Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Tristan! Well, I'm actually posting this a week late. We celebrated Tristan's 2nd bday over the July 4th weekend and had a bbq at home in our backyard. We invited 30+ family and 2 close friends. We decided not to do the friends thing this year because I figured that when Tristan is a bit older, he will want to invite his friends from school and only then do I want to deal with kids running around my house.

Tristan's 2 year milestones.... knows how to read 1-20 and his ABCs. He's able to communicate with us pretty well and he's advanced with his speech. He's also almost potty trained, which was a goal for me before the second baby is born in 2 months, so we're ahead of schedule. Now if only he would sleep through the night!

Pregnancy update - I am 30 weeks now, 10 more weeks to go. Walking and sleeping has become a bit more difficult for me, I cannot even imagine how it will be for another 6 weeks before I start my maternity leave. Also damn those braxton hicks contractions.

Spring Cleaning

Been busy as usual... Thank god for that one extra day we had for Memorial Day weekend, I was able to pack away Tristan's winter clothes and take out his tshirts and shorts for the summer. Also got my husband to finally get rid of those 1990 jeans and khakis he no longer fits into, those pants I call the bottom dwellers. They just sit there for years but hubby insists if he goes on a diet he will fit in them one day. So 3 big bags of clothes later, we emptied out half the closet for new clothes. I also packed away most of my pre-pregnancy clothes and now my dresser only has maternity wear.

In 3 months + 2 weeks, another person will be living in our house and I have to plan ahead where to put his clothes. I have go into storage and dig out all of Tristan's baby clothes for his brother. It was a coincidence that I didn't have (more like too cheap to buy) plastic bins to store Tristan's old clothes so I used diaper boxes. Now I can figure out the different sizes just by the diaper size! I'm a f*ckin genius!!! :-)

Pict taken at a wedding we attended during Memorial Day weekend... looks like he's not too interested in girls yet.

Ultrasound Shocker

So yesterday, I had a 4PM appt for my 20 week ultrasound. I'm almost 22 weeks now, but we couldn't schedule it earlier since my husband was traveling.

As some of you might know, at our 12 week ultrascreen (NT Scan), the nurse and doc both told us we were having a girl. But yesterday, when we asked the nurse to confirm again, she found a penis and told us we were having another boy!

We were in shock, well at least I was. Since we found out it was a girl 2 months ago, my husband always believed and hoped the baby would grow a penis and his dream came true. As for me, I was preparing myself mentally to raise a daughter. I was even thinking to myself, should I put her hair up? Should I do pony tail or pig tails? Since I'm not a fan of pink, how am I going to dress my baby girl in non-pink colors???

I did not realize how happy I was to hear it was another boy until they told us yesterday. I guess it was meant to be for me to be the mother of 2 boys. I loved my son since the day he was born and always wanted another one just like him, my dream came true too.

Now, we have trouble reprogramming Tristan to call my growing tummy "dai dai" (little brother)... he keeps calling it "mui mui" (little sister) still.

Mother's Day

This is the second mother's day for me. Last year, I don't even remember if there was a celebration. My son was only 10 months old and I did not expect him to do anything for me obviously.

This year, I did not expect anything either since he's still young, and my husband and I really don't celebrate these hallmark holidays. I did have to work this entire weekend so while I was packing up my bag to stay at the hotel near my office, my son said "mommy" and walked in with a little tiffany bag. My first response was to yell at him for playing with my jewelry again.

I looked at him for a second and realized it was a gift from my husband. I was really shocked and opened the gift with my sweet little boy in my lap. It was a butterfly pendant from Tiffany's. I took off the old necklace I had on for years and replaced it with this new shiny one. :-)

Awkward times

This is the one thing I don't like about pregnancy (actually there are many)... the clothes. I'm at the stage where I no longer fit my regular jeans. Last pregnancy, I was able to wear 1 size bigger and not turn to maternity clothes until 7 months... But this time, I dug out my big jeans and they still don't fit! I had to resort to my bag of stored maternity clothes.
A gf of mine who gave birth 7 months ago also let me pick and choose from her stash.
Monday April 23 was the first day I put on maternity jeans. I am currently 18 weeks pregnant. If I remember correctly, I didn't get to that stage until 28 weeks last time around.

This weekend, I will start storing away my regular clothes, since I might not be able to fit into them again for another year or so. They will be missed. :-(

Looking for a nanny

We currently drop our son off at his babysitter's house in the mornings when we go to work. I'm a fulltime working mom who is out of the house 11 or so hours a day. When I first had Tristan, I took about 5 months off, then worked from home several days a week until he was 9 months old before I had to start finding a sitter for him. With the new management in this company, I won't have that opportunity with the second baby.

