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Archives for June 2003

What an Exhausting Week!

Steve had the stomach flu this week. This flu had made its way around both of our work environments, leaving folks with 3-5 days of GI issues and a nasty fever. Our goal had been to make sure that Katherine and I didn’t get the flu, and so far we seemed to have ducked the virus. Steve basically quarantined himself in the family room for two days, while Katherine and Patty stayed out of the house as much as possible. I took care of Katherine for a couple evenings – which was brutal given that she woke up every 3-4 hours!

Faerber-izing Katherine

We finally decided last night that Katherine needed to learn how to fall asleep on her own. Instead of rocking and walking her to sleep, we’ve prepared her for bed with a bath, books and brief walk. Then, we’ve put her directly in her crib the last two nights. Last night, she cried for 40 minutes straight. She spent almost 30 minutes standing in her crib, clutching and shaking the railing, and screaming at the top of her lungs. When we walked in (5, 8, 10, 15 minutes apart), she had tears running down her face and was convinced that we would pick her up to comfort her. Just as the book suggested, we consoled her (she would momentarily stop crying – and snuffle), but didn’t pick her up. At the 30 minute mark, just as I asked Steve “how much longer do you think this will go on,” she started to snuffle and cry only intermittently. At 40 minutes, the crying stopped!

Tonight, Steve walked Katherine around the neighborhood after her bath and books. Once she was sleepy and had started to suck her thumb, he put her down. This time she only cried 20 minutes before passing out in her crib. All in all, this experience hasn’t been too traumatic for us and Katherine. She was fairly cheerful today and didn’t seem the worse for the wear after her crying jag last night. I passed the 40 minutes of crying reading the new Harry Potter book, and much of the 20 minutes today cooking with the fan on. ๐Ÿ™‚

Katherine Gets Her First Pair of Shoes

To date, Katherine has been wearing her little baby Merrills (3-6 months) and Robeez (6-12 months). Now that she is walking around, Patty informed us that she needs to wear shoes with rubber soles. So we stopped by the local shoe store at Redmond Town Plaza. The owner of the store was very knowledgeable, and the shoe store clerk managed to measure Katherine’s little foot using the silver measuring thingy (size 3D – thin foot!). Anyway, we got a pair of Stride Rites – fairly flexible leather with rubber sole and laces. He said that Katherine can still wear her Robeez inside the house as slippers. But when she is outside she should wear normal socks with the shoes.

Katherine looked very funny walking around the store in her shoes. Steve called it “high stepping” – the owner said it was like learning how to walk again, because there is a good .5″ inch between her big toe and the end of the shoe. That said, Katherine seemed to enjoy the experience and we manage to capture her in her stroller wearing her first pair of real shoes today. How exciting!!

Developmental Milestones

Katherine can pull herself up by herself using either her Neurosmith block, her Leapfrog learning table or her toy shelf. She’s also a very practiced sitter, thunk!, and still loves to walk around. She’s also increased her speed of crawling and modified her technique. Instead of the army-type of crawl, she uses one knee and the other foot extended to push herself forward alternately. It’s not a traditional crawl, but it seems to work fairly well.

Katherine can now sort of clap. If we clap, she’ll get excited and move her hands together. Often times her hands will actually meet – which is what we call clapping. This Friday, she also started to play ball. We spent the last couple days rolling her little ball to her. She would then flap her arms around and manage to hit the ball, sending it back in our general direction. She loves being able to interact with us!

She has also started to push food out of her mouth. Food that she’s liked in the past, like pears and mango, are now on her “do not like” list. When we try and feed her this food, she sticks it out on her tongue and pulls her tongue back into her mouth without the food. Today we fed her the old sweet potato standby which she ate without any issues.

Our Trip to Orange County, CA

Steve and I have often said that having Katherine has taught us patience and empathy. After this trip, we feel like we’ve gone through a rite of travel passage that we hope to never go through again. And, the next time we ever have to sit near a screaming baby on plane, we will sooooooo empathize with its parents.

Our trip started out well. Katherine snoozed all the way to the airport. She was a trooper as we progressed thru security & boarding. She even played with her toys as we ascended into the sky and fell into a deep slumber as the plane approached Southern California. However, when the plane starting descending into Orange County, she awoke rubbing her ears. Within seconds, she started to scream. Nothing would alieve the pain. She was so upset that she wouldn’t take a bottle or feed from the breast. Katherine screamed for 20 minutes non-stop – during the entire descent – and only calmed down after we de-boarded the plane. Fellow passengers approached us at baggage claim to inquire as to her well-being, which was very nice but reinforced our worst nightmare that Katherine was “that baby that screamed on the plane.” Since this experience, I’ve talked to our pediatrician and gotten a few handy tips involving over the counter medication to avoid this situation in the future.

Grandma and Grandpa Bush met us at the airport. We went back to their house and Steve whipped up dinner while I bathed and then put Katherine to bed in her Pack and Play. Given that this was the first time she had ever slept in a playpen, she did extraordinarily well and made it thru the entire night.

