Tales from the Suitcase

Tricky Kid

2012-02-13T20:01:00.001-05:00

So I guess I would conclude that I had some false labor pains today. I was awaken at 5:30 this morning by what I thought was the beginning of labor. I felt some contractions that were bearable and somewhat regular. Dave even stayed home with me and worked from home in case it was the real thing.

When Dave got back from picking up his laptop from work, I laid down to take a nap as I was pretty tired from not sleeping much the night before. I got a decent nap but that meant the contractions had stopped or weren't strong enough to keep me awake. The rest of the day they never got mor e intense or frequent. I felt them occasionally whole walking or standing but it was not consistent. We took a walk in the late afternoon to see if it might help, but not much to report here.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised after last week's check up that this kid might psych me out again. It's very frustrating and causes a lot of anxiety about what to do next. So at this point I guess I'll continue to go to work tomorrow. Dave is just going to carpool with me from now on so I don't drive anymore. On the bright side I guess this means I'm that much closer and my body is practicing. But my mind is tired of the false hope. I guess I better get used to these tests on my patience as that is a big part of parenthood, right?

38 Week Check Up

2012-02-09T23:08:00.001-05:00

Disappointed. All my hope from last week's appointment was crushed today. The doctor checked and ordered an ultrasound to make sure the baby hadn't done a somersault. Good news is he's still head down but decided to flip over to a posterior (sunny side up) position. This means he's higher than he was last week and not putting pressure on my cervix. So I went from being 2-3 cm dilated to 1-2 cm. I didn't realize it was possible to regress but apparently it is. In other good news, his heart rate was a healthy 147 bpm and my fluid is at a good level. I thought it might be a good thing to have another ultrasound but he's so squished in there that you couldn't make much out. She did tell us it's still a boy in there though. Haha!

In other positives (can you tell I'm trying to convince myself of positive outlooks?), my weight gain is still in control. And all of this motivated me to do yoga tonight to try and get this kid back into position.

37 Week Check Up

2012-02-02T23:21:00.005-05:00

There is hope! I was so pleased to hear the doctor tell me today that I am 50% effaced and 2 cm dilated. While I know that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going into labor anytime soon, it gives me hope since I had zero progression with my first pregnancy up until 40 weeks. The other good news is that the baby's head is down and getting into position. I need this hope as the days are getting slow and I wish I didn't have to go to work everyday just so I don't have to answer all the questions about when I'm due and how I'm feeling, etc.

Today was a busy day, and I really didn't get a lot done at work. We had a hospital tour before my doctor's appointment and everything ran late so I was basically gone all morning. I was really shocked during the hospital tour to see the normal room as it was so much smaller than at the Winter Park hospital where I had Mei Li. I had only seen the bigger room when I visited Tasha, so now I REALLY hope to get one of the bigger rooms. The doctor told us that this is not a busy time of year for babies. It's just all about timing. Other than that, I was really pleased with what I saw at the hospital.

In other not so great news, the health screening I did at work showed I had high tryglicerides. I asked the doctor about it today to see if pregnancy had any effect on it, and he said it would, but that my tryglicerides were still unusually high which could be genetics. I do know that runs in my family, but my cravings this pregnancy and lack of exercise can't help. Not to mention I had cake the night before the health screening. So I'll have to pay attention to that after this pregnancy is over.

Well, I've done it again and stayed up too late. It's not really helping with my constant tired feeling. Thank goodness the weekend is here and a potentially slow one at that!

20 Months

2012-01-31T23:24:00.002-05:00

This is going to be another brief post because it's late at night and late being posted. I kept waiting thinking I would get around to weighing her, but we are completely out of the habit, so it just doesn't happen anymore. Things have been going well. She is still sleeping fairly well. We have been having fun observing some new things now that we have the video monitor set up. And sleep hasn't been disrupted with the addition of her brother's crib and rearranging of furniture in her room. The only thing that seemed to happen is she was a little upset the first time we put her down for her nap after setting up the crib this weekend, because I think she thought she could try out the new crib.

In other news, we keep occasionally trying potty training with her just because she talks about it. We were going to install the new toilet seat with the built in toddler seat, but found out it wasn't the right size and we weren't willing to pay the extra bucks for the one that was. So we've returned it and opted for the cheap Sesame Street one that we'll just put on top of the regular seat when she's ready to go. We thought having Elmo and Ernie (her favorite characters) on the seat would help. She goes through the motions and says she wants to sit on the potty, so we undress her and take her diaper off. But as soon as she's done recognizing the characters on the seat she wants off. She really just wants to play with the seat. I don't know if we're doing any good going through this ritual as I haven't read up at all on potty training at this point, but I figured getting her familiar with it shouldn't hurt. I may find out later that it did, but I'm trying not to push the training issue since there's a chance she'll revert when the baby comes and she seems him in diapers.

Back to Sesame Street, we really don't let her watch that show, but something must be happening at daycare with it because she is learning the characters. She started recognizing them in books people gave her but we hadn't started reading to her. And she's pretty obsessed because they're on her diapers too.

One other random fact, I don't think I mentioned this before but a week or so ago I let Mei Li try some grapefruit because she kept asking for it when she saw me eating it. I warned her that she might not like it, but she really did! Ok, I must go now. Goodnight world.

1 Month To Go

2012-01-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

So today officially marks one month left until my due date. It seems so far away! LOL. Anyway, I figured it was an excuse to blog as I have had some random things on my mind that I wanted to jot down. One thing related to the fact that I was reading a Facebook status update that Vanessa posted about how much weight she has lost already since having the baby last week and some of the comments that followed led me to something I had never thought about. Two of our mutual friends that also happened to be nurses were swearing by belly binding and losing the post-pregnancy belly. One particularly swore of its effectiveness on getting her separated abdominal muscles back together. It's something I never thought about because I figured their only purpose was to act as a girdle to hide the postpartum belly and that there was no actual physical benefit to it. I started researching it a little tonight to see if there was any hard proof behind it, but didn't necessarily find hard scientific facts about it. I was particularly interested about the rejoining of the muscles as my doctor said it was possible that mine never rejoined after the last pregnancy. I was troubled that after all the weight I lost, I still didn't have a nice, flat stomach. I may just try it after this pregnancy because at our Christmas party, I walked away with the Slimaway, so it's not like I'd have to buy anything.

Well, with one month left to go we still have to get the crib set up. It arrived last week and the mattress arrived today. So we're hoping to get around to it this weekend, although it is already a busy weekend without that in the works.

A few random notes about Mei Li. I think we're making progress on her naps. She took 1.5 - 2.5 hour naps all weekend and today at daycare took a 2.25 hour nap. The only bad news is that she won't do it in her classroom now that there are a lot of kids (there were 7 today vs. the 4 she is used to), so they had to take her to the office for her nap. Mei Li's vocabulary is growing by the day. Her current fascination is with airplanes and helicopters in the sky. She'll say she sees them every time we're in the car, regardless of whether there are any in the sky. When we're outside, she points them out and asks me for more when they've gone out of sight. I try to explain to her that I have no control over how often and how many airplanes fly by our house. She has added a new Spanish word to her vocabulary, frutas. She goes back and forth about whether she says fruit or frutas, but I try to encourage both. Tonight she also said something that sounded like nina (I don't know how to type the squiggly n), but there was no context, so I'm not sure if that was what she was trying to say. As for her getting ready for the arrival of her baby brother, yesterday she correctly responded to my questions when I pointed to my belly and asked her what it was (baby) and then when I asked her what the baby's name was (Jack). So I was excited to see that progress. She also felt the baby move yesterday, which I'm not sure what her thoughts were on that. Now that we're catching up on some of her sleep, she's had a lot of energy. I have been playing the toddler station on Pandora for her and the Mahna Mahna Muppets song came on and she danced like crazy to it. Then tonight after picking her up from daycare, she was literally running and spinning in circles around the house.

I better sign off because I actually have the opportunity to get to bed at a decent hour. Sleep has become a challenge for me lately so I feel pretty tired a lot of the time as I wake up not feeling rested. I have started to have to wedge my body pillow underneath my belly to get some comfort for my hips and back, and I never had to do that with Mei Li. I realized that I need to be careful about my weight now not because I'm worried about the weight gain number itself, but I should be conscientious of it for the weight of the baby and my chances of a VBAC. So today I resisted a really delicious looking donut in the cafeteria at lunch and got a fruit salad instead. It's tough to do as I've been feeling really hungry these days, so I find myself eating more snacks. Here's to hoping I have the willpower to make it through to the end.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

2012-01-21T00:23:00.001-05:00

I guess since it's after midnight it's not technically Dave's birthday anymore, but I wanted to do a quick post about it. Today was Dave's birthday and we had a good time celebrating. Since it was Friday, I had the day off to be with Mei Li, so I took her to the office to visit Daddy at work and take him to lunch. Dave's choice, we went to the Indian buffet and it was excellent as usual. Then in the evening we had family dinner night with the Putt/Dinsley crew.

The birthday boy ended up doing a lot of the cooking as we have been trying to have a particular meal for a while at our family dinner nights, but for one reason or another it wasn't working out until tonight. So we had what is now being called DFC (Dave's Fried Chicken), which is his dad's recipe for fried chickettes (vegetarian). It's one of my favorite meals and we've also been wanting to try a potato recipe Magally had been raving about, so they brought those. Then the birthday boy insisted on making his own dessert for his birthday because no one else knows how to make it like he does. So he also baked some biscuits for strawberry shortcake.

We ended the evening with games. He requested that the Putts bring Dutch Blitz, but of course the evening wasn't complete until we ended it with a couple rounds of Rook as well. It was a nice evening despite some road blocks we've been having with our weekend plans. First of all, I was quite upset when my birthday card that I made on Tiny Prints didn't arrive, when it was scheduled to arrive yesterday. I hope it at least comes tomorrow. Then we had some plans to do dinner and a movie tomorrow night, but our babysitter got shingles. So we might have to do a Plan B.

Happy birthday to our favorite Daddy! We love you and think you're the best!

35 Week Update

2012-01-19T22:28:00.002-05:00

I had another OB appointment today and it was uneventful as usual. Unfortunately, my weight gain is higher than I'd like, but the doctor made no mention of anything and says that all my measurements are looking good and on schedule. I've reached the 30 pound weight gain mark, which means I really need to slow it down. I think I've been indulging in too many sweets these days with various celebrations. This weekend will be hard as it is Dave's birthday tomorrow, so I'm sure there will be more to indulge in.

The baby's heart rate was higher than usual today, in the 150's. I think it was because he was particularly active and kept hitting or kicking the doppler. Something else that was sort of funny about my appointment today was that I almost forgot to pee in the cup. Right before I went in the bathroom I handed the nurse my FMLA paperwork and she asked me a couple questions about it. This ended up taking my mind off the task at hand and I just went to the bathroom because I had to. I remembered at the very end I should have collected some in a cup and barely got enough for the nurse to do her test. I was so annoyed with myself for forgetting.

This week was the health screenings at work for our wellness program. It's the first time I've participated since they just started offering the incentives to spouses (they used to only offer the incentives to the primary person on the insurance regardless of employment, and that was Dave). Anyway, one of the measurements they typically take is your waist. They weren't going to take mine since I am pregnant, but I told her to do it anyway as I was curious to see what it was. Come to find out, I've put on about 14 inches to my waist! YIKES! No wonder everyone thinks I'm due tomorrow instead of in 5 weeks... Today a particularly tactless executive asked me if I was having multiples. He did this right in front of my friend who is an HR Director, and she tried to buffer the situation by saying I was just near the end of my pregnancy. I am having trouble with shirts fitting over my entire belly these days. Have I told you how ready I am to not be pregnant anymore? =)

Micah Alexander

2012-01-19T21:57:00.002-05:00

Welcome to the world Micah Alexander. Some of my oldest and dearest friends, Vanessa and Mike, became parents yesterday. It was extra special because Micah was born on his late grandfather's birthday. I know that meant so much to Vanessa for Micah to be born on Uncle Alex's birthday and I'm so happy for her that she got her wish. Everyone seems to be doing well. I was sad I wasn't able to visit them yesterday, but it got late by the time I would have been able to see them and everyone was exhausted.

Seeing them in the hospital reminded me of when I was there having Mei Li. It's the same hospital, so that helped. Plus, she had a c-section and Mike was feeling the same daddy pains as Dave was having to do a lot of the caring for the baby since Vanessa can't move very much. I don't think I've been back since I had Mei Li. The weird thing is it made me more anxious to get this show on the road. I am ready to not be pregnant, so I'm ready to be there at the hospital having this baby. I know, I still need to mentally prepare for having a newborn to care for, but there's something so surreal about those first few days in the hospital.

It's awesome that both times I've been pregnant I've been able to share the experience with close friends. There are a lot of us due around this time, so this is just the start of beautiful babies to come.

Happy 500!

2012-01-11T21:16:00.002-05:00

Blogger tells me this will be my 500th published post. It has taken me just over 6 years to get to this point. Boy have things changed in that time. I've gone from dating to engaged to married to mother of almost 2. I've had 4 different jobs, 2 cars, 1 house, 2 surgeries. I traveled to Greece, Thailand, China and all over the US. Welcomed 2 more nephews and 1 niece (blood related) and many more "nephews" and "nieces."

When I told Dave that I had 500 posts, he realized he had a lot of work to do to publish them in more books.

I want to thank all of you who read this blog, especially those of you who have read all 500 posts! I don't even think Dave can say that. Here's to the next 500 posts and may they be interesting for at least me to go back and read. Cheers!

Silly Girl

2012-01-11T21:06:00.002-05:00

We've had our share of funny moments with Mei Li today and we have pictures to prove it. Yesterday on our way to daycare, she kept talking about the sun as it was in her eyes. I told her that we may have to bring sunglasses the next day to help keep the sun out of her eyes. Then she spent a lot of the rest of the ride to daycare talking about the sun and glasses. So this morning after I got her dressed, I asked her if she would like to try on her sunglasses. I put them on her and Dave showed her what she looked like in the mirror, as she often likes to check herself out when accessories are put on. She was quite pleased with the way she looked. We set her up in her highchair for breakfast and I asked her if she'd like to take the sunglasses off, but she did not want to. She would mess with them and take them off so I tried to take them to put them aside and she would freak out and beg for the sunglasses. She proceeded to eat her breakfast with her sunglasses on as seen here. I even think at one point she said she was pretty in them.

Doesn't she look like Elton John? This brought laughter to our house this morning and the ironic thing is that we had a gloomy morning so she didn't even need them in the car. It worked out because she forgot about them by the time we headed out.

The next couple of pictures require some explanation as well. On Monday evening, Delt and Andra stopped by to give Mei Li a Minnie Mouse dress that Andra had bought as part of a set to get the Minnie Mouse ears headband to wear during her Disney Marathon last weekend. This prompted me to break out my Mickey Mouse ears headband that I've had for some time. Mei Li didn't care for it that night, but discovered them the next night. So tonight when we got home she saw them again and wanted to wear them as she played while waiting for dinner. She was prancing around and pushing her doll around while bobbing her head side to side.

My own little Mei Li Mouse. Isn't she cute?

And if one accessory wasn't enough she then found the sunglasses and wanted to wear them too. So Elton John meets Mickey Mouse, and this is what we get. See how she's smiling? This is Dave showing her how she looks in the mirror. She's not vain at all!

I'm glad she's so happy despite all the sleep troubles we're having right now. I don't know what to do about it. This is the second day in a row that she's only taken a 1 hour nap at daycare and we haven't had much more luck at home either. I don't know that I can attribute it all to teething, but the only other thing I can come up with is growing pains. I was researching it last night and they say those don't typically start until age 3, but that the pain can wake kids from their sleep. The reason I started thinking down this road is because she has been complaining in the morning and evening about her knees. She'll touch them and say sorry, which is what she sometimes says when she hurts herself because I'll say it to her if I accidentally get her hair while putting on her bib or run into her or something like that. Anyway, she doesn't seem phased by the lack of sleep, but I know it's not normal and it bothers me. Her nighttime has gotten better. She's less wakeful after we've been giving her Tylenol, but tonight we're seeing if she can go without it. She still basically sleeps through the night, although it seems like less quality sleep because of the wakefulness. And she's waking up at 7:15 every morning, where she used to sleep until 7:30 - 8:00 if left alone. Anyway, I'd really like to get that 2-3 hour nap back. It will definitely be helpful once her baby brother arrives.

Crib Bedding...Check!

2012-01-09T22:35:00.002-05:00

I can now check one more thing off my list. I found this bedding set on Zulily today. It was a pretty good price for all it included: crib sheet, bumper, crib skirt, comforter, valance, diaper stack and 3 wall hangings. I probably won't even use all of it, but it was still a great deal. Plus, if I don't get around to doing the wall art I really want (the world map set), I'll have these wall hangings to decorate with. It's really hard to find travel/world type decor for babies/kids. So when I saw this, I figured it would be as close as I would get and the color scheme will work well with the green walls in the nursery. The set is even called Little Getaways. I just realized the stripes in this set are very similar to the comforter on our bed. Now that I have a good "theme" coming together, I also need to look for a prop for his weekly/monthly pictures.

If you can't tell, I'm still in prep mode. I've been busily thinking of ways to prepare, making lists, and looking for deals as I shop around. On top of that, I've been trying to get this house organized and clean. I'm starting to pay for it though. My back has really been hurting all day after my super productive day yesterday. I was having a good stretch of time where I was actually pretty comfortable, which is probably why I got so productive and now am back to not feeling so comfortable.

The crib we ordered should be arriving this week. Today I found some deals at Babies R Us on swaddling blankets and the highchair we wanted was on sale last weekend, so we picked that up as well. We already had one as a hand-me-down, but it's bulky and can't hold a newborn, so we opted to find and buy an updated one. Once the crib arrives, we'll order a mattress and will go to town on the nursery I imagine.

I've been thinking a lot about packing a hospital bag lately. I set aside the baby's clothes tonight and now I have to decide what to pack for myself. My mind is racing these days, and I think particularly right now because I know I'm heading into a busy week at work with late nights as I help out with Internal Audit. So I won't have much free time. You'd think we would have everything we need since we've already had one kid, but with it being a different gender and then little things like diapers that don't stick around, there's still a lot to prepare for. Well, I'm pretty tired and start my busy work week in the morning so I should head to bed.

33 Week & 19 Month Check Ups

2012-01-08T21:37:00.004-05:00

On Thursday I had my 33 week check up and all went well. I realized as I was trying to find my post from my last visit, I never got around to blogging about it. Life was kind of crazy around the holidays and I just never found the time or energy to do it. Anyway, this check up I gained 4 pounds in 3 weeks. Not ideal, but still ok. I've gained a total of 26 pounds, so I'm sure I will gain more than 30 this pregnancy. I told my doctor how everyone at work keeps telling me I'm not going to make it to the end. He said it wasn't nice of them to say that and all my measurements and tests show that I'm right on track so he has no reason to think otherwise. I have thought to myself with the way this pregnancy has been going that I wouldn't be surprised if I go early, but I was really starting to believe it after everyone keeps telling me so. Even people that don't see me often ask me if I'm due tomorrow. I want to believe it so I don't have to be pregnant anymore, but I don't want to believe it because I don't feel ready to have another baby in the house just yet. We don't even have a crib! Good news is, baby #2 is still healthy with a heart rate of 144 beats per minute.

Friday was Mei Li's VERY late 18 month well visit at the pediatrician. Again, the holidays and illnesses were to blame for this delay. Since we've already done her pictures, I'll just post one that we took this weekend where she looks like Punky Brewster. I found her some cute Converse at Marshall's on Friday and I think it was the finishing touch to this 80's look.

Weight: 23 pounds, 4 ounces - 25th percentile. I was surprised she hadn't gained more weight, but the doctor was not at all concerned.

Height: 32 inches - 50th percentile.

Head Circumference: 18 7/8 inches - 80th percentile.

Sleep: We've been struggling with her sleep lately and I think it has to do with numerous factors. First of all, the busy-ness of the holidays disrupting her regular routine on top of various illnesses. Second of all, she seems to be teething again. I'm a little confused by this because she basically has all her teeth except her 2 year molars so I'm not sure if they're coming early or the canines that are not fully out are causing the pain. Ken thinks it could be the tightness of all her teeth that could be bothering her, too. Regardless, I'm 99% sure it's teething as we have seen these symptoms before. I am just surprised how much they are affecting her this time around.

Eating: Mei Li's favorite treat are gummies. I try to keep them as a treat but have been a little lenient lately as I noticed they contained a lot of vitamin C and I wanted her to get lots of it to help her get over her cold. I worry that we're getting lazy with her diet and she's heading down the road of a kid diet full of grilled cheeses and PBJ sandwiches. However, she does still love a burrito. It's hard to get creative with her diet when we don't get all that creative with our own. I think I already noted this before, but she's getting pretty good at feeding herself.

Playtime: We gave Mei Li a kitchen for Christmas, but her favorites are still books, dolls, stuffed animals and pushing things around in her toy stroller (thanks Tasha!). She is starting to have the attention span for shows and has shown interest in The Backyardigans. She really enjoys the intro song and would just like to watch that over and over, but she endures the rest of the show most of the time. Her vocabulary is growing and growing. Right now she particularly likes to say people's names. She talks about our family and extended family a lot, and realizes that she is Mei Li (although she calls herself Mei Mei). She also likes to list the names of the kids in her classroom at daycare, but then usually includes Tio in that list (that would be Tio Tim) instead of Ghiselle. One other quirk Mei Li has right now is that she seems to want a time out. When I'm asking her not to do something, she often will follow it with "time out?" I think she wants the time out so that I will count (I typically count to 60) and sometimes if I tell her she's not getting one, she'll start trying to count herself. But her count usually just goes "2, 5." She recognizes all her numbers from 1-10, as well as her alphabet, but she doesn't say them on her own and in order just yet.

