Lily’s Archive

Lily Updates and Stories (updated often)

December 4, 2008.

Similar to Lily’s 18m birthday, here is a snapshot of a day in the life of Lily, now at 2 years old! (and one week)

8:30am- Lily begins to call out from her crib. Mommy doesn’t hear it, she still has her earplugs in. Daddy gets up and asks Mommy, do you wanna sleep more? (which indirectly means, if you don’t then i want to) So Mommy suggest a compromise, bring Lily in to cuddle and after 30min or so, i’ll take her out of the room and eat breakfast with her. Daddy opens Lily’s door, at which point Lily immediately says “Mommy.”

She always says this. On some days Daddy tells her mommy is still sleeping, then she’ll say “Mommy’s chair” which means she wants to sit with Daddy in the glider, sometimes they fall back asleep. Other times Daddy says, “go see Mommy after diaper change” which lily agrees by repeating him vebatim.

8:40- Lily bounds in our room with a big smile and says, “Mommy!” “Help up!” (onto the bed) Most days if Mommy is still sleepy, Lily will say “mama’s eyepatch” adn proceed to take it off mommy’s head. Then get within inches of Mommy’s face and make and signs and words “Mommy wake up!” x 2 (or x10)… today after snuggling for a long time, she repeats Mommy’s instructions, Pop off, go eat breakfast.

9:15- Mommy cooks and Lily helps, stirring the ground turkey meat, shaking salt into the pan. She noticeably insists to stir with her left hand. She actually plays independently nowadays for 2-5 minutes at a time, whcih gives mommy more time to cook in spurts.

breakfast of 2 bites of yogurt. always wants to lick the insdie of the cover, after a few bites, declares, lily no like.

a whole lot of chicken and soup.

whole wheat tortilla and contraband turkey- which lily handles and wraps and falls apart and wraps again countless times.

11:03- wake daddy and off he goes to dr appt and off we go to library for storytime. In the car, Lily says, “Lily Dada” she’s sad that he left to go in a different direction. Just as Daddy leaves the front door he alerts us to the fact ath the paint outside is still wet. Sure enough Lily touches it as we head out the door, and is very upset when Mommy tries to clean it off her hands. In the car ride, she says “More dog” always demanding to see more of the interesting things that pass by us in the car.

11:40- Music and story time. Lily has a big smile on her face the whole time. She loves it. When she’s having fun, she will open her mouth wide, like she can’t contain the grin. Wheels on the bus and other fingerplays, she can do it all, even new ones she hasn’t heard of before. She’s even more delighted as Daddy waves to us from the window, he comes by the library after his dr appt. She helps him check out books and we sit outside (as lily says “eat together” which sounds like “eat two gever”) and eat about 3 cups of blackberries (baby berry if they are small) blueberries and grapes.

12:45pm- Mommy and Lily go to Lake Elizabeth Park. Swings, slides, climb bridges. Lily is so confident on the playground now. One book in our storytime talked about feeling rough sand. so lily touches a lot of sand. Lily now will talk to other little kids on the playground. At one point she and another girl are having fun yelling things through the tunnel slide to each other. Mommy makes newspaper hats (“one for Mommy, one for Lily”) and we walk to a bench to eat Cherrios. (mostly because lily saw another child eating cherrios at the library). We peel clementines and watch dogs and other kids run around. lily loves to crawl or duck below signs and bicycle racks, anything that makes a 2-3ft arch. as we ride the stroller over the foot bridge, lily laughs as we say, “bump, bump, bump.” Back at the car, lily “discovers” a fortune cookie, gives it to mommy to unwrap then breaks it takes out the fortune and gives half to mommy.

2:20- falls asleep in the car on the way home. Mommy brings her to her crib, she wakes up. We go to Mommy’s bed and both fall asleep for another hour. When she wakes, lily is upset that Mommy doesn’t let her nurse anymore til bedtime. Lots of tears, wails, rolling and arching her back over Mommy. Finally the prospect of Milk and other food gets us both back to the kitchen.

4:00- potty and bath time. Unfortunately despite her grunting, no poop comes out, so mommy is wary about putting her in the tub. But bathtime continues with bubbles and even painting time on the wall with avocado face mask. Again she’s favoring her left hand! When she comes out we asks to be wrapped like a burrito in the towel, the way Daddy does when he gives her a bath. Altho she asks to be carried, mommy declines and instead teaches her how to say “toga, toga!” She rebels at the lotion time, but thankfully does nto resist clothing on this chilly day. I can remember when she was a baby and never resisted clothes or lotion or much of anything! THe other day, she told Daddy, No puppy shirt, Live Oak shirt! a new purple one that Auntie Didi gave her last week.

5:00- Carrots and cheese crackers and Signing TImes- My neighborhood, since we saw a police officer and a nurse midwife this week, as well as going to the library today. Lily can sing the chorus “Police officer, Firefighter, doctor or a nurse. They help you if you are hurt.” it comes out “pleece off-cer, fire-fi-er, doctor-nurse. Help you hurt.” with sings for firefighter, doctor/nurse. help, hurt.

5:45- eating dinner. daddy is not home yet, but lily cries that there is not a bowl of soup for daddy. Lily is still a very good eater. Pasta, soup, spinach, celery. Turkey meat. Tortilla. The big surprise today is her love of cucumbers. Mommy tries a new recipe, Cucumber Raita, without mint- plain yogurt, salt, sugar, red pepper, cucumber. Both mommy and Lily love it. dipping cucumbers. lily eats about 1/2 of a cucumber herself. Takes 6 cucumber slices, stacks them on top of each other and says Sandwich! and tries quite successfully to put the whole thing in her mouth.

At dinner Lily says “more wah-plee” and makes a distinct sign which mommy has no idea what it is. So she guesses, more wipes? more oranges? at which point lily just returns a wry smile and her dimples deepen with every guess. She thinks Mommy is just being funny, but in reality Mommy doesn’t really know what she just asked for.

8:00- We read Hungry catepillar about 3 times, and well as a few other books. We watch Jon and Kate plus 8 and feel like our life with one child is simple. Lily is the same age as the sextuplets. When Daddy comes home we are Skyping with Aunt Didi and Ashley. Whenever Ashley gets out of view, lily puts her hand to her mouth and yells “Ashley!!” she also shows them her song, “Ashley shark, do, do, dododooo” She tries to hand them spoons through the computer. Almost every skype session includes her rendition of Pearly Shells Hula. Lily shows them the zoo sign and animals.

9:40- Every thursday after our family time of watching The Office, we start bedtime a bit later. Floss, brush teeth without toothpaste, diaper change. today she flosses Jojo-Pop, her doll. Some days she insists on flossing mom’s cheek/chin. More stories and nursing on Momy’s lap while Daddy sings a lullaby.Daddy puts lily into the crib and she falls asleep today without a peep. Rest well tonight. Tomorrow we go to Oakland zoo. What a good life.

July-November 2008

Ah, after a long hiatus of Lily Updates, we’re back.

Lily is going to have a baby sister! This second pregnancy has gone well, except that we haven’t liked the prenatal care from Stanford, which we had with Lily. The second time around Mimi wants a more natural and compassionate approach. We decided to go with a midwife and deliver at Alta Bates in Berkeley. If you ever care to hear more about this, ask Mimi. But for now, tell your friends, “just say no to Fentanyl and Vicodin.”

July 27, 2008. Conversation between Mimi, Lily, and a 3 year old boy at church in the overflow room:

3 year old boy takes a tennis ball from Lily’s hand.

Lily whines.

Mimi takes the ball back and says, “You can’t just grab the ball, you need to ask first if someone will share.”

Mimi to Lily: “Do you want to share your ball with the boy?”

Lily silently stares at the boy.

Boy: “I think she said yes.”

July 26, 2008. Lily can say quite “a lot” with her limited vocabulary. She walks up to Mama with a sad look and teary eyes, holding out her finger, saying “hurt.” Mama kisses her finger and asks, “what happened?” “Dada”

So Mama goes to ask Dada what happened. He explains that she was trying to walk over him and when he moved to get out of the way she fell and hurt herself.

Lily tests Daddy’s problem solving skills:

Mommy hears water running and Lily whimpering. So she runs over to discover Lily had climbed a stepstool and turned the bathroom faucet on. Mommy was afraid Lily had hurt herself turning on the hot water, but it was cool. and instead Lily is saying, “uh oh! drop!” so Mommy looks down the drain (our cap has been broken and off for a while) and sees something small and yellow.

Mommy asks, “what is that? a ball?”

Lily says, “ball?…… brush!”

“Ohhhhh, it’s lily’s toothbrush!” … fallen 8inches into the sink drain.

So Mommy leaves it up to Daddy to figure this one out.

After some deliberation, Daddy is the hero of the day. He uses crazy glue and a disposable chopstick and fishes that toothbrush out.

We’ll see what other challenges Lily can come up with in the future.

Lily loves to copy anything Mommy and Daddy do. From making a spitting sound when we spit while bushing our teeth to wiping lotion on us (our pants and shirt) while we put lotion on her after a bath. Recently She’s discovered the joy of opening Mommy’s lipsticks. She can even twist up the tube and pokes her cheek with the lipstick. She also learned how to splash water on her hair like daddy does to tame those cowlicks in the morning.

A while ago Lily was taking a bath and Mommy taught her how to splash her cheeks with water to get the food off. She did this for a while but still had lots of food on her cheeks, so Mommy said, there’s still food there, we need to wash it more. So lily picks up her cup and pours water on her left cheek, much to Mommy’s delight. Then Mommy says to her brilliant baby. Oh good job! now try the other side, there’s still food on there. So Lily thinks about it and turns around to face the back of the bath tub then continues to pour water on her left cheek again. Apparently if you want to reach the other side, it makes sense to turn backwards.

Some of Lily’s recent favorite new words and names:

Bob. Matt. Ruth. Ted. Floss. Chips. Trot-trot. Pig (when asking for This little piggie). Eyebrow.

Knock.

Some of the guys (Jonathan, Justin, DaveS) on our trip to the Urano wedding taught Lily how to do the fist bump handshake. Lily thinks it’s like knocking on the door. So she says knock.

They also thought it was funny to try and teach her where her knuckles are, since she knows many other body parts, but her knuckles are still just dimples under her baby fat.

July 17, 2008. From our bedtime story…

Daddy: Let’s read “Big Fat Hen.” One…

Lily: Two. (Mommy is surprised).

Daddy: Buckle my shoe. Three…

Lily: Four. (Mommy is even more surprised).

Daddy: Shut the door. Five…

Lily: Six. (Daddy and Mommy both surprised).

Daddy: Pick up sticks. Seven…

Lily: Eight. (Daddy and Mommy both incredibly surprised).

Daddy: Lay them straight. Nine…

Lily: Ten. (Daddy and Mommy think Lily is brilliant .

July 17, 2008. Daddy takes Lily to the playground in the morning. Lily shows Daddy that she’s learned some new playground tricks. First, she climbs up a long green slide on her own (first time doing this). She grabs the edges with her hands and walks herself up. Then, she walks up a really broad slide, grabbing just one edge. Finally, she goes to the cargo net climb (vertical chains with iron bars between the chains) and climbs up about 6 feet to the playground platform on her own. Daddy is amazed!

July 17, 2008. Mommy takes Lily to an outdoor country music concert at Lake Elizabeth Park in Fremont. They ride in a bouncy house, and Lily is really freaked out by a man in a raccoon mascot costume.

July 10-15. Lily goes on the longest car ride of her life. Thursday, we drive down to Arcadia to stay at Uncle Mike’s mom’s place for Misha and Jen’s wedding – Lily does not like the Grapevine. Friday, we drive an hour to LA Downtown, another hour to Simi Valley, and then an hour back to Arcadia. Saturday, we drive an hour back and forth to Simi Valley. Sunday, we drive two hours to San Diego, with a brief stop in Oceanside. Monday, we go to the San Diego Zoo, and eat yummy raspberry chocolate cake at Extraordinary Desserts. Surprisingly, Lily is uninterested in the cake and the fresh raspberries. More cake for Mommy and Daddy. Tuesday, we drive all the way from San Diego back to Fremont, with stops in LA to see Aunt Melody and Uncle Son, and a stop in Pismo Beach, where we eat at the Splash Cafe (really good Clam Chowder!)

June 28 – July 6. Lily, Mommy, and Daddy go on vacation to Seattle, with the whole Fang clan (Auntie Monona, Uncle Bert, Sarah, Andrew, Auntie Wingra, Uncle Steve, Dennis, Katie, and Grandpa and Grandma). Lily enjoys learning from her cousins. She learned from the boys how to jump from the ottoman – she can’t quite stick the landing, but she laughs hysterically every time she collapses on the floor. She learns from Sarah how to draw cats and dogs on her magnetic drawing board – Lily’s sketches are pretty abstract, but she declares them to be cats and dogs. She enjoyed being in the car and watching Daddy open and shut the power windows (more, more, more!)

June 16, 2008. Lily finds her outdoor voice. She has learned to scream both indoors and outdoors. When we tell her, “Lily, don’t scream, ask nicely.” She’s give you a sweet smile and say “please” and use the sign for please. Then 2 seconds later she screams again.

