10-months

I know I am really bad about doing monthly updates to the point where they are pretty much non-existent LOL but I thought I'd do a 10-month update since it just popped up in my head! :)

I just can't believe how much J's grown.  I really miss having a baby around and at times I even miss the days when J wasn't mobile because I had more freedom back then!  If I put him down somewhere, I knew he'd be there when I came back from a pee break, but now, often times I find myself going from room to room looking for him. 

He's been standing on his own for a couple of weeks now, he stands every chance he gets!  His stance is still quite wobbly, he usually can't last in the standing position for more than 10-15 seconds unsupported, but it's so fun to see him try to last longer.

Some of the things he does often are... flash a goofy grin at complete strangers who take notice of him, get cranky only when he's hungry (that's how I know it's time for a feeding!), eat up a storm!!, whine when he finishes he meal because he wants more, bite EVERYTHING (including me!! he bites me EVERYWHERE!!!).

He can also say "umma" (mom) and we think he knows what it means because he'll say it when he sees me and he'll repeat it over and over again as he whines and crawls, following me around when he's hungry. 

He's also quite a girl-group fan LOL!!  At the end of the Korean shows, they play music videos and everytime a girl's voice comes on, he is totally zoned out watching the girls sing and dance.  He doesn't always watch when a male singer's music video comes on, but he always watches the female artists'. 

J's finally actually started watching Pororo.  Before he didn't care for it and I was the one watching it all the time, but now if I turn it on, he'll sit there and watch it.  He probably doesn't know what's going on, though.

J's definitely becoming more and more independent everyday.  He plays soooo well by himself for hours!!  He loves exploring the house, opening and closing doors, pulling DVDs off the bookshelf, and generally just playing with his toys in his play yard.  He goes from one toy to the next and won't even look at me if I try to play with him or do something a little more interactive with him. 

He's growing up so fast, it makes me a little sad!! But I know he's becoming a more wonderful version of himself every day; I'm definitely looking forward to his next milestones.

Toys @ 9+ months

I don't buy jaden a lot of toys because I always try to minimize clutter as much as possible and babies usually only play with toys for a short period of time before they tire of them.  Here are some toys that J always plays with and some of these he's been playing with them for months!  

  Fisher Price Animals Animals Spinning Around Musical Zoo (What a freakishly long name! lol)

We received this as a xmas gift from one of our neighbors.  I didn't think J would like it because it's really a simple toy and he's more into pressing a lot of buttons and picking things up and dropping them.  To my surprise, he is always playing with this thing!  He's not too fascinated with the spinning action, but he loves chew/suck on the penguin's head and also play with the other animals.  Sometimes he'll try to touch the birds, but it seems like the tiger and alligator are invisible to my son.  He also loves pressing the red buttons to get the music to go again. 

Yookidoo Crawl and Go

I paid $30 for this and it's $17something right now on Amazon so I totally feel like I got ripped off.  meh.  I bought this when J was 7 months old out of frustration that he wasn't crawling, I thought maybe this will motivate him.  It didn't.  He had no interest in this thing until he was actually able to crawl on his own at 8 months.  He loves pressing the snail's tail to make it go, then he watches the wheels like a hawk because the black things that look like eyes amuse him.  The round thing on top of the snail comes off and also unscrews from the top with the orange guy peeking out.  The orange guy squeaks if you press his head and each thing below the head are invidual toys/parts that the baby can play with and one of them is a rattle.  Jaden loves playing with everything on this toy, even chomps on the snail's feelers and I really like that the music is not annoying like other toys, it's actually a really cute snail-like music. 

Fisher Price Musical Table (green only sold @ Toys R Us)

I have mixed feelings about this one.  Jaden LOVES it, he's always playing with it throughout the day.  However, I think it's poorly made because they break SO easily!  The first one broke after 3 weeks.  The second one broke after only 2 weeks.  And now we're on our 3rd musical table, it's been only a few days (like 4?) and earlier tonight when I turned it on for J on the highest volume I heard it get stuck again and make static noises.. so bummed!  I guess I'll have to return it for a new one again. If they're charging $45 or whatever for it, I expect it to last a lot longer than 4days-3weeks.  The only reason I bother getting them again and again is because J loves it so much.

