) and didn't wake up again until 11:30! What a nice treat for us!

Anyways, so G loved ripping open the paper wrapping. We actually knew that from an earlier holiday party where, after all the other bigger kids opened their presents and ran off to play with their new stuff, G was left there in the room mostly by herself, and had a great time playing with some torn wrapping paper, and an opened toy package (made up of a cardboard backing and a molded plastic front that was half torn from the backing). 

Yay! A new 49ers outfit for next season! And with Singletary as their coach, a new era dawns!

Sigh, G insisted that we buy this for Daddy. And this was in addition to an A's book, to go along with the Giant's book G already had.

G's first bass guitar. It's stuffed, not electric, but she can still learn some cool riffs.

G got lots of cool toys and books, but her favorite thing was this paper tag that she pulled off the first present. She didn't let go of it the entire morning!

Here we are at our friends' house for Christmas dinner. Our Santa hat family portrait.

G's self-feeding skills are amazing! Here she is picking up some egg to go with her cracker, how clever! Yum, tastes good together!

Merry Christmas to Mommy & Daddy! I can feed myself!

Massive update with photos (I've given up on photos from our Breck trip, you'll just have to wait for the scrapbook and come over to see them, sorry!)

This was about a month ago, at her friend R's house. R's been using these to help her walk for quite a while now, so we thought we'd let G have a try.

Here we are picking out our Christmas tree, Thanksgiving weekend. Daddy, I like THIS one:

Playing with her favorite friend:

G likes her friend so much she decides to kiss her:

One of our early feeding attempts, organic buckwheat soba noodles, brought us back to the early super messy days. Here she actually managed to grab some noodles.

G loves playing peek-a-boo, especially with her pei-pei and her toys. However, she hasn't quite figured out that part of the game involves hiding, this little Chinese book is one of the toys that doesn't work so well for peek-a-boo, but she still looks cute playing!

At home, since we don't have any fancy walkers, G uses the ottoman to push all over the house. Sometimes she enjoys herself and squeals out in glee and pride, other times she complains that we make her work hard.
G definitely has the crawl mastered. Sometimes, because of the hardwood, she does a modified crawl with one leg up (so one leg she's using her knee, and the other leg she's using her foot).
Here we are visiting Swing Central for the last time, they are changing locations because the building has a new owner. This was their holiday party. E & S met here, so we made a special effort to go for this final farewell. We actually had to leave for G's bedtime before band even got started! I think next time we will put her to bed and have a friend stay home with her and then we can go out to have some dancing fun!

Here we are at B's holiday playdate, another of G's friends. This is the contraption they used to help him learn to walk. E decided to give G a test run in it, quite funny, actually!

Here's a close-up of her in it. Note her fancy outfit, one of the few times we put her in a dress or skirt. Don't you just love her stockings?! Yes, those are stockings, NOT SHOES! Too cute!

And the biggest news of all. For Christmas, G decided to give us the gift of her self-feeding! This was last night when we gave her a big piece of a brioche dinner roll (we're supposed to be aggressively trying to gain weight with high fat foods). She used one of her hands to stuff the piece into her mouth.

This was this morning at breakfast, feeding herself organic Ritz-like crackers. It's like a switch turned on inside her and BAM, now she can feed herself!
Whew! What a whirlwind! I'll be back to post Christmas day photos...

G visits Santa

G's friend R (whom we stayed with when we first left the hospital) had Santa visit her house and invited a few of her friends to come over as well. There were about 6-7 babies total, and Santa's visit was 15 minutes. We had to be efficient in order to get all the babies photos taken with Santa. More babies were invited, so initially we estimated one minute per baby, which isn't really a long time for a baby to get to know a total stranger (that's huge and has this ginormous beard with his face all hidden, kind of scary, actually) and let that stranger hold you on his lap. A lot of the babies cried. G just had this serious look on her face, like when we introduced her to snow, sort of a, "what is this that you're making me do?"

Anyways, G ended up getting two turns on Santa's lap. Here are some photos, but we won't post the one we're using for our Christmas cards. Yes, you heard it first here! After getting home from Santa's visit, we were busy selecting photos and uploading to print them out, in addition to writing some text to go with it.

This is one of G's friends from my mom's group (I didn't ask permission but figured it's ok to post it  b/c you can't see her face, but it was cute that G was smiling and trying to touch her):

There were originally 3 babies standing by this coffee table, but here's G, the only one left. She still does her goofy squishy-nosed smile.

Here we are, G's checking out this Santa guy she's been hearing about. He seems ok.

Hi Everyone, look, we match!

busy, busy

Sorry everyone for not posting much lately...

After we recovered from the prunes, G got constipated again. Then I had a run-in with some bad milk, then G exploded poop all over herself and her carseat in the Target parking lot, and now she has a fever. Oh, and don't forget Christmas decorating, including cutting down our Christmas tree. I've just been too tired to post, but I promise I will get around to posting some pics soon, plus I haven't forgotten about posting some more

 pics from our Breck vacation.

Here's a teaser, G with her "toothbrush":