Some of her favorite things to do now:

a. Walk through our legs

b. Pouring things out – food, water at bathtime, toys out of containers. She likes to see things spill out. She also loves to pour out her milk onto her high chair tray then slurp it up off the tray like a cat.

c. Go to the park, walk on curbs, check the mail.

d. Favorite foods – ground turkey, raspberries, any veggie at Auntie Wingra’s house. She doesn’t eat much veggies elsewhere, mostly fruit and rice.

e. Spinning, rolling, and bouncing. After Tilden sprained his ankle, she learned how to say, “hop, hop, hop!” as he hobbled around. Sometimes she’ll spin around til she gets dizzy and falls over. She also likes to point at other people to tell them to spin too.

f. Playing ring around the rosie. She’ll get mad though if she wants to play and another child doesn’t take her hand or close the circle.

g. put on her Daddy’s shoes

May 10, 2008. Lily the Over-confident. Well, Lily’s love for adventure is several steps ahead of her sense of danger. Mommy’s nerves are frayed this week after two parenting scares. One when Lily wandered off at Walmart, the other when she tried to doggie paddle on her own at toddler swim time.

More signs. Lily used “grapes” and “squirrel” today at the Cajams trip to Happy Hollow Zoo. She wasn’t convinced when Mommy told her a wallaby was a baby kangaroo. We don’t know the sign for wallaby. Goats and carousels are back to being scary for Lily. A few months ago Lily was feeding goats in San Diego.

This week we went to lunch with Hope. At one point Hope tripped and ever-helpful Lily decides to help her up. What she didn’t realize is that pulling people up by their hair isn’t always appreciated. Poor Hope. Lily ended up with a handful of Hope’s hair in her hands.

Lily is very generous with her kisses lately. She’ll give Mommy and Daddy many kisses throughout the day. Recently we borrowed “I love you like Crazycakes” a book about a mommy adopting a baby from China. Many of the pictures show the Mommy kissing the baby. Lily has taken to kissing the baby on every page.

At the library there are only a few chairs that are toddler sized. Lily is an opportunist. When she sees another child stand up from the chair, such as standing to reach a puzzle, Lily slips in behind and sits down. When the other child tries to sit back down he is suprised to find Lily behind him pushing him away. Like, no way, you stood up and you lost your chair, buddy.

We went to Little Gym and Lily really likes the balance bar and various foam ramps. She was hesitant on the inflatable trampoline. She has so much energy these days. Mommy is also gonna take her to try out another toddler gym time.

May 2, 2008. Lily the Resilient. Last week Daddy took Lily on the “big kids” playground while Mommy was off at class. So she hears the story when she returns, that Daddy took Lily on the tallest, fastest slide. But the whole story is that Daddy remembered incorrectly that he had seen her ride this slide by herself. So he helps her to the top and as he lets her go, he thinks, maybe she hasn’t ridden this before… Whoosh! Off she goes, and a nearby parent of another child on the playground gasps. Lily goes flying and lands face down at the bottom. Daddy runs down and picks her up. She’s not crying but is covered in wood chips from head to toe. She’s stunned for a moment and then says, “More!” So the next time Daddy takes her on his lap.

Today at the mall, Mommy was standing in line to get food when impatient Lily catapults herself out of her jogging stroller. Mommy hears the people behind her gasp as she turns to see Lily sliding down to the foot rest then lands on her hands by the front wheel. The triumphant Lily goes, “haha!” then scampers off to explore the garbage can, while Mommy gathers her stuff and chases after her. Recently mommyhood reminds me Andy’s position in Devil Wears Prada, especially the scenes where the boss comes in drops all of her stuff and it’s my job to pick up.

April 2008. Lily knows toes, feet, chin, ears, eyes, teeth, hair, nose, belly button and cheeks. She can even pinch her cheek and anyone else’s. We recently taught her elbow. She finds this one very funny. She calls it “bellbow” very similar to “Bubble.” Belly button is also a four-syllable word that has some b sounds. Mommy got her some foam letters and numbers and at a recent bathtime Lily was able to repeat all the names of them after her Daddy. Daddy has also taught and practiced with her the complete actions to If you’re happy and you know it. She used to only do Clap and Kick. Now she can also do Peek-a-boo and Hooray.

Lily is speaking alot and using more signs. Sometimes she signs things that we don’t quite understand. Recently things like Cup, Car and Bear she brings up out of context. One day at dinner she put her hands up and waved them. Mommy thought well it’s not the all done sign, what is she doing?. It took a while to figure out, then finally she realized she’s looking at a picture of Mike and Lani nearby. She was spontaneously saying “Superstar!”

Lily is learning opposites. She began with Up & Down, Open & Closed, and now can say Slow & Fast. The signs for these are a slow hand crawling up the other hand and the other is pulling your pointers back fast. She says these back and forth a lot. She also loves to eat Popcorn (says/signs “pop, pop, pop”) and tell dogs to “Sit!”

April 22, 2008. Lily is sleeping better – there was one night where she cried on and off for 45 minutes or so at 4:30 a.m., but after that night, she has been sleeping much better. We celebrate every morning now when she sleeps until after 6:30 a.m. It’s a good way to start the day off with immense thankfulness.

April 21, 2008. Lily and Daddy play a game with Lily’s bear (the one we built at Build-a-Bear while Mommy was pregnant with Lily). If you flip Bear with just the right amount of strength, the Bear will do a complete somersault and end up back in sitting position. Lily is fascinated by this, and always wants more. She likes seeing Daddy do somersaults too, but after a few intiial attempts, refuses to try somersaults herself.

April 20, 2008. Mommy went to see “High School Musical” with our niece, Ashley, so Daddy spent virtually the whole day with Lily – from 10:30 a.m. until 9 p.m. It was the longest Lily and Mommy have gone without breastfeeding. Lily did really well the whole day – she especially enjoyed going over to Auntie Wingra and Uncle Steve’s house to play with her cousins, Dennis and Katie. The three of them took a bath together, and Dennis and Katie use food coloring when they take a bath – so the color of the bathwater is mustard green in front and cobalt blue in back. When Lily got in, she looked a bit nervous – like, “I’ve never seen water like this before.” After a while, she got used to it, and even tried to drink some. When we got home, we watched Signing Times together – Lily can now make signs for many animals – tiger, lion, giraffe, bat, monkey, gorilla, fish, kangaroo. The cutest one of all is penguin, arms down at her sides and waddle back and forth.

April 16, 2008. Lily loves the park! Daddy is so impressed that she can climb by herself to the tallest slides and go down them on her own. She’s really quite fearless when it comes to slides – Daddy is so proud. However, today was also the first time that Lily tried a tube slide – one that happened to start a foot off the ground. Because Lily is used to sitting at the lip of the slide before going down, she wasn’t sure what to do – so she stepped onto the tube slide, and then promptly fell over and went down headfirst. Daddy was at the bottom wondering what would happen, and he admits that the terrified expression on her face all the way down was a bit amusing – especially since she was happy once she was at the bottom, and wanted to go on the slide again.

April 15, 2008. Lily has a strange habit with strangers – sometimes, especially when she sees people wearing shorts, she’ll walk over to them and pat them on their thigh. So far everyone has been pretty understanding about it, but we hope no one gets freaked out.

April 12, 2008. Lily hasn’t been sleeping well. Somehow, in the last few days, she started waking up a lot during the second half of the night – 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 6 a.m., etc. After a few days, Daddy decided to try to get tougher and let her cry for longer periods of time so she learns (again) to fall back asleep on her own. Last night, at 4 a.m., Daddy goes into Lily’s room, pats her until she quiets down, and then walks out of the room. Lily immediately starts wailing and crying. And then, in the middle of her cries, she calls out emphatically, “Da – ddy. Da -ddy.” Daddy wasn’t prepared for that. Daddy holds out for a fwe more seconds, then gives up and goes in to hold her until she is deeply asleep.

March 23, 2008. Mommy hosted an Easter Egg hunt yesterday for Lily and her friends – Hope, Nicholas, and Ashley, and Amelia. Mommy has been training Lily for weeks on how to find Easter eggs – Lily is now a pro at looking under our couch and asking for help (while patting her chest, which is the sign for “please”) to get anything she sees under there. Lily showed off her skills at the hunt yesterday. Today, we went to Aldersgate United Methodist Church, where Auntie Wingra goes, for another Easter egg hunt. The funny thing is that Mommy brought along some of the eggs she had decorated and added them to the organized Easter egg hunt. Except… Mommy’s eggs were real hard-boiled eggs that were painted, while all the other eggs were plastic. Daddy was a bit embarrassed, but also found the idea funny that some kids and parents would discover weeks later that their bag of eggs reeked, only to find a real egg in the basket! “How did that get there?”

March 16, 2008. After dinner Daddy makes Lily a big sippy cup of milk. She walks around and manages to bite off the top and throw down the cup bottom, spilling everything. She then walks through it dragging spilled milk behind her. (This is her biggest mess of the day, one notch above the diaper fiasco at McDonalds this afternoon, in which Lily’s poopy diaper smears on the changing table and floor then she pees before the new diaper is put back on. Well, luckily the pee doesn’t hit any clothes bc she’s already naked since her first change of clothes was already drenched from the waterbottle she drank in the carseat.) Oh I forgot to count her 3rd change of clothes which got drenched with soup from dinner, but that’s pretty easy to clean the spinach and broth from her hair with a washcloth and take off her clothes. Did I mention she knows how to put the bowl on her head like a hat? Anyways, now that she’s asleep, I think the milk still wins as the biggest mess of the day.

So anyways, back to the milk, Mommy takes off her pj’s while Daddy cleans up the floor. After Daddy’s done, with Mommy’s suggestion, Lily walks over to Daddy and gives him 2 slobbery kisses as a thank you. Daddy says, “This makes it all worth it.”

March 15, 2008. Our trip to tahoe was great. No storms to get stuck in on our drive. (See last year’s entry on February 26, 2007) I took Lily sledding at

http://www.granlibakken.com/

Here’s how Lily’s first experience sledding went: Crying when I put on her boots. “Why are my feet bound?” Crying when I put on her sunglasses. “What is this on my face!?” Of course when I finished bundling her up, my friends made references to the movie “A Christmas Story.” Her cheeks were cold with tears and her runny nose, while my friend pulled us together around on the sled like a wagon. She cried anytime I set her down on the snow. She didn’t really laugh or smile when we actually went down the hill, but I took her quietness and interest at watching other kids sledding to be a sign that she was enjoying the experience somewhat.

Then the snow started to fall a lot so we took a break at the lodge cafe. Lily hungrily ate her cookies, seaweed, and dried fruit. She then stared and pointed very insistently at the quesadilla the person next to us was eating. So I bought us one. There is an old fashioned pot belly stove in the middle of the lodge that people sat around to warm up, but Lily seemed so fascinated at trying to touch it. She’ll say “hot” and shake her head “no” but yet still reach for it. So luckily she was also interested in the group of kids sitting at the table next to us. So I just sat her down at their table with her toys and they really liked playing with her. My friend commented that Lily was not that happy in the snow, but by the time she left that small lodge every table knew her name. Later that day we were at Safeway and Lily ran into the same group of kids. They all came over and said, “Hi Lily!”

March 14, 2008. Before we drove to Tahoe today, Lily had a music playdate at Roshni’s house along with Brendan. They are now at the right age to clap along and have circle time. Sometimes Lily tries to let go of Roshni’s hand in our circle, but Roshni holds on tight and doesn’t let her. When we sat the 3 kids on the couch for a picture, both Roshni and Brendan had their sippy cups, so I let Lily have a juice box (toddler size 4oz). Well usually she has diluted juice and this was the first time having a full strength juice box. (what a party, huh!?) So she drank and drank and by the time we finished taking their picture, her juice box was empty!

March 13, 2008. We went to visit Ashley and Aunt Didi at their school. Lily’s 5th time to Tartine bakery. This is the first time she can actually eat the morning buns. She’s not that crazy for them, like Mommy and Daddy, but give her time. We ate dinner at this delicious place called Holy Grill, best fries ever!

Lily and Ashley played a bit on the playground together. Ashley goes up to the top of the structure where the longest slide starts and Lily follows her. I run from being behind Lily on the structure to the bottom of the slide, in the meantime I hear Ashley saying “No, no Lily wait!” Lily doesn’t know to sit down before going down, she just kept walking and walked right over and “fell” down the slide, but feet first. When I catch up to her, she looks a bit stunned, but happily says “more!” so we go again. What a way to startle Mommy!

Since Lily’s been moving around alot, I think she has slimmed down and needs smaller diapers. When she was 9-11m she was nearly busting out of size 5. Now she’s back to size 4, but we are still using size 5 we bought before. So there have been a few more blowouts lately. At Didi’s school she pooped out of her clothes and ended up wearing her pj’s the rest of the visit.

March 10, 2008. Lily throws Mommy’s phone for the last time. Well, the last time for this phone. It completely falls apart. The phone pad works but the screen doesn’t. So now Mommy is using Daddy’s old phone with her SIM card and the screen works, but the earpiece doesn’t, so it’s always on speaker phone. Gotta charge up the Bluetooth…

February 28, 2008. More words and signs by Lily.

No!: She has definitely gotten the head shaking down pat. She also says, “Da, da, da, da!” when she is protesting something.

OK or Yes: This was kinda new to realize she was giving an affirmative sign. We often would say, “Lily do you want raspberries?” no answer and no rejection or head shaking, at times a pointing and earnest look on her face. “OK, but first we have to wash them.” So she began to use her hand washing signal – rubbing her hands together. Now she kinda skips the middle. We ask, “Lily do you want this?” and immediately she answers with a handwashing sign. Kinda like saying, “yes, go wash it already!” She has broadened this usage to non-food items.