Green Toys Stacker

Another one of J's favorite toys.  He's had this since he was 4 months old and he still loves playing with it at 10 months!  Maybe I shouldn't say "play"... He can't stack them or anything and doesn't find a lot of interest in knocking it down when I stack them for him, but he does love chomping on them ^^

Sophie the Giraffe

She's been a favorite since the day we got her.

I'm thinking of getting J a few more toys, maybe something from Melissa&Doug and a bath tub toy (Yookidoo has a bunch of really cute ones!) but he loves playing with everyday items a lot more.  He LOVE LOVE LOVES my laptop, I think he totally tries to mimick me because he'll stand in front of the laptop and start pressing the keys with both of his hands like how I type on my laptop.  He also has a thing for closing doors.  He'll go to any open door in the house and spend 10-20 minutes just sitting there opening and closing (not all the way so that he can still open the door again) the door.  He also loves pulling DVDs off of the shelf, pulling kleenex out of its box, and playing with the remote that controls the ceiling fan speeds and lights, he'll turn on the lights and stare at the light in awe, then if he presses the ceiling fan button, he'll stare at the ceiling fan spin round and round for a while.  His absolute fave thing to do lately is open and close cabinet doors in the kitchen.  ^^

Oh, I almost forgot... J's absolute favorite toy:
Vtech Preschool Learning Alphabet Apple

I bought him this 2  months ago because he developed some kind of an obsession with pressing the keys on my laptop.  I think this toy is for like ages 3 and up or something, but I wanted to get J a toy that had a lot buttons he could press just like my laptop.  I tried having him play with one of those kiddie laptop toys but he didn't care for it but played with this non-stop at the store.  It's pretty loud even if you set it on the lowest volume setting and can get kind of annoying, but it has so many different features and plays tons of different music as well.  J loves to press all the buttons and pick it up by the leaf handle and drop it on the floor over and over again and so far, no malfunctioning!

2011 trips

I've been so sluggish lately.  I'm sleepy throughout the day and have the hardest time getting out of bed in the morning.  It's probably because of the damn photobooks lol I'm getting about 4-5 hours of sleep each night and it doesn't help that hubby irritates me in the morning!  I've been asking him to watch J in the morning while I get an extra hour of sleep (J wakes up at 7:30ish) and I could totally tell he doesn't want to do it because he wants to go to the golf range and practice, so he'll wake me up for the dumbest things, like this morning he woke me up because he couldn't find any clean nipples for J's bottles.  SO WASH THEM!!! then he says he doesn't know how to sterilize them.  Are you kidding me?  You did this for the first 6 weeks of J's life when I was recovering from the birth/c-section, you've seen me sterilize his nipples in the steam bag for the past 8+ months.  ugh.  Not to mention that I had told him numerous times that J does not take a bottle in the morning, he eats a bottle of solids, which he even jotted down on his memo pad just 2 days ago when I had to repeat it to him over and over again.  *sigh*

Anyway,  last night hubby and I sat down to make some travel plans for this year.  We hardly traveled in 2010 since J joined the family, I think we took a few road trips and went to D.C. and LA and that was it.  We miss traveling and we figured that once baby #2 is conceived&born, we really won't be able to travel much until the kids are old enough to go to Disneyworld which is just a short road trip away anyway... so this year we are going to try to take a few more trips before all freedom is taken away from us with baby #2 LOL

So far we've come up with a few close destinations- Cancun, Chicago, Canada, & Boston.  We're also considering a spa weekend in Arizona and I'm secretly hoping we can go to Paris.  Surprisingly, Trip Advisor picked Paris as the #6 destination in the world for family-friendly vacations (Orlando is #1, no surprise there hehe).  I'd love to see the sights of Paris and maybe even venture into Italy as well, but the things that are holding me back are the fact that i don't enjoy french cuisine much, and i don't speak a lick of French HAHA!  But most likely we'll hit up Cancun first before the weather gets too hot. 

Exposed & lately...

I think I'm just so used to being on friends lock on xanga that now that I'm using blogger, I feel so EXPOSED~ I know blogspot has a friends lock type of privacy setting but I know like... 2 people who are on blogspot LOL!!