Anyway, I have had quite a productive day around the house and would like to continue doing so. This blog post was part of my productivity, but if I'm not careful, I will never get up from in front of this computer and will do nothing else productive for the rest of the evening.

Prepping

2012-01-02T22:22:00.001-05:00

I don't know if this qualifies as nesting, but I've tried to be focused on getting things ready for baby #2's arrival this weekend. That meant multiple trips to Target and Ikea plus multiple orders online. And since I was in the planning ahead sort of mode, I went a little crazy shopping post-holiday sales for kids clothe for next year. That is one area baby #2 has benefited more than Mei Li. It was much easier to find deals on boys clothes.

So it has been a little frustrating. Dave and I have had some bad timing as we try to prep for this baby. It was my intention to get a crib in time to start arranging the kids' room this long holiday weekend. Since we want a white crib, most stores only have them online and we had found it cheapest on Amazon anyway. I found 2 to choose from and wanted Dave to help make the final decision the next day. When he went to look, they were both out of stock and we wouldn't be able to get it by the weekend. They are still out of stock, but on the upside we were able to find it for the same price online at Walmart and it was in stock. We have to pay tax but at least I know we will get it before the baby arrives.

Then there was our Ikea frustrations. We went there in search of a chair for our room that I could nurse in while the baby stays with us in the beginning as I prefer to nurse in a chair versus the bed. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it since its intended purpose would only last months. I found a chair I liked yesterday only to get to the warehouse bin and find it empty despite all the computers saying it was in stock. We were told to call back today to check if the next shipment had come in as they were expecting one this week. When we called, the automated hotline said there were 36 and when we looked online the night before it said 6, so we figured that meant the shipment came in. We returned to Ikea with our car empty to fit the chair in the trunk only to find the shelf still empty. The plan B to make the trip worthwhile was to buy the white version of the chair (I was wanting the dark gray) and spend an extra $50 on a black slipcover. Then we realized that between yesterday and today, the white was now sold out. When we asked the Ikea worker why we were told there were 36, it because that shipment was coming tonight and would be available tomorrow. About to leave the store defeated, we stopped by the as-is section to see if it was our saving grace. I was so happy to see the chair in my color sitting there for 50% off, but for some reason was missing the cushion. We asked another Ikea worker if it was just misplaced or if it was something that could be purchased separately, and after some searching, the answer to both questions was no. Fortunately not all was lost as they also had a black leather version of the chair for less than the chair plus slipcover. And today they were having an extra 10% off assembled furniture. So we have a chair and the trip was not a total waste, but we ended up spending a little more than intended and still felt a little gypped when I could have had the chair I wanted for much less. So close, but no cigar!!!

A weekend that was supposed to be productive and a little restful ended up having multiple roadblocks, including all of us coming down with a cold. We did have lots of time with great friends. We rung in the new year with the Putts/Dinsley crew with a typical family dinner/game night. We were able to spend time with the Hamiltons and see an old college friend, Jeff, who was visiting as well. Brunch with Ashlee and Scott and a surprise run-in at the mall with Lila. Now it's back to the grind an time to return to work. I don't know how I'm going to have days off without Dave. It's been so nice to have him around for multiple long weekends. I will miss this.

32 Weeks, 1 Day

2011-12-31T17:15:00.002-05:00

So I realized this was long overdue, but I didn't realize how long overdue it was until I just checked and noticed that I haven't taken a belly shot in 12 weeks. Oops! And this is only the third one I've taken, so it's almost like I only have one from each trimester. Poor kiddo, already getting gypped on the pictures. I kept thinking I needed to take a picture, but then I'd forget and change out of my nice outfit or would just be too tired to do it. I was tired when taking this picture, but forced myself to do it anyway. Good thing, or it never would have been done.

I'm starting to panic because I feel like my belly has gotten so huge already that I don't know where it's going to go in the next 7-8 weeks. I'm carrying very differently this time, and it's more concentrated in my belly, so I feel like it's stretching out even more. Everyone keeps telling me how pregnant I look and many people make comments about how I basically look ready to pop tomorrow. Yet, I still have a good month and half to go.

Just to document how differently I'm carrying, I did another comparison collage. Good thing I had a lot of pictures from my first pregnancy so I had one from a similar time frame. I am clearly less swollen this time around, which is a blessing. Hopefully it continues that way through the end.

19 Months & Christmas

2011-12-29T20:44:00.004-05:00

So it's a little late since she turned 19 months old, but we weren't home so I couldn't take my standard picture. I'm not going to get into the stats and my usual post this time, I'll just have to wait until her very late 18 month check up at the pediatrician next week. The holidays and illnesses have really messed with our schedule.

This Christmas we rented a house in Davenport to be between Orlando and Avon Park so that no on had to travel too far, but we would be in a place big enough to hold all of us. It was great to have all the cousins together. I think Mei Li finally connected with the boys as she asked for them every morning and still mentions their names days after our get together. She hasn't had a problem connecting with Caitlin as they are closer in age, although the fact that they connected probably contributed to Mei Li being a little meaner to her too. She just wasn't as keen on Caitlin taking her toys and such, but she loved her all the same.

Group shot at the house after church on Christmas Eve. It's amazing it turned out with everyone looking at the camera with eyes open.

This is probably my favorite shot from Christmas. It just looks so classic and timeless, I LOVE it! Ken took this at our house with our tree, which makes it even more special.

Anyway, we're exhausted from all the festivities. We're hoping to take it easy this weekend, but still have to meet up with friends that are in town visiting. Mei Li is starting to get a bit of a cold and it hasn't helped that her naps at daycare have been horrible this week. Tonight she was SOOOO tired that she pitched a fit during dinner, basically ate nothing, then pitched a fit through bath time and getting dressed. To top it all of, she fell asleep sitting beside me in the rocking chair as I read her a book. It was only the first book I read her and I didn't even get to finish it. We usually read 3 books and she's asking for more at the end, but she couldn't even make it through the first. It wasn't even 7:30, and her normal bedtime is closer to 8. That's never happened before. I'm so glad we don't have to go to work tomorrow. We're just going to work on getting our house back in order and the whole weekend we're going to try and focus on what needs to get done to get ready for baby #2's arrival. It will be here before we know it!

Christmas Card Archive

2011-12-19T15:11:00.002-05:00

We are cleaning our office/guest room in preparation for Ken, Christy and Caitlin's arrival on Wednesday night and it prompted me to do something I've been meaning to do for some time. We've saved all our Christmas Cards from years past, but haven't put them in a special book or anything. Plus, I always feel better if things are at least scanned so I have an electronic copy of it somewhere. Then on top of that, if I put it on my blog, it's saved by someone else, too. So here they are. Scanning doesn't always produce the best quality product, but it does the job for posterity sake.

2007 - Our first card as a married couple. We took this picture in front of Dave's parents' house in Michigan over Thanksgiving. It turned out perfectly with the wintery weather we would never get at home.

2008 - We skipped the card this year. That was a bad year for me with work, etc. So there was just no time. I had people asking me if they had done something to fall off our Christmas Card list. Haha!

2009 - This picture was taken during our annual date night at the Festival of Trees. As you can see on the card, it was somewhat announcing our growing family.

2010 - Our first card as a family of 3. We enlisted the professional services of timputt.com to get pictures for this card and they turned out great! We had a hard time picking only 3 pictures for this card. The scanning doesn't do this card justice since this was on card stock paper versus photo paper.

2011 (front - scanned)

2011 (back - scanned)

2011 - I happened to send a preview of my card directly from the Tiny Prints website to Tim so he could see how the pictures turned out in the card. I'm glad I did so you can see a better electronic version of the card versus the scanned copy. The only downside is that the image saves down smaller in size. We have received the most compliments on our card this year. I'm really happy with how it turned out, especially with the drama it took to get this card done between Mei Li during the photo shoot and having to buy the card in 4 separate orders to take advantage of all the deals/discounts I found for Tiny Prints. I think we literally spent an hour just ordering the cards as we had to use a spreadsheet to help us figure out what order configuration was going to save us the most money. One thing I did differently this year when preparing my Christmas Card was picking the card before taking the pictures. I think this helped a lot as I never have any ideas for the photographer. I had to do this as I had to order the cards very quickly after we took the pictures in NYC to take advantage of all my discounts. So I may have to start picking the card first from now on.

The pictures were another successful timputt.com production and yet again, we have another baby on the way announcement in the card. But this will be the last year for those! At least until our children convince us to get dogs or something...

6th Annual Big Lake Lane Exchange

2011-12-16T23:16:00.003-05:00

So we pulled it off. Another gift exchange party at our house. After the events of this week, I really wondered how we were going to do it. Especially since this year we didn't ask anyone to bring any food and were supplying dinner for the group (which ended up being haystacks and thankfully the Putts helped supply some toppings and the chopping when they arrived). I'm glad we did it because some of these folks we see only this time of year. Our bunch is growing, particularly the next generation. This year, everyone brought at least one kiddo (with the exception of Tio Enoch, but he has claim to Mateo so that counts, too). We had 7 kids, ages 2 and under. Michael decided to add a fake baby to the bunch, too. Plus, Fio and I were toting 2 kids in our bellies. I don't know how we're all going to fit in this house next year. It was pretty tight this time around, we even had to change the arrangement of our group shot to get everyone in.

The hot present this year was a laptop desk for your lap. The Hays pulled off their teamwork to take advantage of the 3-steal lockdown rule so that they could solidify the gift as their own. The popular gifts to bring this year were these personal hair trimmers (3 were brought, and Dave ended up with the ladies version) and the gyro bowl (2 of these showed up). Besides the laptop desk, the only other thing to get stolen was a screwdriver thing. Other gifts to note was a Justin Bieber spin brush (electronic toothbrush), I got a girdle type of thing which seemed to be appropriate with my current girth, and Enoch is sporting the HD sunglasses he picked up in the picture above.

Well, with all the kiddos the party started and ended pretty early this year. By 9:30, everyone had left as kids were melting and the Heinrichs had to drive all the way back to Tampa. I'm so glad they were able to make the trip just for the party. I assumed they were going to make a weekend out of it and stay with family, but I feel so special that they took the time to travel and come just for the party.

Now that this party is behind me it's time to prepare for Christmas with the family. I just can't believe it's already here and I'm feeling the pressure as we have lots to do before we're ready to pack up and head to the rental house where we all will be staying. Then as soon as that's over, it's preparing for baby #2's arrival! Breathe....

Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me!

2011-12-13T17:52:00.001-05:00

I wish it was just a fly, but unfortunately it is a nasty bug! The stomach bug to be exact. It hit this house late Friday night starting with Mei Li throwing up in her crib at 2 AM. Then again on Saturday night at midnight. Sunday night at about 3:30 AM, my stomach started to cramp and it was the beginning of the end. By Monday morning, Dave started feeling the effects too.

The bug effected us all a little differently, but unfortunately I got all the symptoms everyone else did and then some. This included a fever last night, which means I stayed home again today. I wasn't able to eat anything except a handful of saltine goldfish crackers at the end of the day. I've slept a lot today and haven't had much to eat as I have had to force myself to eat the little that I did. Good news is I've been able to keep it down.

I think this is the first time I've had a stomach bug and while it sucks, I think it's worse when you're pregnant. I was constantly worried that I wasn't hydrated enough for both me and the baby that I think I overdid the fluids at one point which made me throw it all back up. Then I had all these concerns like it would send me into early labor or something crazy like that.

Hopefully I'll be in good shape tomorrow because I need to get back to work. The last month has been ridiculous between Mei Li being sick and then passing it on to me that I feel like I've missed a lot of work. Not good for anyone. Can you tell I'm tired of being sick?

First Ponytail and Pigtails

2011-12-05T23:17:00.001-05:00

After some recent pictures, I was noticing that Mei Li's mullet look is getting a little out of control. So I figured it was time I start trying to learn and do something with the hair she has. When I went down to Avon Park before Thanksgiving, Geri had given me a couple hair rubberbands to try putting in Mei Li's hair. She actually tried a ponytail and then gave me an extra one to try pigtails later, but those things are so small, I lost the second one before I had a chance to try it out. Since I had one, I tried the ponytail again on my own and this is what I got.

Yes, she's trying to get into her diaper genie, but it was the only way I could get a picture of the back of her head. I quickly got her to stop as soon as I took the picture.

I had to keep pushing her away to get her far enough for the camera to focus on her and get a good picture of her hair, and she wasn't too happy about it. This picture just cracks me up. With just a ponytail, there was a lot of excess loose hair in the front, so I tried to put a bow to make it look like I did something, or even make it look girlier. I'm not very good with hair, so it's not really a great look. I was surprised how well she did with me messing with her hair. I just handed her a book and a brush, and she was pretty content.

Tonight while we were running errands, I decided I would pick up a whole pack of the hair rubberbands so that I could try pigtails. I really wanted to see what it would look like as I thought it would work better with the amount of hair that she has. She wasn't as cooperative with this attempt as it was towards the end of the day, but I think we got a good idea of how it will look. She was much happier when she could see what she looked like in the mirror. She loves to see how she looks...haha!

I think they look pretty cute and I'll definitely have to try it again. I love how her hair is so straight that it just sticks straight out. Next time I'll have to try and make the part straighter and get the pigtails higher, but I'll have to do it when she's in a better mood. I have 100 hair rubberbands now, so if I lose one, I can try again! The only sad thing is they make her look so grown up. I know, I have to get over that soon because there's no turning back.

On another side note, she seems to be teething again and it's doing a number on her mood and my patience. One bright note is that the Hylands teething tablets are back on the market, so we picked some up tonight. I think they work pretty well because she didn't want to try them at first, but after they had dissolved, she asked for more. We're going to have to watch this one, she's not afraid to ask for the medicines that make her feel better.

18 Months

2011-12-04T22:15:00.000-05:00

This is going to be one of the worst documentation efforts for Mei Li's monthly posts. It's over a week late since she turned 18 months old while we were in NYC and she's changing so fast, I can't keep track of all the new things she's doing these days.

- Weight: I have no idea, we haven't gotten around to weighing her. She has probably lost weight since she's been sick and hasn't had much of an appetite. I'll have to post it when we go to the doctor's office for her 18 month check up.

- Eating: She continues to surprise us, but what seems to be her standard is Mexican/Cuban type food. She eats lots of burritos and beans and rice. With her being sick lately, it's been hard because her other standards like cheese, yogurt and fruit have been falling by the wayside. She'll eat a little bit, but struggles to finish them.

- Sleep: This has also been disrupted by vacations and sickness, but really nothing much to complain about here. If we keep her to a normal schedule/routine, she is pretty predictable. Lately with all the activities, it's been hard to do, but she still manages to get her sleep at night.

- Playtime: Mei Li has been taking off with her words. My current favorite is that she has learned to say "I love you." It melts my heart! She will also say "Bless you (Mommy or Daddy)." And she is saying at least one new word every day. Typically it comes from repeating something I've said or read to her in one of her books. She has started to request certain books with words. The other big accomplishment this month is that she has learned to recognize the alphabet and numbers from 1-10. Although, she has a few that she doesn't like to say like M, N, and 3. She hasn't quite mastered counting as I'll catch her randomly saying numbers, and she just picks her favorites. So it will go "2, 5, 8" or some other variation of numbers.

- Other: Something she's done in the last couple days, which I'm not sure if it's coincidental or not, is she has run off to the bathroom to play/bang on the toilet seat lid. When I go in there to tell it's dirty and to stop touching it, I realize she is stopping to poop. It's happened twice now, so I probably need to look into a toddler seat for the toilet. However, I she is a really fast pooper, so I'm not sure how I'll ever get her on the toilet fast enough between realizing she's about to go and her actually doing the deed. She sometimes says it right before she goes, but that's not consistent either. There are a lot of false alarms if I go by that rule. We've been putting off any potty training at this point because we don't want to go through all the effort with the chance of her reverting when the new baby arrives. So we'll see what happens in the near future.

Photo Shoot Outtakes

2011-12-04T00:28:00.001-05:00

I'm staying up way later than I should be because I ended up taking a really late, really long nap this afternoon. Then, right before I was going to bed, I got an email from Tim that he finished our pictures. So I couldn't help myself but to check them out and start on our Christmas cards. Here are a couple outtakes that I couldn't help but share.

This picture shows the beginning of our photo shoot and the drama that it began with. Glad Tim didn't get a picture of my face because I'm sure it would have looked like pure stress. But Dave's at least shows some humor and you can still see the alligator tears in Mei Li's eyes as she holds onto her new puppy for some comfort.

Later on as we are trying to lighten the mood, we got Mei Li involved in a round of high fives along our stroll. Once she starts, she likes to take turns giving them out. Hence, both of us standing ready for the cue.

28 Weeks

2011-12-02T12:52:00.001-05:00

Yikes, I just realized I started my third trimester today. Where has the time gone?!? The only reason I realized it is because I was catching up on my What To Expect app reading as I lay in bed with Mei Li waiting for her to wake up. I stayed home with her yesterday and today as she is battling this nasty cold still. She's sleeping pretty well right now and has already been asleep for 2.5 hours. I was hoping she'd take 2 naps today to get some extra rest to kick this cold, but I don't know how that will happen after this big nap.

I'm starting to worry that we're not at all ready for this baby to arrive. The holiday hustle and bustle isn't going to help either. It seems every weekend we have at least one something to attend. I miss seeing everyone so I want to go to each one, but I have to make sure Mei Li gets healthy too.

Anyway, that's life right now. I still have some catching up to do on this blog. Mei Li turned 18 months old last week and I still haven't posted about it. Well, time to go. Mei Li is awake.

Babymoon Day 5

2011-12-01T22:33:00.001-05:00

This day ended up being sort of stressful as well. We finished packing up our stuff and I was freaking out because I couldn't find Mei Li's birth certificate. I was going crazy with thoughts of identity theft as I knew it also had some of our information as parents on it, and since I couldn't find it, I was worried that worse case scenario was that the maintenance guy who came to fix our bed while we were gone could have stolen it.

All this searching and stressing caused us to get a late start to our day. We decided to split up from the Putts as they still had a lot of things on their agenda of things to see and the little things we did weren't anywhere near theres. When we finally got out the door, we headed to 34th Street because I had a Macy's gift card and we were told at one of the other H&M's that the one on 34th Street had the maternity section. So I figured I check them both out to see if they had anything different than here in Orlando.

While in the area, we decided to go to Korea Town to go back to a restaurant my cousin, Ling Ling, had taken us to the last time we were there. We found it with no problem, Mandoo Bar. It was still delicious and the mandoos are dumplings that we thoroughly enjoyed. We even got some vegetarian bibimbop and Mei Li ate some of it too. Unfortunately during lunch, I dropped a mandoo into a full bowl of soy sauce and got it all over me. Fortunately we hadn't gone to Macy's yet, so I used the opportunity to find something with my gift card as well as find something cooler to wear as the weather was quite warm. I think at one point it got all the way up to 70. Come to find out, the maternity section in Macy's is just a little Pea in the Pod store. I don't usually shop there because the clothes are so expensive, but with my gift card I was able to find a couple tops on sale and still had a little money to spare.

As I was getting dressed in the fitting room, I got a call from Delta saying that our flight was delayed. This was terrible news for many reasons. First of all, we had negotiated a late check out from our apartment so we wouldn't have to move all our stuff. So I was going to have to try and negotiate an even later check out without getting charged or figure out a way to move all our stuff to another location just to store it until it was time to go. I'll spare you the details, but in the end it worked out and we got a later check out without charge.

This picture is from the subway ride back to the apartment as we were trying to figure out what we were going to do about our stuff, etc. Mei Li fell asleep in the carrier while I shopped in Macy's. How sweet are these two?

So back to the apartment and we got it all sorted out. We got the car service rearranged, the flight was changed again but was a little better off than the first estimate. However, we still hadn't found the birth certificate. One of the places I thought I had hid it was in a nightstand drawer. I was afraid it may have slipped under the drawer, but we couldn't get the drawer out to see. When we were all back, we asked Tim to help us look at the nightstand to figure out if we could get under the drawer. Fortunately he was able to hear it scraping against the drawer and was able to finagle it out without taking out the drawer as he couldn't figure out how to either.

In the middle of that search, Mei Li decided to cough up a storm and gag herself resulting in throwing up. This landed on her clothes and her beloved puppy, which is why in my earlier post I mentioned we had to hide it from her. Anyway, we got all packed up and got all our stuff out to the curb to wait for the car service to pick us up. They were a few minutes late, so Magally gave them a call. In all our changes, they for some reason thought Magally reserved it for the next day. Fortunately they were still able to send someone out to arrive within 20 minutes. While the guys watched our stuff, we girls took the kids to Magnolia Bakery inside of Bloomingdales to get one last set of cupcakes for the road.

The car service told us it would take 1.5 hours to get to the airport (versus the 20 it took us when we arrived) since it was a Monday at rush hour. It only took us about 25 minutes, so we were quite early. It worked out though because lines were long and we had to eat dinner and get the kids into PJ's before the flight. Once that was all done, we headed to the gate, and Mei Li got excited running down the little hill to our gate that she worked herself up into another coughing spell resulting in another throw up. Oh joy! Fortunately no clothes or stuffed animals were affected by this one.

The flight was full, so no full row for us this time. With all the delays, there were some other delays while we were on the plane, which really stunk since it was full and they don't turn the air on until we're on our way. We were so hot we ended up stripping Mei Li down to her diaper since she was in fleece PJ's. Mateo did good and fell asleep fairly quickly into the flight, while Mei Li waited another hour to fall asleep. Neither of them stayed asleep very well and at one point, Mateo had his turn at a coughing spell that turned into throw up. Both of them were awaken by the announcements and lights at landing, and Mei Li was livid. She took a good bit to calm down and then stayed awake until we got home.