Wash hands: well so sometimes this sign simply means she wants to wash her hands or play in the water.

Sleeping: She kinda made this one up or picked it up fast without much prodding. She holds her hand to her ear or cheek and says “shhhhhh” She uses this to point out other sleeping babies, even pictures of sleeping people.

Dog: She can make a panting sound for dog. Sometimes when we are in the family room reading a book and a dog appears in the story, she will get up and want me to come with her to her room, to point at a picture of Hope and Henry, her godparents’ dogs.

Hat: She can now tap the top or back of her head and say “ha!” This also applies to sunglasses and hair accessories. Mommy is glad that since 7 months when she learned how to pull hats off, now Lily is tolerating wearing them again. She even tries putting them on at times.

Po!: This can either mean Hope, her friend as she’s pointing at their pictures together. Or it can also mean po-po as in “carry me” in Fukienese. Daddy uses the mandarin “bao-bao.” the only other Fukienese phrase she understands is “hwah-chu” or hold my hand. Lily can also say “up” which usually refers to help me climb onto this chair!

Airplane: I never knew how many airplanes flew over each day until recently when Lily would point out each one. Her hand glides through the air and she says, “bbbbbbrrrrr…” She was quite astonished to see a low flying helicopter when we went to Shoreline park.

Where is it?: She can hold her hands out and shrug her shoulders after hiding an object, such as daddy’s cel phone under a pillow.

One more thing that has developed in her communication is that she understands that she needs to get Mommy’s attention sometimes. So whether i’m carrying her or sitting by her sometimes she’ll either touch my cheek or turn my head to look in the right direction or I’ll simply see her face pop into my view. It’s pretty funny, it’s like she’s saying, “Eyes on me, Mommy! Focus, I have something to tell you!”

February 27, 2008. Hugs all around. Today I saw Lily hugging and love,love her football. She also hugged Roshni and it was so cute to see how they both lean their heads over each other’s shoulder and pat each other on the back. This must be the standard hugging protocol for toddlers. Roshni and Lily went to the park today. They understand the importance of putting the playground bark on the slide and work on this together side by side. Roshni’s mother asked her, “who is your best friend?” “Lily!!” Also when we sing “London Bridge” Roshni says “…my fair Lily.”

February 26, 2008. Lily is 15 months old today! She is starting to demonstrate the ability to associate and to plan ahead in recent weeks. One of her favorite activities is standing on a push-cart toy – she is so precarious while staing that Mommy is in the habit of putting a pillow down next to her when she climbs on her toy in case she falls. A week ago, she was playing in the living room, and she walked over to the pillow, lifted it up and carried it over to her push toy, dropped it on the ground, and then climbed up on her toy. Daddy was impressed. She has also started stacking blocks, up to 3 or 4 high, and she now has favorite pages on her board books – she particularly likes the page in “Goodnight Gorilla” where the zookeeper’s wife blinks in the dark and then the next page where she stares in surprise at the gorilla, and the gorilla is grinning. Lily is very good at making a sign for “gorilla” – she beats her hands on her chest and says “ah-ah-ah.” She was very happy to keep making her gorilla sign (over and over) during our recent trip to San Diego, when we saw real live gorillas at the zoo!

February 25, 2008. Daddy and Lily were both in the bathroom, and Lily was trying to reach her blue collander in the bath tub. She stretched, and stretched, and then tipped over and fell headfirst into her (empty) bathtub. She was quite ok, but was a little stuck with her feet in the air, and eventually started crying for help. This is the first time she been able to get into the bathtub on her own – Lily is really growing up!

February 17, 2008. San Diego. We went to visit the grandparents and Tilden’s older sister and her family who all flew in from the East Coast to spend this time together. Lily loved playing with her cousins Sarah and Andrew who would copy her sounds in the car. Andrew was especially good at running around her and popping out to make her laugh. We went to the Zoo and at this age Lily can truly use the petting zoo. Although we say, “Oh, it’s a sheep! Lily, touch the sheep!!” and she gives it one obligatory pat on the back. We also saw adult and baby gorillas so Lily could use her ever important Gorilla sign. We also saw an actual wolf howl in an animal show. Lily howled back! We ate so much yummy food. I especially liked Fish Company in Coronado, don’t forget the gelato next door!

February 7, 2008. Daddy and Lily took a walk this morning. She held his hand as they walked around our condo complex – she took in the trees, stared at the airplanes, and mostly stayed on the concrete path around our complex, though she especially wanted to be helped onto a bench and sit like a big girl. Daddy looks forward to many more walks with his little girl.

January 30, 2008. Daddy and Lily have started having “Daddy and Daughter” nights when Daddy is watching Lily when Mommy is in class. Daddy especially likes taking Lily to the library, where she is learning to climb the stairs and come back down on her own. Then, Daddy and Lily look at the ducks and geese for a while (including the gargantuan gray goose), and then usually go to Fresh Choice to eat together. Daddly likes Fresh Choice because Lily gets to eat whatever she wants and he doesn’t stress about food being thrown on the floor. The most recent time at Fresh Choice, the manager was so impressed that Daddy was having dinner with Lily on his own!

January 25, 2008. Tomorrow Lily will be 14 months old! sniff! Today she said “Puppet” as I was reading her a story. She loves walking around the church (like she owns the place) while we are at Real World, waving at people and checking out the pool table and random things on the shelves. But it’s really the people she’s most interested in. As I get her ready to leave she’s still smiling and interacting with folks, then as I turn to leave she is so sad in her sling. She’s strapped to my front and tries to get herself out of the sling to go back to her friends.

Earlier today we were hanging out with Auntie Sophia. Lily really wanted the ball that their dog Henry was playing with, but she was kinda afraid of Henry. As Sophia and I are talking we turn to look at Lily who has started to whine loudly. Apparently she grabbed the ball while Henry wasn’t looking and now Henry was looking right at her and she was scared of potential ramifications to her actions. Soph thought it was funny and whipped out her camera, at which point Lily really begins to cry.

January 24, 2008. Lily was crying as I put her down for bedtime. As she stands there in her crib crying, I tell her it’s ok and that it’s time to sleep. And I even threw in a “if you wake up at night, it’s ok, you can go back to sleep on your own.” Lo and behold, it actually “worked.’ She did wake up twice but fell back asleep on her own. She stayed in her crib from bedtime until 7am the following morning! Hallelujah! She hasn’t slept that soundly since before we left for Houston for Christmas. She also has somewhat condensed to one afternoon nap of 2 hours 12:20pm to 2:20pm.

January 23, 2008. Lily wakes up Daddy by kissing his ear (now with a smack) and saying “ear.” She’s so young and already has Daddy wrapped aroudn her little finger. Lily and Daddy get to have Fun Nights Out on Wednesdays when Mommy goes to class. Most recently they went to Fresh Choice, chicken from the noodle soup, meatballs and spiral pasta are her favorites. She even tried Lima Beans. Daddy puts Lily in the sling and takes her to the library and Borders bookstore.

In the afternoon it was so rainy and Lily was busy tearing up the house, so I decided to take her to the mall to run around. She loved the Reactrix screen and since it was in the early afternoon it wasn’t as crowded. usually I see those screens filled with kids. this time there was only 3 brothers running around. Lily walks right up to them and loved watching them stomp around and chase the images. Then I laughed as she just plops down and sits in the middle of the area. these boys were trying to kick the soccer ball or chase race cars around her. Then she hardly notices when spaceships are “exploding” around her behind. She had a great time walking around and putting “ice cream cone” lotion bottles off the shelf and into our stroller. her favorite thing is riding up adn down the escalators.

Janurary 22, 2008. Baby Signs

More: pointing fingers together- she uses this whenever she wants anything. Food or objects.

Stinky: as mentioned before, waving in front of her nose.

Breastfeeding/Nursing: she either makes the nursing sound or she’ll walk and point to the nursing chair in her room.

Eating: She makes the munching sound or can walk up to her high chair and wait to be put in.

Thirsty: Mommy taught her to point to her throat, which she acutally points to her mouth, and make a slurping sound. But Lily improvised with a gurgly raspberry sound. So when she points to her mouth and goes “phhhbbblllt” that means she wants a drink. She now uses sippy cups with straws.

All done: waves her hands or opens her arms (usually to indicate she wants out of the highchair)

So Big: (taught by Jen) opens her arms out to the side, and even way back behind her.

Lotion: she copies Mommy and whenever Mommy puts lotions on her own hands, lily will clasp her hands together and wiggle them back and forth.

Awake: Mommy is trying to teach her how to do the pincer opening of the fingers to say awake. She uses her whole hands like twinkle twinkle. Usually this is used when we’re in bed trying to catch more ZZZ and lily is awake in bed with us, tellng us to get up. “Wake up! awake!” She hasn’t bothered to learn “asleep”

Love, love: she can hug and swing back and forth the Lolly doll, the teddy bear, or the Lily frog.

January 5-16, 2008 Lily is doing so many new things!

Books: As we read these books, she started doing these things…

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb- She loves to drum along with the monkeys in the book, but now she also makes a “munching” sound when Hand picks Apple and she also does a motion for Hand plays Fiddle. Her motion actually looks more like a DJ scratching than a bow across a fiddle.

Daddy Hugs- She pats us on “Pat and burp the Baby hugs” and does her “touchdown!” action for Yay you did it! and she holds our fingers on Tiny Finger Hugs.

Mommy Hugs- when Mommy Polar Bear tickles her Baby, Lily tickles her own belly. She pats us when Mommy Monkey pats her baby too.

I Love my Daddy Because- This book shows a lot of Daddy animals taking care of their young. Lily can mimic howling like a wolf, saying “ow” when we touch the porcupine, and lastly she can make a monkey face and beat her chest like a gorilla. All are very useful lifeskills…

Trouble:

She “discovered” how to throw books and my hairbrush into the toilet! We hafta find a new toilet seat clamp, the first one we bought falls off too easily. Lily likes to walk around the house with it, probably flaunting her ability to defeat it.

She managed to flip off the bed, but land on her bottom and not hit her head on anything.

She still likes to throw food off the highchair. Sometimes when we have friends over they laugh at this action which of course reinforces it. We’ve started a new method to reduce the mess, which is encouraging her to put any food she doesn’t want into a “trash” bowl. We praise her profusely whenever she does. Sometimes Daddy eats the leftover tomato skins and fruit out of her discard bowl.

We’ve needed to tighten the seatbelt on the highchair since now she regularly tries to stand up in the chair.

Songs:

Itsy Bitsy Spider – She will sway back and forth when we start to sing. Her “spider” looks like a cross between clapping and “more.” She grins when my “Rain” comes splashing on her face. Her Sun isn’t over her head but around her belly and she sways back and forth.

She can kinda dance now. he sways back and forth to music. She walks around in a circle, only counter-clockwise. The other night she did this 5 times in a row, with Daddy spinning too, and then she fell over from being dizzy.

She also likes Ring around the Rosie and can “fall down” and she claps for pat-a-cake.

General stuff:

She can blow kisses and sometimes kiss us on the cheek. No smacking sound, just a lot of drool.

She can walk backwards and sideways, very slowly. This week, her playful smile showed that she knew she was being funny, as she walk backwards down the hall, then ducked around the corner and said “Ah-boo!” (peek-a-boo)

She loves to climb stairs. When I leave our condo she is always pointing to Roshni’s stairs, wanting to climb them. We did today and she got upset when our upstairs neighbors weren’t home to answer the door.

January 4, 2008. Lily can sign “More” by pointing her index fingers together. She even once said “More” This sign is easy to learn as it is often followed by more food. Lily is not as crazy for blueberries anymore, but still likes raspberries and strawberries. Her consumption of whole milk is slowly increasing. She used to be a blueberry vacuum cleaner. Daddy called her my little blueberry.

January 3, 2008. Crazy shopping day. Lily, you are a trooper. You came with Mommy to Great Mall, and hung around for 6 hours!! The time went by so fast as we enjoyed Wilma and Kathy’s company. When you got tired you slept in the sling or pinched Mommy’s neck for attention. You still love waving at strangers. At one point you walked up to a seated, older grandfather and waved and placed your hands on his knees. He was so delighted in you that he picked you up and kissed you on the cheek! Mommy sprang to her feet and politely took you out of his hands. Once in a thai restaurant a friendly waitress came and kissed you on the mouth. Mommy is quite shocked at the personal boundaries of some people. Later this day you left a bunch of tiny handprints on Lani’s TV and walked around their apartment dragging around their recyclable trash, bags and boxes.

January 2, 2008. We took the BART to SF and watched Ashley ice skate. We got to see Amelia imitate Bono with her wild hair and pink sunglasses (not to mention her fur-lined, rock star coat). We played on the Yerba Buena Gardens playground and Lily bravely climbed up ramps, stairs, and slides. Ashley’s friends like to play with Lily and pick her up. She’s exactly half their size.

PHOTOS- Review of 2007: http://picasaweb.google.com/mimi.fang/Xmas2007?authkey=pfzjPTOWpOw

December 31, 2007. New Years Eve. Lily learns how to imitate Celine Dion’s melodramatic singing and poses from Auntie Didi’s constant playing of her Vegas concert DVD.

December 24-28, 2007. Lily goes to Houston to visit Nana for Christmas. Lily loved waving at everybody at the airport. She sat part of the flight in a seat with Ashley and watched a DVD. She swam in Nana’s new jacuzzi as Daddy went fishing. She loved climbing the stairs and unravelling toilet paper. When we arrived in Houston we realized Lily had packed a potholder in our suitcase, just in case? Santa brought Lily a box of cookies.