Anyway...

lately I've been feeling like I'm just all over the place, and I probably really am >.<  It took me over 2 weeks to unpack from our LA trip (and we only had one suitcase!), and as soon as I started to take a dab at finishing up the dohl plans and working on my first DIY project, I realized that my groupons for blurb.com are going to expire in the beginning of February.  I purchased 4 groupons thinking I could probably combine all of them in one order but then found out that I could only use one coupon per order, so in the end in order for me to utilize all of my groupons, I would need to make 4 books and pay for each book separately in a single order.  (Am I making any sense?)  So anyway, that left me a little over 3 weeks to make 4 photobooks, and if you've ever made one of these books before, it takes a lot of time to pick the photos and work on the layouts.  Hubby thought it was funny and a blessing in disguise because I'd been putting off making these photo books for like 3 yrs now LOL!! I'm such a procrastinator and he knows that had I not had this deadline with the groupon discount, I'd never make the books.  This is resulting in a lot of sleepless nights, staying up til 3am, 4am, 5am (depending on the day) to work on these books.  So far I completed 2006-2007, 2008, and working on 2009... I just have to add the pics from our babymoon but my goodness it's taking me DAYS to pick the pictures because I probably took 3 million pictures on 3 different cameras!! Our friends who met up with us in Barcelona also have a ton of pictures of all of us together, pics of just me and hubby, etc but I am not even going to bother asking them for copies.. I've already got so many pictures to deal with, I think we're okay ;)

J's dohl is coming up in less than 2 months and I still only have the venue and photographer set.  It's really tough trying to plan such a big party remotely.. After considering my budget, time, and my limitations on executing everything since we land in LA just 2 days before the party, I've narrowed down the elements of the party- the DIY projects, but it's tough getting started.  I have to rely heavily on the internet for my research and buying my supplies.. this is especially tough when I want to buy things for the party by only seeing the product picture on websites and honestly, I won't be all that surprised come party day and none of the items I bought and shipped to my in-law's house are not to scale with one another.  So before I buy ANYTHING I just keep going back and forth about it in my mind over and over again because I wouldn't be able to check the product upon receiving it and/or have ample time to return/exchange things since I'm getting everything shipped to my in-law's house. 

Other moms have also said to get a head start on DIY projects or you will be up all night making them the last month before the party... I totally know what they mean!! But I also think that regardless of getting a head start, you're going to have to stay up in the night making everything anyway.  I've tried making flag banners (super simple, right?) in the daytime and J was ALL UP IN MY FACE and in all of my papers, scraps, etc.  It was just impossible and I ended up having to finish it after he was down for the night.

Health-wise, I started walking at night after I put J down.  Last month when we signed up for life insurance we had blood work done and overall we are healthy and fine, but I really want to get my cholesterol down.  It's still in the normal range, but it's higher up than I'd like, so I'm on a mission to get it down and up my good cholesterol along with it by doing my cardio.  I've walked for 3 days now and every time I realize how much I hate cardio LOL!! It's just so boring!  Aside from it being boring, though, I sort of do enjoy having that time all to myself.. no baby, no hubby, no dogs. 

Okay now.. back to the photobooks!!!

29

I'm not one for celebrating my own birthday or trying to get other people to acknowledge it and do something for me on my birthday.  My family never made that big of a deal about birthdays so I've just gotten used to not making any kind of a fuss about it either.  It wasn't until I met my husband that we started to really celebrate my birthday and he always goes above and beyond to make me feel special. 
Hubs and my goal in life is to live a very NORMAL life... no roller coaster rides for us, please... to just live a normal, low-key, happy life, and most importantly to provide such an environment for J to grow up in and be showered with lots of love.  It sounds easy, but if you think about it, it's actually quite difficult to achieve. 

More than anything, I tend to think of all the things I'm thankful for on my birthday (which is weird because I never really think about things I am thankful of on Thanksgiving haha) and I'm really thankful for having such a happy and loving family, health, for J coming into our lives, having a roof over our heads and financial stability in this depressing economy, and for having such wonderful in-laws (esp the BESTESTEST brother-in-law in the world). 

In the coming year (wow this is starting to sound more like a new year's post haha but I can't help it, my birthday falls in January!) I look forward to: many family trips and making memories to last us a lifetime, to J's first birthday, making new friends, and maybe even be blessed with another addition our family. 