By the time we dropped off the Putts, got home and put her to bed, it was 2 AM. Our flight ended up being delayed a good 2 hours. It's a good thing I took the next day off work. Fortunately, Mei Li decided to sleep in until 10 AM that day! That's never happened before.

Overall, the trip was wonderful! The weather was amazing, but unfortunately it was so amazing that we overpacked for it as we expected colder weather. It rained until the day we got there, and then got cold the day after we left. I'm so glad we did the trip and it was so fun to have the Putts to share it with. I hope we can continue to travel when we have baby #2 with us. It is something Dave and I enjoy so much, even though it is much more work with kids.

Alright, I REALLY need to go to bed now. I just had to get all this down before I forgot.

Babymoon Day 4

2011-12-01T21:41:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm finally getting around to blogging about the rest of our trip. If you care, I went back and edited previous posts with pictures and such as I wasn't satisfied with how the iPad and iPhone were posting things.

This day of our trip was sort of on a whim. We didn't have any hard plans, and after the night we had, no one was in a rush to get the day going. Magally and Tim came back close to midnight from their Broadway show, and just after we finished catching up on the evening, Mateo decided to wake up and it was the beginning of a long night for the Putts. I wanted to help them out, so Dave and I offered to take the kids to the grocery store in hopes that they'd fall asleep during the stroll and give Tim and Magally a chance to nap a bit. Well, Tim didn't think he needed a nap, so he went instead of me. Mateo decided to fall asleep just as they got back and so we decided to take the kids to FAO Schwarz while Tim and Magally got ready for the day.

FAO Schwarz was on my list of things to do as I have very fond memories of going there as a child. I knew Mei Li would go crazy for at least the stuffed animals, but I didn't know how she would handle the store in general. It was a Sunday, and while it was before noon, the store was already busy. I wasn't sure if that would intimidate Mei Li, but the first floor, right when you enter was filled with stuffed animals and she was in heaven.

Here Mei Li is meeting Penelope, the pink version of the signature FAO Schwarz dog. If her face doesn't tell you how much she loved the store, I don't know what does.

She hugged every stuffed animal she could get her hands on. This picture makes it look like she's holding on to it for dear life. It didn't take long for all the noise and excitement of the crowds and Mei Li to wake Mateo up. So while my intentions were good, we didn't end up helping the Putts all that much and had to call them for reinforcements rather quickly.

While waiting for Tim and Magally, we toured the various floors of the store and Mei Li continued to enjoy the toys all around. Mateo was having a good time checking them all out too and wanted to touch all the cars, trains and a lot of the stuffed animals too. Once we got to the third floor, we had our turn on the Big Piano. Dave stayed back to take pictures while I managed the kids. It was an experience, but I'm glad we did it. We had to go with a group and there were some show offs in our group that were playing actual songs, so Mateo got scared and I felt like we were in the way so we stood off to the side after a while. Mei Li thought they were funny and tried to imitate them jumping from key to key.

In the end Mei Li walked out with a new puppy friend and a bouncy ball that she played with throughout the store. She was a happy camper that day. We couldn't get over how much she enjoyed it. I'm just glad we didn't walk out with the whole store, because she acted like she loved it all. Funny thing is, later in the trip we had to hide her original puppy from her as he was no longer usable, and she missed him greatly. The new puppy was not a substitute by any means. We also got a few souvenirs for Mateo, including a NYC taxi cab.

After Tim and Magally arrived and had some time to roam the store as well, we jumped on the subway to head down to the NYU area to eat at Otto. Magally had done some extensive research on restaurants, and we hadn't gone to one yet as most of them were not close to where we were staying. So we were determined to go to at least one of them this day. We chose Otto because it was noted as family friendly. It is owned by Mario Batali and they served pizza, which we had yet to have on this trip.

Lunch was when I realized things were heading south quickly and this was going to turn into my least favorite day of the trip. Mei Li had fallen asleep on the way to lunch, which was fine because I wanted her to get a nap in before we took our family pictures, which was going to be after lunch. We kept her asleep in the restaurant until after we ordered, but then realized she was probably getting quite hot as we had her all bundled up for the outdoors. I tried to gently release buckles and such from the stroller to get her jacket unzipped, etc. and inevitable woke her up. She was not happy as she had not been asleep long enough and to make matters worse, she threw her new puppy to get it out of her way and the tag proceeded to cut her lip. I'll spare you from the details of how lunch went, but it was not our smoothest eating out experience.

When lunch was over, we realized we were running out of time to take our pictures before Tim had to take pictures of his real clients, Sam and Cindy. So we were trying to rush out of the restaurant to head out to Central Park. Then on the way to take our pictures, we stopped at a picnic table outside of the Central Park Zoo to get Mei Li changed. I was doing it myself because Dave was tying his bowtie. As I was taking off her day outfit to get her in the picture outfit, just as I pulled the outfit over her head she decided to take a step back and totally slip off the bench and under the table. She wasn't hurt, but this completely startled her and got her crying just as we were about to start taking pictures.

Needless to say, we were running late, I was stressing, our pictures were rushed and then Tim ran late for his actual appointment. I'm sure the pictures will be great for our card, but I could have gone for a less stressful experience.

After we finished our photo shoot, we took some time to roam the park again while Tim was busy taking pictures.

It took us a while, but we finally found an open field that we had spotted the other day and took the kids there to run around and get some energy out to hopefully take another nap before dinner. The kids fought over Mei Li's new bouncy ball and had complete meltdowns when we changed each of their poopy diapers (which they strangely seemed to follow the same schedule for those that day). The field was getting locked down as the sun was going away, so we packed the screaming children into the stroller and they fell asleep shortly after.

After leaving the park, we decided to split up. Magally was going to take Mateo back to the apartment to meet up with her friend Maya. Dave and I decided this would be a good time to go to another place on our agenda, Tiffany's. The last time we went, Dave bought me a necklace. This time, I had my eyes set on finding some earrings. And that we did! So Mei Li and I both got treats this day. It worked out perfectly as Mei Li stayed asleep the whole time and didn't wake up until we took her out of the stroller when we got back to the apartment.

We met up with the Putts back at the apartment. They were still visiting with Maya and since Mateo didn't sleep long after Central Park, they weren't ready to head out to a restaurant. Mei Li slept quite a while, so we decided to venture out. We went to a place a block away from the apartment called 360 Brasserie. It was perfect for a Sunday night. We got burgers and watched some football, and it just seemed like a nice, quaint neighborhood place to hang out and eat. We saw a couple families there, so it was nice to know they were family friendly as well.

The night ended with packing and then we stayed up watching Bridesmaids since Magally had it on DVD from her Netflix. We had to watch the movie with subtitles because we couldn't hear much since the TV is right outside the Putts room, so we couldn't turn the volume up very high. However, we still got a good laugh from it.

Babymoon Day 3

2011-11-26T23:11:00.001-05:00

This morning we took our time getting out of the apartment as we were all still recovering from our first night here. The only plans on the agenda were The Central Park Zoo, meeting up with Kristie and Tron, and Tim and Magally's date night. We intended to do the zoo as soon as it opened at 10, but we didn't leave the apartment until 11. Both kids fell asleep as soon as we started walking to the park, so we took our time exploring Central Park.

The weather was beautiful today and so warm that we left most of our coats in the apartment. We strolled and eventually found the spot where Tim proposed to Magally. By this time the kids woke up and we figured it was time to do lunch. We had passed an organic hotdog street vendor that served veggie dogs as well, so we made our way back to try them out. We considered taking our family pictures next to take advantage of the awesome weather but decided there wasn't enough time to go back, change, etc. before Tim and Magally needed to take off for their date. So we decided to stick to the original plan and go to the zoo.

The Central Park Zoo was a lot smaller than I imagined but was pretty affordable to get into and the kids enjoyed the animals there. I'd say the highlight for the adults were the red pandas. Mei Li definitely liked the snow leopard best and kept calling out to the big kitty.

The kids fell asleep on our way home from the zoo so we had to find a place to hang out while they snoozed. This also was the only time Kristie and Tron had to meet up. We decided to try and get frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3, but didn't realize how big of a tourist attraction it is. The wait was 3 hours long so we opted to just go to the nearest Starbucks. Krisitie and Tron met us there but Mei Li woke up right before they arrived so we decided to head back to the apartment to hang out for a bit.

Tim and Magally went off to dinner and then to broadway to see The Book of Mormon while we stayed back to babysit the kids. After feeding, bathing, and putting the kids to bed (which fortunately went without a hitch), Dave went and grabbed us some take out from a falafel place we spotted around the corner [Barbanzo]. Another great meal here in the city.

Well, I probably should head to bed. Tim and Magally will be back soon and then tomorrow's only definite plans are to take family photos and Tim has a photo shoot with Dave's coworker, Sam and his fiancé Cindy, at some point. I'd like to get some shopping in at FAO Schwartz and stop into Tiffany's, Macy's and possibly H&M. I'm also hoping to do another dinner out in the evening in SoHo. I'll leave you with a few photos from today. I uploaded then to my iPad and it will be hard to choose just a few.

[Added pictures from computer later since the iPad photos were showing up too small.]

Magally bought this headband for Mei Li specifically for this trip. It looked so cute on her and she was particularly photogenic this day. I had multiple shots of her in the stroller with this headband, you're lucky I managed to only post one.

Our double stroller was used way more than I thought we would use it. Once we left the apartment, we were gone for a long time, so any chance of a nap would have to be taken in the stroller. It worked well, but we sure loaded it up with babies and bags and such. It got quite heavy for the guys to carry down the steps of the subway stops. Only one stop that we used actually had an elevator.

This string of photos was taken as we roamed Central Park and enjoyed the beautiful weather. This was probably the best day of weather for the trip. It was supposed to be the warmest. I love this last picture of Mei Li! Again, I could have posted even more pictures, but decided to pare it down at least a little.

A few pictures from our visit to the Central Park Zoo.

And lastly, a picture from our quick visit from the Wilders.

Babymoon Day 2

2011-11-26T09:54:00.001-05:00

Thursday was one of the worst sleeps of all of our lives. The Putt room was overwhelmed with noise from transport trucks going to the Queensboro bridge. Our room was blazing hot from the radiator that is centrally controlled by the building, which also made the air extremely dry keeping Mei Li up coughing.

Magally took the opportunity to go shopping since she was up anyway. Then we all got ready to go to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

The sightseeing was uneventful as we were all dazed and the kids kept falling asleep in the stroller. We came back with enough time to go to the grocery store and get ready for our date night.

Dave and I had a lovely date at The Modern, which is a restaurant in The MoMA. It was way fancier than we're used to and I probably didn't know half of what I was eating. Probably not a good idea when I'm pregnant. The waiter was good enough to notice I was pregnant and forewarned me if anything was raw. It was a four course meal, but had some extras in the beginning that we didn't know were coming. The food seemed small as the portions were very tiny, but we were more than stuffed when we left. My favorite thing I ordered was this duck and fois gras ravioli.

After dinner we walked over to Rockefeller Center to see the decorations and get some cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. We have yet to eat them because we were so full. That was it for the night as I started to feel like I was coming down with a cold after our terrible night's sleep.

Mei Li did great for Tio Tim and Tia Mags as we were out on our date. She ate like a champ and then pooped on the floor before bath time. LOL! When we got back, the kids were peacefully asleep. We all got a better night's sleep last night as traffic wasn't as bad, the Putts also invested in earplugs, we bought a humidifier, and the room even cooled enough for me to use covers.

The weather has been great. I keep wavering between hot and cold as we're out and about thanks to my personal heater inside my belly. I'll leave you with a few pics from my phone.

[Pictures added later.]

Family photos in front of the Statue of Liberty.

Playing around on the field in front of the Statue. Mei Li really enjoyed falling down on her soft, puffy coat. No worries, no children were harmed in this picture.

A couple more group shots on Liberty Island.

Even though we had been to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island the last time we went to NYC, I wanted to go back to Ellis Island to get another picture in front of the sign now that we have additional family members.

Posing in the apartment before leaving for our date night at The Modern in The Museum of Modern Art. Magally had us take another shot with Dave's scarf because she thought it looked very New York.

Pictures at the Modern. We took pictures of our food too, but it was so dark in there, it was hard to get good ones. Plus, I don't think I could tell you what was in each dish.

Pictures of some after dinner roaming around Rockefeller Center and a tree near our apartment. This tree was in the roundabout in the middle of a building that held Bloomberg and Le Cirque, another restaurant we looked into.

Babymoon Day 1

2011-11-24T21:31:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving! The first leg of our trip has gone well so far. We fit all of us and our stuff in a minivan. Both kids took naps for the majority of the flight (I'm posting some pictures of Mei Li sacked out, but this post is from my phone so I don't know where the pictures will be). The flight wasn't full so we each had a 3-seat row to ourselves and we even had the 2 seats across the aisle empty which was good since Mei Li took up 2 seats when she fell asleep. We arrived safely, the car service was on time, Magally's friend, Maya, was able to save us a trip to the rental office and met us with the key at the apartment. We found a really good Indian restaurant that was open on Thanksgiving and the kids behave well throughout dinner. And now the kids are asleep and the dads are buying groceries while us moms relax and play on our phones.

The area where we rented the apartment is really nice as it is near Bloomingdales. There is lots of good shopping just around the corner (Urban Outfitters, Aldo, H&M, Zara). The only downside to being in such a nice area is that most of the restaurants are fancy and expensive. There are some other places around that we've already spotted that look like they're worth a try. And we just realized we're a block away from one of the Serendipity restaurants that serve the frozen hot chocolate. I'm hoping we get to try that!

The apartment has its pros and cons. I like it's location in that it is close to shopping and Central Park. However, it's definitely got city living quirks. The noise level is a little loud with traffic on one side of the apartment and the heating seems to be central for the building so we have no control. They have window units in the room but they can't over power the radiators and we don't want to leave certain windows open because of the noise. We might be calling on that problem tomorrow.

Well, I guess that's all for now. Tomorrow we head out to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

[Additional pictures added later.]

Our apartment living room/kitchen area and entrance to the front room, aka Casa de Putts.

Hall leading to the back room where we stayed. Door on left is bathroom, door on right is entrance.

The Putts' room.

Our room.

Dave and Mei Li showing the way as we look for a place to eat dinner on Thanksgiving night.

All bundled up and ready to stroll.

The Putts strolling NYC.

All the couples at dinner for our Indian Thanksgiving meal.

That Just Happened...

2011-11-23T20:07:00.001-05:00

We were watching Wheel of Fortune this evening as we were relaxing since we were done packing. We were also excited to see they were in NYC. Well, the bonus round puzzle was "Off The Rack." During the closing credits Pat pointed out that most people think Vanna's dresses are tailor made, but in fact they are off the rack. She confirmed and he followed up with saying, "Well, you have a lovely rack." Seriously?!? They really let stuff like that slide on public television?

26 Week Appointment

2011-11-23T11:24:00.001-05:00

Last Friday, I went in for another OB appointment and it was time for the fearful glucose test. I just called to get my lab results and I'm pleased to say that I do not have gestational diabetes! Hooray!!!! I don't know what I would have done if I did with us heading to NYC tomorrow for our babymoon and my main priority is to eat while we're there. HAHA!

The rest of the appointment went well. Because of the glucose drink, the baby was moving so much they were having a hard time getting the heart rate, but it was about 156. I'm measuring right where I should be and I think my weight is within reason too as there was no comment from the doctor.

One reason I was sort of nervous about this appointment was because I had to bring Mei Li with me. I brought the iPad to keep her entertained, but she was not thrilled to see the nurse walk into the room. She whimpered and said bye every time she entered the exam room. Surprisingly enough she didn't seem to mind the doctor.

Anyway, nothing else to note about the appointment. Although, I was taken back when the doctor informed me that I would have another appointment in 4 weeks, but then we would go to every 2 weeks after that since I'd be in my third trimester already. How did this happen so fast?

Annual Date Night

2011-11-20T21:17:00.001-05:00

It's that time of year again. Dave and I went on our annual date night to the Festival of Trees at the Orlando Museum of Art. It's crazy to think we've been going to this for 6 years now. This year the new thing was that they switched the music theme again. When we first started going, it was a Latin night. Then it was a Jazz Stroll for quite a while. This year was Rock n' Roll and the band was decent. People were actually dancing this year.

We were playing this whole night by ear because Mei Li got another cold and this time Dave was the lucky one to catch it as well. Anyway, we wanted to be sure we felt ok leaving her with the Putts for her sake and Mateo's. Unfortunately, Mateo had already caught the cold from Mei Li at daycare so I guess it wasn't much of a threat that night. It all went well and I'm glad we were able to go because I would have been sad if we broke our little tradition.

There weren't many stand out trees this year, but as usual, the gingerbread houses didn't disappoint. Here are some pictures of a few intricate ones.

This first one was supposed to have working lights on the inside so you could see all the furniture and details inside. Unfortunately, it was burnt out, so we didn't get to see it all. The outside was still quite impressive.

The Ritz Carlton always puts on a fancy showing for the gingerbread houses and typically have an open side for you to see all the inside details. It's hard to see, but some of the gingerbread and frosting had some detailed designs and textures to them.

Isleworth Golf and Country Club is another regular to the extravagant gingerbread houses.

This is the first time I saw one that actually looked like cake.

The windmill actually rotated on this one. After seeing these, I always think that it would be neat to try and make one of these with my kids. But it seems so expensive with all the candy and I have no confidence in my craftiness. I also always wonder if anyone actually eats these and if they taste any good after sitting out for a long time...

These pedal cars were on display from someone's private collection and I thought they were pretty neat. I have to pay attention to this sort of stuff now that I'm going to have a boy in the house.

This one was my favorite. The seat looked like it was even made of leather and was cushioned like a real car seat.

And this was just classic.

The food didn't disappoint this year in volume, largely in part to our favorite food vendor this time around. They brought in Big Green Truck Pizza which has a mobile wood-fired oven (pictured above). The pizza was tasty and they were giving large portions. The rest of the vendors were pretty standard like Brio and Buca di Beppo. Although the other vendor that really stood out was KeKe's Cafe because they served breakfast items liked stuffed french toast and a breakfast salad, which was basically a yogurt parfait. It was nice they were there because there really were no dessert vendors this year to give us a sweet fix after all the other savory foods.

It was nice to get all dolled up and feel like just regular adults for a few moments. The nice thing is that I got my bangs trimmed that afternoon so my hairdresser curled my hair for me. One less thing for me to do as I am terrible with hair. It was another successful date night and I'm already looking forward to next year!

Nursery Inspiration

2011-11-10T21:48:00.000-05:00

I was browsing Etsy this evening for some inspiration for baby #2's side of the nursery, etc. Dave and I have always liked the travel/world theme, it was something we even considered for Mei Li. However, we've always struggled to find many options that were very kid-friendly. Well, tonight I found this wall art and I think I'm in love.

I like the colors shown here, but I also like set 6 below. Since this will be going on the green walls in the current nursery, I'm just a little unsure of how it will all match, but I'm hopeful.

The Etsy description of the product included a link to the designer's website for a tutorial on how he or she mounted the prints onto wood panels covered in metallic paint so they could use magnets to mark places of interest. I already loved the prints and this just sent me over the top! However, my only wish is that they were already sole this way because I'm not very confident in my crafting skills and am intimidated to try this myself....

I'm not sure how much it would cost to do this myself either. I know to print on canvas it is going to be super pricey. But I wasn't all that thrilled with the canvas idea because it would stick out farther from the wall making it easier to knock off as the baby gets older and more rambunctious.

Anyway, I've always loved the pins on maps and I have all these grand ideas of somehow making special small magnets with pictures of our family members so we can place them on the map where they live. Or a picture of us when we were somewhere, like our upcoming trip to NYC. It's good to find some inspiration because I've been so busy I feel like I haven't put any thought into preparing for this next baby. Hopefully this inspires me to do more!

That Mom...

2011-11-05T23:01:00.004-04:00

I just remembered something I've been meaning to blog about. I have become THAT mom. The one that only takes pictures of her kid. I had to make a special thought and verbalize the thought to Dave to ensure that I took a picture of myself with Vanessa at the baby shower tonight. Otherwise, I've been terrible about taking pictures with my friends when we get together. I either take pictures of our kids together or them with my kid. The month of October, just about every weekend I spent some quality time with friends and/or family. Did I take pictures with them? NOPE!!! I used to be so good about that when I was in school. I took a million pictures of me with my friends. I'm going to try and be better about it....

My only excuse is that I think people are more interested in my kid than me. And since I've been pregnant or losing my baby weight over the last 2 years, I haven't necessarily wanted to be in pictures myself. They're not good excuses, but I had to try.

I'm sure there are other ways that I have become "that mom," but it's too late for me to think of them at the moment. The first step is acknowledgment, so I'll do my best to work on the next steps from here on out.

Busy Saturday

2011-11-05T22:52:00.002-04:00

Well, we have made it through one day of our busy weekend. It was going to be busier as we originally intended to hit up a Greek Festival last night, but the couple that we usually go with was out of town. Probably a good thing as today would be fairly full considering we will also have another busy one tomorrow.

It started out with Sabbath School and church. We're getting better at making both these days, but it's still a struggle with Mei Li's nap schedule as church starts to run into it. We decided to go out to eat for lunch afterwards because I was starving and had a crave for Indian food. Sure enough, Mei Li fell asleep on the way over to the restaurant and slept for about 30 minutes total with some time in Dave's arms in the restaurant.

Here are some pictures from church. I dressed Mei Li and myself alike today. I try not to do it too much, but I find it fun and convenient every now and then. They've never been the exact same outfit, but they're pretty close so we're basically twins. I still get worried that we look dorky when people make comments, but I do it anyway.

My mini-me (although I think she's starting to look less like me as she gets older).

