World Blog Action Day

It's supposed to be about poverty, but I want to address a related, but what I consider to be, bigger, issue of human trafficking. I just saw Call & Response today. Please check out the trailer, if you can't go see the movie. As a nursing mom, I'm glad I made the HUGE effort (keeping her up so that she will be tired enough to have a longer nap while E watches her, coordinating with E to time G's feeding to the last 30 minutes before the movie started and having him meet me near the movie theater to pick her up and swap cars/keys) to go see this movie. I'm proud to say that this was the first movie I went out to see in the theaters since G was born. E will be going with some friends tomorrow to see it. When I got home, E asked me if it changed my life, and I said to him, "I hope so."

I want to respond. I'm still processing how, but blogging this to you is a first step. While I watched the movie, I thought about G, not only about the world I want to leave for her (I want a world that has ended human slavery, not a world where there are more human slaves than ever in our history), but about how some of these children could be her friends if we lived in a different part of the world or society. It puts into perspective things like the presidential election, the economy and our finances, even being green.

I buy local and organic, but am just getting into buying "fair trade" (to ensure that the people who helped bring those products to me were given fair wages and treated fairly). We sponsor a child (we're on our second) through World Vision. But there is so much more that needs to be done.

We are supporting some friends who will be going on a trip to Thailand to help victims of human trafficking. We can't wait to hear their stories and see not only how they have changed lives but how their lives have been changed. I hope we can partner with more efforts like these, both locally and globally, and as a supporter and doer.

A quote (as well as I can remember) from the movie, "I don't want my clothes to be someone else's despair, or my food to be someone else's tragedy."

gDiaper update

I flushed one insert a few days ago, but just the insides, and threw away the liner, but the toilet sounded funny after flushing (not the normal smooth flush, but kind of burped air up which is not usually a good sign). It made me nervous, so after that, we are back on gDiaper hiatus.

However, gDiapers is paying for our plumbing bill, which is very nice of them. I was talking and emailing back and forth with one of the founders. 

I am in the process of cutting up her pei-peis (flat cloth diapers) to use as cloth inserts for the gDiapers (and putting her on the toilet or 7th Gen for poops). Seems like we are back to doing laundry almost daily anyways because of her messy eating.

Avocado Toes or Spinach Toes?

Apparently, food tastes better when sucked off toes than from the spoon. Last week's new foods were avocado and spinach (making up for the week before).

I used to like avocadoes, now, I'm not so sure...

Here she is discovering spinach...

I could almost stamp her footprint...

We've learned a few things from these early feeding experiences: 

-Don't have your baby wear white, unless your food is white. 

-Feeding G in a short-sleeve onesie is least messy (or roll up sleeves and legs as much as possible).

-Holding G's hands down helps contain the mess, even though she doesn't like having her hands contained.

-Use big bibs.

Her next spinach tasting went much better following these rules (see how clean her toes are, not to mention her bib and face?): 

And in case you think she doesn't ever enjoy any of her food, she does have her good moments:

Busy Week

But not in a good way...

Monday: S notices the master bathroom shower is draining slowly.

Tuesday: S buys natural drain cleaner (uses enzymes or something) but drain seems ok so we don't use it.

Wednesday: Master bathroom shower drains slowly again.

Thursday: Master bathroom toilet clogs, S plunges it. Hall bathroom toilet not filling up with water, after a few flushes, water starts backing up into the tub. Check back to the master bathroom to find water backing up into tub as well. Luckily, E was working from home that morning, so he helped mix the natural drain cleaner stuff (activates by mixing with warm water, has to let stand for the day). S scrambles to find somewhere to go after G wakes up from her nap since we have no working toilets. That evening, flush toilets to find problem still there. E buys regular drain cleaner and borrows a drain snake and attempts to snake drains. Still clogged and backing up.

Friday: E calls our homeowner insurance (free for our first year) and plumber comes. We have no outtake pipe so he has to snake through the roof, which isn't covered by insurance. S spends the rest of the day cleaning the floors (since the plumber wore his shoes all through the house and bathrooms), and triple cleaning/disinfecting the bathrooms (toilets, sinks, tubs). S also calls gDiapers to find out what can be done about the flushable inserts (we have returned to 7th Gen for now, but are considering several alternatives which include cloth inserts into gDiaper covers, only flushing the pulp part of the gDiaper and trashing the liner, try to start composting to compost the inserts). We are waiting to hear back from gDiapers, but so far they seem very nice.

