Julia - Eating Solids (video)

Julia is starting to eat more solids now. We've tried different types of fruits (apple, peach, mango), veggies (peas, carrots, squash, sweet potato), chicken congee, bread and cheese. It's only this week that she is eating more than a spoonful. We will be trying baby yogurt this week.

9 Months - Julia

Julia is now 9 months old (a week ago). Because Jasmine and Julia were sick for the past 2 weeks, we delayed doing Julia's check up this month until today. Julia and Richard both had their flu shots today. These are Julia's 9-month stats:

Weight - 16lb 8oz (20th percentile)
Height - 73cm (85th percentile)
Head - 44cm (50th percentile)

Currently Julia is sort of on a schedule but she still doesn't eat alot. Her schedule looks like this:

8am - wake, 5oz bottle
10am - nap (1.5 hours)
11:30am - 1oz cereal with fruit puree
12:30pm - 5oz bottle
2pm - some bread or puffs
2:30pm - nap (1.5 hours)
4:30pm - 5oz bottle
5:30pm - 1oz meat with veggie, 1oz fruit puree
7:30pm - 7oz bottle then bed

As you can see, Julia really doesn't eat that much solid food yet and she doesn't drink that much milk (sometimes she doesnt' even finish the bottle). Unfortunately, the doc told me that Julia is underweight so we'll have to keep on offering food to her every 2 hours. I mean, I offer her food all the time, but she just doesn't eat that much of it. How do you make a baby open her mouth when she just clamps it shut?

I'm very lucky in terms of Julia sleeping through the night and taking her naps during the day. It is only recently that Julia sleeps 1.5 hours during the day. It probably corresponds to her being more active now. She's not quite crawling but she's really, really close. She sure helps Mom clean the floor nicely, by first drooling and then dragging her body on the floor. Thanks Julia!

Pop Goes the Weasel (video)

We recently bought a doll stroller for Jasmine and she was fooling around with the box that the stroller came in. Jasmine got into the box and tried to hide inside. She said "Mommy "san san" meaning close the box". And just as I closed the box, Jasmine POPPED out of the box... constantly. It was a fun game for her for about 20 minutes. Check it out.

3 Years Old - Jasmine (video)

We celebrated Jasmine's birthday a couple of days early because she is supposed to have her shots the day before her birthday. Rather than hosting a birthday party this year, we decided to celebrate with family instead. We had a tasty dinner at Western Lake restaurant and then cut the birthday cake at home. We arranged for a special cake that had Jasmine's favorite caterpillar on it (from Baby Einstein).

Check out the video. All she kept on saying is "choy hong chong chong" meaning rainbow worm. Happy Birthday Jasmine!

(Jasmine is still scared of taking pics so it's hard for her to smile and look at the camera at the same time.)

Bottle Nipple - back to level 2

After changing the nipple to a faster flow, I noticed that Julia does not finish her bottles anymore. She also has alot of air and needs to burp more often. In fact, it was getting more and more difficult to get her to drink milk. I can hear her gulp every time she swallows and she takes smaller sucks to compensate for the larger amounts of milk getting into her mouth. Not good.

I made an executive decision to revert back to using level 2 nipples. As soon as I did this, Julia finished the next 2 bottles. Hooray!

Both Kids Sick again

I really hate the colder months. It seems the kids catch colds so easily, even when I put so many layers of clothes on them before we go out.

Both kids are sick again. Yes, again. I think they just got over the last cold a week ago. Jasmine on nebulizer again; her airways seem to swell whenever she is sick. We are administering meds every 4 hours again. Julia is starting to get better (she caught the cold first this time) now with a slight runny nose. But with teething issues, she isn't drinking milk (on bottle strike) and she's not eating that much solid food either so that's bothering me.

I hate colds. Please don't let me catch the cold from the kids.

Nipple Change - next level

Julia has been on the bottle since 6.5 months, still drinking pure breastmilk. We are using Born Free bottles with level 2 nipples but recently Julia is collapsing the nipples when she drinks (sucking very hard) so we decided to go to the level 3 nipples now.

