Second Year - House Aniversary

Another year - we've officially lived in the new house for 2 years now.  Little Josh finally gets to be in the picture.

Time sure goes by fast when all you do all day is chase after the kiddies.  They love running up and down the stairs, outside the gate, into the backyard, even though there's no running in the house!  

Mini-Accident - Black Eye

Poor Daidai had his first mini-accident today.  He's crawling around, pulling on things and trying to climb on top of stuff.  He's exploring and bonked his head on the wall/ground/edge of something.  Not sure what.  One minute he is happily slithering around and the next minute, he's screaming his head off.  Luckily, he was only hurting for a few minutes.

In the pics, shows his black eye (right eye).  We tried icing the eye area but it didn't help much.

Dance With Me (video) - What does the Fox say?

Ok, I'm sweating.  Just watching this video is making me sweat.  In this video, the girls are dancing to the song:  What does the fox say?  This video was taken one month ago but I haven`t had time to convert the clip til now.

Jas and Julia were enrolled in a dance-ercise class at the Killarney Community center for the past 3 months.  It`s pretty neat.  They get to listen to upbeat music, learn some moves, get exercise and Mommy gets to join in too!  Some nice Mommy and girls time.  There`s usually about 10 people in the class.  Too bad the class ends just as summer begins.

Josh - 10 Months

Josh is now 10 months - can`t believe he`s such a big boy now.  And I`m clocking up to my time to go back to work, in 1.5 months.  Kinda sad really.  He`s still so little.  I already miss him.  Maybe because I know  he`s our last baby, I want to be with him all the time and watch him grow up s-l-o-w-l-y.  I really cherish how small and cute he is.  

In the past month, Josh learned to sit up, crawl and pull himself onto his knees.  He eats well but still can`t swallow any solids.  He likes to shove everything into his mouth all the time but he has a really strong gag reflex and always pukes out everything we give him so he`s pretty much still on purees.  We are using a mesh feeder where he sucks the juices out of foods we put into it (he really enjoys that).

We are still waiting to see the new doctor.  About a month ago, I found out that the doc we`ve been using suddenly retired and shut the clinic doors permanently.  I scrambled to find another doctor who is accepting new patients... and it took about 30 phone calls to find one.  Hopefully when we see the new doctor in 2 weeks time, we`ll get updated on his weight and have made some progress in the eating department.  

I just realized that I forgot to post Josh`s 9 month pic (oops - bad Mommy!) so I`ll just upload them here now:

Come Find Me... I can Crawl! (video)

Josh reached another milestone today - he`s crawling!  Yay!  Well, he`s been doing this army crawl thing for a bit, you know, like only using his arms to pull himself around and his legs are dragging behind him.  He gets tired pretty fast doing it that way.

Here`s a video showing how he progressed from bouncing on his knees, to doing circles with his arms, to the army crawl thing and then finally crawling normally.  I have to close most of the doors now and watch him like a hawk.  He can crawl from one side of the house to the other side in less than a minute.  Here comes trouble...

A Trophy! A First for Jasmine

It's the end of grade 1 and Jas has been taking both Mandarin and Cantonese classes at two different Chinese schools.  We were expecting Jas to do ok in the courses but we got a surprise when the teacher informed that she was getting an award at the end-of-year ceremony.  We weren't sure what to expect.

On the night of the ceremony, we managed to convince Jas to wear a pink frilly dress (as you know how much she LOVES wearing dresses, especially a pink one...)  We rushed out of her piano class (ended at 6pm) and the ceremony starts at 7pm.  It was a mad drive.  We got there in time although there were no more seats left in the auditorium so we ended up sitting outside (where they ate dinner) until it was time to present the awards.  When they called her name out, Jas walked out on stage happily to accept her trophy.   She was at the top of her class.

We also bumped into Adyson, who also received an award at the school.  Both girls had huge smiles.  I am so proud of you!!!

Changed to Level 3 Nipples

A couple months back, we tried swapping to level 3 nipples on Josh's bottles but he choked on it so we had to swap back to level 2.

He's 9 months now and it's taking him 15 minutes to finish an 8oz bottle (if he finishes the bottle); but most of the time, he loses interest half way and doesn't want to drink any more.  So we tried using the level 3 nipples again and he loves it!  He can slug back an entire bottle in 3 minutes.  Yup, 3 minutes!  He gives out a couple of huge belches afterwards but seems content with this new arrangement.  Now we can move onto more difficult tasks...

Fighting Sleep - Kiddos

Sleep, sleep, sleep.  Why do they always fight sleep?  The kids have it GREAT, but they just don't know it.  Wish I could laze around all day long and just snooze on the couch.  They never want to take their naps.  They never want to go to bed on time.  

Little Josh is fighting all of his day time naps right now so it's exhausting.  I can't do anything during the day, not even eat lunch or go to the bathroom or change clothes to take him out for a walk without him whining out.  (he's at a very clingy stage).  He's up from 7:30am to about 9pm every day with a few 10 minute snoozes throughout the day.  The girls rarely take naps now and bed time is just filled with these: 

"I want water", 

"I'm hungry",

"I have to go pee", 

"I didn't eat vitamins yet",

"I need to read my book",

"I forgot my blanky", 

"my ear is itchy",  

"my eye hurts",

"my toe nail is catching on something"

These are excuses they've used regularly.  By the time they are actually in bed, it's around 11pm. Ugh.  I'm working on it.... sigh.  Here are some pics of the kiddies sleeping:

What a Day. Can It Get Any Worse?

Today is one of those days that you wanted to end ASAP.  Right from the get-go,  it started horribly:

1)  First thing in the morning, Julia went on a temper tantrum for no reason (maybe bad sleep last night?)  She was screaming and crying so we put her into the room and shut the door (this was 8am in the morning) and then she tries to kick the door down.  This lasted about 30 minutes.

2) Josh had a puking day.  He basically threw up after every feed, sometimes 3 times a feed.  Like one of those "he pukes, looks around, feels like he didn't make enough mess, so he does a mini-puke while looking the other way (the side that didn't get puked on yet)".  And after you change him and clean the floor, he decides that he didn't like his clothes and does another up-chuck.  This went on all the way into the evening.  Thanks dude...

3)  In the afternoon, Jas decided to have a meltdown.  So so so glad we were at home and not outside shopping.  She has this ear-piercing scream, cries hysterically, slams her feet into the ground and lies flat on the floor.  This lasted about 20 minutes.  In hindsight, it's probably from low blood sugar and she needed a snack or a short snooze.

4)  After dinner, we put Josh into the jumperoo.  He was happily bouncing away, bounce, bounce, bounce, for about 20 minutes.  It was time for his bath so we picked him up and found that he did a poop while jumping.  Great.  He did one of those "QUICK - get him into the shower and then peel clothes off" ones.  It was everywhere... gross.

On a joking note, Rich says "well, it could be worse...  If he sprinkles us with pee right now....  hahahha.   Ahem, no, that wouldn't be funny....  

I was So GLAD when the day was over.