After lunch we knew we couldn't get Mei Li to take her usual long nap, so we just tried to get some energy out of her so she would take another catnap in the car on the way to our next adventure. During this time she found some old pants of hers that she likes to pull out often as they're in a box by the front door with other items we've set aside for a garage sale. Dave thought it would be funny to put them on her head like a hat, and she thought it was pretty funny too.

The next stop was Mike and Vanessa's baby shower. Mei Li and I remained twins, although we did change up the outfits a little by changing to leggings and different shoes.

Vanessa and I have been BFF's since we were about 3 years old. We're now both pregnant with boys that will be about a month apart. Hopefully they will be lifelong friends as well!

This is Mike and Vanessa opening our gifts to them. Their nursery has a beach/surfing theme and we found this book at Marshall's. I knew we had to get it when we flipped through the pages to find out that the story involved a surfboard the pigs named Dave.

Towards the end of the shower, Mei Li was going crazy. She had hit the beyond tired phase as her 2 catnaps in the car only added up to about an hour versus her typical 2-3 hour nap. You wouldn't know it by these pictures, but she was getting nasty. She was screaming and running into me as she ran away from her Uncle Delton who was trying to play with her. If we were holding her, she was squirming and whining. At one point when she ran to me, she hit me in the face and we had to have a stern talking to and some time out. That is when we decided it was time for us to depart the festivities.

Tomorrow will be another busy day. We have a 1 year old birthday party for Landon, but it is in the Tampa area, so that will be 3-4 hours of driving time on top of the party time. That means Mei Li's nap will have to be in the car again, but hopefully it will be a couple hours this time. We're hoping that she sleeps in tomorrow morning since we gain an hour and she got so little sleep today. Here's to hoping!

Food for My Soul

2011-11-03T22:59:00.001-04:00

So the last two evenings, I have done some things that have really hit the spot for me. One is a good thing, and one is not so great. So let me start with the really good things.

Last night, I finally did some prenatal yoga. My exercise with this pregnancy has been next to none and my body has been screaming at me to do some prenatal yoga. My hips and back in particular, and it felt so great to do it last night. I LOVE all the stretches, but could do without some of the stances. Those darn warrior poses make me feel the burn and even break a little sweat. Not only was it good for my back and hips, I slept like a brick last night and probably could have gone to bed soon after the yoga was done. I swear when I woke up this morning I hadn't moved once, and I usually wake up to flip from side to side a couple times a night. Hopefully that won't be the first and last time I do prenatal yoga this time around.

I haven't seemed to make the time to do any exercise, not even a walk around the neighborhood. With my first pregnancy, I always made a point of at least going for an evening walk every night to keep myself active. It's harder to do that now because I have a sleeping baby to consider at home and a million dishes to wash and things to get ready for daycare the next day. I keep telling myself I'm too busy or exhausted, but right now I'm VERY busy with work and various events, but I seem to be able to do more now than ever. It made me realize that I seem to function best when under pressure with a busy schedule. It makes me worry that I wouldn't be a good stay at home mom because I don't have someone else's deadlines to keep like I do at work. I would make it up on my own, and I'm not great with self-discipline in that way.

Anyway, back to the pregnancy and exercise. I have tried to keep it up in other ways like taking the stairs as much as possible at work. This sounds lame, but I swear carrying Mei Li all the time is a workout in itself. She's over 20 pounds, so I'm probably not supposed to do it as much as I do, but I was doing it before I was pregnant so that should count for something, right? And I know I'm not the only mother out there who does it. Lately I've been showering with her a lot at night to save time in the evenings and for the steam when she's sick. She isn't comfortable just standing in the shower, so I have to hold her the whole time. My back is pretty tired by the end of it.

I guess it's time I address the bad thing I did tonight, but not without a positive twist. I have the BEST, most thoughtful husband ever. I was at that point after dinner where I wasn't quite satisfied/full and wasn't sure what I wanted. I sat down to catch up on some of my recorded shows when I saw a character eating a donut (and this character just happened to be extremely hormonal from IVF hormone treatments). It struck a note with me and it was all I wanted. I even told Dave where we could get some. Without any begging or pleading (just the heavy hinting...haha), he asked what kind I wanted and went to get me one for tonight and one for later. There's nothing like satisfying a crave right now because I'm coming off a time where I was just hungry and couldn't figure out what I wanted. So now when I have a crave, it's so satisfying to not only satisfy my hunger, but also get something that just hits the spot. It's really a shame how much I love food. And it's really a shame I don't have cravings for fresh fruits and vegetables like I do sweets. When I do get those craves, I make sure I satisfy them before they pass like a fleeting thought as I know the ones for bad things such as donuts don't go away until they're satisfied. And lately, the sweets are all I crave. Particularly creamy sweets such as ice cream, chocolate, lattes, and now donuts. I don't particularly crave sweets like lollipops or hard candy, although I have had a craving for sour patch kids.

I swear this second pregnancy is going to do a number on me. For our upcoming trip to NYC, all I want to do is find really great places to eat. It's even more important to me that we go to a nice restaurant rather than a broadway show! The other reason I want to eat everything I can now is because I know what's about to come. When I'm breastfeeding, I feel so limited to all the heavy flavors I love because it upsets the baby's tummy, and it's SOOO not worth the aftermath. So now I'm indulging on all the dairy, spicy, garlicky, cabbage, broccoli, etc. foods that I can get my hands on before I have to say goodbye. Man, it sounds like I need help...

Pediatrician Dilemmas

2011-10-26T19:46:00.003-04:00

Ugh, we just can't get past sicknesses in this house. I swear it's either been Mei Li or me sick over the last month. I've been avoiding all my friends with newborns to keep from spreading the germs. Well, things have taken a turn for the worst this week and Mei Li came down with a deep cough. We got concerned on Monday night when she pretty much coughed the whole night. It's the worst timing too because I'm in the midst of my busiest time at work, and Dave is about to be too. Fortunately Dave has been able to take the time off to be with her through most of it, but on some days we split it.

Let me just preface this whole story with the fact that I'm on the fence with our pediatrician and I'm considering switching as I was already weary after the last time we went there for a sick visit and she ran a bunch of tests and talked us into Rosefrin shots because she thought it was bacterial when in the end it was viral and there was nothing we could do but let the sickness run its course. Well, today we found out it's the same story.

So it started with a call to the nurse on Tuesday morning as I was hesitant to bring her in and have a bunch of unnecessary tests done. Well, the nurse still recommended we bring her in so it was a doctor's appointment that afternoon. Dave ended up being the one to take Mei Li there and after all the tests (some of which I still feel were unnecessary given the symptoms) they couldn't find anything particularly wrong and assumed it was viral, but sent her home with a nebulizer and some medicine to see if they relieved some of the symptoms. I wasn't crazy about this idea because I figured the medicine contained steroids, and they did.

Well, something happened because Mei Li was able to get some better sleep that night. Who knows if it was the medicine or not because when Dave took her to the follow up appointment this morning, the doctor could hear wheezing in Mei Li's lungs. So they wanted to give her another nebulizer treatment and listen to her lungs again. They did that, and still there was wheezing, so my doctor got concerned again. Next order of business was to send Dave and Mei Li to the Children's ER for a chest x-ray and possibly some additional treatment that could not be administered in the doctor's office. I'm so frustrated at this point because not only was the appointment at 9:30 am and it was now 12:30 pm, my instincts were telling me this was another overreaction.

After grabbing a quick lunch, Dave headed to the hospital to carry out the doctor's orders. It is now 7:35 pm, and Dave just called to say they were on their way home. The conclusion is that she has bronchiolitis caused by a virus and that there is no treatment for it and we just have to let it run its course. The x-ray they took just to confirm that there was no pneumonia came back clear.

I feel so terrible that Dave had to do all this today. Today alone was 10+ hours of just going to appointments and Mei Li had to suffer too because all the running around prevented her from getting decent meals and sleep, which I'm sure only makes the problems worse. I had my OB appointment, so I couldn't take Mei Li to all these appointments on top of all the work I have to get done. And I'm anxious because I don't know what to do about our pediatrician. I feel like she's an extreme and I would rather have someone in the middle. I want medicine when it's necessary, but I don't want someone who's going to push medicine and tests just because they don't know what to do. However, I don't want the other extreme either. It's just so hard because I trust my doctor's to know what they're doing since they're the ones that went to school for it and I didn't. I guess I need to get better about doing research online, but it's just overwhelming. I do know that I feel like my current doctor is never willing to let things run their course and in essence is trying to cover herself for liabilities. Here's to the search for answers...

22 Weeks, 5 Days

2011-10-26T19:22:00.002-04:00

I had another check up today and it went well. All my blood test results came back negative, which is a good thing, and no adjustment needed to my thyroid medication. Blood pressure and weight were good, although I gained 5 pounds in 4 weeks this time around. He said it was no cause for concern, but I knew this was going to be a bad weigh in with the trip to Chattanooga and all the Asian food over the weekend.

This month flew by fast, even my doctor thought it wasn't that long ago since he had seen me. Baby #2's heartbeat was strong at 147. Next appointment will be my glucose test. They tell me I don't have to fast, but I made the appointment in the morning so that I might be able to because it seems that all my friends who didn't fast don't pass the 1-hour test and have to go back for the 3-hour. The majority of them pass the 3-hour so I would like to avoid having to take that one if at all possible.

That's all for now. This baby is moving, but because of my anterior placenta the majority of the movements I feel are to my insides. I'm excited to feel the real jabs and kicks when they come then I can really share the feeling with Dave. It's kind of crazy to see your whole belly jolt, but in a good way.

Mei Li's Word Log

2011-10-25T23:04:00.000-04:00

I'll try to organize them so I get them all. Translations will be in parenthesis.

- Names: Daddy, Mommy, Mei Mei (Mei Li), Baby, Puppy, Money (Monkey), Kokey (Khloe), Cay Cay (Caitlin), Bo Bo (Uncle Boco), Sissy (Auntie Christy or any Christie/Kristie for that matter), Ye Ye, Teo (Mateo), Gack (Jack)
- Animals: Puppy, Money (Monkey), Dutt (Duck), Cow, Owl, Ishie (Fish), Kitty, Tat (Cat)
- Animal Sounds: Cack (Quack), Mmm (Moo), Baa, Maa, Neigh, Hoo Hoo
- Objects: Flower, Ah Choo (High Chair), Eyes, Car, Wa Wa (Water), Agua, Bubbles, Oval, Cone, Car, Ball, Shhh (Shoes)
- Food: Hot Dog, Mana (Banana), Apple, Chhh (Cheese)
- Numbers: Five, Four, Eight
- Letters: B, D, I, T. If we got her to to say E at the beginning of that list, we'd know for sure that she was going to be an accountant. Sorry, it's a really nerdy accounting joke.
- Commands: Dooeh (Do It or I Do It), Daddy! (Usually yelled when he is in the kitchen), Down
- Other: Hot, Cole (Cold), No, Uh Oh, Hi, Bye, Besshoo (Bless You), Amen, Wow

Phrases
- It's a (baby, mommy, daddy, puppy, monkey).
- Hi (baby, mommy, daddy, puppy, monkey).
- Oh (baby, mommy, daddy, puppy, monkey).

Mei Li still uses her sign language quite a bit. For the most part, she doesn't speak these words, but there are a couple she has opted to speak rather than use the sign.
- Still used: More, Please, Thank You, Eat, Drink, Bib, Milk, All Done, Up (she sort of made this one up on her own, it looks like she wants you to pick her up, but when I told her she put the airplane window shade up, she used it then as well), Frog, Bath, Toothbrush, Light, Sleep, Book, Love, Stars, Moon
- Replaced by spoken words: Water, Bubbles, Duck

She babbles even more than this, so this list is only what I can understand. Certain words she uses for everything. All kids are babies in her mind and most animals are puppies as well.

17 Months

2011-10-24T22:06:00.001-04:00

Oh my goodness, where has this month gone? I have so much to write about because it's been too busy to get to the blog. Let me just start with some of the standards.

- Weight: Approximately 23 pounds. It's too hard to get her to sit still for an accurate weigh in these days.

- Sleep: I don't really blog about this anymore because it's pretty standard. However, it's been nice that with all the activities we've had going on, she has been sleeping in until 8 after having a late night. Although, with all the busy-ness, her naps haven't been as long as usual either. It's been a while since she's had a good 3-hour nap. I miss them...

- Eating: We're still figuring out what we can give her that's new. She has some standards like PB&J, quesadillas, grilled cheese, pizza that we know if we're in a bind she will definitely eat. I'm sort of sad about that because these are all those stereotypical kids foods that aren't necessarily of high nutritional value. But we infuse vegetables in those instances with Happy Tots veggie packs. We always try to ensure she has fruits and vegetables at each meal.

- Playtime: This girl runs circles around us now. She still loves her books and loves to dance. And absolutely loves her BabySigns DVDs. They're my crutch when I need to get anything done. A new toy we got her recently is a tunnel from IKEA. It took her a little while to warm up to it, but she likes it now. The biggest thing I wanted to note is that her words are expanding by the day. I might just have to do a separate post on all her words. I've been wanting to write it down so I don't forget. She's also starting to do little sentences like "Hi Daddy" or "Oh Puppy" or "It's a baby."

Well, since my last post we've been dealing with sickness after sickness. I think Mei Li and I keep passing a cold back and forth. Right now I'm on the up and she seems to be coming down with something again. She has a mean cough.

Also since my last post, we've made a trip to Chattanooga. Dave was recruiting at Southern and I took the opportunity to tag along with our free companion ticket so that I could visit old friends and see my old stomping grounds. It was a good time despite being sick.

This last weekend was my parents' anniversary party. It was much anticipated, especially since it would be the first time my niece, Caitlin, would be visiting Florida. It was so great to see Ken, Christy, and Caitlin. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

We forgot to take a nice picture of Mei Li all dressed up in her Chinese outfit. She looked so cute. This is her being shy as we walked into the room and all the people were saying hi to her. She's so shy when it comes to the people that are close to her, but so friendly to the most random people at stores and such.

Our family picture, complete with Puppy. When she says Mommy and Daddy, Puppy usually follows. Soon this family roster will also include her pal Monkey.

We decided to take pictures of the girl cousins in costume. I had actually found 2 costumes for Mei Li and stuck with this one. Especially since Caitlin was going to be a ladybug, it coordinated nicely.

Here's a somewhat belly shot of me. And no, I did not mean to coordinate with my stripes.

Finally taking pictures with my daughter. I never remember to take pictures of me anymore. Just take pictures of my kid. By the way, I am quite proud of myself for making her headband. The costume didn't come with one, so I went to JoAnn's to put something together myself. I even painted the balls at the top. It's not the most secure thing, but I think it turned out cute. I'm not the most crafty person, so I take pride in the fact that it even worked for picture.

This picture just cracks me up. Like I said, this girl runs circles around us these days and this picture just captures the essence of it.

The cute little bug cousins. I miss little Caitlin already! (Oh, and Ken and Christy as well...haha!) I'm so glad we only have to wait 2 months to see them again at Christmas and that we'll have almost a whole week then.

A couple sweet pictures of my little bumblebee.

Mei Li with her trick or treating basket at Sea World's Spooktakular. I'm trying to get the most out of this costume. I might even get more use out of it this next weekend at a pumpkin patch.

One last shot of our growing family. I'm trying to get better about taking pictures of us too. I didn't take a single picture with my friends in Chattanooga. I must make a conscious effort, but it's sometimes hard to when I'm busy worrying about a kid and such.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2011-10-09T22:22:00.000-04:00

Oh man, it's been raining constantly since Friday, and I'm going crazy. After such a beautiful week and spending a lot of time outdoors, I hate being cooped up inside. Plus, Mei Li and I are fighting a cold, so it's been pretty ho hum. Luckily we had some reprieve yesterday when we had lots of visitors who were also trying to find something to do. First the Putts came over after church and we shared leftovers for lunch. Then soon after they headed home for dinner, Delt and Andra came over for a visit.

Today, to keep ourselves occupied we headed to the mall for a little shopping after Mei Li and me had a nap. So we headed up to Sanford to hit up Old Navy and H&M. We found some good stuff for Dave and myself in preparation for our NYC trip. And we have our eyes on a couple of things for Mei Li too, but we're waiting until it gets closer to the trip to see if she changes sizes.

Sorry for the boring post, but I had to vent a little about being stir crazy this weekend.

20 Weeks, 1 Day

2011-10-08T14:20:00.000-04:00

Well, I figured since yesterday was the half way mark, I should probably take another belly picture. So here it is. I can't believe I'm already half way there, it just doesn't seem possible. This time is going way too fast. My belly has definitely grown as perfect strangers aren't afraid to ask when I'm due, etc. I've never been one of those who are quick or sly enough to make the people feel bad like I'm just fat, but sometimes I feel like doing it just to be funny.

Anyway, nothing new really to report here. Just moving along and trying to stay energized.

Highchair Headbanger

2011-10-08T13:43:00.001-04:00

As if there weren't enough videos of Mei Li dancing, here are a couple more. We were having a nice Friday night meal with just our little family and decided to play some music to bring in the Sabbath. As you can see, she just can't help herself. At some point she starts doing a little dance that Magally witnessed at daycare and we haven't been able to replicate, but finally saw it while I was recording this video.

Since she was rocking out so much, I took another video. It's kind of more of the same, but at the end I try to get her to say a special message to my brother and his family who will be visiting in a couple weeks. We're very excited to see them again, so I was trying to get her to learn their names. My brother's name is Ken, but he is known to my nephews as Uncle Boco. Just so you're not confused by what I'm asking her to repeat.

Go Tigers!

2011-10-07T21:24:00.001-04:00

So this week started with a huge day in sports for Detroit and our household. Both the Lions and Tigers games were going to be on TV and they both won! Unfortunately Dave couldn't see the end of either game because we had to meet someone from Craigslist to sell our stroller to. In the end, everything worked out! Well, we don't have any Lions gear right now in this house, but we have Tigers gear, Dave and Mei Li were decked out to show their support.

Isn't this picture adorable? I love it! It's definitely a keeper since Dave has his eyes open and Mei Li is smiling. I think they actually look related in this picture, and it's not just because they're both wearing Tigers gear. Mei Li has Dave's crooked smile (much to Dave's dismay).

Trying Daddy's hat on for size. She often finds this hat around the house and loves to play with it. She'll put it on herself or ask you to put it on. It is an accessory after all.

Mei Li got this shirt from her Uncle Levi last Christmas. I was afraid it would be too big since it's a 24 month shirt, but it looked pretty good. She actually wore it on Tuesday again to show her support. Dave though some of the people at daycare might be impressed.

She's the cutest fan I've ever seen!

Well, the other reason I had to write this post was to document that I actually was into a baseball game. I have never denied that baseball is probably my least favorite sport to watch, while it is one of Dave's favorites. However, this week I watched pieces of the games with Dave as the Tigers were playing the Yankees and it was the ALDS semi-finals. Well, game 5 was last night and Dave was traveling back from his recruiting trip to Alabama, so I felt I should keep tabs on the game to be a good supportive wife. Thursday night is when all my big shows come on (I'm a loyal Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice watcher). I let them record and watch them later so that I can fast forward through the commercials. Well, I was flipping back and forth between the recording and the game, and the game was getting pretty intense so I actually stopped watching my shows to see how things would turn out. It came all the way down to the 9th inning and I was texting Dave (though I later found out he was able to find an AM station in the car broadcasting the game on his way home) as things happened. Not only did I stop watching my shows, I stayed up until almost midnight to see the game through. And I was really stressing and rooting for the Tigers. Oh boy, what is happening to me?!?! I'm going to be outnumbered quickly because Mei Li seems to enjoy watching sports with her Daddy and we're about to have a boy who I'm sure will be heavily influenced to be into this sport as well. I might just cave under the peer pressure to like this sport, at least enough to follow this team...

Cooler Weather & A New Ride

2011-10-01T22:56:00.000-04:00

The temperature took a nice drop today. The funny thing is I had no idea. It must be the pregnancy hormones, and the fact that we didn't spend a whole lot of time outside since we park in the garage. It wasn't until we were sitting in the parking lot of church, looking at Facebook on our phones (since Mei Li fell asleep on the way there), that I realized after everyone's status updates the temperature was nice. When we finally had a chance to get outside, we agreed and thought we needed to take advantage of it. Another reason was our new stroller arrived today and we wanted to test it out not only for our upcoming baby, but for our upcoming trip to NYC with the Putts. So after naps, we headed to Cranes Roost with the Putts.

The Putts enjoying the weather in the park.

Mei Li telling Daddy something very important about the fountain.

Mommy blowing bubbles for the kids. I have decided it's not very attractive for me to be pregnant and squatting. I look like I may be practicing for the birth of baby #2 or something.

This picture would have been even better if there were bubbles in the picture, but it's still precious nonetheless.

The BFF's. They look stunned but I was blowing bubbles to try and entertain them and possibly bring out some smiles.

I love this little girl! Such a cutie pie! I am biased, I know.

Peekaboo Mateo!

And here it is, the new stroller. It worked out pretty well on our stroll, although as both kids are walking now, they didn't stay in it simultaneously the whole time. Plus it was getting later in the evening and we were encroaching on dinner and/or bedtimes. Quick review: I like that it's not huge and Mei Li doesn't seem to mind the bottom seat. It rolls nicely and weighs about the same as our other stroller, according to Dave as I have avoided heavy lifting at this point.

We took some time to feed the ducks while we were there. Mei Li wasn't as keen on it as I thought she would be. She was a little scared of them. Mateo was ready to walk right up to them and give them a big hug.

Taking a little stroll. Another not so flattering shot of me preggo, but thought it was a decent mother/daughter shot. My baby girl is growing up too fast! And I am trying to give her as much quality time as I can before her baby brother arrives. She has been so clingy and cuddly whenever she has the chance. I'm loving it at times like when she wants to cuddle when she's sleepy and is starting to let me put her to sleep again. But I'm trying not to set myself up for disaster either to where she gets used to so much one-on-one time with me that she'll be devastated when it's gone... Oh, the balancing act of it all!