Here's to the best year in my 20s! (last year will be pretty tough to beat, though! ^^)

Car Wash

Am I the only person who didn't know about this service?  Where they come to your house and wash your cars?  Apparently, many of our neighbors do this, yet it's the first time I've actually seen them in action!  (Pic is of my neighbors across the street getting their cars washed).  I never wash my car anyway so I probably won't be using this service anytime soon LOL I only get my car washed when I take it into the dealership for an oil change.  But anywho I was really amused by this for some reason.

ROK:BRGR

Last Sunday we headed over to Ft. Lauderdale for lunch.  My friend had bought me a gift certificate to a bar&grill in the Old Fort Lauderdale district which was about to expire and I didn't want it to go to waste.  Unfortunately, they really are more of a bar than anything else and was not open for lunch!  So we decided to have lunch next door at this place called ROK:BRGR which looked really dark inside and hip!

They had such a cool menu that was made of super thick leather.

J bored waiting for our food and hubby having himself a little beer fun.

     

Our food!  We both ordered our burgers well-done and they said it would take up to 20 minutes for it to be fully cooked because their patties are so thick!  Their burgers were HUGE, it wouldnt even fit in my mouth after I had smashed it down as flat as I could get it with my hands.

Look at those onion rings!  They were almost as big as the ginormous burger and sooooo yummy!!!

Byebye, ROK:BRGR, we'll be back for your artery-clogging yummy goodness!! ^__^

I love dumplings

I love dumpling soup.  I Love.... did you hear me?  I LOOOVVVVVE dumpling soup (Mandooguk).  It's always been one of my absolute favorite Korean dishes.  I'm not such a fan of ddukgook, though, the rice ovalettes are not a fave of mine unless cooked to a perfect consistency, so come New Years, per Korean tradition, we have the dduk manduguk but I have mine with as little rice ovalette slices as possible.  Anyway, the above pic is of the rice cake dumpling soup my MIL cooked for us the day after New Year's. 

On New Year's Day we all went to Jaden's great grandparents' for brunch where she served up a very different kind of soup than the clear broth like pictured above... great grandma's soup tasted kind of like yookgaejang- had a bit of a spicy kick to it and she puts in a lot of the beef slices.

We got to great grandma's just in time for lunch and I got to help make the remainder of the dumplings.

Someone else's dumplings:

My dumplings:

I think I kind of rock in dumpling-making! hehe!!

Her Garden

My aunt is one of the most talented home decorators I know and she's not even a professional!  She does this purely as a hobby as she loves beautifying her home.  She invited us over during our LA trip and cooked us a feast which was so yummy, what wowed us even more was her backyard, which she designed and planned herself!  She said she went to buy the rocks herself too and laid them out on her own as well as planting all her greenery herself as well.  Here are a few pics I took.  I regret that I don't own a wide angle lens or even bringing along my zoom lens for that matter because I couldn't take an overview shot of the lot which is just gorgeous.

 

She grows her own veggies!  How awesome is that?!

If I ever move back to socal, I know who to call to landscape my backyard! :)  I'd love to grow my own strawberries!

Milestones

Jaden is hitting so many milestones within such a short period of time, it's so exciting but I'm a little sad at the same time to see him grow up sooo fast!

Up until he was 8 months old he couldn't even crawl. I was actually very concerned because other babies I knew were crawling at 6-7 months! One time my MIL told us over the phone that a friend's grandson who is a month younger than J could crawl and I got really teary-eyed because I felt like I was doing something wrong which was making Jaden not develop at the same level as other babies. He was doing the yoga pose for the longest time, which I guess is something that babies do just before they learn to crawl. We kept thinking, okay he'll crawl by the end of this week, any day now, he's always doing the yoga pose! But he did the yoga pose for over a month before he actually crawled. And his first crawl happened when he had a mean diaper rash and when I tried to wipe him, he flipped over and ran (crawled) away from me crying! lol

Ever since that time he started crawling (it was around 8 months, 2 weeks) he seems to be super mobile and developing so rapidly. About a week after he started crawling, he started to pull himself up  started cruising as well! He's 9.5 months now and today he stood on his own!! I was on the phone with skippee discussing what favors I was thinking of doing for J's party and I started yelling, "omg! J's standing!! he's standing!!!" LOL I was so surprised!! He came over to me because I was holding a toy and he grabbed it out of my hand and just stood there standing in the middle of his playmat for a good 10 seconds just looking at the toy. So exciting!