December 23, 2007. Aunty Didi teaches Lily a “useful” new trick. Since Lily already knows how to wave, she learned a modification. She knows how to put her nose to our feet and then motion “Stinky!” by waving her hand in front of her face and making a face. This trick gets such a positive reaction that she delights in doing it. She even says “Stinky!” with the S sound and intonation. Another fun game is what Auntie Didi dubbed the monkey face. Mommy didn’t really intend for it to be a monkey face, but has fun when Lily imitates her “smelling” or sniffing very fast with her nose and mouth all scrunched up. It was meant to be smelling the flowers or tickling and sniffing lily’s neck. I guess it looks like a monkey.

December 21, 2007. Dinner at Choi’s Kitchen with Nicole and the gang. Lily joined Mommy for a girls’ night out and wore her cheetah print dress and matching brown giraffe shoes, a jungle theme. She also had her hair up in two pigtails, tied with brown ribbon. They looked like antennae sticking out the top of her head. When Lani and Amy first saw her they just laughed and said, “what did Mommy do to your hair?” Nicole gave us a toddler penguin costume as a Christmas gift. Since Lily already walks and flaps her arms like a penguin at times, this was the perfect gift. Mommy can’t wait to have you wear it, surely there will be an occassion before next Halloween… At dinner the funniest part was that Lily recognizes Japchae noodles. When they were set on the table, Lily immediately started pointing and making sounds, clearly wanting them NOW. Our friends said, she certainly is her parents’ daughter.

December 18, 2007. Well, Lily is feeling better but for some reason (maybe still feeling icky?) decided it was funny to bite me. All day today each time she nursed (about 4 times on each side) she would bite me either before she started nursing or when she was done. She would laugh or smile at my reaction. I got scared to feed her and could tell my anxiety was preventing a good let-down of milk which I think added to the cycle of “i’m bored, there’s no milk, how about I bite Mommy.” I could almost tell when she was gonna do it because she de-latches and hovers just a moment as if she’s thinking about it. At first I followed the advice I had read about saying “No!” firmly and setting Lily down off my lap each time it happened. This didn’t work too well for me because I tried to set her down quickly so she would associate the discipline with the offense, but in retrospect she might have thought I was dropping her and just got more upset. I was pretty fed up and frustrated so towards the end of her bedtime, I promptly left the room, and Daddy was left to help this angry baby go to sleep.

The next morning she still bit me at the end of her long morning nursing. This morning changed my course of action after reading even more advice online about biting. Basically I paid very close attention at each feeding and quickly broke the latch whenever she stopped nursing and she seemed to be contemplating a bite. By the end of the day I was quite engorged. I think she didn’t drink as much and was still testing the boundaries with attempts at bites. At the end of this day she was tired and clearly frustrated. After our bedtime routine she didn’t even bother trying to nurse just screamed as she sat on my lap. This was very sad to me because in every other situation she could be calmed down with an opportunity to nurse. For a long time I sat there with a screaming baby, thinking I’m glad Lily never had colic, how will I get this milk out, i haven’t pumped in months and don’t even know where my pump is. I also started to get scared thinking what if she stopped nursing all together. This would be a sad end to our nursing relationship. Finally her tiredness outweighed her stubborness and she began to nurse again and fell asleep. Since then she hasn’t bitten me again. I praise her for her gentleness, although she recently took up a habit of pinching my neck. Anyways my last thought is that scores of people when they see Lily’s teeth coming in have asked me whether she bites or whether breastfeeding hurts. In my case, we didn’t have too much trouble establishing our nursing relationship and over these two days she has probably only successfully bitten me a dozen times. Then I think back over how much I love breastfeeding, how comforting it is for both Lily and me, and that probably over the course of this past year we’ve had over two thousand good, pain-free, loving nursing sessions. I will miss it when this stage is done.

December 17, 2007. Lily’s first real sick day. Starting at about 8 am this morning, Lily just couldn’t keep anything in her stomach – it all came back up. She threw up over a dozen times between 8 am and 3 pm, and by the end it wasn’t even anything she was drinking, it was just bright yellow bile. Daddy and Mommy were pretty worried. When we took her in to see the doctor, she was at her lowest point – quiet, listless, completely passive. At one point during the checkup, she curled up into a little ball on Mommy’s lap. The doctor was worried too – Lily was still reasonably well hydrated, but if she didn’t stop throwing up, then dehydration would set in and she would need an IV. We decided to take her home, with the plan to bring her back for an IV in two hours (at 5 pm) if she was still vomiting. Well, Lily threw up one last time in the doctor’s office for good measure, and then we gave her a few sips of pedia-lite (baby gatorade). Though we were trying to feed her only little sips every 10-15 minutes, she started perking up and demanding more and more. By the time an hour had passed at home, Lily was close to her old self again – crying, demanding more pedia-lite, and laughing at peek-a-boo. For dinner, she devoured a whole bunch of rice and chicken broth. We just put her down to bed – it is amazing how much of a roller coaster today was – it ended up being an 8 hour stomach flu. The doctor said that the more violent the flu at its worst, the faster the baby recovers – that was certainly true for Lily. Mommy and Daddy were both surprised how much we missed her crying when the flu was at its worst – anything is better than a baby whose personality has completely disappeared. We are very grateful to have our Lily back in good health tonight.

Other than her sickness today, there have been a ton of other “firsts” in the recent weeks. Two weeks ago, at Wingra’s, Lily tugged on Daddy’s shirt sleeve to get him to go somewhere with her – that was a new behavior. Tonight, after her illness, she started playing peek-a-book with her hands correctly for the first time – actually covering her eyes with her hands. She now walks almost exclusively – no more crawling for our little girl. She has been actively pointing for what she wants for weeks now. Every day is something new – it is pretty amazing just to marvel at the miracle of our little girl growing up.

December 7, 2007. Wow, Lily is doing so many new things today, I can hardly keep up. This morning as I was singing “Pop goes the Weasel” she started saying “puh” at the right part of the song. So then I sang “Ring around the rosie” and fell down flailing at the end. She laughed hysterically everytime. Then i suggested she try it. She did, but ended up rolling on the hardwood floor and didn’t cry but had this look like, “This isn’t as fun as it looks with Mommy.” So finally I gave her a floor pillow and we both “fell down” on the pillow.

Also, I sang “here is thumbkin” and when pointer came out, she blew on it! This is after trying to teach her to blow on a candle I would imitate by blowing on my finger. She now thinks pointer fingers are for pointing and blowing on. Her puffs of air are cute, not with round puckered lips, but with puffy cheeks full of air.

We went to visit Jeff Chong (11 days old) but he was asleep. Lily was very sad to leave, bc she was concerned as she heard jeff crying as we left.

Tonight at dinner Auntie Didi tested Lily with her tricks: waving, claping, etc. Now she taught her how to head bang, or play peek-a-book by looking up then quickly down. After eating at Tofu House, we walked next door to look at Christmas decorations … at Walgreens. Lily was having fun walking around alot and picking items off the shelves. We love hearing the way Ashley laughs at Lily’s antics. Lily loves playing with Ashley. When Ashley was carrying Lily and turning around, Lily would keep spotting on Auntie Didi.

Oh yeah, tooth #7 pops out today, third one for her bottom row. Did you know her cousin Dennis lost his 2nd tooth last week? He accidentally swallowed it at Sunday dinner. But he wrote the Tooth Fairy a letter to explain what happened. At his house the Tooth Fairy writes back and gives very official looking letters and forms.

December 6, 2007. Mommy was trying to do a few sit ups using Lily’s yoga ball. Lily comes behind Mommy and decides to help by pulling Mommy’s head up by her hair. Lily’s the cutest Personal Trainer ever.

December 5, 2007. Today Ningning with Timo 14m and Kim with Elise 7m came over. We took lots of pictures. Elise sat and watched with her dark round eyes as Timo and Lily bumped into each other as they waddled, kinda like a roller derby. Timo can walk faster and farther than Lily so Lily ramped up her walking skills to keep up. They even fight and share toys. They traded soup spoons, sippy cups and bottles. At one point when Timo was very tired, he fell and cried loudly. Lily cried after hearing Timo. The funniest part was when Timo is walking around and Lily is in her highchair. Lily looks at Timo then throws her food off the edge of her tray to watch him pick it up and eat it.

December 4, 2007. Lily went with Mommy to the Creche Exhibit at the LDS church in Palo Alto. it was very nice. We went with Angela and Hope (who can sleep through car alarms, gardening, everything) Lily tried very hard to pull the balls off the Christmas tree. She watched the musicians playing the oboe and piano. Then we watched a marionette show of the Christmas story. I think that is the first time Lily has heard the story of Jesus’s birth.

December 3, 2007. Lily’s 12m well baby check up. Poor Lily — 5 shots and 1 blood draw. This was the first doctor’s visit that Lily did not like any part and cried at each step. She did not want to get measured or weighed by this stranger nurse person. She cried and protested being held still for the shots. Then we went through 3 phlebotomists before they could get a good vein for a blood draw. She knew it was coming and would cry loudly at the sight of the next person putting gloves on. When we got home, Mommy let Lily have some juice. Daddy decided to give Lily her xmas gift early. A 65cm yoga ball. Lily loves walking and rolling this ball and drumming on it. What a rough day for all of us.

That evening Lily was feeling much better and played with Aunt Sophia and Uncle Lee and their dogs, while Daddy discussed Spice Hut’s take-out policies with Mommy. We love our dates to the bakery Sugar, Butter, Flour.

PHOTOS: http://picasaweb.google.com/mimi.fang/07_11LadybugsBirthday?authkey=9QqT1G3Xtuo

November 30, 2007. The third and last “First Birthday Party” for Lily. Three little ladies are turning ONE at Cajams. Mommy and Angela got together several times to prepare for this party and make T-shirts, invitations and cute ladybug antennae headbands. Lily and Hope would sit under the table and fight over cel phones and somehow manage to call each other on the cel phones. The bigger kids loved being in the hammock ride. We all played the “unwrap a box with many layers” game. (in which Andrew unintentionally entertained us all with the music control…) When we played the tray game, Lily picked up the Ballet dancer. Lily slept really soundly after this day of partying.

November 29, 2007. Parents go to see the Warriors play the Rockets. Not too impressed with Yao-Ming. Auntie Jane babysat Lily and successfully put her down for bed (although a lot of crying in the process).

November 28, 2007. Lily has a new mole. Her second one. Her first was behind her ear. Now she has one on the top of her right foot. Mommy has one on the top of her left foot. Today Lily successfully sipped through a straw for the first time. She drank a few sips from two different juice boxes. (because mommy decided that apple might upset her stomach and switched to grape) She’d sip a little bit then kinda forget how to use the straw and start to bite down. Then she seemed to decide the straw must be broken and pointed at the other juice box. This went back and forth throughout dinner. She even seemed to understand it when Mommy told her that she needed to take bites of food between sips. Mommy would say, “you need to alternate.” And Lily would then open her mouth for more food.

November 27, 2007. Stinky feet. Mommy took Lily to the park to run around with her new walker wagon. When we got home and took off Lily’s shoes and coat, something was so stinky that Mommy thought Lily needed a diaper change. But no! It was her feet! Lily laughs a lot when Mommy sniffs her feet and makes a face and says, “Puuuuka feet!”

PHOTOS: http://picasaweb.google.com/mimi.fang/ThanksgivingBirthdayALBUM

November 26, 2007. HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY, LILY!!!!

00:04 Lily wakes up crying, Daddy helps her fall back asleep. She hasn’t gotten up this early in a long while. She must have been wondering where her party was. At this point in her usual sleep pattern, she sometimes gets up for 5-30min around 2-4am, but about a dozen times she’s slept from 8:30-7:30am.

07:18 Lily wakes up and is ready to nurse. Daddy brings her into Mommy’s sleepy arms. Sometimes she’ll fall back asleep, but very rarely. She rolls back and forth laying her head on sleepy parents and patting them and giggling when she catches one of them awake and looking at her.

08:15 Mommy lets Daddy sleep and takes Lily for her breakfast: cheerios, oranges, peas, toast. Lily claps and waves between courses.

09:00 Changing of the guard. Mommy goes back to sleep. Lily wants to go out and bangs on the front door. So Daddy takes her for a walk to get the mail. He thinks she knew there were bday cards for her. They play peek-a-boo down the hallway and try on plastic bowls for hats. Daddy pushes her around on her animal car toy.

10:35 Lily naps for 30min. Mommy tries to get her to sleep longer and nurses her again when she wakes at 11:00 but Lily is done with napping. Mommy notices when she rocks Lily in her arms, her hair sways like sea grass. Already Lily has lost the hairclip Mommy put in her hair this morning.

11:14 Twelveth month photo shoot! Lily in a diaper with Lolly and Bear on the recliner. Lily likes to see what the picture looks like after each take.

11:42 Lunch: one bite of lentil soup, more oranges and rotini pasta. Some days she only eats the green pasta in her tri-color pasta. Lily grabs Daddy’s hand and wants more tastes of his red sauce pasta. Like father, like daughter.

13:17 Mommy folds laundry as Lily tries to help by pulling the folded laundry out of the basket.

14:00 Lily is getting cranky and wants to nurse again. Maybe she’s teething, bc she’s very drooly lately. I assure her that even though she’s heard me say I’m gonna nurse her until she is ONE, it doesn’t mean we’re stopping today. She doesn’t need to get as much as she can today, there will still be more tomorrow.