Videos

2011-10-01T21:31:00.004-04:00

I was trying to get Mei Li to say Khloe, after new baby Khloe that we visited in the hospital. The first time I ever asked her, she said Kokey. But this night, it sounded like she was at least saying Koey...that is until I brought out the recording devices. I started with this video and later took a voice memo on my phone so that I could easily send it to Tasha to hear. You'll hear some of her other babbles as well. It will be fun to see what these words really mean some day.

Mei Li has been able to feed herself with a spoon for some time if I hand her a spoon with food on it. However, she has yet to master the scooping of the food herself. Since we have carpeted floors in the dining room where we feed her, I haven't given her too much freedom with a spoon and food. We usually have a plastic sheet underneath it, but it only covers so much area. Anyway, she seemed to be doing pretty well this evening, so I gave it a go with something easy like applesauce that she didn't have to scoop chunks of. It's still a work in progress.

You can't really hear the music in this video, but the penguin toy she's playing with plays a little song after you hit it. She breaks out in one of her dances and we laughed as we watched the replay as it is reminiscent of a certain Guns n' Roses persona.

Along with some more babbles (i.e. oval!) you'll get to see some more of Mei Li's booty shaking here. She really loves to dance. This is seriously not something she inherited from me.

Caught by Surprise

2011-09-29T21:27:00.000-04:00

So, you know how I mentioned yesterday that I am not good with surprises? And how I didn't have to deal with one at the ultrasound? Well, that was all made up for today. I was excited because today was going to be a second free lunch at work this week. Every other month, we have a staff meeting at work where a haystack luncheon is provided while the CEO interviews an employee so that we all can get to know them better. It's called "Meet the Family." Well, today the CEO wasn't able to be there for the meeting, so the CFO was in charge. Before interviewing Dave's boss, he started to say that he heard a rumor. Now it's typical for him to talk and ask about the rumors going on around the company about the company. So I was all ears to see what he was going to say. Turns out the rumor he wanted to talk about was the fact that Dave and I are having another baby...

YIKES! I was not at all expecting that!!! So in an instant, I was in shock as the whole room turned around to look at me (I was sitting in the back) as he asked me if it was true. I timidly said yes, and apparently the look of shock on my face looked angry because he said that if I was going to be mad at anyone, it would have to be Dave since he was the one who gave him permission to say something. Dave was on the complete opposite side of the room, and apparently someone had told the CFO about our baby before the meeting and he asked Dave if it was true and if he could tell everyone right before doing so. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised because the CFO often called us out in his smaller staff meetings where it was just his departments, especially right before we were going to get married. He would often razz us for not sitting together at the meetings, which he did to other married couples in the office. However, this was on a different scale since it was the entire office and a meeting where free food was offered, so almost everyone was there with standing room only. I was just ill-prepared...

Anyway, he went on to call out other people and their major life events. There were 4 people that were engaged and getting married within the next 6 months or so. He also asked if anyone had any other similar announcements they would like to make. No one volunteered...

18 Weeks, 5 Days

2011-09-28T21:15:00.002-04:00

Today we had another OB appointment which included the ever important ultrasound to find out the gender of Tiny Baby. I apologize for the numerous ultrasound pictures, but the ultrasound tech at this new practice is very generous with printing pictures for us. Both this time and the last, I didn't post all the ones she printed.

Some cool shots of the hands. The first one is a 3D shot. Tiny Baby is just like Mei Li and kept it's hands in front of it's face the whole time. This 3D shot looks like it's saying "no more photos please!" The second one is the usual 2D shot, but it looks so cool because you can see so many more details of the hand since it's all bone.

A sweet profile shot.

Of course the ultrasound pictures wouldn't be complete without that scary skeltor/alien head on shot.

Here are a few 3D shots she took, and I didn't even have to ask! The first one, the baby was mid-yawn.

I saved the best for last...

There it is, we're having a boy! I was so worried that I was setting myself up since I felt so sure it was a boy, and then they were going to tell me it was a girl and I would be shocked. Fortunately, that didn't happen because I am not good with surprises. Anyway, the appointment went well. His heart rate was 155 bpm. He's measuring within 2 days of his due date (didn't ask which way it went). My weight gain has been acceptable so far, let's just hope I can keep it going at this rate. I asked them to check my thyroid, which they were going to do anyway, because I have been feeling a lack of energy which I would have expected to get back by now. So we'll see how that goes. I suppose I should take another belly shot soon, but I just haven't been in the mood...

16 Months

2011-09-25T22:39:00.003-04:00

- Weight: After all the doctors appointments in the last few days, I'm going to go with the first one since it was the only one done with just a dry diaper. She's about 20 pounds, 14 ounces. I'm sure she would have broken the 21 pound mark if she hadn't been sick.

I've been blogging pretty frequently this month, so I don't think there's too much more to add. She continues to grow and wear me out every day. I love her more and more and I can't wait to see what's to come. Although looking at her pictures today, I'm having a hard time finding a baby in that face and body and that makes me sad. I guess I'll have to start getting my baby fill from baby #2 when it arrives.

Mei Li still enjoys watching some football on TV with her daddy. Here they are catching the Lions in overtime. They actually won! This has been a good year for Lions fans so far and it's been a longtime coming.

Doesn't she look so huge in this picture? I love it and hate it all at the same time. We got her to laugh by doing fake sneezes. Poor thing couldn't even laugh at that yesterday, so I know that it's a sign of her feeling better today.

Here are a couple videos I've been meaning to post. This first one I really should have edited, but I'm too lazy. You really only need to see the first few seconds of her picking out the number 5 and saying it, but the rest of it is me being annoying and asking her to repeat the number 5 so it can be heard more clearly. And please excuse the crazy hair, I just don't know how to tame it some days.

This last one just makes me laugh. Mei Li was playing with one of her toys that plays music and started dancing. I had not seen these dance moves before and I think they're hilarious. I'm not sure where she learns them, but we've gone from the "arm jig" to the "arm worm" for lack of better terms. She pretty much dances to any music now and even no music. She's got quite the groove with her shimmies and sometimes some hip shaking too. I credit her Grandma Ellis for all these moves and the love to dance. I would also like to take note of the look she gives me at the end of the video. I was having to be kind of sneaky about taking the video because now when she sees the video camera, she stops what she's doing to grab the camera as she thinks it should be a toy. Anyway, once she realizes what's going on, she seems to give me this intimidating look like "What do you think you're doing?"

You Know Your Child Is Sick When...

2011-09-25T15:59:00.000-04:00

Oh man, it's been a rough few days. Beware, this is a very long post as a lot happened over a few days. Thursday evening was going to be a busy one. Dave and I carpooled so that we could pick Mei Li up from daycare after work, then head over to the hospital to meet Khloe and congratulate Bill & Tasha, then grab a quick bite to eat afterwards. We were busy and didn't plan accordingly, so we didn't even have spare diapers with us as we only had her daycare diaper bag with us. Well, after the hospital we decided to go to Sweet Tomato for dinner since we wouldn't have to wait for food to be brought to us. In all our rushing around, we didn't even remember to wash Mei Li's hands before dinner. So after going to two very germ-filled places, we set ourselves up for disaster.

We got home and gave Mei Li a bath before putting her to bed. It was later than usual and we debated just putting her straight to bed, but when we asked her, she wanted a bath. It all started to get weird after we pulled her out of the bath and she just started to shake/shiver. This has never happened before, so it freaked us out. She was not happy to be shivering, so after putting a diaper on, I just held her and tried to calm her down. Her hands were really cold, her heart was racing, and her breaths were short and labored. We checked her temperature, and it looked like she was starting a fever. This fever came out of nowhere as she was normal all throughout the rest of the day, and the symptoms were different than any other fever she has had. So we gave her some acetaminophen and decided to keep a close watch on her all night. We checked on her every couple of hours, making sure her breathing was ok and her temperature was being maintained (it got as high as 103). At one point, she woke up and needed more acetaminophen and we took her in bed with us where she happily slept. It was not long before we decided we needed to take her to the doctor's office in the morning, she NEVER wants to sleep in bed with us. The morning came and we got a late morning appointment so Dave would have time to attend a meeting. Meanwhile, Mei Li and I stayed at home sleeping, and she did not want to be away from me and wanted to keep sleeping with me holding her. Again, NEVER happens!

We have done this routine before, and we knew that the doctor would run some typical tests. We wanted to be safe, but we knew that most of the times these tests always come back negative. In addition to the usual peek at the throat and ears (both showing nothing), they swabbed her nose and throat, took blood from her finger, and bagged her to get a urine sample. It was such a frustrating appointment as it took forever because Mei Li refused to pee even though she had leaked through her diaper that night. So we ended up leaving with her bagged and an extra one in case it didn't work, but were told that we had to get the pee to the office within an hour of when she peed to keep bacteria from growing in it. The timing of it was all terrible. In the end, all tests came back negative except her blood test showed a very high white count which (we thought) confirmed it was not viral and was a bacterial infection. They called and asked us to head to the after hours pediatrician to start getting rosefrin (antibiotic) shots and additional blood work as they needed to start attacking the infection before the results of the blood culture would come back. The nurse sounded pretty urgent and said that the shots were necessary instead of oral antibiotics because they were more concentrated and since they didn't have anything to show where the bacterial infection was coming from (i.e. ear infection) than they had to make sure it wasn't in the blood. This freaked me out some more because as I was researching her symptoms the night before, meningitis was coming up as a possibility, which is essentially what they were trying to rule out with the additional blood work.

When we saw the after hours pediatrician, he examined her and found that her ears were getting red (which he told me were probably infected and the source of the high white count) and showed me that she started having blisters on her throat. None of these symptoms were present at her previous appointment, so they showed up within hours. He was telling me that meant she probably had strep and the ear infections were a result of that, so he didn't think we'd be back for another rosefrin shot and if anything would be put on oral antibiotics. I wasn't a big fan of this doctor as he wasn't giving me the most confidence in his horrible bedside manner, etc. So we went home and then had to call or regular pediatrician for a follow up in the morning.

The next morning at our follow up appointment, the doctor was surprised to see the blisters on the throat as they were not there the previous day. She saw that Mei Li's ears were red, but not infected as there was no puss. She was convinced it was probably the hand, foot, mouth disease which is viral and not strep as it would not cause blisters and it would have shown up on the swab. So inconsistency with the after hours pediatrician. However, she was a little unsure of how to proceed as the high white count still gave a chance that there was a bacterial infection somewhere, although it is possible for a viral infection to spike the white count too. The safe route was to give the second rosefrin shot anyway, just in case there was still a bacterial infection in her blood that we didn't know about because it was too soon to tell from the blood culture. But she didn't want to give an unnecessary shot if that wasn't the case, which she tended to think it wasn't since Mei Li wasn't looking all that sick, just in pain from her throat. Plus, after the first rosefrin, her fever broke and had not returned other than a low-grade temperature. So she decided we would do another finger prick to get some blood to do a quick check on her white count. If it went down, we wouldn't do anything and just wait for the blood culture to confirm there was no bacterial infection in the blood. Hours later, we got a call from the doctor and the darn blood clotted before the lab could run any tests. So off we were to the after hours clinic to get the second shot of rosefrin.

A different after hours pediatrician saw her that night, and he said it was too soon for the white count to go down anyway (inconsistent answers again...). So we got the second shot and would wait until the next day to hear how the preliminary results of the blood culture were looking. If they were negative, we would not have to come back and get the third and final shot. Nor would we need to get oral antibiotics, as it meant that it was just a viral infection that has to run its course. Sure enough, after 2 days the blood culture was negative. So we're now done with the medicine and we just have to wait for her to get better. Yesterday was probably the roughest as she was in so much pain from her throat she didn't want to eat or drink and was pretty miserable whenever she was awake, pulling on her ears and banging her head with her hands. But this morning she seems better and is eating and drinking a little more, definitely less whining and pulling/banging on her head, which I assume means less pain. So I don't know if the shots had anything to do with it, but I'm just glad we're on the upside of this.

This whole experience made me question all my decisions. Did we go too soon to the doctor? Would they have concluded it was viral if we had waited longer and we could have avoided unnecessary medicine? Etc., etc., etc. It was one of those things that you wanted to be safe than sorry. Anyway, the moral of the story is to remember to wash your child's hands! I feel terrible that we may have been the cause of all this madness in our carelessness. Oh the joys of parenting!

More Babies!

2011-09-25T15:19:00.001-04:00

This week was another one filled with new babies, I guess they got my message a few posts back to come soon. Bill & Tasha welcomed Khloe Colleen on Wednesday. Paul & Laura welcome Sebastian Marcus on Friday. We were able to meet Khloe on Thursday, but have not even seen a picture of Sebastian yet. It's so exciting to have so many babies being born so close together. Then on Wednesday, we get to find out what baby #2 is!

Christmas in September

2011-09-23T22:47:00.000-04:00

No, this is not Christmas coming early. It's actually Christmas coming very late...haha! This is Dave's Christmas present to me that he plans on doing every year. A book of all my blog posts. He has some catching up to do, but this is the first installment. It arrived this week and looks pretty cool. Below is a preview of some of the pages and how it turned out. I love it! So all you fellow bloggers, check it out for your own blog.

Tales from the Suitcase Volume 1 by Mellie | Make Your Own Book

Dave says this actually covers my last birthday and anniversary too. So let's just say Happy Valenbirthaversary!

Mean Baby, Sweet Baby

2011-09-19T20:53:00.001-04:00

I keep forgetting to post about this, but Mei Li is not the most sympathetic person when it comes to someone with a cold. If she hears you cough or sniff, she imitates you in an almost mocking way. But then she makes it seem all better when she imitates you saying "bless you" after someone sneezes.

Another sweet moment today happened when I put her down for her nap. I was washing her sleep sack so I was just going to put a loose blanket over her. I decided to use the one I crocheted for her. She seemed really curious about it. When I laid her down she wanted to sit up and look at it but I encouraged her to lay down, then I patted her back and played with her hair quickly before I left. She didn't move and fell asleep that way. It melted my heart. I know it's a really simple thing, but we rarely use blankets at home. She sleeps on a mat and uses a blanket at daycare, but there was something different about it since it was my blanket. It made me realize that she won't be a baby for much longer, also because I realized the blanket wouldn't cover her entirely for much longer.

When The Parents Are Out

2011-09-18T22:43:00.000-04:00

Mei Li had a date of her own today with Mateo. The Putts took her to the Farmer's Market in Maitland and sent us this picture. Notice how they have shared sippy cups with each other. These are best buds! Who knows, maybe one day they'll be more and we'll have tons of pictures of them as kids to show at their wedding. It starts with the sippy cups, then the milkshake with two straws, etc.

Here's their picture from Mateo's first birthday party. Just another one to add to the archives!

It sounds like they had a great day together. Just as it goes with daycare, she acts perfectly for her caretakers, and then as soon as we show up she starts to act up and whine. I guess that's her way of paying us back for leaving her.

Date Day

2011-09-18T22:37:00.001-04:00

I had been giving Dave a hard time because we had not gone on a date since Father's Day, which means it had been 3 months! And the last date was one I planned, so of course, it was his turn. Haha! To make up for this lost time, he made it a date day versus our usual dinner and a movie.

The day started with brunch at Brio. We both barely ate breakfast to save our appetites, which I think is a bad idea for me being pregnant because I ended up gorging myself. And there's nothing like feeling overly full while being pregnant. It's kind of an awful feeling which I made worse with an extra decaf treat from Starbucks. We had a little extra time, so we took a little stroll through the mall to buy a thank you gift for our babysitters, the Putts.

The next stop was The Ritz Carlton. Dave scheduled a wonderful 50-minute mommy massage for me and followed it up with afternoon tea. Here we are, "Cheerio!"

Dave ordered the chai tea, while I tried the green passion tea (to minimize the caffeine intake). It's so interesting how tea compliments the food they serve. They really have that all figured out. This was our second time to go to tea as my parents took us 4 years ago after our honeymoon. The food was really good, our favorite little treat was the key lime tart (seen in both pictures topped with raspberries). The scone for today was lemon poppy seed.

There's something about the ambiance that makes it such a fun experience. I remembered enjoying it the first time, but I really had fun again today. More than I thought I would. It was really cute to see, there were a couple tables where mothers and/or grandmothers took their little girls to tea. They actually have a menu for this sort of thing where they have the option for PB&J sandwiches and milk, hot chocolate, or juice instead of tea. It's called the Peter Rabbit Tea Time and their drinks come in a Peter Rabbit mug. It made me smile to think about the possibility of brining Mei Li someday for a special birthday party with Mommy and Daddy. We just have to wait until she's old enough to stay composed for long enough.

On the way back home, we stopped to do some stroller research (as noted in my previous post). Then, as if we hadn't already eaten enough today, we got some takeout Indian food to take over to the Putts as additional thanks for babysitting most of the day. We all had dinner and I again had that uncomfortable full feeling. I'll have to take it easy tomorrow... Thanks to Dave for planning a wonderful date day!

Sabbath School

2011-09-18T22:16:00.000-04:00

This weekend was actually the second time we made through BOTH Sabbath School and Church. The first time was three weeks ago before Labor Day weekend. It's quite the feat. We have to pack Mei Li a lunch to feed her partially during the church service and in the car on the way home. She typically takes her nap around noon, and we don't get home from church until 1. So as soon as we get home, we put her down for her nap. She typically doesn't sit through the entire church service yet, one of us usually has to take her out to let her run around in order to avoid a loud meltdown in the middle of the sermon.

I took this picture in hopes of getting the full length shot of her dress and the bows in her hair. Since I was using my iPhone, I had to wait until she was standing still if I didn't want her to be a blur. That meant I had to wait until she stopped to eat her goldfish at snack/play time...probably her favorite part of Sabbath School. Please note that she is not wearing any shoes. She lost one of her shoes before we left the house, but in our scurry to leave, we didn't notice until we took her out of the car at church. So, she was a little ghetto and walking around barefoot in church. Also note the bows in her hair. This was the first time I was able to get her out in public with bows in her hair. She tried to take them out a couple of times, but we managed.

Speaking of ghetto...BABY GOT BACK! We decided to put this dress on her since it will soon be out of fashion. If we weren't in Florida, it would already, but it's still hot, so we think it's still appropriate. This was a dress given to her for her birthday. It's really cute and quite poofy. Hopefully we can continue the trend of going to both Sabbath School and church. We'll see how that goes when baby #2 arrives.

September Babies

2011-09-18T22:04:00.001-04:00

I'm catching up on posting some of the big events I have taken pictures of on my phone. So I'll start with a new little person.

The beautiful Evangeline was born on Monday, August 12 to Jess and Michael. She is a gorgeous little newborn and it was nice to finally meet her. It's so interesting to see friends go through the newborn stages again. It's reminding me of what's to come.

The next day, Alfi and James welcomed their second baby, Benjamin. We're still waiting for a few more September babies to arrive: Paul & Laura's son and Tasha & Bill's daughter. Come soon little ones!

On the baby #2 front, we did some stroller shopping today. It's like car shopping, there are so many options out there! I wish I had taken the time to look into the future of having more than one child and a stroller to handle them. I love my Peg Perego Skate, but it will not work for two kiddos. I have a hard time thinking about pushing around a wide side-by-side double stroller, or a long tandem double stroller. However, when it comes to strollers, I (actually...we) have really expensive taste. So initially my interests were in the UPPA baby and the phil&ted's. We went to the MacroBaby store to check them out and see other options, but surprisingly have found that we really like the Britax B Ready. It will cost us a pretty penny, so we're going to wait a little bit and try to sell our Peg Perego in the meantime.

Hide your...

2011-09-12T20:23:00.005-04:00

Hide your kids, hide your wife... Oh wait, that's the wrong message. What I meant to say was, hide your keys, cellphone, anything small and valuable to you because the hiding/throwing away phase has begun. Her current favorite thing to "put away" are shoes. Of course, she only chooses to do this with one of the pair. I have found a shoe in the garbage and a closet drawer. The garbage was most disturbing, and I'm just glad I noticed it while it was at the top of the garbage before it was there too long and before we just threw it away. While playing in the living room, she took a wooden puzzle piece and drop it into the toy drawer. If I wasn't watching her, I'm sure I would spend hours trying to find it. We just got the puzzles yesterday and we already almost lost a piece.

In other news, Mei Li seems to be trying to say new words everyday. While I already noted she said five the other day, today she picked up the 5 in her numbers wooden puzzle and said it. So when I would ask her to find me the 5, she more than often found it and if I held the 5 up to her and asked her what it was, she would say it. However, the one glitch is that she gets the 2 confused with the 5. So sometimes she picks up the 2, or if I hold up the 2 she will call it a 5. I'm not entirely sure what her attachment is to the number 5 and why she has not chosen to learn any other numbers, but I'll take what I can get. Haha!

I have pregnancy brain because I feel like I had more words to write down, and I can't remember any of it right now. Speaking of pregnancy, I definitely felt the baby move the other night. I was able to even sort of feel it from the outside. I had eaten a chocolate covered strawberry a few hours before (thanks April for the present!) and the baby went crazy. We have a stethoscope my dad loaned me when I was pregnant the first time because I read somewhere you could hear the heartbeat with it (and I never could), so I put it against my belly and could hear all kinds of taps and even rubbing noises as it kicked and squirmed in there. It was nice to hear and feel and confirm what I was feeling. Right now I have to be laying a certain way, leaning back but not flat on my back, to feel it. Anyway, this baby is so sensitive because that chocolate covered strawberry kept me awake too! All these things it makes me crave and then I pay for it later.