Here's E's pic of what got snaked out of the drains: several weeks' worth of gDiaper inserts (maybe abou 25):

First Outside Photo Shoot

Since E's hobby is photography, we do our own photoshoots and haven't done any professional ones yet. My philosophy is that most of the people working at those kiddie photo places in the mall or department stores probably have no training in photography or creative arts, all they do is point and shoot with nice backgrounds and props, but limited time. On the other hand, G is familiar with us, familiar with our house/setting, we know how to make her laugh better than anyone else, and we have time on our hands to capture just that perfect look or moment. And we also would like to think we have a good eye as well.

But Gap is apparently having a casting call for new baby/kid models, so we decided to try out luck since everyone tells us how cute she is (and we think she's the cutest baby ever). Here are two of the four photos they took last Friday (notice that her head is cropped off, yet another data point supporting my theory that these guys aren't even photographers anyways):

Here are some other photos we dug up that we are considering using. We welcome your opinions so please vote for your favorite pic by leaving a comment.

We will also try to do another photoshoot with her to get some more pics to choose from, so stay tuned.

Non-English Vocabulary

My Chinese isn't good enough to speak to her in nonstop full sentence (I did try it but it felt funny), but I'm doing my best. I can talk to her in Chinese a little if we're with my relatives, but that's about it. Both Grandmas have bought us Chinese books to help us in our quest to have G be bilingual. It should also help to improve my Chinese as well as E's. I'm also doing a little bit of baby signing with her. 

Here's what we've taught her so far:

Signing words:

Mommy

Daddy

milk

more

all done

yucky

We've also done "please" and "thank you", but not much)

Chinese words:

nai nai (milk)

pei pei (security blanket, spit up cloth, yes, it's Cantonese, but my rationale was that it would also be to "pei" her, keep her company)

bao bao (hold, pick up, sometimes it's po po, in Cantonese)

ma tong (toilet)

da ku (big cry)

tu nai (spit up)

Wai Po & Wai Gong (maternal grandma & grandpa)

Tai Po & Tai Gong (maternal great-grandma & grandpa)

Jio Po & Jio Gong (maternal great-aunt & great-uncle)

G also just recently met her Da Gu Po and Da Gu Gong, so I guess she has those too, but since they live in LA, not sure how much she will get to see them and learn their names.

Korean words:

pongu: fart

dong dong: poop (we used to say da bien, in Mandarin, but have just recently switched it; we have a "dong dong on the ma tong" song)

What she currently says:

Aaaaa

Ggggg

Bbbbb

Vvvvvv

She's still working on her pronounciation, but we're getting there...

Houdini baby

G took a 4 hour nap this afternoon. When I unzipped her sleep sack (bag that zips up for sleeping, has holes for head and arms), she was only in a onesie. As I looked at her, I thought, didn't I put pants on her before she went to bed? Sure enough, at the bottom of the sleep sack was her pants. Weird. I have no idea how she did that!

There are now 4 new babies at church that are younger than G (all boys). Plus another friend outside of church has a 2 month old (a boy), and we have 4 more friends expecting this year (all boys), and one due in January (finally another girl!). E held one of the new babies (1 month old) last Sunday at church. At first he was hesitant to hold him because he looked so small and fragile. When we got home, E wanted to look at G's hospital and newborn pics to see how small she looked because he said it seemed like so long ago.

What's G working on these days? She can sit, and she can creep, but she can't go from sitting to creeping, even with the most enticing thing in front of her (S's plastic foot massager, gross!). We'll have to try again tomorrow, maybe with S's water bottle. She's also working on standing herself up and learning to "fill and spill" her toys (beanbag toys in giant empty Costco animal cracker bin).

What has G mastered? Creeping, she's really fast now. Pulling her carseat sunshade, she uses both hands and both feet to get it down super fast, as well as pulling it all out of shape!