14:40 Mommy and Lily go out with Nancy to Target and TJ’s. Lily naps for 40min while we talk in the parking lot. Lily’s face lights up when we give her a balloon from TJs. We watch the train and other babies in the store. Mommy feels triumphant to have fixed her toy piano by buying a new leg (in a roundabout way with Target returns). Nancy is understanding even though Lily cries at seeing her.

17:38 Lily hears the dishwasher open and decides she should come see what she can pull out of it. She also tries to pull out the cans and jars from the cupboard. As she bangs the glass salad dressing bottle on the floor, it reminds Mommy of when Mommy and Auntie Didi were two and broke a grape jelly jar under Great Grandpa’s dining room table. You are getting to be a big girl, Lily. Mommy can now use the garbage disposal without you crying. But you are still afraid of Tickle Me Elmo ball and the strange two faced Bert and Ernie ball that Aunt Shanny gave you. Those two toys and Nancy are the things you cry at…

17:45 While Mommy cooks dinner, Lily is put under Daddy’s charge… and with a Snack: a box of blueberries all for Lily. It’s not blueberry season, Mommy thought about whether one container was enough, but they are quite expensive. It’s your birthday splurge. Mommy talks to the great aunties, thanking them for their birthday cards to Lily.

18:20 Dinner: ground turkey, tortillas, 2 asparagus stalks, grapes, one whole juicy, drippy tomato, oranges and cherrios. The majority of the asparagus gets spit out although she seems to love chomping on them.

19:23 Rolling the ball with Mommy. Playing her piano. Laughing at a game of “Chase the naked baby with a diaper.” Reading “Hand, hand, Fingers Thumb” and “ABC” and more. Lily yawns when we read “It’s Time for Bed.” Lily cracks up when Daddy bows while she is applauding. She says “Bow” and imitates Daddy’s bowing. The whole family takes turns bowing.

20:02 Lily can give us kisses on our cheeks. No smack sound, but she thinks it’s funny to try to bite Mommy’s face.

20:19 Daddy lays on the nursery floor and sings “Goodnight, Lily” song and “Day is done/taps” while Mommy nurses Lily in the rocker.

20:25 Lily is fast asleep.

22:51 Missing hairclip is found. yay!

November 24, 2007. The second of your 1st birthday parties. We took you to the park for a picnic of leftover turkey sandwiches and lemon birthday cupcakes. Nana gave you a wagon walker that you charged full speed through the park. Sometimes you walked so fast you fell to your knees but just kept kneeling and pushing. Nana said you were like the people who do penance and crawl on their knees a far distance. You are soo cute when you lean forward to try to get going on the slide. We sat you in a double folding chair with Ashley. Amelia was the Godfather again in her own chair in the center.

November 23, 2007. Your first thanksgiving. This morning you started clapping for the first time. This happened as we waited for Uncle Justin who was making us breakfast. Hooray for omelettes! Now that you can open adn close your hands and now clap, you are halfway there to learning the whole Chicken Dance.

When we went to Auntie Natalie’s house for thanksgiving you practiced climbing up her stairs. You are less afraid fo the cats and you still try to pull Amelia’s hair anytime you can. We put you in a hanbok for pictures. Thanks to Jane and Esther. Mrs. Lee kept commenting about how your hanbok is the palace design, which was not allowed until recently.

November 19, 2007. You have been shaking your head “no!” at a lot of things – almost everything I offer to feed you. (while you still put every leaf, rock, piece of bark in your mouth) The only confirmation (a pointing finger) goes to pasta, clementine oranges, and sometimes grapes. We can also entice you to chug down some fruit baby food. We call it your smoothie. Tonight after our usual, sticky dinner I put you in the bathtub. It’s getting colder these days so you started shivering when you stand up. It’s funny that you love your bathtime so much even when you are cold you don’t want me to take you out and dry you. Today you were very serious about the task at hand. You were busy trying to pull your rocking horse into the bath with you, you could not be disturbed by my efforts to towel you off.

Today we also went to the park, you continue to lean and thrust yourself down the slide, but for some reason you have decided not to swing anymore. Maybe it’s getting too cold. Anyways you were quite content to watch kids play bball. (see previous entry). And (added retrospectively), your first (volitional) word occurred around this time – you have started to say “ball!” and point to your ball.

November 16, 2007. Your first 1st birthday party (two more coming). We celebrated with a cake time the hour before RW started. Cake from Costco (thanks to Joyce and her Snap) and we also borrowed a corral of child gates. You and Nicholas had a wide open space to play. We watched a 12minute – 200 picture slideshow that Daddy made on Adobe Primere. Someday you can ask him what Ken Burns means. We also had you try out the Korean Dol game. You picked the basketball! then dropped it when everyone made a cheer. Then you picked up the pen, dropped it then picked up the roll of money. I think those three items translate to “basketball scholarship.” We gave you cake for the first time. We debated so much whether to let you have it, whether to get you non-dairy options, whether to take away the frosting. Well you just picked at it. Then you picked off tiny pieces and offered them to Mommy, Daddy, and Auntie Didi. So generous of you to share!

November 12, 2007. Lily took her first steps today. She’s actually very smart about it – if she needs to move too far, she gets down and starts to crawl. But, if you can set up a situation that it is easier for her to shuffle a couple of inches rather than get down on all fours, she’ll take a couple of steps!

November 6, 2007. Mommy took you to the playground, the one further down Deep Creek so that we could watch more geese (no giant ones) and we could explore a new playground. Some of the kids at after-school care came up to you and sat like inches from your face. I was thinking how kids don’t really understand personal space. One of the girls (7yrs) said you looked cute in your hat. The next boy said you looked cute in your cheeks. (?) They kept trying to touch your chubby cheeks. I loved seeing how social you are and when you give smiles the other kids giggle with delight. On another playground adventure (the one by our house) a little girl who seemed to not speak english was eyeing your blue ball, which i always bring with us. I told her she could play with it if she stayed close by. Well, my mistake, she took it and started walking off with it. I had to grab you out of the swing and grab our stroller and chase this girl down. Finally I caught up with her and said that it’s baby’s ball and we needed it back. I guess she understood some english because she protested, “but I want it!”

PHOTOS – http://picasaweb.google.com/mimi.fang/07_10Lily810months?authkey=_xpIbsNu6X4

October 31, 2007. Lily’s first Halloween. Mimi had bought an infant pumpkin costume from a garage sale $5, sometime before Lily was born. She wore it to our trip to the Ardenwood pumpkin patch as well as to Ashley’s school and our trick-or-treating down Belvedere in SF… oh yeah, also to a round of trick-or-treating in our neighborhood with Roshni the Dragon. What a long day for Lily. She slept long and hard through the night. Her Pumpkin costume is so puffy it sticks out of the ergo sling.

October 24, 2007. Daddy took Lily to the library today (Union City Library in Fremont) and they saw the biggest goose ever – seriously, it’s like Andre the Giant came back as a goose – and I don’t even believe in reincarnation. Daddy overheard one 7 or 8 year old girl tell her mom, “That goose is mean. It pecked me in the butt once.” Daddy stifled a laugh, and the girl’s mom cracked up. It’ll be interesting when Lily is that old. As we were leaving the library, the giant goose was coming up the path, and Daddy (holding Lily) decided to walk straight towards it to see if it would get out of the way. It didn’t. Daddy ended up swerving. The goose moved a little bit too, but was entirely unafraid. Scary goose.

October 23, 2007. Daddy and Mommy have been playing games of online Scrabble through www.scrabulous.com. Very fun. Daddy is proud because he is trying to raise the level of his game to play more Scrabbles (using all 7 tiles, for the 50 pt. bonus). So far, he has consistently played one per game – he is very proud of FAIRIES, LEAVINGS, UNICORNS and UNHEALED. If you look up Scrabble on Wikipedia, you get all sorts of neat strategy tips – for instance, the rule of thumb that with good play, an “S” is usually worth 8-10 points, and a blank about 25 points. Daddy and Mommy have also been learning a lot of esoteric two letter Scrabble words, like AI, DE, and LE.

October 22, 2007. Daddy was driving in the car today, and noticed his first white hair. Sigh. Coincidence that he’s now a father? I think not.

October 19th, 2007. Lily has been getting into our computers lately. Soon she’ll be typing her own Lily Updates. Well the other day, Lily reached up and pressed Daddy’s keyboard and suddenly his screen turned 90 degrees. He didn’t know how to fix it, but had to seach online with his crazy screen to figure it out. (we discovered it was CTRL-arrow) Well, I guess CTRL is a favorite key of hers since it’s on the corner of the keyboard. Daddy thinks it’s because she has control over our lives. Then another time, Lily reached up and completely tore the CTRL key off Mommy’s laptop. (update: we took a long time to put it on… daddy found some diagram online. But then a week later Lily popped it off again, and it’s missing)

October 18th, 2007. Yup, gone are the days when Lily did not know how to spit food out. Now she can reach in and pick food out of her mouth as well as stick her tongue out and allow the food to drop off it. She made a definite grimace when I fed her dinner today. I have been trying all sorts of stuff. Finally she literally chugged a jar of pears, she didn’t want to be spoon fed, but likes to drink from the jar. But she’s smart she won’t chug yams from a pear jar.

October 15th, 2007. Lily’s first cold. We’re glad this is only her first and it’s quite mild. Mommy remembers the exact kid who probably gave it to her… trying to let it go. When Daddy was putting Lily down to sleep at night. She was crying and resisting more than usual. She would push, push, push away while Daddy held her in his arms. So Daddy sat on the floor with her and tapped on the lotion tub which helped calm her down as she began tapping with him. But after the lights were turned off she started crying again. Daddy waited there patiently and Lily tried to crawl away, but then realizes she is tired, so she crawls back and lays her head on Daddy’s ankle. She won’t let him pick her up, but as he pats her back, she slowly crawls closer and lays her head on his thigh. Finally she moves closer and closer and falls asleep in his arms.

October 10, 2007. Lily is becoming a problem solver. We have movable barriers to keep her away from things like halogen lamps, but she is learning to pull as well as push, and one day Daddy found her sitting happily inside the barrier, next to the lamp. She has figured out how to pull open doors that are cracked open, but only if she approaches it from the wall. If she is sitting in front of the door, she pulls on it until it bumps into her, and then she gets confused and pushes it shut. Then she cries.

October 8th, 2007. Lily’s cousin Amelia turns 2 months and comes to Fremont for lunch at Claimjumpers with Lily’s playgroup. We also go to the Ardenwood pumpkin patch to take pictures of the cousins in their Halloween costumes.

October 5, 2007. We took Lily to Yosemite. Lily had a good time, except all her good sleep habits went out the window in this new place. At night she cried and cried – which is kind of awkward in campground. Mommy and Daddy are really relieved about one episode, though. Lily was crawling around on the floor, and our friends Mike and Lani gave her a sleep bag to cuddle with. Then, we moved her onto the bed. We turned our heads, and in an instant, she flipped off the bed backwards, her body completely parallel to the ground. Instead of hitting the hard ground (very thin carpet over solid wood), she landed completely centered on the sleeping bag, which cushioned her fall perfectly. Lily didn’t even cry. It looked like the perfect movie stunt – except that the more we thought about it, the more grateful we were that Lily was ok. Thank you, God, for watching over our little one.

September & October 2007. More about babyproofing and Lily’s eating habits. So we’ve bolted heavy furniture to the wall and covered electrical sockets. Then we wait for our little beta tester to show us what else we need to babyproof. Recently our garbage can became gated up bc she figured out “wow! there’s lots of things to eat in here, like stale popcorn!” (But we won’t name her Garbage like Dwight’s cat.) She also likes to tear up paper, specifically paper towels to bits and eat those. Daddy is amazed how much concentration she uses to shred the paper towel to itty bitty bits.

Besides putting leaves, rocks and shoes in her mouth, there are a myriad of items you’ll be surprised (or not surprised) that end up in her mouth. One morning Mommy picked her up from the crib and put her next to the sleeping Daddy while she went to the bathroom. Then from her “seat” in the bathroom, Mommy sees Lily staring intently at a foam earplug while chewing vigorously on the other one. She yells at Daddy to intervene… Flashback: 1999 Mimi decides to babysit her sister’s cat Max, who also decides earplugs are for eating.

small side note: lily can chew on things for a long, long time and never swallow. Daddy dropped some salad once and before he could pick it up, Lily crawls over and eats it. Sometimes, Lily sneezes and out flies food that should have been gone a long time ago. Last but not least, at this stage Lily can sort of pick food out of her mouth with her hand, but she hasn’t quite figured out how to spit it out. I know that’s coming… she has also begun to slam her hand down adamantly to let you know she doesn’t want anymore baby food. Oftentimes during her feeding she needs to poop. So she begins to push and her face turns red, and lately those unswallowed mouthfuls of babyfood also ooze out her mouth with every push.

September 2007. Lily has started her first music class. The first day she was still napping and I felt bad disturbing her. But I guess it’s like just the beginning of many years of waking her up to rush to school. (by the way the 3rd class she slept through and played hooky.) At music class there are only 3 students. Hope, Lily and Julian, all the same age. Lily doesn’t really stay in my lap for the bouncing songs, she likes to crawl and try to tear up the teacher’s lesson plans. When class is over and everything is put away, all three babies decide the fun is just beginning and love to crawl up to the closed plastic bin and drum away on it together.