Well, that's all for now. I'm catching up on my guilty pleasure television. Right now it's Keeping Up with the Kardashians and later it's the final episode of Kate Plus 8. I don't really like Kate, but I love seeing how her kids have grown up. It's also interesting to watch her as I am afraid I have similar personality traits and she can sometimes say aloud what I would be thinking in certain situations but would never say. So then it's a good reminder to me to control those thoughts so I don't become like that. Anyway, other than that not much is going on. Mei Li and Mateo will be reunited tomorrow, so it should be fun to see/hear how that goes.

Random Baby #2 Facts

2011-09-09T20:59:00.001-04:00

I need to be fair and talk about both kids. Poor baby, hasn't even arrived and already competing for Mommy's attention.

I think I felt the baby move for the first time while we were in Nashville. I'm still not 100% sure as it's still at the point where it feels like gas bubbles. I haven't felt the feeling consistently yet but when I did feel it, it seemed right. Hopefully I'll get more of those feelings soon and know it for sure. In fact, I think I just felt it now, but that could just be the Indian food talking.

We referred to Mei Li as Little Baby when she was in utero since baby was the term of endearment between Dave and me. Baby #2 is referred to as Tiny Baby. I know, we're extremely creative.

I still have this strong feeling it's a boy. Mattie has also made her prediction that it's a boy. I could be setting my mind up for a big surprise but I just can't get it out of my head that it's a boy.

This baby is having me crave all kinds of bad stuff. With my last pregnancy, I craved fairly healthy, balance diet things like fresh fruits and vegetables. But with this one, I can't stop thinking about coffee (which I never drink), ice cream, and sometimes chocolate too. Oh, and lately I've been craving salty food too, which makes me extremely worried about my weight gain. So anytime I crave a salad, I make sure I get one ASAP before the craving leaves me. At one point I almost threw up after taking a bite of banana.

While this is more about me than the baby, I am happy to report that my maternity clothes are a size smaller than the last pregnancy (for now) and so I rewarded myself by buying a pair of maternity skinny jeans.

Random/Fun Mei Li Facts

2011-09-09T20:15:00.001-04:00

Today Mei Li said down, shoes, five and eyes. I also forgot to note that she said Sissy in Nashville, which is my cousin Christie's nickname.

Yesterday morning and this evening, Mei Li handed us her bottle of Tylenol and signed please. We weren't sure the first time if she realized what it was but after the way she's been acting the last couple days, we're pretty sure she's teething. So tonight we obliged and gave her some.

This afternoon Dave took Mei Li with him to our friend's rental to help the new tenants get checked in (our friends live in Oregon), while I got my haircut. The new tenants were two guys straight out of college. When they saw Dave and Mei Li together, one of them asked Dave where Mei Li was from and if she was adopted. He hasn't been asked that in a while.

At the end of Mei Li's bath, we were draining the water. She usually splashes around as the water gets shallower. When it was almost gone, she paused, clenched down and farted. We just died laughing and she was laughing because we were laughing so hard, I was almost in tears. The water was just at the right level to make it sound like a huge, wet, reverberating fart. I wish I was able to get it on video.

We let Mei Li try Indian food tonight. She liked all the breads and rice and even a fried potato appetizer thing, but wasn't a fan of even the mildest curry. she wouldn't even touch the rice after she had the bite with curry.

The milk situation is still hit and miss. Today was a miss.

There's an App for That

2011-09-08T23:15:00.001-04:00

I tried the new blogger interface tonight and the homepage mentioned they now have an app. So here's to easier posting from my phone! Maybe now I'll actually post more random thoughts. (Like that's a good thing.)

Vidoes

2011-09-08T23:00:00.003-04:00

This is what crazy Friday nights look like at our house these days. We were having fun with the kids in a baby doll stroller and it was quite the event.

I was trying to get Mei Li on video kicking a ball, but instead I ended up getting her playing with her baby doll. Let's hope she's a little more gentle with her upcoming sibling, but just as loving. You can hear her say baby, ball, and uh-oh. I don't know if I've pointed this out before, and you don't necessarily hear it all that well in this video, but when she says ball, she almost says it with a southern twang where it's a two syllable word.

This video is short, but thought it was quite sweet to capture some love for her Daddy. She's been pretty Mommy-centered these days and he doesn't always get the warm welcome he used to when he comes home.

This week Mei Li hasn't had her BFF, Mateo, around at daycare. Just last week she started saying his name, but it's "Teo." I wanted to get it on video and send a little love-gram via email while he was gone to let him know he was missed. Mercedes says that she looks for him when they mention his name at daycare. Also, yesterday while she was having a hard time going down for her nap, Mercedes asked her if she'd like to go in Mateo's crib and she happily obliged. She didn't fall asleep there, but she was happy to be in it.

Nashville Trip

2011-09-08T21:51:00.001-04:00

I need to blog about our trip to Nashville before I forget. It was a wonderful trip visiting friends and family, and as always was way too short. The weather was strangely hot and felt even hotter than Florida until the last 2 days we were there, it rained and cooled down. I always feel bad when I go to big gatherings like this because I feel like we don't get to hang out as much as I'd like because of Mei Li's need for a nap. She unfortunately won't nap just anywhere, and if she does happen to fall asleep in the middle of an event, the nap usually lasts up to 45 minutes and then I'll be lucky if she'll sleep again later in the day. That leaves us with a very cranky girl and mommy. The other difficult part in all of this was the 1-hour time difference that wasn't working to our advantage.

Well, let me start of by talking about the travel bit of it. Mei Li did pretty well. We ended up being on the same flights with my parents. On the way out there it was during Mei Li's awake time, so we were able to keep her entertained in Lola's lap watching Baby Signs DVD's on my iPad. The trip back was even better because it fell during her nap time and she slept pretty much the whole time. The only bad part was that I ended up being the bed and I got very uncomfortable after 1.5 hours of holding a sleeping child and not being able to move much in an uncomfortable seat. On another travel note, we took the lighter of our toddler car seats, and since it works much better when forward facing, Mei Li got to sit forward facing for the first time. She didn't seem to notice a huge difference, but I would say it was easier to keep her awake at times because she had things to look at. However, it doesn't matter when she is utterly exhausted.

This trip was the first time we stayed in a home rental vs. a hotel. It was an awesome place and I'd love to go back when the weather is cooler. It was really convenient to have separate rooms and a kitchen and dining room. I didn't think we'd be able to use it much, but we were able to be there quite often because of Mei Li's naps and Bill, Geri and the boys even spent an afternoon with us there. We would have enjoyed the huge yard and pond outside if it wasn't so hot, but that didn't stop the boys from taking a ride in the paddleboat. Another plus to this place is that it was located in a newly developed area that had lots of conveniences just around the corner. This included a Which Wich! We LOVE these restaurants and have only been able to go to them when we visit Ken in California. We made sure to stop by there once over the weekend, and it did not disappoint. If only we could get one here. They also had a Red Robin, but we didn't have time to make it there.

All in all it was a busy weekend with a trip to the zoo, a big 25th anniversary party, a trip to the YMCA pool, and LOTS of eating and hanging out with family and friends. I was happy to get some time with Bill, Geri and the boys. Mei Li finally warmed up to her Uncle Bill and hung out with him quite a bit on Saturday. She has a hard time warming up to men these days. I wonder what Dave's been teaching her. =)

I'll leave you with some pictures from the trip.

There is Hope!

2011-09-07T23:24:00.002-04:00

So it's way late and I need to go to bed, but one thing led to another and I'm still awake. Anyway, before I go to bed, I had to document this day. Mei Li drank cold milk! It was completely random. We were getting dinner ready and she saw her milk sippy cup on the counter and I asked her if she wanted milk. In response, she signed milk so I gave it to her to see what would happen. Next thing I know she's drinking it up. I cheered her on to give her tons of positive reinforcement every time she took a sip. Between then and the end of dinner, she drank 4-5 ounces, assuming she didn't drink any at daycare. This is HUGE!!!!

Part of me was scared to even mention it as it could jinx the whole thing, but I had to note that it indeed happened before I forgot. So here's to hoping it's not a fluke and it's only up from here!

Another Day, Another Trip

2011-09-01T21:29:00.003-04:00

I tell you what, these last few months have been flying by. It's already September and things have been crazy at work and at home. We fly out again tomorrow to Nashville to meet up with family for my Uncle's 25th wedding anniversary party. I'm excited to see everyone as they haven't met Mei Li yet. However, I'm exhausted from the week and anxious about getting on a plane and managing Mei Li's routine through all the events and time difference. I think the lack of sleep from the coffee ice cream, sleepless nights are catching up to me and is causing me extra stress and anxiety.

I guess I forgot to post a blog after my check up the other day. Everything is fine. Dave was able to come and meet Dr. Sweet. However, I have the worst luck with this office. This time, I showed up and they asked me to show my appointment card. Come to find out, their system wiped out all the appointments that were scheduled when I had scheduled mine, so they didn't have me in the system for that day. They of course took me anyway, and it was actually one of the quicker visits coincidentally. The baby's heartbeat was 154 bpm and it was giving the nurse a hard time as it kept moving when she found it. We scheduled my next appointment for September 28, which will be the ultrasound where we find out the baby's sex. Another funny thing to note about my doctor's appointment is that every time a nurse or a doctor sees my c-section scar (which looks terrible because I get keloids), they sometimes ask who did it and almost always tell me that the doctor can fix it if I ended up having another c-section. Lovely...

In other news, it's been an interesting week at daycare. It started out well with Mei Li taking great naps on Tuesday and Wednesday. However, today was a different story. Sounds like it could have been because Giselle's mom came to pick her up early. We don't know for sure because Mercedes was on her lunch break and the other teacher didn't say, but that was Mercedes' guess. Mercedes also told Magally something interesting today. Apparently Mei Li and Mateo are truly BFF's and have learned to play together quite well. The problem with this is that they seem to have become a clique. There is only one other child in the class at the moment, Giselle, and they haven't been very nice to her. Yesterday Mateo bit her and Mercedes told Magally that when Giselle comes over to where Mateo and Mei Li are playing, they leave and go do something else. I'm happy that Mateo and Mei Li play together, but how in the world did they learn to be so exclusive at such a young age?!?! Mercedes did note that it's getting better, but still, I can't believe they do that... Mateo will be gone for a week, so maybe Mei Li and Giselle will get to know each other a little bit better.

Well, that's all. Just had to vent a little and keep myself busy as I waited for my iPad to update. Why do I always wait until the night before a trip to plug the thing into the computer? It's inevitable that there's a software update that needs to happen and I need to transfer purchases, plus get the movies I wanted to upload onto the thing in the first place. Procrastination is never good...

Belly Comparison

2011-08-30T22:42:00.002-04:00

Ok, so after my belly shot post, I was obsessing about how big my belly looked. I went back to old posts to see if I could find a comparable shot from my first pregnancy. My first belly shot at around 14 weeks was not even comparable, so I pulled the next one when I was almost 18 weeks along and it still is barely comparable. Yikes! I'm already bigger than when I was almost 18 weeks along.... However, I just noticed how I nicely color coordinated the outfits I chose to take pictures in these different weeks. How thoughtful of me! HAHA, like that was planned! I guess it just means I have a limited selection in colors that I like to wear.

Alright, last post tonight. I've been playing catch up and Dave is scolding me to go take a shower and get to bed. I have needed to catch up on sleep because a few nights ago we discovered that a coffee ice cream I decided to try two nights in a row was to blame for keeping me up late in the night (one night I was up until 3 am). Too bad, because that coffee ice cream with brownie chunks was sure tasty. I guess it's a good thing I can't eat it so that this belly doesn't grow any faster!

Daycare Crafts

2011-08-30T21:47:00.004-04:00

Every now and then, the teachers at daycare put together crafts for the parents. I never scanned the first ones, so I'm playing a little catch up. All of these crafts were done by her first teacher, Tania, from the baby room. We will miss her greatly, she was wonderful!

I was bad and didn't write the date on the back of this one. I think it was the first one, so it had to be around April 2011. If I am wrong about it being the first one, then it might have been more like June...

This is obviously from May 2011 and the plant in the pot are cutouts of Mei Li's hands.

This is 1 of 2 that Tania gave us last week after Mei Li graduated into the 1 year old toddler room. It's probably hard to see, but the school bus has little pictures of Mei Li and all her classmates from the baby room. It starts with Mei Li in the driver's seat, Mateo in his alligator costume, Brantley in a lamb costume, Hector Renee in a puppy costume, Ruben in a bumblebee costume, and Giselle in a puppy costume.

This collage features more of Mei Li and her classmates (Hector Renee and Brantley) in costume, one of Mateo (her BFF), and a few older pictures from when Mei Li was probably around 9 months or so. This was supposed to be a surprise for parents, but Magally happened to come early to pick up Mateo that day and saw all the kids in costume for the pictures. She couldn't help but share with me what she saw because Mei Li was just as happy as could be strutting her stuff in her costume around the classroom while all the other babies sat and cried and wanted out of theirs. Oh, the girly girl we have on our hands! She just loves accessories and I anticipate she'll love dress up as well.

Her new classroom and teacher seem to be going better this week. Today I gave her new teacher, Mercedes, a detailed sheet of notes regarding the recent changes in her routine with a table showing her new routine/schedule in a time format. I think it helped because today she took a 2 hour nap vs. the 1 hour naps she was taking last week. This is MUCH better as she typically takes a 3 hour nap at home. So I am pleased with the progress. I wasn't able to talk to Mercedes about my notes as Tim had to drop them off for me after I had already left since our printer ran out of ink last night and I had to ask him to print it for me.

Other than that, I really need to work on my Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish so I can better communicate with her teachers. Mercedes speaks better English than Tania, but there is still a language barrier as she is not fluent.

14 Weeks, 4 Days

2011-08-30T21:18:00.003-04:00

Ok, I have to admit that I was too lazy to calculate how far along I am that I just looked at the app on my iPhone to tell me. And if I look tired in the picture above, that's because it was taken around 8-something this evening after a full day of work (actually worked late because I was consumed by what I was working on I lost track of time), dinner, giving Mei Li a bath and putting her to bed. I also decided it was time to take a belly shot because 2 men at work asked me if I was pregnant today and they didn't already know. Dave said they were pretty bold to ask me, but they were both over 50, so I'm pretty sure they think they can get away with that stuff now. Lastly, I thought it would be a good time to take the picture because I was in a new dress and I had flat ironed my hair this morning because it got all kinked in my sleep. However, I'm sad it doesn't display the full length of my hair as it feels crazy long and I think I'm ready to take some length off.

Well, just as it was with my first pregnancy, I'll throw my disclaimer out there that I am a self-concious person who doesn't like to take pictures of myself. Especially when it's a picture where I know people will be analyzing my ever growing body. So don't expect weekly pictures, but I am a "documenter" and would regret not documenting this process. And if I weren't self-concious enough about it, I've been feeling extra down on my body image since I feel like I didn't have the chance to tighten up my midsection before getting pregnant again. So it's popping out so fast since it's the second time around and it's not as firm as it once was...

Anyway, there you have it...the first belly shot. Things are going better with this pregnancy now that I'm in the second trimester. My nausea is gone but the fatigue continues. It's getting harder and harder to carry Mei Li, which is unfortunate because she seems to want to be picked up often. I am trying to keep my weight in check this time around and I seem to be doing it inadvertently by being too busy to eat all the time. I know this isn't the healthiest route, but life has been a bit crazy.

I have another OB appointment tomorrow. I'm looking forward to talking to the doctor, hearing the heartbeat, and hopefully getting the test results from my last appointment. I hope that Dave will be able to come so he can finally meet Dr. Sweet as well. Not much else going on in the pregnancy front. On a positive note for my rapidly growing belly, it is a constant reminder that I have another little person to care for. It's hard to pay as much attention to the pregnancy when so many other things are calling for your attention. I can already understand how all kids after the first born feel that they don't get as much attention. I hope I can make sure that baby #2 feels just as loved as Mei Li.

15 Months

2011-08-30T20:40:00.003-04:00

15 months

Already full of mischief

In the second picture, I think I caught her mid-rock. I was actually surprised she had already figured out how to rock the chair. She has been surprising me a lot these days. Sometimes I feel like I need to go back to blogging about her weekly because I can't keep up with all the things that are happening lately. We had her 15 month check up yesterday and here are her stats.

- Weight: 20 pounds, 13 ounces, 20th percentile

- Height: 30.5 inches, 40th percentile

- Head Circumference: 18.5 inches, 75th percentile

It was cute when the doctor gave us the percentiles she said, "She's skinny, tall, and full of brains. Must be nice!" I had a few more questions that usual for the doctor that day. Over the weekend we had decided it was time to work on Mei Li's transition to drinking cold milk. She has transitioned smoothly to her cow's milk/almond milk mix perfectly plus her sippy cup transition has been going so well that she was even taking her milk from a straw sippy cup. The last transition left was her temperature preference. I'm sure I must have blogged about this in the past, but Mei Li is a gourmet girl and has her opinions about how her food should be prepared. Her milk has always needed to be so warm, it's almost hot. Everyone that has cared for her is always surprised how hot she likes it, but we have all learned that if it's not hot enough, she will not touch it. So I knew the gradual transition wasn't going to make a difference, so on Friday we went cold turkey and started offering her milk straight from the fridge.

Let's just say we have a strong-willed girl on our hands. We went from 24 ounces of a milk a day to 2-6 ounces a day. This of course freaked me out, but her water intake went from 2 ounces a day to about 4-6 ounces a day and her diapers were pretty regular, so I knew she wasn't dehydrated. However, I made sure we were supplementing her diet with extra dairy products and watery fruits to make up for the lack in her liquid diet. Her solid diet has increased since, but it still worried me that she wouldn't touch her milk. I was holding on to the belief that kids eat and drink what they need and that she will eventually come around when she realizes it's never going to be warm milk again. However, it's been 5 days and she's holding strong. So I think her weight may have been higher had she not been on the milk boycott, but the doctor was not worried about her weight since she eats so well and clearly doesn't look starved. She was also not concerned about the nutrition Mei Li would be missing from the milk as it seems we are supplementing appropriately through dairy products and vegetables, etc. to get her vitamin D and calcium intake. Oh man, feeding this child has seriously been the bane of my existence since she was born! I really am praying that next one is a champion eater and most laid back kid. I am sure I will regret that wish when baby #2 is in school and I have to push him/her to care about it. =)

Anyway, it was really good to know her height because we had continued to use her infant carseat as its limitations were 30 inches and 30 pounds. We knew she wasn't going to be 30 pounds anytime soon, but we knew we would be approaching the 30 inches in the near future. So Mei Li officially graduated to a toddler seat today, although we are continuing to keep her rear facing.

Here are a few pictures we took of Mei Li tonight. I found an old stuffed animal someone gave me and I knew she would love it. At daycare, they have a stuffed animal with the same idea of the long arms and legs that velcro together, and when they put it on her she likes to check herself out in the mirror like its an accessory. Plus, she just loves monkeys right now as that is one of her words and stuffed animals in her crib.

Reading with her new friend. After her doctors appointment yesterday, Dave told me to get her a treat for doing so well with the shots (although she cried as soon as we walked into the exam room and continuously throughout the appointment). Behind her is one of the toys I bought, which is turned upside down, that is supposed to be like an iPhone but it has buttons that you push to make sounds. I also bought her another phone toy that is like a flip phone because she loves the one at daycare and holds it up to her ear and says "Mommy" all the time. No, she's not spoiled...

A little gangsta posin' with her new monkey pal.

Just hangin'

So I'll end with a list of her new words since two weekends ago:

- Uh-oh: I'm not thrilled about this one as I know kids like to use it to look cute when they're doing something bad. She is already using it when she drops food and I'm trying not to encourage it in the bad situations.

- Ball: Today at daycare they put new toys in the room, some of which are beach balls hung from the ceiling just low enough for the kids to swipe. She LOVED this and couldn't care less that I was leaving. She just kept hitting them and yelling "ball!"

- Oval: So this is kind of random, but we have a shapes book that we don't even read that often and recently when we turned the page to oval, she kept repeating it. Although, as Dave says, it sounds more like Volvo. Maybe she was just trying to tell us we made the wrong choice for our SUV.

- Cone: This is also on account of the shapes book and really just sounds like "ko."

- Bubble: I blow bubbles for her sometimes in the bath and she loves it. So of course, she has started to learn how to say it.

- Water: Sometimes she'll repeat this one, but she's starting to sign it too now that she wants water instead of milk. She isn't doing the proper sign, which uses 3 fingers to form a W and motions towards your face. She just uses her pointer finger and points to her cheek or mouth area and sometimes ends up at her nose, which she then proceeds to pick.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but that's all I can think of at the moment. Sorry for the long post, but so much has happened that I'd like to document somewhere!

Money, Money, Money

2011-08-23T20:57:00.002-04:00

So all weekend, Mei Li had been saying a new word "money." I couldn't figure out where she would have picked this word up, and for a moment I thought I was raising a child prodigy who knew her accounting/finance background at such a young age. Then it hit me yesterday...I was picking her up from her crib after a nap, she handed me a stuffed animal and said, "money!" It was her MONKEY! Haha! I just had to laugh because it all suddenly made sense. One of the times she kept repeating this word was when she was in Mateo's room on Saturday afternoon, and he has various monkey things there too. I made sure I understood her correctly, so at various points during the day, I would point to her stuffed animal or a picture of a monkey and ask her to repeat, and sure enough she would say "money." It also makes sense since when she says duck, it sounds like "dut" and when she says ducky it sounds more like "daddy." So it all comes down to the missing K sound. It just makes me laugh...

Some other new words lately are water and fish/fishies which she picked up pretty well after our day at Sea World. She is also pretty good at saying wow these days. I'll have to post a video later.

In other great news, she had a successful first day in her new toddler classroom at daycare today. She even took a nap on a mat, which was very new to her. They did have to help her fall asleep and it only lasted a little under an hour, but they think it will continue to get better as she gets used to her new surroundings.

Introducing...