At 8.5 months, we changed to level 3 nipples. No problems adjusting on the first try although I could see it in her face that she realized something had changed. Every time she sucked, she gets so much milk that sometimes she chokes. I think it'll take a week to adjust to the new nipples.

Typical Day at Ballet Class (video)

I have a wonderful father-in-law who is retired and helps take care of Jasmine while I am working (and while I am on maternity leave). Jasmine usually stays at home most of the time so we enrolled her into ballet class. She can go out, get some fresh air, meet new friends and stay active.

This 2-minute video shows some of the things they do in ballet class every Monday afternoon (2.5 year olds). Jasmine is the class clown wearing grey shirt, pink pants in the pony tail. She is the LOUD one:

Logan 3rd Birthday Party

We celebrated Logan's birthday today (he's 2 days older than Jasmine) at the Thunderbird community center. It's one of the newer community centers and we've never been there before. When we arrived, lunch was served and we ate noodles, fried rice, chopped vegetables, fresh fruit on sticks and yummy cupcakes. Each cupcake had car icing on it, yummy! Then we had cake (that was yummy too). There was even a car pinata, where you hang it up and kids pull strings off of it to eventually dump a bunch of candies all over the floor. Jasmine managed to grab a bunch of treats.


After lunch, we went downstairs to the gym to burn off all the calories we ate. It was a terrific birthday party. Thanks Logan for inviting us.

Time Zone Change

It's been a few days since we changed daylight savings time. We turned our clocks back one hour, from 2am back to 1am again. For most people, that's a terrific thing, (get an extra hour of sleep) however for me, it's a bad thing.

Julia usually starts her day around 6am and has her first feeding of milk. Sometimes she goes back to bed for another hour, but lately she gets up at that time. With the new daylight savings time, the 6am feeding now is a 5am feeding.... Zzzzzzz. Way too early for me.

Unfortunately it'll take a week or more to adjust her internal clock to the new time. I can't wait until this happens. I really don't enjoy waking at 5am and entertaining her.

Playing Together (video)

Both Richard and I were doing chores today so we decided to plop them both down on the floor to play. There were so nice and playing together without any screaming (Jasmine likes to play with anything that Julia is playing with). It was a perfect video opportunity. Any peace and quiet in the house is something to celebrate.

Halloween - Trick or Treat, and Capilano Bridge

For Halloween this year, we decided to head over to Brentwood Mall for trick or treating. Jasmine has been practicing saying "Trick or Treat" for the past 2 weeks and was ready to make use of all her efforts.

It was a zoo at the mall, with probably over 500 kids trying to get candies. Although trick or treating time is only for an hour, many of the stores ran out of candy before it ended. We weren't too disappointed though, since we don't want Jasmine to be eating so much junk anyways. Besides, Julia is one of the nicest sisters ever, letting Jasmine have all of her candies too.

We took some pictures of Jasmine and Julia in their costumes before we left the house. Jasmine was a dragon and Julia was a lamb:

We also visited Capilano Bridge, where they decorated the entire park up for the Halloween spirit. We had annual passes so we made this a family outing. There were tons of pumpkins as well as a band playing. Jasmine was dancing and jumping to the music.

It was all fun until:

1)Jasmine had to use the potty. It was an entire ordeal just getting Jasmine to the toilet, getting everything set up and then she tells me she doesn't have to pee. Sigh

2) Richard thought he lost his wedding band. By the time he told me, we had already walked the entire park so we had to trace back our footsteps and look everywhere! After searching for half an hour, Richard then remembers that he didn't wear his ring out that day. He called home and asked his Dad to check if his ring was at home. And it was. Relief!

Anyways, that ruined the mood for anything else we wanted to do that day so we went home. Mind you, I was pretty much out of energy anyways, lugging the two kids around so I was happy to drive home. What a day.