September 30, 2007. Today Lily went to her friend Kyle’s birthday party. She was sitting in the lawn with her other playgroup friends, do their usual stuff, staring at each other, grabbing each other’s sippy cups, etc. So Mommy got up to get something to drink. When she returned, she found Lily is holding on to something in her clenched fist. To her surprise and horror, she realizes it is HALF a worm. Mommy quickly swipes Lily’s mouth to see if there anything in there, no worm parts in there. Mommy tries not to freak out, but is having a hard time wrestling the worm from Lily’s fist. We then go wash our hands. The whereabouts of the other half of the worm remain a mystery. The funniest part of this story is the look on Dennis and Katie’s face when I tell this story to Wingra.

September 26, 2007. Lily turns 10 months today! She’s definitely growing taller, and she’s losing some of her baby fat. Mommy thinks she’s starting to look like a toddler – and she’s starting to stand more on her own now. Here are a few of her recent mannerisms which we love. 1) Lily had her best night of sleep ever last night! She slept from 9:45 p.m. until 8:45 a.m. 2) Lily loves sweet potato puffs and bunny love “cheerios” – her success rate at feeding herself is around 80%. Recently, she started being a bit more difficult to feed by spoon, so we give her more finger cereal and “sneak” spoonfuls of baby food in. I think she has secretly trained us to feed her more baby cereal. 3) Lily’s favorite sounds to make: “puh” and “buh”. She likes vowel sounds, but not other consonant sounds yet. 4) She likes attacking Daddy and Mommy’s knees and thighs with her mouth and blowing raspberries. 5) During meals, she has a habit of running her right hand through her hair. It makes her hair… crusty. She has thus trained us to give her daily baths. 6) She loves doing “Barnyard Dance” with Daddy. 7) She still gives lots of smiles… we love her so much!

September 15, 2007. Lily is crawling a lot now. Her favorite goals are the remote controls – the dvd remote and the tv remote. She now has a clear understanding of cause-and-effect association – she crawls to the tv remote, holds it up, and looks at the TV. She hasn’t figured out how to turn the TV on yet, but she knows that the remote is related to the TV. Sometimes, it seems like after she looks at the TV and it isn’t on, she looks at Daddy as if to say, “Hey, this remote is broken. Isn’t it supposed to turn the TV on?”

September 6, 2007. Lily is officially crawling. She’s been on the cusp of crawling for weeks (feels almost like months), but she’s only been able to make progress going backwards. Today, she finally focused forwards and started shuffling her hands and knees in an organized pattern, and she made it several feet forward. Good job, Lily!

Today was Lily’s 9 month checkup, and she’s doing well. She’s still above 90th percentile in height (31 inches) and she’s still over 95th percentile in weight (at 24 lbs, 11 oz.) No shots today, but she will get a flu shot in October or November – for infants, the first time they get a flu vaccine they need two shots on two separate days – I didn’t know that.

August 30, 2007. Daddy was watching Lily this morning, and after she had eaten her breakfast he left her in her high chair facing him while he did some dishes. He noticed that she was very sleepy, and eventually she nodded off onto her high chair tray, with her vinyl bib pressed to her forehead. Whem Mommy got home, she was so surprised to see Lily sleeping in her highchair! When Lily woke up, her big was stuck to her face, since it still had food on it – she was not amused. Daddy tried hard not to laugh, though.

August 26, 2007. Happy 9 months birthday!! Lily is now 25 lbs and has lots of hair. I watched some of her home videos (4+ hours since birth) and realized I have made comments about her hair at almost every take. “Here’s Lily at 2months, her hair is growing… here is Lily at 4months, look at all that hair!” So I will try to refrain.

Lily is very smiley and very active. She can scoot around on her bottom and given enough time can get about anywhere in a room. She doesn’t actually crawl (although Bubu is trying hard to train her) but can roll, reach, and stretch to get to anything, which usually ends up in her mouth. She has tried several times quite successfully to bite our toes.

She can push away when we carry her. She can twist both ways to look around us at other people or usually the TV. It’s cute to see her feet wrap around us everytime we pick her up. She also tries to dig her toes into my tummy when trying to push away. She has displayed a few times of stranger anxiety. Some friends have come over and either Lily had just gotten up from her nap or just didn’t understand their laughter. Either their friendly greeting or their laughter startles her and she cries.

Last but not least, her laughter is adorable. A hearty laugh. She likes to hear us say “Boink!” Today I was chasing a fly in our house and she found my antics hilarious!

August 22, 2007. Lily’s first trip to Berkeley. We went with Nicole to Charles Chocolates where we watched people making chocolates through a window. I told Daddy I was taking you there so you could interview to be an Oompaloopa. At first we only saw 3 or 4 people making chocolates. But then when the employees saw Lily, they started waving and pointing at Lily and a few more employees came out from the back to look at her. We had lunch at a japanese place and Lily broke her first plate, at least it was a small one. It made a huge crash and everyone in the restaurant looked at us. Maybe it was also Lily’s first Berkeley protest. I told her that this is not the 60′s and she could not burn her diaper.

August 16, 2007. Lily was playing on the floor while I cleaned up her crib. I was so delighted that she scooted over and tugged on my nightgown. She actually was trying to play peek-a-boo with it. She can hold a handkerchief about chin level, not actually hiding her face. She starts with both fists about 2 inches apart, then she pulls outward. It’s a random chance or based on friction which hand will let go first. Then I say, “Peek a boo!” And she giggles and starts over. This was the first game where she would do it repeatedly on her own.

August 8, 2007. 0p-;[/” Lily’s first chat message. Daddy and Mommy were talking on the phone, and Lily used Mommy’s computer to send that Gchat message to Daddy. Daddy is still trying to figure out what it means. His current best guess is that she is hanging upside down winking with her mouth open and her hair is sticking up on the right hand side. See that?

Lily also grabbed Mommy’s cell phone last night and tried to put in a quick call to Auntie Sophia. However, Auntie Sophia didn’t pick up. Lily is definitely getting the hang of household electronics.

August 6, 2007. We spent a lot of time cleaning out Lily’s room, and we set up a crib mattress on the floor for her. This is our big effort to start to transition Lily to sleeping on her own (out of our bed), while still allowing Mimi to keep breastfeeding as needed at night. The funny thing is that the first night that Lily slept in her room, we decided that if she woke up and started crying before 3 a.m., Mimi would nurse her and try to get her to sleep in her own room. If she woke up after 3 a.m., Daddy would get up and bring her into our bed. Lily woke up at… 3:02 a.m. Clearly she is listening in on our conversations, has an excellent sense of time, and knows how to maximize time with Mommy and Daddy in our big bed.

July 24, 2007. Today Lily grabbed a chunk of banana and successfully put it in her mouth. The other 90% of the banana ended up on the floor, or smeared under her arms, on her hands or on the highchair tray. Yesterday was Lily’s first taste of Frog’s Hollow Peaches. Daddy and Mommy’s favorite. Most of the time Lily eats normal Gerber or organic jarred baby food. But just twice so far, we’ve made some special batches of homemade baby food and freeze them with love. Sweet potato, butternut squash, pears, and Frog’s Hollow fruit medley.

July 20, 2007. Lily is moving A LOT! Reaching for things and rolling back and forth. While she has always enjoyed standing on our laps, now she has the strength to go from sitting to standing on her own. She doesn’t do it much, except with the right motivation. Today she surprised Mommy by pulling herself up in efforts to get out of the bathtub. Then she straddles her legs and flexes her abs extra hard, making her stiff as a board and almost impossible to make her sit back down in the bath. Last but not least, she has learned to pull hats off her head, much to Mommy’s dismay.

July 2007. For photos of our cruise go to http://shangkuan.shutterfly.com/action/

July 16, 2007. We disembark from the cruise ship and get to our hotel in Waikiki. Daddy wants to go surfing, so we find a place that rents surfboards and he goes out. Of course, since Daddy has only been surfing once before, in Santa Cruz where he needed a full wetsuit, he doesn’t realize how stupid it is to go surfing without anything covering his chest. After about 45 minutes, his stomach, chest, and nipples are rubbed totally raw and stinging in the seawater. He has managed to get up on his board a few times and ride some nice waves, however. He decides that further pain isn’t worth it, and he heads back in and finds Mommy on the beach. He tells her about his chafed nipples. For some reason, as a nursing mom, she is unsympathetic .

July 14, 2007. Today we’re on Kauai. We get another rental car and go up to the North Shore, where we go to a neat place called “The Queen’s Bath” which is essentially a naturally-created, giant, swimming-pool sized tidepool. It is quite a hike to get there – maybe half a mile down a muddy slope and over a lava rock trail. Daddy likes the bath, and on the hike back it starts to rain. Lily is strapped to Daddy in a hip carrier, and Daddy shields her from the worst of the rain with a little portable tent. She’s perfectly happy as we climb up a steep slope and go over boulders – we now call her our “adventure baby.”

In the afternoon we go to a craft fair and eat a yummy, yummy lunch plate. We finish off our day snorkeling at Tunnels, where Daddy swims with a honu (sea turtle). Daddy has been expecting to see one all week, so he’s happy that he finally gets to swim with one – it is a good finish to his last snorkel of the vacation.

July 11-12, 2007. We spend two full days on Maui, and Daddy and Mommy rent a car (free upgrade to a Jeep 4×4 SUV!). In the morning we drive from Kahului, where the port is, down to La Perouse Bay, only to find that the place we went snorkeling a few years back is now a lot harder to reach (and would have been very difficult with Lily – it takes some hiking over lava rock boulders, which are quite sharp). Instead, we drive to the next bay over, Ahi’hi Bay, which has some excellent snorkeling as well. We rush back to the cruise ship, so that Lily can sit at her first Teppanyaki table. As we wait, we realize that Lily first two bottom teeth are coming in!!!!! Mommy and Daddy are very excited. Lily handles teppanyaki like a pro. The chef does the flaming onion volcano thing, but Lily takes it all in stride. After the chef is finished with the cooking and has left, Mommy steps into the center cooking area and starts to pretend to do all the teppanyaki tricks – this cracks Lily up and she starts laughing out loud. In the afternoon, we go back to the beach, and Lily has a bite of plain shave ice – she sucks on it for a bit, and then Mommy gets worried that it’ll congeal into a choking-hazard ice-ball, so she scoops it out. Lily is pretty good all afternoon, but she cries like crazy on the car ride back to the cruise ship. Poor Matt and Candace, who are in the car with us – they get a long earful of screaming baby.

The next day we go to Honolua Bay. Last time Mommy and Daddy were at Honolua Bay in 2004, it was in April right after rainy season, and there was a freshwater stream dumping tons of muddy water into the bay. Daddy was snorkeling in the bay and decided to cross it in the middle, and he suddenly found himself surrounded by murky water. Remembering what he read about higher incidences of shark attacks in murky water, Daddy got really spooked, swam really fast across the bay, and stopped snorkeling. This time, we go back to Honolua Bay and it is beautiful – the feeder stream is totally dry, and the visibility is quite good, and the coral reef is stunning. Daddy sees an eel that’s bigger than he is (like the screaming eels in Princess Bride), and also swims through an enormous school of fish – like the fish that give directions in Finding Nemo, but even more plentiful. Very cool. Lily is missing out on all the fried McDonald’s apple pies (baked on the mainland, but friend in Hawaii – fried is much, much yummier) and all the ice cream we’re eating. At the rate we’re eating desserts, we’re going to start looking like Lily .

July 10, 2007. We arrive in Hilo on the Big Island. In the morning, instead of paying for an extra excursion, we take a shuttle to Hilo Hatties. The afternoon is a long bus ride to Volcanoes National Park with all the Shangkuans. Lily likes bus rides, because she gets to be held instead of being strapped into her car seat. She takes her first walk (strapped to Daddy) through the Thurston lava tube – she’s pretty expressionless through the whole thing. The only part of the bus ride she doesn’t like is when we get on the bus and have to walk down the aisle to take our seats at the back. Lily is so cute (and Mommy has so many extended relatives on the bus) that all these people reach out their hands to try to touch her, squeeze her, or pat her. Daddy comments that Lily is like the little mermaid swimming in the cave to Ursula. The bus driver is a non-stop talker, but his droning on and on helps Lily to fall asleep, and she’s like an angel as she takes two naps on the trip. It is already clear that Lily attracts a fan base – almost everyone on the cruise ship, whether crew or fellow passengers, stops to smile at Lily, hold her hand, and comment on what a cute baby she is.

July 9, 2007. The cruise set sail today! For a 14-deck cruise ship (2500 passengers, 1000 crew), most of the feedback from experienced cruisers indicates that the ship has a lot of rocking and swaying. It seems like the adolescents are hardest hit – Ashely and Mimi’s cousin Stephanie were having a rough time. Lily took it all in stride though – we figure that she’s so used to be held and rocked that the “world” always sways for her – so the ship seems perfectly normal.

July 8, 2007. Today we flew to Honolulu for our weeklong Hawaii cruise with the Shangkuan side of Mimi’s family (her mom’s side). When we got to our hotel in Waikiki, we received a free upgrade to a two bedroom suite, which was nice – Lily will have her own room, and Daddy and Mommy will have theirs. Daddy was excited to go to the beach and go snorkeling, and so we walked the three blocks to the beach. The snorkeling was quite mediocre since the reef has been irreparably damaged by millions of visitors, and but Lily was content to play in the sand. Mommy and Daddy tried taking her into the water, but she was scared of the waves.

July 4, 2007. Lily is officially, undeniably rolling back and forth from her stomach to her back and vice-versa. Our baby is growing up and moving along the development milestones!

