The rat race began this week. K and the kids went back to school, work got busier than ever and K’s semester started off with a hellacious bang (whoever thought nursing school is a cake walk is just plain wrong). Most daunting of all, we’ve had to figure out a way for both of us to get decent amount of ZZZ's while parenting a three-month old.
Since K and I have never been disciplined enough to sleep-train our kids, we have once again decided to rely on our own strategies. There’s the “11:30 PM strategy,” which involves K awakening the little guy around 11:30 PM for his last feeding. This usually satisfies him until 6:30 or 7 AM, allowing us to get much needed rest. We’ve also set up a “Nuk-ing station”--a mattress, pillow and blanket placed right at the head of his crib. When B-Boy inevitably starts crying for his lost pacifier in the middle of the night, I would stumble into his room, pop it back in his mouth, and resume my slumber on the mattress for the rest of the night. My arms are just small enough to fit through the bars of his crib, which means I can pretty much pop the pacifier back in his mouth in my sleep. Yes, we are probably training him to constantly need someone to give him his paci, but what’s worse – night after night of crying, or a few seconds worth of Nuk-placement? You may be clucking your disapproval while reading this. But K and I are in crisis control mode--whatever it takes to make it work in the short term.
All in all, our first week wasn’t terrible at all. We’ll see how our second week goes.
On a related note, B-Boy has been acclimating wonderfully to his new daycare environment. According to the gals at the daycare, he coos and smiles for them all of the time—already the ladies’ man.
BB turned one month old last Wednesday! Here are a couple of pictures of the little guy and me. I was going through our photos and realized that there were virtually no Mommy-BB pics in our collection, so I took the liberty of staging our own photo-shoot session.
The Chinese tradition calls for a Full-Moon celebration for babies once they hit the one-month mark. It is a big deal celebration, since that's when the babies are first introduced to friends and relatives. My parents had a huge Full-Moon celebration for me at a banquet hall and invited over a hundred (yes, a hundred) friends and relatives. K and I neither have the money to throw a huge banquet, nor do we know a hundred people locally in Arkansas (come to think of it, we do not know a hundred people that we would invite to this event). So, we decided to scale BB's Full-Moon celebration down just a tiny bit--the guest list consisted K, EB, my parents and me.
EB got to choose her brother's birthday cake, although in the process, she decided that it was only fair to celebrate her birthday as well. Despite the fact that her birthday is still a couple of months away, we thought: why not? After all, BB wouldn't know the difference anyway. Or so we thought...look at the picture below. BB was fighting hard to reclaim his place in this celebration.
It was a grand celebration indeed. The grown-ups enjoyed a nice bottle of 2007 Earthquake Zinfandel, and BB enjoyed a nice bottle of 2011 Mommy Milk.
I feel like I've been perpetually behind on blogging, but having a newborn does that to you. We've been back at home for a couple of weeks now and I'm finally getting the hang of being a mom to a newborn again. Meaning, I've re-read all of my old baby care books and torn through a few new ones, each about five times over.
For the most part, EB has been fantastic - "helping" with the feeding, fetching his pacifier and giving him sweet little kisses on the forehead. To be sure, she's had flashes of jealousy, but mostly it has manifested in the form of clinginess to me.
I find myself often staring at BB, studying his beautiful little mouth, his tiny little toes, and when his eyes are open, looking at his dark, peaceful eyes. He's absolutely perfect, I think, and then marvel that he can be so beautiful yet at the same time, bear such a close resemblance to one of the monkeys in the movie "Contagion." EB thinks that BB looks exactly like Edgar the butler from the movie "The Aristocats," with his bald, wrinkled forehead. She even gave him the nickname "Edgar Peanut" for his resemblance to the butler and because he's small like a peanut.
Meet our little new guy - BB. Born on September 18, 2011 at 11:43 PM. 5 pounds, 11 ounces of wonder.
It was quite a dramatic day. I felt my water break while eating a chicken wrap in a booth at Mimi's Cafe (Heh...now you will forever remember this restaurant as The Place where I left my mark. Sorry!). So, we left EB in the care of a good friend and rushed to the hospital only to be told that it wasn't my water (it was) and that I probably won't be in labor for days (wrong again) and sent home. That night, I was back at the hospital with major contraction pains and 7 cm dilated. Things moved fast from there (fortunately, not so fast that couldn't get an epidural, though.) and we able to greet our little man just two hours after I had checked back into Labor and Delivery.
Welcome to the world, BB...our adventure together has just begun!
. . .a boy! But, I think most of you already know that since I had announced it a couple of weeks ago (a bit of retro-blogging on my part).
Here’s a 3D skeletor-style picture of the little dude’s profile -- adorable, right? I showed it to Mom, who promptly declared that he looks just like me. My uncle, however, disagreed, proclaiming that he’s a spitting image of K. We showed it to EB, and when we told her that it’s a boy, she looked a bit smug: “I know, Mommy.”
She had asserted that it would be a boy when we had showed her the image of his first ultrasound taken at 8 weeks. On what basis did my little future doctor make this diagnosis? “Because he has short hair.”
She even named the baby “Stephen.” We have no idea where she got the name from, but she’s adamant that this is his name – nothing will dissuade her from calling him Stephen (no offense to Stephens out there; yours is a perfectly good name; we just have something else in mind).
So for now, until we share his official name, Stephen it is.
Well, if you’ve seen K’s Facebook posting or if I’ve contacted you directly, you know our big news: I am pregnant!
K and I are thrilled, although this time around our excitement is a bit tempered since we went through a miscarriage last year. But in the end, we’re still excited as heck. After all, you never know what will happen at ANY stage, so there’s no point of being too guarded with our feelings, right?
A few differences this pregnancy: I’m in my 15th week, and my nausea/queasiness is just starting to ease up. This is a change from when I was pregnant with EB. That time, I was pretty much feeling great by the end of my first trimester. And what’s up with the maternity clothes that I wore when I was pregnant with EB? I cannot believe I thought it was OK to dress the way I did back then. My maternity wardrobe situation sent me into a frenzy, and I ended up going on a shopping spree at Gap Maternity and Zappos this past weekend.
We told EB a bit earlier than we should’ve, which made me very nervous at first. I didn’t want to have to have a difficult conversation with her in case something went wrong with this one as well. She was so excited about being a big sister that she announced it to everyone (and I mean EVERYONE ) at her school. At circle time, her teacher asked her if she had some news to share. EB went up, and proudly announced: “I am having a baby!”
To finish off this posting, I want to share a little video from "Google Search Stories" that’s bound to put a smile on your face.
And in case you are wondering after having watched this video...no, we're not having twins :)
