What a Year It's Been

Cousins Rita and Rebecca

A year ago, around the Fourth of July, we went on a trip to Marseille, France for Alex's sister, Erika's wedding. This was our itinerary for approximately 10 days:

Fly to Boston via Las Vegas

Take train from Boston to Newark
Fly from Newark to Copenhagen via Stockholm

Fly from Copenhagen to Marseille via Amsterdam

Fly back from Marseille to Copenhagen via Amsterdam

Fly from Copenhagen to JFK
It should have been then direct from JFK to SFO, but it turned out to be JFK-Atlanta-Indianapolis-SFO.

This year for the Fourth of July, we went to the lagoon in Foster City, which is roughly 5 minutes from home and across the street from my office building. We had a lot of fun hanging out with Nancy, Ted and their two girls and watching Isabella watch the fireworks. Even the loud booms didn't seem to bother her at all.

Such is the life of a suburanite, but we don't mind it too much.....

Back to Work

No new entries lately, since I went back to work on June 14 (coincidentally, Alex's birthday). So, now we have even less free time. Basically our routine is to get Isabella ready for the day between 6:00 and 8:00 AM, drop Isabella off at day care. Get home with her by 6:30, get her bathed and ready for bed so that she's asleep by 9:00. Then we have between 9:00 and when we fall asleep for some free time. For this reason, among others, Isabella is switching day care starting in July. The new day care is about 10 minutes from our house, which is about 20 minutes closer each way in rush hour traffic. We figure this will allow us to have some more quality time.

I remember back when I was on maternity leave, and itching to go back to work, people kept saying to be "Just when Isabella gets fun and interactive, it'll be time to go to work." That has proven to be completely true. It seems that she has been growing like crazy lately. Every day she feels heavier and she learns new things all the time. She's learned to roll over, both from her tummy to her back and vice versa. Although we haven't seen her roll from her back to tummy, we know she can do it because we leave her in the crib facing up and then after a few minutes when we check on her, she's giving herself some "tummy time." Alex says she must feel like the hands of a clock, because she is constantly turning herself in the crib. First she's straight up and down, then at the 15 min position, then at the 30 min....until she finally settles down. It's pretty funny to watch. Today, I was showing her the difference between sitting down and standing up and she was cracking up. She couldn't stop laughing for five minutes. In turn, this of course made Alex and I laugh the entire time. By the time Alex got the video camera, Isabella looked over and refused to laugh, so we'll just have to remember the excitement of hearing her laugh out loud continuously.

Here are a few recent pics:

Bad Report Card

Isabella started a trial day at day care yesterday and we've already gotten a bad report card! We were asked, "Do you hold her all the time?" Embarrassed, we responded that her grandparents were here over the last two months and they held her a lot. I guess, sadly for her, this will be changing very soon.

This was a big day for everyone. Alex and I were thinking about how the time went by so quickly and the thought of her not being with us all the time was hard to bear. I started getting sentimental last weekend and spent most of the day yesterday wandering around doing retail therapy (buying stuff for her, of course). Isabella took the whole thing in stride and doesn't seem to mind being away from home at all. Alex and I were talking about how we spent a lot of the time during the pregnancy wondering when we were going to have free time to hang out in the house again. Then all of sudden, when I did have some free time, the house seemed way too empty without her.

Well, we finally finished our string of visitors. My parents left around noon on May 11 and in the evening, our friend Octavio was here for the weekend. (He's the reason why Alex and I met) Here are a couple of pics:

Oh and we went to the Maker Faire last weekend. We saw Jimmy Kimmel in the crowd, although at the time, I couldn't remember his name. We of course needed to commemorate with a picture:

We went to Bay to Breakers too, but we didn't do any walking/running, just people watching. Next year, we'll register and make sure to walk with some sort of family costume...

Oh what a month it's been

I just realized how long it has been since my last post. I'm so behind. Abuelita left on April 9 and Wai Gong and Wai Po (my parents) came in on April 16. Everything seems to have been on fast forward since.

In between the visits, Isabella learned to sleep through most of the night. She now sleeps generally between midnight and 6AM, although one night she managed to make it to 8AM. Of course we are extremely happy with this new development, but for some reason, we've become more tired. Maybe our bodies are screaming for catch-up sleep, who knows?