June 21, 2007. Lily has recently started blowing raspberries, basically spitting with a bbbbbpppptttt sound. She can do this when she wakes up, when she’s falling asleep, often with drool and sometimes with food in her mouth. Mommy thought it was adorable that in the middle of lunch Lily grabbed Mommy’s hand as it passed her face and blew a raspberry right onto her hand. She included a mouthful of sweet potato, which was an extra bonus. It dawned on Mommy that Lily is returning the favor, as Mommy often blows raspberries on Lily’s tummy or thighs. It’s like she’s saying, “Do you wanna know what that feels like?”

June 20, 2007. Right now, at 8pm… Daddy is asleep in the family room and Lily is asleep in her bed. Daddy fell asleep “watching” Lily after dinner. He’s tired from a week long intensive class at Fuller. He also may be tired from all the excitement of playing with Lily. Today for the first time (that we noticed) she grabbed a toy and brought it from one hand to another. This is one of those milestones that they ask about at the doctor’s appointments. Daddy was so proud. He erupted in thunderous applause. Lily was so startled that she promptly dropped the toy, but eventually she picked it up again, made another pass, and Daddy gave another cheer. He did this several times then eventually fell asleep on the floor with Lily still playing next to him.

June 19, 2007. Lily took her longest nap ever, a 3 hour nap. But took only 2 naps instead of her usual 3 naps. She often changes things up – maybe she likes to keep Mommy guessing. Lily also has started to use more consonant sounds. Instead of “Aaaaaahh” she likes to say “bu-weh” and “gaaahhh-bbllttt.” Still waiting for her to say “gleeba.”

June 18, 2007. These are things Lily can do that Daddy can’t:

* Fold her body in half and suck her toes.

* Show her dimples (neither Mimi nor Tilden have dimples).

* Flip her tongue over both directions (so her tongue is vertical rather than horizontal) – Mimi can do this one direction, Tilden can’t do either direction.

* Raise her left eyebrow (like Mimi… and The Rock)

June 17, 2007. I remember not too long ago trying to get Lily to grab hold of her toys or a rattle and she would always drop it. And I looked forward to when I could see any signs of volition or hand control… Well, now she is Little Miss Grabby. She grabs my hair, Daddy’s glasses, her clothes, her toys. She is also quickly learning how to hold cups and bring them to her face, even if it means smooshing her nose with them. And if your nose gets to close to her when she’s hungry, she’ll try very hard to shove it in her mouth.

June 15, 2007. Ever since here 6 month checkup, Lily has been eating solid foods. She’s done really well, and she now is comfortably eating: rice cereal, oatmeal, avocado, sweet potato, squash, applesauce, prunes, bananas, apricots, pears, and carrots. Wow – so healthy! Unfortunately, one of the side effects of solid food tends to be more difficulty pooping (a.k.a. constipation). Lily has had a few tough bowel movements recently where she cries as she is pooping – once while Mimi watched (and photographed – gross). But we are increasing her intake of anti-constipation foods, and we think that things are getting better. It’s amazing how much of parenthood is spent worrying about bowel movements.

June 15, 2007. In the last few weeks, Lily has been using her walker more and more. It has been incredible to be across the room from her in her walker, and to be able to call to her and have her come walking right up to Daddy with a big smile on her face. Unfortunately, we learned today (from some very timely advice from Grandma Fang) that walkers are actually detrimental to childhood development – there are a bunch of medical studies that show statistically significant delays in cognitive and physical development in kids who use walkers, particularly those who can’t see their feet as they utilize their walkers. So, it is back to the floor for Lily, to practice sitting up (which she does quite well) and to learn to roll over (which she is still working on), and hopefully she’ll move on to crawling soon and be mobile again – Daddy is eagerly waiting for when Lily can toddle up to him again.

June 5, 2007. Today, out of nowhere, you decided to talk nonstop. From when you woke up til your 3rd nap of the day you were making sounds at every little thing that delighted you and every little thing that annoyed you. Mostly “mmmm” sounds. It was very sweet to take you to the park and ride the swings. You liked to watch the 2yr old twins playing on the playground around you.

June 1, 2007. Going to our favorite bakery, Tartine. Thanks, Auntie Amy, for taking us. There were a lot of babies there that day. You had your eye on a 1 yr old boy. I think bc he had the only highchair in the place, so when he left, you got it. They mispaced our order of morning buns, and were kind enough to give us $20+ bakery items. Yum! Earlier this week, I was going to write about you pooping a lot, but today actually won for the most poop ever in your life. Once again, Daddy cleaned it up, just like day 5. It leaked out of your pajamas and spread throughout one leg of your sleeper. My apologies for anyone reading this and wondering why i started the entry talking about bakery items and end with talking about poop. To close, I want to point out that after this big diaper blowout your poop has changed – to a lot less frequent and more resembling the solid foods you have been eating.

May 31, 2007. Today was your 6m check up. By now Mommy and Daddy are not as scared of the immunzation shots, because you have handled them so well already. Instead they are very much looking fwd to these visits to see how much you’ve grown. You are very good at growing. You work so hard at it and yet people are always complimenting your parents for it. (as well as calling you a Sumo) Before your check up we also took a visit to the lactation consultant. She said it would be great to have a picture of Lily with a caption that said, 100% breastfeeding. She also said we got an A++ (double plus)for how well you’ve done. Mommy will try not to let it get to her head.

You weighed in at 22lbs and 9 oz. One ounce less than your buddy Anna. You are 28 inches. That’s over 95 percentile for both weight and length and 50th percentile headsize. On one hand, you are only 5lbs more than the 50th percentile baby. On the other hand that’s more than 33% bigger. I felt like Monica Geller, when I gave the doctor a list of solid foods I was planning to introduce to you. I just wanted his input, but it did feel like I just wanted to impress him. In Friends there is an episode where Monica, a professional chef, goes to cooking school just to get compliments and a gold star. Well, we got our affirmations today.

May 28, 2007. Today was Daddy’s afternoon with Lily – Mommy had an afternoon off, and she made the most of it by seeing Shrek 3. Daddy took Lily to the historic farm in Ardenwood where they saw goats, sheep, and bunnies, and rode the train. When they got back from the farm, Lily was very hungry, so Daddy prepared some rice cereal (which Lily is getting used to) and Lily’s first taste of “real” food – fresh, mashed avocado. Daddy smushed the avocado and put a small scoop in Lily’s mouth. Lily was very hungry, so she chomped on the spoon, hesitated, and then her face slowly dissolved into a look of horror, and she took a deep breath in preparation for a huge, upset, wail. Daddy, who had gone from excited to very stressed in that moment, quickly scooped out the avocado from her mouth, and desperately offered Lily rice cereal. Slightly mollified, Lily only cried a little bit, and decided she was hungry enough to go with the rice cereal. Daddy was sneaky and started doing half avocado and half rice cereal towards the end of the feeding, and Lily seemed ok with it. Perhaps she was just shocked at the mouth-feel of the first non-liquid meal she’s ever had.

May 26, 2007. Happy 6 months birthday today! What a wonderful time it’s been! Today we went shopping at Target. I said to you, “Ok after this, we’ll go to Costco.” Then you looked at me and raised your left eyebrow. It was such a funny expression. Daddy can’t do that, so you must have gotten that from Mommy. Also as we were going around, i noticed some white spots on your shoulder. I said, “Oh, what’s this? Is it spit up?” Then you turned your face towards me with the biggest smile and your face all covered with spit up. It was both gross and so cute. Your smile neutralized the ickiness. It reminded me of an ending scene of Toy Story 2: “You’ll like Amy. She’s an artist!” Then Barbie turns with all these tattoos on her face.

May 24, 2007. Most of the time people look at Lily, sleeping snugly in her stroller and say, “What a tough life! I wish I were a baby…” Well, they may not understand that some days ARE pretty rough on you, Sweetie. It all began today when daddy made your stuffed animal “bark.” How confusing seeing as it was a cow! How will you be able to learn with inaccurate information? Then later that day you were supervising Mommy as she did the dishes. And lo and behold, out comes a very loud rumble and everything starts shaking! You were so scared! Next time Mommy knows NOT to use the garbage disposal when you are around. Last but not least, you were happily walking in your walker in the afternoon when Mommy put on a new CD. That children’s music can start off pretty loud and cheery. You looked frantically all around you to see where the music came from. I think if there was a corresponding video on the TV, it may have helped you locate the sound. But instead you got scared as it was coming from “nowhere.” You felt better after I turned down the volume, picked you up, and danced with you.

May 22, 2007. Today I bought Lily her first sippy cup. Here is a summary of her eating attempts thus far. While in Phx since it was 105F, I gave her some water from a 16oz water bottle. She LOVES it and leans fwd and licks the opening of the bottle. After that time anytime I am drinking from a water bottle she looks so excitedly thinking it’s for her. This week we also brought out her high chair. She looks so small in it. When I gave her a plastic spoon to hold onto, she knocks herself in the head a couple of times (like Steve Martin in DRS). Also since were waiting a few more days until she’s actually 6 months this Saturday to feed her solids, she decides she’ll just chew on the edge of her high chair tray. Today she was thrilled to see me pouring water into her sippy cup. She held the handle of the sippy cup and tried so hard to bring it to her mouth that she smashed her nose. In the end Daddy says, “It’s OK you don’t have to grow up too fast.”

May 21, 2007. We visited Aunt Sophia today at her work at SJSU. Although we see Soph often, it was the first time she heard Lily laugh. Also when Soph holds Lily up face to face, she said it was a bit scary as Lily tries to eat her, coming at her with an open mouth and shaking at the effort of leaning closer and closer.

May 20, 2007. Lily’s 1st retreat at Camp Hammer. Lily played Little Baby Jesus in our skit. She also tried out her sunshade tent during afternoon games. It was fun to have her hear Alex VR’s teaching too. For the next several days following the retreat, Lily still wakes at 8am on the dot still expecting lots of smiling people to hold her.

May 15, 2007. Heard from a friend today who asked about cribs. It got me thinking about all the purchases we’ve made, so I put together a new page called Buying for Baby. Mimi and I have also been introducing Lily to her crib. As most folks know, up to now we’ve been co-sleeping with Lily. We are starting to try to get her to sleep in her crib for her first two sleeping stretches – usually 8 p.m. – 12 a.m. and 12 a.m. – 4 a.m. (if all goes well). It has gone pretty well the last two nights – so far, it has been harder on us than it has been on her.

May 10, 2007. Lily has officially outgrown two of her infant car seats – she is over 22 lbs, so she doesn’t meet the weight requirement anymore. It’s a good thing that we bought the large Graco SafeSeat, which takes infants up to 30 lbs. I never thought she would need it, but I’m glad we have it now. We’ll probably put the toddler rear-facing car seat into our other car, since Lily can’t fit the infant seat anymore. Mimi is also a little sad to pack away all the cute infant clothes Lily has outgrown. Now she has to shop in the toddler section for clothes. Toddler clothes have lots of attitude… like T-shirts with sayings “patience tester” and “I heard you and I don’t care.” I think Lily still cares…

May 7, 2007. We have a fun lunch with Lynn and Annie, two of Mimi’s college drawmates. Tilden was holding Lily while he was finishing a yummy bowl of hot and sour soup, and Lily decided she wanted some, so she reached out, grabbed the lip of the bowl, and pulled it onto Daddy’s lap. Tilden was not very happy to be wearing soggy shorts for the next hour or so. Lily has been much more active playing with “toys,” grabbing items, and exploring the living room in her walker!

April 25, 2007. Mimi points out over dinner that one of Lily’s fontanelle’s pulses. A fontanelle is a “soft spot” in a baby’s skull – the baby’s skull plates have not fused together yet (so the baby’s head can squeeze through the birth canal), and there are gaps in the plates that are only covered by a membrane. One of these gaps at the top of Lily’s head bounces up and down with her pulse; her hair over that spot vibrates to her pulse as well. Tilden thought this was super cool and he had never noticed it before; Mimi said she has seen it for months .

April 24, 2007. We just got back from our weekend in San Diego, visiting Dave and Naomi Mccants, who are good friends from college and who live in Texas, and it was their first time meeting Lily. The condo complex that we stayed at in San Diego has a huge pool, which is heated to a lukewarm temperature. However, the weather was unseasonably cold and windy, so when we brought Lily to the pool for her first dip, she quickly became cold and started crying. We also tried feeding Lily a bit of mashed up sweet potato – Mimi put a tiny bit in her mouth, and she rolled it around in her mouth for a while. Just when we thought she had probably swallowed it, she ended up pushing it out of her mouth with her tongue. So, we’ll try solid food a bit later .

April 22, 2007. We had dinner with Lily’s great Aunt Mathilda and great Uncle SI today in San Diego. They were counting the creases on Lily’s arm – she has 4 of them – one by her wrist, one mid-forearm, one around her elbow, and one around her upper bicep. It’s all muscle.

April 1 – April 6, 2007. Lily has had a wonderful time meeting her cousins Sarah and Andrew, who entertained her with a rousing theatrical rendition of “The Wizard of Oz.” Tilden and Mimi especially enjoyed Sarah singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” and Andrew’s wonderful “Cowardly Lion” dialogue. It’s amazing to think that the next time she sees her cousins from New York, Lily will probably be walking and talking!

