Happy 1/2 B-day

Happy 6 month birthday Isabella! We can't believe how time flies with you in the world. We watched some videos and it looks like your head was smaller Daddy's hand when you were born. Now you're rolling all over the place.

To celebrate, we bought a slice of strawberry shortcake for Isabella to pose with. Of course, we ate it for her. We'll post the pics tomorrow.

Big Milestone Week

Big Milestone Week

We’re all feeling better now, and Isabella is back to her five-month self. To celebrate her recent five-month birthday, she had several milestones:

1) Solid food! - She’s eating watered down cereal once a day at dinner. We’re not sure how much she’s actually eating because feeding her is more like smearing her face with a spoon. She seems to enjoy it quite a bit, because she’s always anxious for her next spoonful and puts her lips to the bowl as if she wants to dump the cereal right into her mouth. I’m not sure how babies are able to eat multiple solid food meals if they only get one bath a day. Even though she has a big plastic bib, Isabella still needs a power wash after eating.

2) Baby Einstein – Isabella got to watch her first Baby Einstein video to commemorate her five-month birthday. While Alex and I were bored to tears during the video, Isabella had never seen anything so exciting. Toys, other babies, strange puppets; they’re so much more fun than staring at Mom and Dad all the time. It was like caffeine for babies. She was excited for a good two hours after watching for just 10 minutes. Uh…maybe we’ll wait another few weeks before showing it to her again.

3) Raspberry on command – We’re not sure what this means, but Isabella seems to be able to say PBBBTTTTT at will. It’s usually followed by a plaintive squeal, so we think it means that she’s not happy, but then sometimes she’ll sit by herself and PBTTT repeatedly. Sometimes she does this after she eats her oatmeal…..which does not please us very much.

First Illness

As much I didn't want to admit it, Isabella is sick for first time. We went to the doctor today and she was diagnosed with a type of viral bronchiolitis. While it's heart-wrenching to hear her wheeze and cough, it's apparently fairly common for infants in day care to come down with this. One study estimated that almost 100% of kids under 2 in day care will have bronchiolitis. So, she has to have a nebulizer which will give her medication to open her airways every 6 hours. Only upside is that the mask is in the form of a dragon and is pretty cute. I'll try to post pictures, but she doesn't like to have the mask anywhere close to her face.

Meanwhile, both of us are coming down with some sort of cold. Looks like it'll be an indoor weekend for all three of us.

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