Visiting the Vasvarys

The next morning we played, got around, met Steve’s dad at Polly’s for lunch and then went to visit the Vasvarys, Steve’s maternal grandparents. This is the second time that the Vasvarys have seen Katherine, and they seemed to enjoy watching Katherine walk around and play with their plastic ambrosia container. Great-grandma Vasvary explained to Katherine how she puts Katherine to bed at night by lying down a picture of her that we sent for Christmas. In the morning, she turns the picture vertically, so Katherine wakes up. She’s done this every day since Christmas, which is quite remarkable.

Just to set context, we’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get Katherine to “wave” for the past several days. As we left the Vasvary’s home, Katherine gave her first wave. It was kind of like an arm movement coupled with a finger moving. Since then, she’s wiggled a couple fingers – which is extraordinarily cool.

Katherine’s First Trip to the Beach

After a very nice visit, Steve, Katherine and I headed to Newport Beach. Steve used his Boogey Board to surf the waves. Katherine walked around on the sand using my hands to stabilize herself and her little toes to grip the sand. She sported her cool Baby Banz hot pink sunglasses, which were essential since it was a hazy and windy day. She had a blast sitting down and grasping the sand in her hands. Unfortunately, she did manage to stuff sand in her mouth (twice!), which I wiped out with a towel.

Once Steve returned from wave surfing, we introduced Katherine to the surf. She loved it!! The wave would come towards her, and she would wobble towards it holding our hands. She also loved to be held above the water, so she could kick it as it raced over her feet and ankles. Despite the water being very cold, she was fearless and stomped in puddles mimicking Steve. We managed to capture a few video vignettes using our little Canon digital Elph camera. After our sandy adventure, Steve rinsed Katherine off in the cold beach showers (she howled), we packed her in her car seat and we drove back to Fullerton for a quick bath.

For dinner, we went to Great-grandma and Great-grandpa Ramsay’s house. The Ramsays had us over for an impromptu, but very nice, dinner of lasagna, salad and fruit. Katherine had fun during the meal with Grandpa Bush, as you can see in the pictures. We also found out that Aunt Amy is pregnant (congrats!) and that made the dinner quite a memorable occasion. We waded thru Steve’s growing collection of digital photos from the trip, and had fun catching up with family.

The Happiest Place on Earth & Almost Meeting Mickey (Twice)

Just about everyone in Steve’s immediate family has worked at Disneyland at some point or another. So, it was inevitable that we’d take Katherine to the Happiest Place on Earth at the tender age of 7.25 months. Many folks have asked me “did she get it? did she enjoy it?” Yes and Yes. She showed her grandparents why we call her swivel head. She sat in her little stroller, leaning forward and looked at all the sights, people. Because she was too young for many of the rides, we spent several hours walking thru Disneyland – taking pictures, visiting characters and pointing out changes that have occurred over the last 10 or so years.

One of the highlights of the morning was “It’s a Small World.” Katherine was exhausted at this point, having skipped her morning nap. We could see her try her best to keep her eyes open to watch the characters in the ride. Halfway thru, as the ride got dark, her eyes drooped shut and she snoozed for the next 20 minutes or so. You can see a picture that I took leaving the ride with Katherine asleep in the Baby Bjorn and in her pink “First Minnie Hat” embroidered with her name. Of course, we got her some Minnie ears which she just detests wearing. ๐Ÿ™‚

We managed to get pictures of Katherine with Snow White and Goofy….and Mickey sort of. We caught sight of Mickey on Main Street and patiently waited to take our picture with him. As our turn approached, Mickey’s handler started to say that Mickey had to leave. Of course, we were courteous and took the pictures for the people in front of us. Just at that point, Mickey took off – probably to cool off backstage. (Our second Mickey sighting was later that night during a parade. We got to see his backside since we arrived just as the parade ended.)

As you can imagine, it was HOT and we went home around 2PM to cool off and give Katherine her nap. We had to work very hard to get her to nap, as she really was over-stimulated from Disneyland. But, we did get her to sleep for 2.5 hours and later we took her back in the evening for Fantasmic. Overall, she was a champ at Disneyland – and we had a great time watching her in this environment.

Kelty Backpack

Over the weekend, Christine and I bought a Kelty Summit Backpack. This allows us to carry Katherine on our back for extended periods of time. Katherine loves the ability to see everything from our eye level. We tried it out with a trip to Molbak’s, a great nursery in downtown Woodinville. We cruised around Molbak’s with Katherine in the backpack and bought some tomatoes, squash, and peppers for our garden. Although Katherine’s too young now, we wanted to start planting an annual garden as a family experience. After 15 minutes or so, Katherine fell asleep in the backpack. This is great news for us because Katherine hasn’t been able to sleep in the Kelty Joyrider jogger stroller we bought.