2011-08-17T21:32:00.003-04:00

Baby #2, due to arrive on February 24, 2012.

Side profile

Side profile with hand up by face and legs crossed

A little closer side profile

Today's ultrasound went well. I was surprised when the ultrasound tech did not want me to go to the bathroom first. I did not have to leave a sample today as I was not seeing the doctor, but apparently they prefer full bladders for this test. It ended up not working for the ultrasound tech because the baby was moving all around while my bladder was full. She wasn't able to get the picture she needed for the test, so she let me go to the bathroom. When I came back and she took a look, the baby was just relaxing. Hands were up like he/she was trying to put them behind his/her head, legs were crossed, and he/she kept relatively still for the rest of the time.

The heart rate was 153 beats per minute, while it was 163 at my 8 week ultrasound. And here is where my somewhat scientific prediction begins. I am predicting a boy because at this time with Mei Li, her heart rate was 170+ beats per minute and I think it's somewhat fact that girls have a faster heart rate. Next, the timing of conception in relation to my cycle (sorry if that's TMI) was prime for having a boy as well, which is also different than my first pregnancy. The ultrasound measurements are showing my due date to be right on with my LMP date, which also goes along my timing of conception theory. That's the end of my "scientific" method for my prediction. The rest is maternal instinct, including the fact that my pregnancy symptoms have been different from the start.

Something else to note about this pregnancy is that I have switched OB/GYN practices. It was quite stressful at the beginning because I am attempting to do a VBAC in hopes to prevent a repeat C-section. Due to the state I live in and the insurance I hold, it was difficult to find a physician willing to do it. After many calls and visits to 2 different practices, I found one that I feel comfortable with and I am excited about the change. The one thing I do miss about my previous practice is that they used Philips machine and the ultrasound pictures seem to be clearer and bigger printouts.

I think that's all for now. I look forward to hearing your predictions on the gender, but don't let my "super-scientific" prediction sway you. I have yet to hear Mattie's prediction, but I have sent her a copy to see what she thinks.

I Have Some Explaining To Do...

2011-08-15T21:57:00.004-04:00

So I owe some of my readers an apology, particularly you Joel! In my last video update post, I let a "little" announcement slip. When I do video posts, I typically multitask and simultaneously send the links and captions via email to our immediate families. Today, I was in a particular rush to get it posted before Mei Li woke up from her nap, that I forgot to modify my blog version a little bit. In the back of my mind, I figured that all of the people who read my blog already knew, so it wasn't going to phase anyone. I was saving my "official" announcement for when I was ready to post to Facebook, which is when I have a decent ultrasound picture to show since the video thing didn't work out.

I have intended to make this "official" announcement sooner, but things just never worked out. I haven't been hiding it anymore since we told our departments at work 1.5 weeks ago. I have also been in a rush to tell people as I have been paranoid that people will start wondering why I look so plump since the belly shows sooner the second time around. So waiting for a decent ultrasound picture has only been in my mind for the Facebook crowd as I think people who take the time to read my blog are privy to more information. =) I have actually had 2 ultrasounds so far, but the first one was so early it didn't look like much. Plus, the office had run out of paper and just gave me a photocopy of the printout, which made it look even worse. A couple weeks later, I switched practices and the new doctor didn't receive a copy of my previous ultrasound, so he did one himself just to make sure he saw with his own eyes that everything was alright since it was too early to hear the heartbeat on the doppler. He doesn't typically do the ultrasounds so it was quite informal and there were no printouts. But it was still nice to see the little person doing somersaults in my belly! The next ultrasound will be this Wednesday and I hope to have that decent printout this time. That's the other reason I didn't think anything of my slip up with the video since I knew the "official" announcement was just days away...

So thank you Joel for reminding me that I have a bigger audience than I think. I'm sure I have a couple relatives reading this that I have forgotten to tell myself (although, I'm blaming Davey for not telling you...haha!). So please accept this apology and "unofficial" pre-announcement of baby #2. He/she is due February 24, 2012 making the kids 21 months apart.

Tax free loot

2011-08-15T13:02:00.002-04:00

These are just a couple of things Mei Li scored during our tax free weekend shopping. We stopped by Nordstrom Rack yesterday and found Crocs and Keens in her size. They're so tiny and cute! I've always loved baby shoes.

Video Update

2011-08-15T12:27:00.003-04:00

Swinging: Mei Li enjoying Mommy swinging her around.

Beach Fun: Took some video during my birthday weekend at the beach. This was the first day and Mei Li's first time in the ocean.

Bathtime Cleanup: Usually at the end of Mei Li's bath as the water drains from the tub, Mei Li takes part in taking out all the toys from the bath tub.

TV Excitement: This video doesn't do the excitement justice. She is this excited that I turned the TV on, I hadn't even started her favorite DVD's (Baby Signs) on yet. She just knows it's coming and is quite happy about it. You can see how much of a couch potato she is as she just settles right into my lap in preparation for the show.

Words & More: I had originally taken this video in hopes to get Mei Li saying our "family roster" as a way to announce we are having another baby. I never got the perfect shot of it but thought this video was pretty cute nonetheless. She's busily chowing down on some biscuits and gravy Daddy made over the weekend.

On a Lighter Note...

2011-08-11T21:29:00.004-04:00

On the brighter side of this week, I'd like to point out some more cute things Mei Li has been doing. I can't remember exactly when it started, I think this week sometime but definitely tonight, Mei Li has started to play peekaboo, meaning she does it herself. It's pretty cute. She was kind enough to exhibit it for Auntie Randi via FaceTime tonight.

Another first today is she started wearing her size 4 sneakers. Her feet are finally starting to grow! I can still pull of her size 3 sandals for now, but not for long. The sneakers had to go as she wouldn't even keep them on at daycare yesterday. I'll buy her new sandals this weekend during our tax free weekend here in Florida. It was pretty funny, as soon as I put the new shoes on, she was off. She was super excited to walk in them and was walking all over the place today. She got many compliments on them at daycare and she was loving walking around Target and at home this evening. She was very tired tonight and didn't make much of a peep once we laid her down.

Other growing points are her clothes. She still wears some of her 6-12 month clothes, but she's definitely ready for her 12-18 month shirts. The pants are still a little big, but the buddha belly sticks out of a lot of her 6-12 month shirts. Dresses just depends on what store it's from, but most of them are still 6-12 month size. PJ's are definitely 12-18 month now. This girl is going to be petite and definitely have the same challenges with pants that her mommy has.

I forgot to mention in my other post that she also hugs her teacher's leg at daycare when she's cleaning at the sink. Tania loves it! Tania also told Dave this morning that she is using her please and thank you signs too.

Speaking of daycare, the teachers all tell me (and even Magally) how girly Mei Li is. They say she takes everything she can and puts it on her arm like a bracelet and walks around showing them off. One day when I went to pick her up, the afternoon teacher told me that she put a monkey stuffed animal around her neck and Mei Li immediately went looking for a mirror to check herself out. The first one she went to was too low to the ground so she couldn't quite see it, so she went on to the big mirror to see the full picture. Oh man, am I in trouble!

I almost forgot! This was pretty funny. Last night I was giving Mei Li a bath and had left the TV on from watching the news earlier. By this time though, it was entertainment news and Dave told me from across the family room that they were saying rumors that Jennifer Aniston is pregnant are true. My response was, "Really?! WOW!" Then all of a sudden, Mei Li started repeating wow for the rest of her bath. I think we even took a little video of it. It's extra funny/cute because she's pretty dramatic when she speaks words so she really emphasizes the first syllable. So it can be really dramatic when there's only one syllable in already dramatic words like wow and whoa. Can we say drama queen? HAHA!

Crazy Times...

2011-08-11T21:00:00.004-04:00

Ahhh....my work week is over. It feels like it's been another long one because we had a huge deadline to meet and then something very scary happened yesterday. I first heard about it when my dear friend Kaylee asked us to pray after she just had to pick up her daughter up from school early because the principal had been murdered by one of the students. Here are just a few articles about it as I'm constantly checking for new information.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/aug/11/teen-held-mental-evaluation-after-memphis-principa/

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/aug/10/female-teacher-found-dead-memphis-junior-academy/?partner=popular

http://www.wmctv.com/story/15243865/teacher-found-stabbed-to-death-inside-memphis-private-school

This is frightening to me on so many levels. First of all, my heart is heavy knowing that someone so close to me and so young (Mattie is only 6) has to be around such tragedy. Not only that, I realized today as I was talking to Kaylee that a college friend is a teacher at the school too. I think he's in one of the pictures (3 of 8) in the Commercial Appeal links, hugging his wife. It reminds me that you can never feel too safe and you never know what's going on in someone's life. I can't even begin to understand what drives anyone to do this, especially someone so young.

To anyone reading this, please keep all the families in your prayers.

Random Happenings

2011-08-09T23:08:00.003-04:00

After all that mobile set up, I'm still posting via computer because the formatting was funny and I'm already on here anyway. So here are some funny things that happened recently with Mei Li. Yesterday, while I was sitting on the couch, she brought her flip flops to me so that I could put them on. Not really sure why she wanted this, I complied anyway. I put her back down with her shoes on and the next thing she does is grab her purse and head for the front door. I guess she really wanted to go shopping! I typically take her to run errands in the afternoon, but it was rainy and I was tired so it didn't happen that day. I think she was trying to tell me something...

Something else really cute that she does right now is while we're working away in the kitchen, she'll come up to our legs and hug them. I think it's particularly funny because her head comes up to my butt and she often lays her head on it while hugging my leg like it's a pillow.

I'm trying to teach Mei Li to say please and thank you with her sign language. It works most of the time with please, especially when she asks for more of something, she's starting to realize that if I'm waiting to hand it to her, she needs to say please.

Mei Li has started to learn the concept of knocking. We often close our bedroom door while she's playing in the living room to contain her in one area. Many times when I'm home alone with her on my days off, she will go to the bedroom door, knock, and call for daddy.

Mobile pictures

2011-08-09T23:02:00.000-04:00

Testing

2011-08-09T23:00:00.001-04:00

I changed a setting on my blog to be able to post via email. I wanted
to do this as sometimes I have a quick thought I'd like to post but
don't always have the time to log in. For instance, I've been wanting
to jot down funny things Mei Li has been doing but haven't had the
time to sit down and do it. Since I always have my phone, I can just
email a post to my blog really quick. Seems easy enough, let's see if
I like it.

T.G.I.F.

2011-07-29T13:56:00.003-04:00

Oh man, am I glad it's Friday. This week was a bit of a rough one. After yet another busy weekend, on Monday I decided I couldn't take my house anymore and cleaned every moment that I could while Mei Li was napping or entertained enough with toys. It was exhausting, but I couldn't stand the mess that had become our house after being busy so many weekends in a row. I woke up on Tuesday feeling so exhausted and sore that I considered even calling into work.

Boy oh boy, do I ever wish I had called in to work that day. It was a doozy. I know I can tend to be a negative person, but have you ever woken up and gotten that feeling like today is going to be a bad day? Well, I had that feeling, and it came true. Tuesday morning, Tim and I happened to walk into daycare at the same time to drop off Mateo and Mei Li. We were met by the new coordinator (the director recently retired) who decided to share some news that they were going to start transitioning Mateo and Mei Li into a toddler 1 year old room THAT DAY! No warning whatsoever... They were going to put them in this new room for a couple hours on Tuesday and Wednesday with supervision from their current teacher, but would be in the new room full time by Thursday.

First of all, here is some background for you. Previously, the toddler room was a 1-2 year old room and we were told that the kids would not move into that room until certain milestones were met, regardless of when they turned 1. Some of the milestones include walking (not just steps, but steadily and regularly walking) as well as drinking from a sippy cup. Mei Li had met these milestones, so I was expecting that they might tell me she was ready to move soon, but Mateo has not met these milestones. I was also suspecting that they were going to move Mei Li soon because they were adding some new babies, and if all of them showed up on one day (which depends since a lot of them are part time), they would be over the legal limit for the babies to teacher ratio. Regardless of my suspicions, I assumed I would get some notice of when they planned on making that transition. So I was quite upset when they told us the day of the change as we walk in the door.

Secondly, the new teacher for this new classroom was one we had never seen or met before. She was only going to work until noon everyday and then another teacher would come in for the afternoon. The afternoon teacher was also going to be someone new that we had never seen or met before, and was only going to be temporary for a couple of weeks until they could find a permanent person. Both of these new teachers had only been trained for one day with the current teacher and the one day was a day when neither of our kids were at daycare. Are you seeing anything wrong with this picture?!?!

As if this is all not enough, the new room was set up for toddlers. So the toys weren't all age appropriate and the room hadn't been thoroughly cleaned since the two year olds had been in it everyday. On top of that, they were going to expect our kids to learn to sleep on mats and eat at a kid sized table. Again, had some notice been given, we could have been preparing for this change.

Since they sprung all of this on us, we had no time to formulate a lot of questions but left extremely upset and anxious about what just happened. So Magally and I spent the morning researching some things to make sure we understood whether there were any regulations that required them to make some of these changes and then we went back to the daycare at lunch time to express our concerns, check on how things were going, and meet the new teachers. By lunch time our kids hadn't taken there morning naps, the new teacher was misreading all her instructions on how to go about their lunch routine and the temporary afternoon teacher bailed and said she had conflicting obligations and wouldn't be able to help the daycare out. When we went to pick them up at the end of the day, they had called a back up teacher who used to work there full time to fill in for the new person who had just bailed. But with all the new babies and current ones in the baby room, it was a madhouse.

Mateo had only slept 45 minutes that day, Mei Li didn't sleep at all until about a minute before I had walked into the door when she crashed on the teacher's lap. Magally had gone in before me as I had stopped to talk to the Principal who is supposed to also oversee the daycare and she said it was a madhouse of crying babies as the new ones weren't adjusting well and ours were just strapped to high chairs and swings to be contained through it all. When I walked in to pick Mei Li up, her current teacher (which we love) was so exhausted and upset about how the day went that when she saw me she just said sorry and started to cry. I quickly grabbed Mei Li's stuff and picked her up and took her home to get some sleep.

I was so upset and exhausted from everything, that I decided I needed a day off and Mei Li needed a day off to catch up on her sleep. So I took Wednesday off and we stayed home and rested. I also wanted to give daycare a day to get there stuff figured out. I have said a lot, but there are even more details I didn't go into. Overall, there was clearly miscommunication between management and with the parents. I think the end result of what they were trying to do was a good idea, but they did a terrible job of executing it. Magally ended up bringing Mateo in on Wednesday and kept me posted on what was happening. They made changes again and after calls and talks between all of us and management, we discovered that the new plan was to have 2 baby rooms (as the reason all of this is happening is there is a demand for the baby room and they wanted to take more babies and move the older ones on to another room). The babies that were already with the daycare would stay with their current teacher and the new ones with get the new teachers. When 4 of the babies can walk, they will go back to creating a toddler room just for 1 year olds and will hire a new teacher who is qualified to take that age. They are hoping that is within the next month.

Anyway, after all that I am satisfied with the plan for now. Although I need to meet the new teacher and know that she has had time to train or has enough experience to handle kids without getting to know them first. This whole experience made me want to stop working and just stay at home with Mei Li, but I know I need to give them time to work things out and give them a chance. I have really enjoyed the daycare thus far and I know all this change is hard on them too. The other option is to find another one that is better if they can't get their act together.

It was just so frustrating because I felt like this was all unnecessary anxiety that could have been prevented with some communication and planning. I feel a little anxious just talking about it all again. But things are on the ups and it's the weekend now and it will be a relatively low key weekend for once! So hopefully I can just breathe and relax and enjoy time with family and friends. On another high note, I found out another friend of mine is pregnant today. I don't want to say who just yet as I'm not sure how many people she still has to tell, but it's all very exciting! So thanks friend for helping make this Friday even better as I needed some things to make this week end on a happy note! Happy Friday everyone!

Steal of the Day

2011-07-25T22:38:00.002-04:00

I had to show you my find for today. When I buy Mei Li's clothes, I always try to find them in her future size and on sale so that I don't have to buy it full price when I need it. I've been burned on this for seasonal clothes as she hasn't always stayed with her age/size, but for basic stuff, it's pretty safe. Especially since we live in Florida and it's warm 75% of the time. Anyway, I found all 5 pieces in the picture at Target for $5.19 after tax! They were on the clearance rack and I thought they were perfect play clothes and back up clothes for daycare. And for $5, why not?!?! One big downfall is that the teal tank top is the wrong size. I went by the hanger label and didn't notice until Dave was looking them over that it's actually a 4T instead of an 18 month shirt. I was too distracted by the great deal to check the tag on the shirt. So I'll have to go back and see if there is an 18 month size left. But for $0.87, I might just keep it anyway.

14 Months

2011-07-25T22:12:00.002-04:00

Man, where is the time going?!?! It seems like we just celebrated her birthday...

- Weight: 20 pounds, 8 ounces. Woo hoo! She finally meets the requirements to be forward facing in her car seat, although Daddy thinks we should wait since it is safer and our rear facing car seat can hold her for another 9.5 pounds and 2 inches. I'm just so excited to see what she thinks of being able to see where she's going.

- Eating: Her appetite can be all over the place, and I think that's on account of the teething. When she's hungry, the girl can eat. As far as new foods, we haven't been all that adventurous these days. We did give her some cherries and strawberries while we were in Michigan, but we over did it and paid for it, so we're a little weary of doing it again. She has had Olive Garden for the first time and didn't like my eggplant parmesan, but was loving on Dave's fettucini alfredo. We tried it again tonight, and she didn't have the same sentiment, so who knows. I was getting excited because she seemed to finally start holding her own sippy cup while drinking milk, but that was short lived.

- Playtime: She's walking like a champ and signing like crazy. She knows please and kind of knows thank you, but has to be prompted and sometimes shown how to do them. She occasionally will do light as well. But what's really neat to see is that she's doing multiple signs at a time. Her favorite string to do while sitting in her high chair at dinner is stars, moon, love. I think it's because she recognizes those words now when we read one of her favorite books, "In Grandma's Arms." Verbal words continue to be daddy, mommy, baby, puppy (whispered only) and cheese (but it sounds like chssss and she uses it for any food that is orange). She babbles other words, but they are yet to be recognizable.

- Sleep: Oh man, this has been all over the place, especially this last week. I had blogged a little while ago that she dropped her morning nap. Well, that was only for 1 week. She has been taking 2 naps every day now, and half the time her afternoon naps have been 2-3 hours long. That is unheard of! I guess she must be hitting a growth spurt as she always acts sleepy when she's awake too. Anytime she sees a pillow, she lays down on it. The other problem is that we've had a lot of activities on the weekends and so we haven't been getting her to bed on time. So she must be doing some catching up. It's been throwing our whole feeding routine off kilter, but we're figuring it out. I'm hoping when she goes back to daycare tomorrow she'll start getting back to a normal routine and we can figure out what she really needs for naps.

I feel like I'm forgetting to say all that has been going on. It's been a busy few weeks. We've had 2 trips to the beach, last night she had her first boat ride and LOVED it, birthday parties, etc. While I have my days where my patience runs thin with Mei Li as she's grumpy because her teeth hurt, these days have been really fun and she's changing so fast. Lately she's been pretty loving and cuddly. I get jealous some times because Dave gets a lot of her affection and she asks for him all day while we're alone on my days off. We got it on video tonight, so later you can see the greeting he gets when he arrives home. I get a decent one when I pick her up from daycare, but it's not the same. I do love that she now runs with her arms open to give you a hug.

Anyway, I'm losing my thoughts, so I better just sign off. I'll leave you with a few extra pictures.

This girl loves to read. She likes to pretend she knows how to read the books and just sits for a long time (in toddler time) just flipping through pages of various books. Her current favorites are Dr. Suess' ABC, The Tooth Book, Hooper Humperdink...NOT HIM! As well as Karen Katz' Mommy Hugs, Daddy Hugs, Counting Kisses, and In Grandma's Arms.

Mei Li loves her accessories. She wears things on her arm like purses and bracelets. She brought me these barrettes to put in her hair today when she couldn't figure out how to do it herself. She leaves certain hats and sunglasses on, and often wants to try yours on too.

This is one picture from the beach trip for my birthday weekend. I think this picture reflects the pure glee that she had while playing on the beach. It makes me so happy to see her enjoy these experiences.

Hello 30!

2011-07-17T22:06:00.003-04:00

I'm winding down from a lovely weekend at the beach with the Putts. We were planning this weekend for some time, and it almost didn't happen because we couldn't find a place to rent as I found out that July is busy season. In a roundabout way, I found out a friend at church had a beach condo and took the chance to ask them if they rented it out and if it was available. They didn't rent it out, but were so generous to offer the place to us. It was awesome and was way better than anything we could have rented. I'll have to post more later, along with pictures, but just wanted to quickly recap on the perfect little escape from reality that we had this weekend.

As my big 30th birthday approached, I wanted to reflect on this past decade as it seems so much happens in this particular decade. I know it was the case for me! So here's my quick recap of things that happened in my 20's.

20 (2001-2002): This was the summer/year I met Dave, although technically we met months before I turned 20. We were summer interns at Florida Hospital and hung out quite a bit. At the end of the summer, there were some sparks, but not enough time to do anything about it. We ended up keeping in touch throughout the following school year.

21 (2002-2003): Since I was not a partier, I decided the big thing I was going to do was to finally pierce my ears. My mom and I debated about it for years as I always had a fascination with them, but it was one of those things she had issues with as an SDA. That summer, I also dated Dave for 3 months before I broke his heart...

22 (2003-2004): I graduated from college, started my first job at Ernst & Young, and passed the CPA exam on the first try. I attended a lot of weddings (as this was the year of the first string of friends to get married) and I'm sure a lot more, but I think this covers a lot.