Isabella started to smile in her sleep while Abuelita was here, but we kept waiting for her first real social smile. I was starting to fret because most of the babies from my March BabyCenter group had started to smile (It's amazing/ridiculous how preoccupied a person can get with developmental milestones for their baby). I kept thinking, "Is she not happy with us?" or "Maybe she'll be a serious baby," which would seem almost impossible since her father is such a prankster. Well, yesterday, just as I was about to post a worrisome message to my internet mother's group, she started to smile by herself. She even laughed once by herself while she was in the swing. The best part is Wai Gong got to make her smile too. Five times, he declared. It's funny how excited a 90+-year-old with his youngest granddaughter's every move.

Anyway, we're all doing very well. Isabella is going in for her two-month checkup today. Getting lots of shots. I'm getting the Tylenol ready and Alex is tanking up on sleep for a couple long nights of grumpiness. We'll see what happens....

Easter pics. We went to Gamble Garden in Palo Alto.







Here's the sleep smile.






We went to Filoli last week, which is where they filmed the outside shots for Dynasty. Yup, the 80's soap opera. We highly recommend the gardens for those in the Bay Area

Concession

I have finally conceded in the Pink War. Back when we first found out that we were having a girl, we celebrated by going out and buying a few outfits for Isabella. I was determined that my little girl was not going to be dressing in pink clothes with little flowers all the time, which seemed to Daddy's clothes of choice. Even when Alex was painting the nursery, I insisted on not having pink walls. After much discussion, I gave in and allowed him to paint the window trim pink and we got some pink striped curtains.

Fast forward several months and Isabella became quite the fashionista, thanks to all the generous gifts that she received. More and more pink flowery outfits appeared in her closet. Well, I've now gone over to the Dark, I mean Pink, Side. Over the last three days, I bought two dresses for the baby, both of them pink and one of them is pink with little flowers all over it. So much for the girly-girl resistance front.

In other news, Isabella continues to grow and she seems harder to carry every day. On Monday she was 8 lbs. 6 oz. Her cheeks are drooping and she has a double chin, but that makes her so much fun to look at. Everyone says they see her resemblance to me in her cheeks..Hmm...

Last night, she celebrated her four weeks of life on the outside by sleeping for a 5.5-hour stretch. That's a record!!! Mom and Dad are appreciative of the sleep catch-up she gave us.

Overall, she's been very good and she's brought more meaning to the words "family" and "love"than either one of us have ever known.


More sleeping. Second Aunt and Uncle came to visit over the weekend. Isabella didn't even open her eyes the entire time. We'll have to teach her some manners!




She has begun to take a bottle a day. Dad gave her the first one.

See? They do make girls' clothes in colors other than pink! OK, she did get the striped shirt from Jake....

Pictures

(Sorry for the bad formatting of captions and pics, I don't have this whole blogger thing figured out yet)

Priorities, priorities. Isabella spends much of her day sleeping or yawning. She's in her car seat, which she HATES and she doesn't hesitate to let us know. Thankfully, once we hit 55 mph on the highway, she's asleep.

Daddy finally got to push a stroller down Burlingame Avenue. Not that you can tell that there's a baby in there.

But really, she's in there!

Hanging out with Dad...

And Abuelita...

Isabella's first train set from the Martinez family!

Wow, almost three weeks

Where does the time go? Since Isabella was born, we seemed to have lived one very very long day. We barely know what day it is, and our concept of time has completely changed.

Isabella continues to grow at a rapid pace, and she weighed 7 lbs. 4 oz. at her last doctor's appointment on Friday. Everything seems to be going well, so she won't have to go back until May, when she'll get four (ouch!) shots. I scheduled a Friday appointment so at least we can comfort her over the weekend.

On Friday 3/16, I was looking at her umbilical cord and thinking that I should take a picture of it, since it was the last remnant of our physical connection. Well, no sooner had I thought of that and I went to sleep, noting it as a good thing to do in the morning. Well, at her 2AM diaper change, Alex discovered that the cord stump had already fallen off. So much for the picture!

We have more pictures, but I'll post those later.