April 1, 2007. Lily had her “red egg” party today. A traditional red egg party is after 30 days and in Chinese culture, the Mom and baby usually don’t leave the house until this celebration. However, other Asian cultures celebrate 100 days, and we decided to do a 3 month-ish red egg party in conjuction with Mimi’s birthday. The host family is supposed to dye red eggs and give them out as party favors, but in America, dyed red eggs aren’t very popular to snack on. So, instead, we rolled up chocolate eggs in red tin foil and passed them out. Thank you to all who celebrated with us!

March 29, 2007. It’s Mimi’s Birthday! It is also Lily’s 4 month check-up. She measured 26 inches and weighed in at just under 18 lbs. She is a huge baby – the size of an average 9 month old. However, we’re happy that she is proportional . She is 97th percentile in both height and weight. Her Daddy likes to joke that she can beat up other babies, but really all she could do is sit on them… Again, she took her 4 shots like a champ.

March 26, 2007. A successful date! Auntie Jen came over to babysit, and Mommy and Daddy had a wonderful time going out to a nice dinner at Tamarind in Palo Alto. The food was super yummy, and it was nice to pre-celebrate Mimi’s birthday. Jen did a great job with Lily – we came home to find Lily asleep in Jen’s arms. The next day, we heard from Jen that her arm and shoulder were incredibly sore – yup, Lily’s growing fast and isn’t a lightweight anymore…

March 20, 2007. Daddy heard Lily laugh for the first time today. She had laughed once before for Mommy, but today while Daddy was at work, Mimi was playing with Lily in front of the mirror and she started laughing out loud again. Mimi quickly called Tilden on his cell phone, and Daddy heard her laugh out loud – it was amazing to hear her express such joyful emotion and also a poignant sign that she is growing up quickly and racing through “firsts.” We hope you have a life full of laughter, Lily.

March 15, 2007. Your first time meeting Nicholas. He’s just a few months older than you. Unfortunately you missed your nap that day, so you were not in a good mood. When we put you two down next to each other. He reached out to touch your face, then you wailed at him. He was very surprised. Mommy thinks the photos of you two together that day are quite funny.

March 8, 2007. Auntie Jen came over to watch you while Mommy went out for a haircut. You do love staring at Auntie Jen. That night we went to an IV dinner. You got to see your buddy Anna again. She’s the only baby we know who’s bigger than you!

February 26, 2007. Also today was her first playdate with CAJAMS our Fremont Mommies group. Our neighbor Anusha made you a bday cake bc you and another baby inthe playgroup celebrated your 3 month birthday that day!

February 26, 2007. Lily is 3 months old today! 3 months is a significant milestone for a baby – their immune systems are now much stronger, so a moderate fever or other illness is not as nerve-wracking. We spent this past weekend in Tahoe on the Real World Snow Trip, which was a lot of fun. However, it was a long, long drive home, since there was a huge winter storm. We spent about 9 hours to go from North Lake Tahoe to Davis, where we stopped and had dinner with our friends, Matt and Ruth. Unfortunately, Lily had a meltdown at their house – we think it was a combination of being in unfamiliar environments all weekend and having to wake up early that day. We’ve never had her throw a tantrum where she is crying frantically and inconsolably, and so we were quite shaken up and we didn’t know what to do. After trying to calm her down and feed her for a while, we decided we should just head home; thankfully, Lily slept the whole way home, and had a good night’s sleep last night. This morning, she woke up the perfect angel she usually is… Mommy and Daddy are almost certainly more scarred from the whole event than Lily is!

February 22, 2007. I added some new thoughts about pregnancy and testing – you can find them on our Parenting Reflections page.

February 21, 2007. One of our friends is trying to setup a monthly bowling event. It made me think about how Lily is just shy of 16 lbs now – still lighter than a heavy bowling ball. But, we think she is getting really big and really long. She’s starting to outgrow so many of her clothes. She particularly enjoys chatting with us in the mornings when she wakes up – her baby vocabulary is increasing rapidly. We’re trying to regularly speak to her in Chinese, and we also throw in a little bit of French and Spanish when we are feeling inspired.

February 14, 2007. Lily has begun to discover her hands! She’s trying to suck on them, but they are a little to big for her mouth, so she ends up licking her hands. It is very cute. Hopefully she will learn to self-pacify!

February 10, 2007. Auntie Desiree offered to babysit so that Mommy and Daddy could have a Valentine’s date (a little early). Daddy wasn’t feeling very well in the morning, but it was such a rare opportunity that he tried to tough it out. We made it up to the city, dropped Lily off, and enjoyed lunch at the Ferry building. Unfortunately, Mommy forgot to bring her pump, so she was a little “full.” Daddy also felt more and more sick, so we ended up only lasting an hour, and then we returned to pick up our little girl.

January 26th, 2007. Daddy had his first argument with Lily – over taking a bottle. Lily had been bottle feeding pretty well on and off over the last few weeks, but today she just decided that she didn’t want to feed by bottle anymore. Mommy was resting because she was a little sick, and Daddy tried to feed her by bottle. Lily was hungry, and her natural sucking instinct caused her to take the bottle’s nipple again and again, but every time she would give a suck and then cry and spit the nipple out. Daddy fed her this way, one suck at a time, for about half an hour, and then went to find Mommy to see what he should do. Mommy, wisely knowing that we parents would be in trouble if Lily trained us to go to Mommy by refusing the bottle, encouraged Daddy to try for another 15 minutes. Daddy thought about the problem some more, warmed up the milk a little more, and kept on trying. Finally, Lily decided that Daddy (with Mommy’s help) was more persistent than she was, and she settled down and drank the whole bottle (around 4 oz. at this point). Daddy hopes that he doesn’t have to “argue” with Lily again for a while – he’s dreading how hard it will be when she can talk (and when she wants the keys to the car!).

January 25th, 2007. Lily’s 2month doctor’s visit. Lily had 5 vaccinations today – 4 by shot and one orally. She weighed in at just shy of 13 lbs, and is now 95th percentile for both height (23.5 inches) and weight.

January 15th, 2007. Lily is SMILING and truly beginning to mimic our facial expressions!! Happy MLK day! Lily is 50 days old today. She meets Anna (who is 1 month older and 5lbs heavier than her!), getting to thank her in person for the great clothing hand-me-downs.

January 14th, 2007. Lily meets a rambunctious Caleb (22months) and awaits her playmate (Caleb’s younger sibling, will the baby be a girl or boy??) to be born. Thanks for the yummy lettuce wraps!

January 13th, 2007. Lily sleeps quietly as Mommy has lunch with her friend Amy and finally gets those yummy waffles!

January 12th, 2007. Lily’s first visit to Real World Bible Study. Thanks Auntie Kathleen for the yummy adobo chicken! We were very excited to introduce her to our church fellowship community. We studied Phil. 4 and she loudly nursed the entire time. I guess all that studying makes her hungry. She must have thought we were studying 1 Peter 2:2-3.

January 8th-10th, 2007. Lily’s first plane trip to Phoenix to attend her Mommy’s paternal grandmother’s funeral. Although Lily never met her great grandmother, she will be blessed by the example of nurturing love passed down through the generations. Lily did great on the plane rides. Much to her parents relief, she slept the entire flight. And while in Phoenix, she basically spent the whole trip in the arms of her great aunts, great uncles, and her first cousins once removed. (Do you like how I clarified those relationships?)

January 7th, 2007. First trip to church (hung out in her baby bjorn and wore her new pink & white dress). Lily meets her big buddy 3 month old Nicholas Rosales.

January 6th, 2007. Lily’s first shopping adventure in the DeAnza Flea Market , thanks to Auntie Jane, who loves the DeAnza Flea market. Mommy got kettle corn and Lily got some cute dresses! That night Lily also enjoyed her first poker night outside the womb… Sometimes before she was born her Mommy would rub her belly for good luck. Now if Daddy tries to bluff while holding her, she gives a little whine. Is it a tell or not? She came dressed in a little fleece hoodie, so we called her the Unabomber, aka Phil Laak.

January 3, 2007. Mommy’s special day with Lily. When Mimi was little her mom would take her on special days out, usually to the mall, often drinking apple juice. Today was Lily’s first special day out with Mommy. Though it may not sound like much, it is a significant milestone for me to have regained the strength and built up the courage to go out on this adventure by ourselves. We had lunch at PF Changs. Horray for lettuce wraps! I was encouraged that I met a friendly family sitting next to me who were also nursing their little baby just like me. I also went shopping at Old Navy. Lily was very well behaved on the entire outing, but at one point I had to nurse Lily while I was still trying on clothes in the changing room. So with feeding her & trying on stuff I think I was in that room for a whole hour. The staff knocked on my door twice to see if I was still there. Last but not least I could drive home in the carpool lane with my lil’ 10lbs carpool buddy.

January 1, 2007. Happy New Year! We rang in the New Year with sparkling cider and having Aunt Didi and cousin Ashley over. We watched ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and played Scrabble and Tripoley. Tripoley is a card game that requires little strategy and Lily came in second after Ashley’s big win. We also found a great Korean restaurant in Fremont (Paseo Padre and Alvarado Niles) that was open New Year’s Day. We were all excited to eat soon duboon. They say all the different foods the mother eats gets transmitted to the baby as different flavors in the breastmilk. How do you like that kimchi, Lily?

December 30, 2006. Somehow (without teeth) Lily has learned how to bite Mommy while nursing. Not often, but just as she seems to be falling asleep, her jaw clamps shut. Is she really falling asleep or just getting back at Mommy for pinching her cheeks?

December 29, 2006. Lily’s cries are becoming more distinguished. Now instead of the ubiquitous “Nyah- feed me” she sometimes turns the volume up a notch to say, “Wah! This diaper change is taking way too long!” She also occassionally gets startled. Auntie Didi says,”At this age babies don’t get scared, see BOO!” (Lily makes no response, but Ashley cracks up) However, when Lily was sleeping in my lap, we burst out laughing at the DVD we are watching. She gets startled and cries from surprise and probably from annoyance at being woken up.

December 28, 2006. At Lily’s 1 month check up today, she weighs 9lbs 12oz. We begin noticing Lily is cooing now… after the doctor asks us, “so has she started cooing now?” Is that what you call that funny, adorable high pitched sound? Now Lily has a range of sounds. She cries, grunts, and coos.

December 25, 2006. Lily’s First Christmas. We haven’t taken Lily out too much, but she has a habit of making spectacular “messes” when we’re out of the house. Last night, at Grandma’s house (Mimi’s mom), Lily had such a big poo that somehow it got all over her stomach, chest, and even reached her upper arm! I don’t know how her poo defies the law of gravity, but maybe it worthy of further research. Today we were over at Auntie Natalie’s house, and she had another big poo. When she has a big poo that leaks out of her diaper, the it stains her clothes and we have to change her outfit. Wait a minute… maybe that’s why she “accidentally” messes herself at parties, she’s telling us she’s ready for her wardrobe change… she’s a baby fashionista!

December 22, 2006. Our first family stroll around the park! See photos in Dec 2006 photos. Thankfully Mimi is healing well and felt significantly better than our first grocery store outing a few weeks ago.

December 15, 2006. Lily had her first bottle today! Now is roughly the time to begin “pumping” and introducing the bottle if we want the flexibility for both of us to feed Lily later on. Mimi was a lot more ready to give it a shot; I was a bit of a nervous wreck (“our baby is growing up so fast!”) Mimi ended up pumping about 1 oz. of milk, and I fed it to her while Mimi hid and watched from a corner, since bottle feeding is supposed to be more successful initially if someone besides the mom does it. Lily took the nipple in her mouth and was skeptical for a few seconds as she tried to figure out this new contraption. Eventually, she decided that milk is milk, and chowed down and finished off the bottle. Way to go Lily .

December 12, 2006. Lily had her 2 week check-up today, and she weighs… 8 lbs! Way to go, Lily! She was born at 7 lbs, 4 oz., and at her 2 day checkup, she had dropped to 6 lbs, 14 oz (which is very typical for a baby to lose weight in the days after birth). Her pediatrician had said that the target was for her to at least return to her birth weight, but we knew that she had been feeding really well, so we guessed that she might be around 8 lbs. Additionally, babies have to suffer the indignity of having their temperature taken rectally for the first two months of their visits. On her two day check-up, Lily didn’t seem to mind, but today, as soon as the thermometer was stuck up her butt, she responded by, uh… pushing back. I think her forceful “No. 2″ statement was telling the nurse, “Let me show you what this hole is really for.”

December 11, 2006. Lily crosses the 100th diaper threshold. Mimi and I are now certified diaper-changing professionals.

December 9, 2006. Our good friend Shannon treats Mimi to a massage in Fremont. It was a real treat for Mimi to have some time out of the house, and we tried our best to “prepare” Lily for Mommy to be gone for 2 hours – feeding her as much as possible right before Mommy left. It didn’t work. As soon as Mimi steps out the door, Lily begins to fuss. Tilden tries every trick he knows (changing, bouncing, singing, bribing, praying), but it is clear that Lily wants only one thing: Mommy’s milk (which Tilden is very unqualified to provide, much as he might want to). We’ve been trying to avoid using a pacifier as much as possible, but in this case, we didn’t have much of a choice – so Daddy used the pacifier – I mean, gave the pacifier to Lily – for about an hour to tide her over until Mommy came home.

December 4, 2006. While Mimi is changing Lily’s diaper, Lily’s arms are flailing wildly. Lily whacks herself in the face, and starts crying hysterically, since she doesn’t recognize its her own hand.

December 3, 2006. Lily comes home from the hospital and gets her first manicure from Mommy (Mimi files down her nails).