Katherine Eats Yogurt

This was a tough week in the BushChang household as the entire family caught a cold. Normally when you get a cold you want to sleep it off but with a child these plans go out the window. You opportunity to sleep is when she sleeps and when she’s sick she doesn’t sleep much during the night. Needless to say, Christine and I were very tired from Monday to Thursday as we were fighting a cold and Katherine was a bit cranky due to her cold. Katherine had a running nose and congestion. She would sneeze and green snot would come flying out. It was like a snot shooting range. You heard the sneeze and the snot would hang from her nose like a slinky or be projectiled onto your shirt. Life with kids.

Despite being handicapped with a cold, Katherine learned a lot of new things this week. First of all, she’s got the assisted walking thing down cold. You hold her fingers and she walks across the room. She loves walking and will reach up her hands to signal you that she wants to walk around. It’s so cool to see your kid learn new things and be able to repeat it over and over again until they’re experts.

According to Patty, Katherine learned how to blow kisses to people. She puckers up her lip and makes a smacking sound. Christine and I have yet to see this new behavior though we heard it once. She’s also blowing raspberries a lot. She must be teething again because she’s drooling up a storm (baby Niagara Falls). She soaks a bib after about an hour. Christine and I had to stock up on bibs because we couldn’t wash them fast enough.

Beautiful Weather

The last couple of days have been sunny and warm. We’ve spent our early evenings on the deck talking and watching Katherine play. I snapped a few pictures of Katherine and Mom in the beautiful dusk light.

PEPS Meltdown

On Thursday, we hosted PEPs at our house. This is the second to last meeting of our group. We’re going to miss the last meeting as we will all be in Fullerton visiting my parents. We’re going to continue meeting after PEPs officially ends. We really like our PEPs group.

Christine and I arrived home shortly before 6P to discover that Katherine hadn’t taken our full complement of naps today. Usually this results in a challenging time getting her to go to bed as she battles us to stay awake and be social despite being completely exhausted. Unfortunately, tonight was an extreme case. She basically melted down. We tried to get her to take a nap before everyone arrived but she would have nothing to do with it. She started crying and became almost hysterical. Nothing we could do would soothe her. We walked her around, bathed her, breastfeed her, and laid down next to her. Usually one of these tricks works but not this time. She basically screamed for over an hour. Finally, Steve took her for a walk outside that calmed her down. She didn’t fall asleep but was now calm enough for Christine to breastfeed her and get her to fall asleep. Walking with Katherine is a new tool for us to add to our tool belt but we don’t want to go through another night like tonight anytime soon. We’re just exhausted and it’s so hard to hear your kid scream in tears and not be able to soothe her.

The same thing happened two weeks ago at the Ladies Night Out PEPs event. We need to chat with Patty to see if there is anything special about Katherine’s Thursday routine that might cause this behavior.

Dinner at the LeVines

Eric and Suzi LeVine invited us over for a salmon dinner. During his sabbatical from Microsoft, Eric went to The Culinary Institute of America in New York to take cooking classes. Dinner at the LeVines is always a lot of fun. In addition to great food and wine, it’s great to catch up with them and have Katherine play with their son Sidney.

We arrived late due to Katherine’s nap schedule, dad’s run, and bad traffic. Sidney was just finishing up his avocado dinner. Like most kids his age (8.5 months) half of the dinner ends up on his face, bib, and high chair. Yes, that’s really avocado dripping from his nose ๐Ÿ™‚

After Sidney got cleaned up, he and Katherine played together with the Leap Frog learning table. It was fun to watch them play together. Katherine would press a button or spin a dial and Sidney would follow suit and vice versa. After a while, it became more interesting to play with each other. Sidney tried to touch Katherine’s face and Katherine tried to pull Sidney’s hair. Parents intervened before a full on brawl ensued. The cutest highlight of the evening was Katherine and Sidney head butting each other.

At dinner, dad drew the responsibility for juggling Katherine while he ate. Katherine kept reaching for dad’s corn on the cob so dad gave it to her to suck on. With only one tooth, dad felt there was no harm in having her suck on the ear of corn. It also makes for a great picture ๐Ÿ™‚

PEPS

Katherine, Christine and I went to our weekly PEPs meeting at the house of Jenny and Nathan Schaffer. Every week, it’s amazing to see how quickly the kids are growing up. This week Katherine shared toys with Blakely and Zach. They’re not quite old enough to play together but the kids find each other very interesting. Being proud parents, Christine and I showed the group that Katherine can walk now with assistance. Katherine’s the second oldest kid so we’re a what’s next preview for the rest of the parents.

One of the highlights of the evening was Katherine’s fascination with Zach’s feet. Katherine wanted desperately to put Zach’s foot in her mouth. Possible foot fetish or just something soft to chew on?

Katherine did much better this week. Last week was Ladies Night Out so all of the dads took care of the kids while the moms had dinner at Spazos. Unfortunately, dad didn’t check the nanny log before leaving. It turns out Katherine only got 15 minutes of sleep in the afternoon instead of her usual 2 hours. Dad was doomed from the start. Katherine had a complete melt down and dad had to leave early.