I expect to take 3 months off and return to work, so I felt I needed to make sure I planned out who will be watching the little ones. I spoke to the sitter about watching a second and she said one of the kids is leaving, which means she is unsure of her plans to continue babysitting. I might lose her all together, or if I'm lucky, she will watch both my kids. We still did not sit down to discuss anything since she's undecided. I hope to speak to her soon and maybe give her an offer to come to my house to watch the kids, but my husband is hesitant, since he believes children should not be stuck at home 24/7.

For those who have 2 or more children and are not stay at home moms, what do you think is the best childcare option?

Edamame

I got my son to eat edamame over the weekend. That is the ONLY green veggie he is currently willing to put into his mouth without spitting it back out. I guess it's a bit of progress!

I was snacking on it in front of the tv and like all foods, he runs up to me saying he wants he wants. That's the thing with toddlers... he can have the same exact meal in his bowl but he would want to eat what's on my plate. I squeezed out the pea from the pod and made this "boop" sound to kind of make it fun. He popped it in his mouth and asked for more. I was actually shocked since Tristan is not a veggie eater. He would only eat corn and pototoes, which I don't consider real veggies. For a while I minced all his veggies very fine and mixed it in his congee which he would use his tongue to find and spit it out or put it in his little fingers and hand it straight to me. I tried to hide peas in his food over the weekend, which I thought he did ok eating, but a day later, I found dried peas all over the living room floor... I guess he spit them out and left a trail.

Edamame will be the new snack at home now. I read up on it and seems like it has most of the nutrition he needs - Vitamin A, protein, fiber, iron and calcium all in a little package!

First kicks

I'm currently 17 weeks pregnant with baby #2. We were extremely excited with the first one, but this time around, seems like there isn't much talk about her (yes it's a girl). It's probably because we went through all the excitement first time around, or, it can also be because we're extremely busy with our toddler nowdays to even think about #2.

My morning sickness came and went, and now we're in our second trimester. I noticed my pants getting tighter about a week ago... with my first, I wasn't in maternity pants until 7 months! This morning I had trouble getting into my jeans... I know I have to go pick up maternity pants soon at the Gap.... sigh.

I also noticed some little kicks earlier in this pregnancy. About 2 weeks ago, I already felt some fluttering but I've been ignoring it... it's too early I say to myself. But this weekend, during one of my many sleepless nights I have nowadays, I felt some distinct kicks so decided to place my hand over my tummy. It was a dark and quiet night, so this time I was sure. I was able to feel a kick and this time it wasn't gas. :-)

Toddler's eating habits

My son was never a good eater.
It's Friday and what am I dreading? What to cook for him this weekend. During the weekdays, the sitter takes care of his meals and "claims" he's a pig and eats everything from congee to rice to noodles to cookies to bread.
At home, he's constantly turning his head to everything except for cheerios. I can't have a toddler eating cheerios and milk 3 meals a day!!!
Well, I might be exaggerating a tiny bit. He does eat apples and bananas too, in addition to his cereal diet.
He was an ok gerber baby food eater as an infant, but around 9 months or so we started making him "congee" which is a chinese staple for babies. It's just soupy rice cooked with chicken or some type of meat. I like to mix in minced veggies, which he golfed down as an infant. But once he hit 14 months or so (I just threw in a number, who knows how long it's been), he decided he doesn't like congee anymore. He's constantly turning his head and dodging the spoon.. you know, what toddlers do best.
In fact, it seemed like he enjoyed taking his cough medicine more than his congee. So since then, I gave up making a separate pot of congee for him since it goes down the garbage disposal at the end of the day anyway.
So what do you serve a toddler?
I thought kids loved chicken nuggets, pizza and burgers... NOOO my son wants nothing to do with that... *more head turning*
He also hates mac & cheese. We realized that he doesn't like cheese like his daddy does. I try those campbells soups with the Dora characters on it... *head turns*

I envy those moms who say.. my kids eat everything on their plate! Please help me.

First Post

I can't believe I'm starting a new blog now. I've been in the internet world for 10+ years now. Some of you might know me as the girl waiting to get into a club at 3am on a Friday night, but no more. Going to sleep by 10PM is the norm. I cannot even remember the last time I picked up a drink. But it's ok. I am now in a different phase of my life.

My son is already 21 months old. Time does really fly. I remember the day he was born back in the summer of 2005. I was several days late and the doc sent me in to get induced. Literally 5 hours later, with 2 hours of painful contractions (yes only 2 but did I mention painful?) Tristan was born and changed my world.

We are way past discussing his infant milestones, but he's growing up quickly, walked by the time he turned 1, we weaned him off the bottle by 18 months and for the last couple of months, he's already learned to read 1-10 and all 26 letters of the alphabet. Who says too much tv is bad for kids? If it wasn't for cartoons, my son would not be so smart. :-)

OK, now I'm going to start invading your blogs. ;-)