Archives for April 2006

Massive Development

Allison continues to reach new milestones on a daily basis. Today she surprised me by crawling up a stair in the morning. By evening, she managed to crawl up three stairs. She’s also babbling and talking up a storm. Here’s a sampling of words and sounds:

• “Hie” (rhymes with rye) – she says this to get our attention. When she’s excited, she’ll wave for good measure too.
• “bao” – I think she’s trying to say Bisco. She’s learned to get his attention, by throwing food over the side of her highchair. She’ll then lean over, say “bao” and look for Bisco to come over. Sometimes she’ll even look at him and say it, as if telling him to come on over for a snack!
• “bi-bi” – sounds almost like “bye-bye.” Again, sometime we get a wave, sometimes not.
• “mama” “dada” – just what you’d expect
• “awa” – we think she’s trying to say “agua”

Tonight we read her Peek-a-Boo book. She giggles when we turn the pages, for instance saying peek-a-moo or peek-a-zoo. Allison also started to say “ya-ya-yoo” and “ch, ch” after I said peek-a-choo choo. Patty and I agree that Allison is starting to talk earlier than Katherine, easily by 4 to 6 weeks. My mom says that Allison has said “paw paw” when she’s babysitting. 🙂

Steve has gotten adept at reading Allison as well. Two short yells “ahhh ahh” mean that Katherine has taken away a toy from her. He’s also taught Allison to put her “arms up!” When we say that, she’ll put her arms in the air so we can take her clothes off. Today at Little Gym, during family participation day, the instructor put her arms up in class. What did Allison do? She put her arms up!

Tulip Festival

Last week was spring break for Katherine’s preschool. That meant that last week was a very, very long week for the parents. We decided to take advantage of no school by taking the kids and my mom up to the Tulip Festival. What did we learn from this experience?

• It’s going to be a very long drive to Disneyland and Sea World this summer.
• When Katherine gets food, Allison cries because she wants the same thing.
• When Allison gets food, Katherine has to have the same thing too.
• When Katherine yells “ahhhh” at Allison, the little one yells “ahhh” right back. Unless we ask them to, they don’t stop.
• Katherine prefers the Smuckers PB&J sandwiches to McDonalds.
• We think Katherine must have a second stomach to store all the food she eats on car trips.

Oh yes, the tulips were beautiful too. After an hour and a half of running around the tulip fields, Katherine was exhausted. Allison was pretty tired too. They both slept on the way home.

Just one of those days

I was ready to throw in the towel by 2PM today. The morning started at 4AM with Allison crying in her crib and making her way (via Dad) to our bed for a few more hours of sleep (see below). Katherine then padded into the room at 7AM exclaiming, “I stayed dry. Please get my new cell phone down from the fridge.” (ditto) Steve left for the gym at 7:30 and returned for a brief one hour stint before the house sort of upended itself…What caused all the racket and stress today?

Well…Katherine’s big wooden Vermont 5-drawer maple dresser fell over. I was feeding Allison downstairs while Katherine riffled thru her drawers for some clothes. For some random reason, instead of using a stepstool, she stepped into a drawer to reach a higher drawer (this is how she described it to me). The sound of a large dresser falling sounded like “BOOM, WHAMM…WHAMM….WHAAMMM…..then AAAARRRGGG.” I ran upstairs to find this dresser about 45 degrees from the wall, Katherine stuck under a couple drawers and sitting on top of her train table. I lifted it up, had Katherine crawl to the back of the dresser to retrieve some items stuck below and we pushed it back in place.

Where was Steve? He was having lunch with a friend. We agreed that bolting this thing to the wall was the next step and Steve finally arrive at home around 2:30 with the necessary equipment to do so.

The good news is that Katherine seemed no worse for the wear. She was running around, telling me all about what happened and seemed fine. I called the nurse for some advice. She advised me to prod Katherine in the torso area to see there was any pain, e.g. internal bleeding. Thankfully Katherine didn’t flinch or seem in any pain. She giggled through the whole exercise, thinking I was trying to tickle her. She was bound and determined to see the doctor (always an entertaining visit) telling me that all parts of her body hurt, from her ankle to her torso to her hair. We’re keeping an eye on her, but I think at most she might end up with a bruise.

She also has informed Dad that she’s afraid of her dresser now. She also asked us to bolt the dresser in another part of the house – pointing down the hallway to the nursery. 🙂 I think she’s learned her lesson.

More Sleep Deprivation

We had a very eventful weekend with Allison, starting with a 103 fever on Sunday morning. Her temperature went up and down for 2.5 days – reaching 104 highs and 99 lows. I took Allison to the doctor on Monday morning for a checkup – nose, throat, ears and lungs were clear. The doctor’s best guess was roseola- a virus that causes 3 days of high fever followed by a rash (50% of time). Typically it occurs between 8 months and 2 years. Allison pulled out of her fever officially on Tuesday afternoon and has been making up for lost eating/sleeping time since then. No Rash.

The strangest aspect of the doctor’s visit was her weight. At 9 months, Allison weighed 16 pounds. On Monday, she weighed 16 pounds 13 ounces with clothes!!

Tonight she polished off a bottle of green beans/rice, a container of baby yogurt and then eat rice and scallion pie. How did she get scallion pie? Steve was feeding her yogurt at my mom’s house. While he wasn’t looking, she sneaked her little hand under his arm, grasped the pie and proceeded to eat her treat very happily for the next 5-10 minutes.

Staying Dry

This past summer Katherine tried sleeping thru the night without diapers – with limited success. After several loads of laundry, we decided to try again later when she had greater bladder control. Spring break was an opportune time for this, and we broke out the incentives.

1) Stay dry for 3 nights – get a little book with miniature tea items and a tea party at Grandma Chang’s house. Patty also threw in a “push-up” popsicle at the zoo for good measure. (done)

2) Stay dry for 3 more nights – get a doctor’s kit with cell phone that’s on the fridge. Katherine managed to negotiate the cell phone this morning after night #4.

We’re having much greater success now at 3.5 years. Assuming no accidents by Saturday (1 whole week), I think we can officially put away the size 4/5 diapers for Allison someday!!

Sleepover

Spring break also seemed a great time to have Katherine sleepover for the first time at Grandma Chang’s house. We’ve been talking about this for a while, but wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t interfere with preschool. We dropped by for an early dinner today, and my mom said the magic words “making cookies…” (a rare treat). Katherine virtually pushed us out the door afterwards. She stood at the door with my mom, waving energetically, saying “Bye bye, see you later!!”

It’s now 11:30. My mom hasn’t shown up yet with Katherine in tow and we haven’t gotten any calls yet. Boy…kids grow up so quickly.