23 (2004-2005): After my EY internship ended, I started working at Internal Audit for Adventist Health System. Between the two jobs, I took time off to take my first international trip (other than family vacations to Canada or the Caribbean or mission trips to South America) to Paris and Geneva. During my time in Internal Audit, I traveled about 30-40% of the time. It was good and bad. It gave me lots of opportunities to visit with friends but it was hard to be living out of a suitcase all that time.

24 (2005-2006): I was still traveling a lot for work and fun, and during this time I came to my senses and started dating Dave again. At this point, Valerie (a coworker) introduced me to the world of blogs, and I started this one (hence, the title). Towards the end of this year of life, after about 10 months of dating, Dave proposed while we were on a trip to Greece to attend a family friend's wedding!

25 (2006-2007): I had a new job in Investments, and a new job planning a wedding. We got married on May 27 and spent our honeymoon in Thailand.

26 (2007-2008): This was a year of contemplation for my career. I had to make a decision on whether to commit to Investments or get back onto the traditional Accounting track. I ended up interviewing for jobs in Texas and Florida. I ended up getting a job as Accounting Manager at Florida Hospital Waterman.

27 (2008-2009): My first job as manager was a trying time for me. In my personal life, we took a trip to China, my first visit. I originally planned on visiting both China and the Philippines when I graduated from college, but we cancelled our trip because of the timing of SARS and ended up going to Hawaii instead. After a little over a year as Accounting Manager, I decided to choose my personal life over my work life. I took a 2 month break from working all together and came back to AHS on a part-time basis as a Tax Analyst. After my first day on the job, I got appendicitis and had an appendectomy.

28 (2009-2010): I spent my birthday recovering from my appendectomy. Good times! I also had to recover in Sebring as Dave was out of town at work and didn't come back until my actual birthday. Talk about a guilt trip! Just a few months later, I found out I was pregnant! Then of course, I had beautiful Mei Li on May 25 (which resulted in a c-section, my second surgery in a year), just 2 days before our 3rd anniversary.

29 (2010-2011): This year, I became a mother. Not only a mother, but a working-mother. It has been the most challenging and rewarding job ever. I know it's a cliche, but I honestly don't have any better words to describe it.

Well, there you have it. It's been an amazing decade with so many life-changing moments. I'm sure I have many more to look forward to in this next decade. To my fellow bloggers, if you have the time, I would love to see your version of this post as I am just amazed at how much happens in our 20's. So I hope this inspires some posts from all of you or at least a conversation from you who read this when we talk in the future. Speaking of reflection, this brings me back to a post I did in my beginning years of blogging of 100 things about me. It's fun for me to read as some if it still holds true, but some if it is so reflective of the time I wrote it. What brings this list back to my mind in particular is item #38. Mission half-accomplished!

1 Nap Down...

2011-07-12T20:45:00.002-04:00

I'm so sad to report that Mei Li seems to have dropped her morning nap. I am not ready for this. I thought it was just a daycare thing and that she couldn't take 2 naps there because there was too much going on around her. Then when she was home after being at daycare 3 days in a row, she would usually sleep 2 long naps and seemed so tired from all the activity at daycare. Well, she has stopped taking the morning nap at home as of yesterday, so I told daycare today that they didn't have to try and put her down for the morning nap unless she seemed tired. She skipped the morning nap and slept a good 2 hour nap in the afternoon, which is very good for a nap at daycare.

Part of me still wonders if it's just because she's teething and sick right now. I guess time will tell. Speaking of teething, her bottom right molar has started to break through and it's making things very difficult for all of us. Mei Li is practically refusing milk and vegetables right now. She'll only eat things like fruit, yogurt, puffs/cereal, and I'm assuming cheese (although I haven't given her any lately). I'm so worried she's not getting enough nutrition or fluids and it makes mealtimes a big pain/fight. I pray that it ends soon!

So I forgot in my last post to note that Mei Li learned a new sign while we were in Michigan. I decided to see if she'd copy me while I did the sign for "love" and she's been doing it ever since. It's SOOO cute! Tania at daycare has also taught her to wink and it's really cute to see her try. She occasionally does it with one eye only, but it's so funny to see her try because she actually looks like she might be in pain because she's concentrating so hard. Another thing she seemed to start doing while in Michigan was fold her hands when we say "Let's pray to Jesus" before her meals. I've always said it and done it myself, but she just randomly did it before one of her meals while we were there and has kept doing it since.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I'm blogged out now that I've caught up a bit. Until next time...

July 4 Weekend

2011-07-12T20:14:00.007-04:00

OMG! I FINALLY finished Mei Li's thank you cards for her birthday gifts, so I felt I was justified to have some time to blog about our holiday weekend. We had a good time visiting Dave's family and Mei Li learned about all sorts of new things.

This is Lola, one of the mini-daschunds of the house. Lola is the calmer one and Mei Li became comfortable with her right away and loved to pet her. However, Mattie (not pictured) is the loud and yappy one, and Mei Li wasn't as warm with her. She often cried or scowled at Mattie when she would bark too loud or just pass by. She would only approach Mattie if she was asleep. It was cute that she was so interested, especially since puppy is her favorite stuffed animal and lovey. However, we are not excited about the prospect of her asking for a dog in the future. Our plans are still to say no, but you know how that can change.

Mei Li loved "helping" Grandma with the laundry. She particularly liked carrying Grandpa's white socks around and scrubbing the floor and other surfaces with them. I'm not sure if I should be proud of her scrubbing abilities or ashamed of her disregard for neatly folded laundry.

Mei Li had a lot of solid surfaces to walk back and forth on at Grandma and Grandpa's house and enjoyed roaming freely. She definitely got more confident on her feet this trip.

You can see Mattie's silhouette in this picture. Mei Li loved to walk up to this door and look outside. The cat is always outside, but sometimes the dogs were too. This particular time, the boys were outside playing basketball so she was enjoying watching and telling them her thoughts from the inside.

After church on Saturday, we went and had lunch at a park that included a splash pad. Neither the church or Grandma and Grandpa's house had air conditioning, so it was a nice reprieve from the hot weather. Mei Li LOVED it, of course. She was having the time of her life now that she can walk. She must have done 10 laps around that splash pad and was just full of pure glee the whole time.

At the end of it, she was sure to let us know she was all done. She signed "all done" after getting a little tripped up in the splash pad as I'm sure she was tired. Then when we dried her off and were packing up our stuff, she signed "sleep" to let us all know she was ready to go home and take a nap.

Over the weekend, both sets of Dave's grandparents came to visit with us. It was the first time for his Ellis grandparents to meet Mei Li as we were unable to meet up at Christmas time. Dave's mom was smart enough to make us all take the time to take generation pictures while they were visiting.

The Rusher Generations

The Ellis Generations

Mei Li learned to climb stairs while at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Thank goodness they already had gates to block the stairs for the dogs!

Luke was away at summer camp for most of our visit and came home Sunday late-morning. He has always been so excited to be an uncle and is always so nurturing around Mei Li. He always asks if he can feed her and read to her, although he has yet to volunteer to change a diaper. He was so sad he chose to go to summer camp instead of his cousin's wedding in California because that kept him from being home while we were there.

Mei Li signing "more" for Uncle Luke to feed her more spaghetti.

Reading one of Mei Li's all-time favorite books.

I think one of the reasons she likes this book so much is because it has so many of the words she knows the signs for. Here she is signing "stars" after Uncle Luke read the word in the book.

While we were at the Babies R Us in Lansing to pick up some toys and various things for Mei Li, we came across some sweet Tigers gear that we wouldn't find down here. We couldn't resist buying her this ballcap. I almost didn't even bother with it because all of them said they were newborn size, but at the last second decided to just see if it would fit her head. Sure enough it did. She's always had a small head, and I really think the hat is way too big for a newborn anyway. She looks so cute and Dave is so proud of it.

Well, I think that's it. One other thing to note is that Mei Li seems to be wary of men. Poor Grandpa didn't get a lot of quality time with her. One of the first times he tried to hold her was right when she had woken up from a nap and his deep voice scared her so she just screamed at the top of her lungs. She seemed to be hesitant ever since and acted the same way with her Great Grandpas. No problems with Grandmas though. It's weird because she connected so quickly with her Grandpa the first time she met him. Hopefully she grows out of it.

Diaper Rash Again...

2011-07-06T21:00:00.003-04:00

I'll have to post again soon about our July 4 weekend up in Michigan with the family, but I don't have time to do it all now. I did want to do a quick post about our unfriendly visitor, diaper rash, that has came to visit at the end of our trip. We're trying to work through it and one way is to let Mei Li just air out. So here's to the upside of diaper rash...watching TV in the nude!

This is our little way of providing a diaper-free safe zone. It works as we've gone through 3 beach towels in 3 days.

13 Months

2011-06-27T21:31:00.002-04:00

I'm late posting this because I completely forgot to weigh her. You get out of a habit quickly! Anyway, I won't be able to write as much as I'm desperately trying to write her thank you cards that are over a month overdue. Plus, I've tried to document things as they've happened.

- Weight: 19 pounds, 8 ounces. I think this would have been more if we didn't have 2 weeks of diarrhea to deal with this month.

- Baby Signs: She now knows more, eat, stars, book, moon, milk, bib.

- Spoken Words: Daddy, Mommy, Da Da, Ma Ma, Puppy, Yummy, Baby

- Physical Accomplishments: Walking, dancing, blowing kisses

- Favorite Foods: Yogurt, cheese, stir fry, avocado, fruit, goldfish (saltines)

Baby Signs

2011-06-21T21:02:00.003-04:00

Tonight during dinner, Mei Li was being particularly cooperative with showing me what signs she knows. I had Dave get the video camera even though I knew we were approaching the end of it. We got a good bit, but she was doing more signs just a minute before. Plus, the video camera card was getting full so it just stopped recording at the end. Anyway, thought it was interesting nonetheless.

Mei Li had a particularly bad day at daycare today. I sent the sippy cup and no bottles today and she wouldn't have it. She drank probably a total of 4 of 12 ounces that I sent and completely skipped her afternoon nap. She was so cranky when I went to pick her up, she fell asleep quickly after we pulled out of the parking lot and transferred fairly well to her crib when we got home. I felt bad that I didn't send a back up bottle, but I just figured that it had been going so well at home that I didn't need to worry about a back up. I'll send one tomorrow, but hopefully it goes better.

I'm excited that tomorrow is my last day of work this week, so I'll have an extra long weekend. I attended a CPE class yesterday so now I don't have to work on Thursday. This is a good thing because we've started having dinner every Friday night with the Putt/Dinsley household and alternate houses every week. This week is the Ellis household's turn, and I need to clean in a very bad way. So hopefully two whole days will be enough time to get it all done. Plus, according to my meal plan, I'm going to attempt to make stir fry to feed everyone. YIKES!

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T17:28:00.001-04:00

Dave bought this pool for Mei Li this weekend and she had some fun in it yesterday. Such a silly girl. There's nothing like a baby's laughter to brighten one's day!

Surprise Date

2011-06-18T23:42:00.002-04:00

So tonight I pulled of a surprise date night for Dave in celebration of Father's Day. As far as he knew, the only thing we were going to do was get breakfast in the morning. I was pretty proud of myself for arranging it all since I typically leave it to Dave to all date planning. I even arranged for Delt & Andra to babysit and it even required them to feed her dinner, bathe her, and put her to sleep. It's a pretty big deal for me to entrust that to anyone other than Dave. So it was good practice for me too.

We went to Five Guys for dinner and then went to see a movie. I was even willing to see Hangover 2 with him, but he actually chose to see Pirates instead. We very rarely get to see movies, so it was a treat for all. We ended up staying until the end of the credits to see if there was additional footage, and that movie has a million credits. They even gave credit to their accountants, which made me want to work for a movie. =)

Ok, gotta go to bed so we can be ready for an awesome breakfast at First Watch in the morning. Happy Father's Day!

Eventful Friday

2011-06-18T13:29:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was a big day for me. First of all, I found a sippy cup that Mei Li will drink milk from! This is a HUGE accomplishment. The ironic thing is that I had this sippy cup the whole time. Christy bought it for Mei Li the day before she was even born, but I have been avoiding using it for water and such because it's heavy and I didn't want her to throw it around and mess it up or hit anything with it. I figured it would come in handy when she was a little older so I completely forgot about it during this whole transition process...until yesterday. I figured that Mei Li didn't like the sippy cups I had been trying because the spouts are actually quite challenging to drink out of in comparison to her Dr. Brown's level 3 nipples (I actually tested a few of them to see if she'd follow by example). So when I remembered this sippy cup, I filled it with a little water and tried to drink out of it myself. Then I filled the Dr. Brown's bottle nipple with a little water and tried to drink out of it and found that the flows were quite similar. Sure enough, we tried it, and it worked! Of course, the temperature still had to be just right. This girl will not drink her milk cold and actually likes it quite warm, almost hot! And I should have known Mei Li would have expensive taste. This is not your run of the mill sippy cup you can buy for a few bucks at Target, Walmart, or the likes. Here's a quick picture of the successful sippy cup.

Yesterday we also started mixing in almond milk with her formula. She drinks it just fine, if heated to the right temperature. After 24 hours, her BM's have changed consistency again, which is a little worrisome, but at least there is no diaper rash right now. We'll see how it goes...

Also another big thing for me yesterday was my haircut. I have been considering chopping my hair to donate it and have a new look, but friends and family have convinced me to hold off on that for a little while. I still felt the need to change things up a little, so I decided to get some bangs since my baby hairs were growing long enough that they looked like half bangs since there wasn't enough to cover my entire forehead. I have hesitated to get bangs for a long time because: (1) I haven't had them since about the 8th grade, at which point I had to grow them out to get them off my forehead since the oil from the hair was causing my skin to break out with acne; (2) I think bangs make me look like a child; (3) I'm a very low-maintenance person when it comes to hair and know nothing about styling it, so I didn't want to add something that would add time to my getting ready routine in the morning. Well, I went ahead with anyway since my 30th birthday is coming up and I could use some extra help feeling young. Here's the final product.

I felt so old at the salon as their was a girl next to me chopping her hair off for a new college look as she just graduated from high school. She had braces and was of Indian decent, so she looked 13 to me. Then when I realized she was going to college, it just made me feel older because it's been 12 years since I was in her shoes...

I'm happy with the change, and it hasn't required much maintenance thus far. I sure hope my acne doesn't come back! Dave agreed that it makes me look younger and added that I look more Asian (Chinese, specifically) with the bangs. He also said that he has to do a double take when he sees me because it's a big change. HAHA.

Video Update: Part III

2011-06-14T22:43:00.003-04:00

This was Mei Li's first taste of my stir fry. She had my mom's pansit at her birthday party, but these were her first encounters with Asian food. She's not the best eater, but she opened her mouth so wide to eat my stir fry and you can hear her say yummy. =)

Not necessarily her first steps, but this is the extent of her walking right now. She's getting more confident each day.

I often sing to Mei Li at bathtime. She has always like the song "If You're Happy And You Know It" but I used to sing it to her in the car to stop her from crying. I haven't sung it to her in a while and last night decided to sing it when I was running out of ideas. She immediately started clapping and dancing and does it every time I sing it. I asked her daycare teacher if she sings the song to her, and she said she does in Spanish, so I can't take any credit for this reaction. I think it's so funny that part way through she starts dancing like a drunken pirate. I think she learned her dance moves from Daddy.

Video Update: Part II

2011-06-14T22:18:00.002-04:00

So I completely forgot to bring out the video camera before we started the birthday cake at the party. This is all I got which was towards the end and she was pretty much done with the cake.

The park where we threw her birthday party had a splash pad. I think she enjoyed it.

After the party, we went back to Delt & Andra's house to rest up. One of her favorite gifts was the tissue paper in the gift bag from Uncle Delton and Auntie Andra. She also started doing this funny thing of spinning in circles on her butt.

On her actual birthday, we took her to Sea World. She loved all the aquariums and had lots to say to all of the sea creatures. You can hear it more in the second video, but at the end she gets upset after she realizes she's been sitting still for a while and I'm standing right there and not picking her up.

Video Update: Part I

2011-06-14T21:33:00.003-04:00

So I finally had some time last night to go through our video camera. I probably don't even have them all uploaded to YouTube because we moved some to the external hard drive to make room on the memory card. Anyway, it's been a busy couple of months so we had a lot recorded. I figured I would break it up in pieces to give everyone breaks... So here we go, this is the end of April until her birthday activities. That will be all of Video Update: Part II.

This first video is so that you can hear Mei Li say Daddy. It's so sweet the way she says it, she never says Mommy so sweetly. Anyway, I don't know how to video edit so you'll have to bear with me. It takes her a while, but she starts saying it repeatedly towards the end.

You'll see a lot of videos of her during bathtime because that seems to be her most playful time. This particular night she was extra chatty.

On Mother's Day we took Mei Li to the pool. As usual, she loved it and in this video she even started moving her arms like she was going to take off swimming.

This showcases some of Mei Li's various "tricks". One thing I was trying to capture was her babbling "ba da ba da". Sorry for the crying in the middle, she tried to rip the camera out of my hand...

She doesn't do this much anymore, but it was too cute when she did, so I'm glad we captured it. And this was probably the only time she has ever cuddled up to me while showing us that she was sleepy.

One of her favorite activities is to bring us books to read. She just can't seem to get enough!

Chair Time

2011-06-13T21:48:00.004-04:00

This is one of Mei Li's new skills, climbing into her chair all by herself. Since she was sitting there so nicely for a long amount of time, I decided to take some pictures. I recently felt like I didn't have a lot of pictures since I haven't taken her weekly pictures in the "big" chair. One other thing to note in this first picture is one of her current favorite toys, the diaper. I also think it could be one of her words. She says something that sounds like it, but it's not always at the right time. Also notice the book at the bottom of the picture. We sit in the living room and she brings books for me to read. She knows the sign for more now, so she uses it often to have me read the books over and over again. This morning we watched a new Baby Signs DVD since we just got them from Kimberly over the weekend, and she learned the sign for book. Since she often used the sign for more when reading books, she was confusing them a little by the end of the day.

I love how big her eyes are when she doesn't have a big smile on her face, but then get sooo tiny when she smiles. I'm sure she'll use this trait to work her magic in years to come.

My little thumbsucker. Typically reserved for bedtime, I think it's coming out more often since she's teething.

I had to use a stuffed animal to entice this smile and since I was managing that and the camera, I forgot to bring the stuffed animal to eye level. Still pretty darn cute though.

And then the cheeser came out! Such a silly girl.

Sorry if this grosses anyone out, but I often use my pictures to zoom into her mouth when I suspect teething. I don't know if you can see it, but it definitely confirms my suspicions of molars coming in on the bottom. Do you see how swollen the back of her gums are on the left of this picture in comparison to the rest of her gums? Looks painful to me! I think that explains a lot of what's been happening with her, but we have still gone back to infant formula and the BRAT diet to play it safe. After my last post on Saturday, things got worse again. That night we tried to give her a baking soda soak in the tub for 10 minutes. We had to clean up and restart the soak 3 times since she pooped in the tub each time. After the third time, we decided it was time to give up on the soak and just get her cleaned up and to bed. Things have gotten better since then. Both yesterday and today her dirty diapers have been limited to just one blowout in the morning, which has given her diaper rash time to heal. Besides the diet, we started using Boureaux's butt paste since it had more zinc than the Desitin we were using. Also, we bought some J&J corn starch powder to put on top of that. Can't say whether one thing helps more than the other, but I'm just glad that something is working.

The only transition we've been working on since we had to put all the food and milk stuff on hold is trying to get her to drink milk from a sippy cup. It's been going HORRIBLY. The best instance she drank 2 ounces from one with a straw, but now won't touch it if it has milk in it other than to chew on the straw. I've tried 4 different kinds now, and I'm frustrated because I had a sippy cup that had 3 transitional tops but accidentally left it on a plane on one of our trips. I tried to find it again today and was out of luck. Anyone have any tips? I've tried it cold, warm, while watching TV, etc.

Frustrating Week

2011-06-11T12:07:00.003-04:00

It's noon and we're already home from church. Our schedule was a little off so we thought we'd try Sabbath School and see if Mei Li would sleep through church. Clearly, it didn't happen.

Mei Li woke up at 4 am last night screaming. She had yet another loose BM in her diaper and a worsening diaper rash. We changed her, gave her some Tylenol in case there were teething issues and gave her a small bottle in case she was hungry. She seemed to go back to sleep just fine after all that and ended up sleeping in until 8 am. That was good news since we were all tired, but the bad news was she had another dirty diaper. There was good news and bad news here too, it was finally a "normal" consistency and color, but her poor bottom was suffering. It's pretty much been the story of our week. We've been trying to do the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) with a few exceptions for cereal/puffs and some vegetables, but no matter what she was having many dirty diapers a day, and all loose. So at 4 am, I was so stressed and worried that we needed to take her in to the doctor's office since she's been dealing with varying degrees of loose BMs and diaper rash for 1.5 weeks. However, her last diaper made us hopeful that we're on the way back to normal.

There's nothing more frustrating than seeing her suffer and not being able to help. When we thought things were starting to get back to normal at the beginning of the week, we tried adding some almond milk to her bottles. That made things worse, so we stopped and went back to formula again! Then, we ran out of formula and figured we needed to at least step her up to toddler formula so we've been trying that. We thought since it was still formula it wouldn't make a difference, but who knows now.

Besides all this stuff, I went to work on Thursday and couldn't roll up my window in my NEW car! I swear I have a bad omen on car windows. Thankfully it's covered under warranty, but I just seem to always have car troubles. Yesterday, I went to fill up on gas and the gas tank door wouldn't open. I had to go to the trunk to use the emergency latch release. So now I think I might have to take it in again, and it's just frustrating since I don't expect to have to deal with things like this on a new car. It was just one of those weeks.

Anyway, hopefully my luck has turned for the better. Time to eat before Mei Li wakes up.