I've also started brushing J's 4 teeth, yes, all four of them keke. He hated it the first time I brushed him, but now he'll open his mouth just enough to let me slide the toothbrush in his mouth and scrub scrub scrub his tiny little teeth to my heart's content :)

He also gets super excited when he sees food. REALLY REALLY super duper excited.

.....................
Pics from today:

My brother bought J 2 sets of baby jail!! A true life saver! I could get so much more done now!

laundry fun!!

My baby sleep routine sucks.

I can't believe it took me over 2 and half months (since Crying It Out sleep training) to realize that how I put the baby down for naps and nightsleeps was probably a nightmare for J. Whenver I put him down to sleep, he'd scream at the top of his lungs and cry for a while before falling asleep. I never understood why he does this, because I don't put him down unless he shows definite signs of sleepiness (like rubbing his eyes, yawning, eyeballs rolling back, eyelids looking heavy). I would always think, 'you are so sleepy, I don't know why you won't sleep right away'. On the nights I am busy doing dishes or something and baby is sleepy, I'd ask hubby to put J in his crib. He'd always yell from the baby's room as he puts him down, asking me what he should do because J keeps crying and that he looks so sad/pissed/scared. I would always tell him "nothing! just come out of the room!" because I figured that the crying was just a part of how J falls asleep. I figured it's okay since J never cries for more than 5 or 10 minutes at night. He does cry longer for naps though because he wants to play. But that was the routine. I thought it was okay.

I was SO WRONG!

I never read to J before he goes to sleep because he was just too young and the few times I tried, he didn't seem to care at all, which discouraged me. I decided to put off reading until he turns one. Then for the past 2 nights, I sang to J holding him in my arms before putting him down in his crib and he doesn't cry and scream anymore! This just tells me I've been a horrible mother to him whenever bedtime rolled around, he probably cried, whined, and screamed because he felt neglected or something. I feel so bad!! But life goes on and I've learned my lesson.

New bedtime routine:
Hold, sing, sleep.

omg! so funny!!

Jaden and I were sitting on the living room floor when hubby comes out from our room and takes his shirt off because he says there's something on his back that he wants me to take a look at. I get up and sit on the couch and hubby sits below me on the floor so I can take a look at his back and Jaden crawls over to hubby, stares at hubby's nipples for quite a while as if to study them or to think to himself "hmmm I've seen those somewhere before... I wonder if they do what mommy's does.. hm...", like he seriously stares and studies them and out of nowhere J dove straight onto them, mouth open wide, to have himself a little snack! LOL Hubby freaked out and we were all laughing cuz it was so funny! I'll never forget the look on J's face studying them. It was like a lightbulb went off in his head, like, "let's see!!" before diving straight for them ha ha!! okay, u just had to be there!

I must be getting old...

Today was day 4 since we've been back home from our trip and I'm still lifeless. It's taking me so long to bounce back, I think it's cuz I'm getting old! LOL I spent the whole day napping with J... we woke up at 7pm! O.o

As for J, I could clearly see that he's grown so much mentally since the trip. He's doing a lot of things that he's never done prior to the trip like digging through everything, going to his toy basket to pick out what he wants to play with, keeping himself entertained for hours, being more verbal of his needs and wants, showing lots of excitement when he sees food, etc. The best part is that he naps anywhere now, which he didn't do before. He only napped in his crib, he couldn't even fall asleep in my arms no matter how tired he was. It used to be crib or nothing. But during our stay in LA, we were seriously driving from point a to b all day long to meet people that he had no choice but to sleep wherever- in another baby's pack n play (he never napped in his own pack n play before), on the floor of great-grandma's house, in mommy's arms, in daddy's arms, in the car, etc. He used to sleep all the time in his carseat even prior to the trip but when I would park the car, he'd wake up (and drive me crazy for the next 3 hours!) but now he doesn't wake up when I try to get him out of the carseat, he'll just lay his head on my shoulder and continue his naps. I'm totally loving it!

Yesterday he even napped in the Costco cart!

First post of 2011

We just got back from our [short] LA trip last night and spent the entire day chilling and napping, so blissful!

We had 5 full fun-filled days in LA and it was wonderful having J finally meet all of his family members.  I think people liked him a whole lot more just for the fact that he didn't cry, thank God he doesn't have stranger anxiety. 

I took tons of pics but decided to trim it down to these handful.. enjoy!