Category Archives: What’s She Doing Wednesday

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Toddler Trip Success!

Enjoying the contents of her Busy Bag!

This past weekend we went to Richmond, Virginia (about 2 hours south) for a family funeral. I searched and searched for a hotel that was a “suites” chain so that at least we would have a separate bedroom from the living room. That way we could put her to bed in her pack and play in the bedroom, close the door, and hang out in the common area. We settled on a Homewood Suites, located about 20 minutes away from the funeral and it was worth every penny (not that it was pricey). It had the pack and play, free hot breakfast, and an outdoor pool. As mentioned in last Saturday’s post (Traveling with your Sprout), all these are so beneficial when traveling with a baby or toddler, so we were thankful to have found a place that had all of these features, not inconvenient to the funeral’s location. Did I mention my parents booked the suite next door? That made things even better! We were able to score a night out on Saturday, to meet up with my childhood best friend. Plus they got some extra Jia time that they wouldn’t have had, had we stayed in separate hotels. Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Toddler Trip Success!” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Summer Lovin’

Wow, two weeks went by without a WSDW post! It was kind of nice to take a little bit of a break from the blog, but it’s really crazy how fast the days go by even without “working”! With my days completely off, I was still pretty tired running errands, filling my little toddler’s days jam-packed with fun summer activities, sending out my resume and taking calls to get feelers out there for prospective jobs. It’s really surprising how even without my deadlines for blog writing, I was still very busy. Being a stay at home mom is really tiring! It’s one of those things where you can appreciate the exhaustion the other type of mom goes through – either Mom A works all day and is tired from work, cooks dinner, puts baby down to bed, packs up baby bag and meals for day care/babysitter, then passes out. On the other hand, Mom B at home gets up when baby wakes up (or earlier) and from start to finish it’s: meals, cleaning the kitchen/house, picking up after toddler, running errands to the grocery store and Target of course, meal planning, activities, driving in traffic, bedtime routine, laundry. Both are a lot of work and mom doesn’t get much time to herself. Yeesh, that was tiring just thinking about it.

With my little break from blogging and after I wrote last Saturday’s post about high-risk pregnancies, I realized how much I missed having a “purpose” after Jia went to bed. I guess it made me appreciate the work I put into my own posts. I feel like I’m doing something good, aside from raising my little girl. Doing the research and writing up informative posts is kinda energizing – as long as I’m not entirely pooped, that is.

Anyway, continuing on… Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Summer Lovin’” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Stack ’em Up!

Since I’m taking a break from the research posts I publish on Saturdays, I figure I should still write a short update on what Jia’s been up to. These posts are a lot easier to write since I don’t have to go digging through research journals, evidence-based practice recommendations/best practices, etc.

What she’s been doing in the past week:

She starts kissing the doggies by smacking her lips and chasing after them while making her kissy noises. So cute!
Poor Puggies. Pug kisses aside, she is starting to find entertainment in pulling the pugs’ tails and grabbing their feet – Kona is particularly perturbed by this new activity, but he’s a good boy and knows when to walk away.
She can stack her wooden tower (cover photo) finally! Before, she would just remove all the wooden parts but now she’s discovered she can stack them onto the peg. No they’re not in order, but baby steps!
She knows the word “rabbit,” so when I say “where’s your rabbit?” she’ll look around the room and grab this squishy little light-up rabbit toy my grandmother got her for Easter, and bring it over to me.
My mother-in-law bought Jia an inflatable Spray ‘N Splash pool from Buy Buy Baby on sale for a cheap $14 and I finally blew it up yesterday since it was a hot upper 80s/low 90s day out and I didn’t want to drive anywhere. So I filled it up with the hose out in the front yard and she had so much fun splashing and going down the slide! At first she hesitated because it was strange, but after a few tries, she soon wasn’t eager to hold onto my hands and would try to thrust herself down the slide on her own. The zebra on ours sprays when hooked up to the hose, but I detached it soon after we had it going, since the spray was a little much (I’d already filled the pool, so additional spraying would over-fill the pool. Anyway I highly recommend this pool, with a manual air pump it was exhausting but way worth it! Don’t try to inflate it with your mouth, you’ll pass out I’m pretty positive.
Eating is getting better. Broccoli, mango, pot roast, chicken shu mai (from Trader Joe’s), and really getting used to smoked salmon in her eggs. She also loves toast with breakfast, because we usually have toast, so I butter hers up with some unsalted Kerry Gold organic and give her a half of a piece. We have to give her white whole wheat bread, because I think she may struggle a bit with our high fiber bread… and she poops enough!
Weaning: finally on full concentration cow’s milk, but we’ll continue to give her breast milk that I have frozen, for during meals (mixed with a little cow’s milk). Still nursing in the morning and before bedtime, but I’ve finally stopped pumping before I go to bed, which completely is a relief to me! I love not having to pump! So exhilarating being able to just go to bed without having to stay up to pump at 11 PM. (It was my own doing, requiring myself a pre-bedtime pump session)

For me: Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Stack ’em Up!” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Happy B-Day Mom!

Mother’s Day 2015

I had this vision for writing this Mother’s Day post as a letter to my mom for last weekend’s Sproutings Saturday but I decided to give myself a break since I’ve been so so tired. Makes me think I need to get some bloodwork done to see if there’s a reason why I’m so exhausted all the time. Anyway, so I wanted to post a photo like this for that post, but since it didn’t happen I’m just going to use it for this post! Oh so my intentions for this week are to write a post about lipase in breastmilk and how it affects some babies, or about what the research says about breastfeeding and trying to get pregnant. But, I gotta be honest again – I’m recovering from a brush with pesticide poisoning and my head doesn’t even want to write this post but I’m fighting against my desire to cuddle up with my pillow but I’ll write this anyway.

Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Happy B-Day Mom!” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Arf Arf!

I’m trying to be better at remembering all the things she’s been doing but it’s hard. Nowadays it’s because I would usually write it down in my “reminders” app in my phone, but now since she insists on listening or watching Little Baby Bum on my phone, I often forget before I have the chance to jot it down. So this is what I can remember for this week: Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Arf Arf!” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: My Nature-Loving Girlie Girl

Jia’s happenings as of late: Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: My Nature-Loving Girlie Girl” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Bubble Baby!

This week has been a fun one, here’s a little recap:

Bubble Baby: After going to her first kiddie birthday party with a little container of bubbles in her goodie bag, she’s been so entranced when I blow them for her, but she either wanted to blow them herself (which she wouldn’t, she would just put the wand in her mouth after dipping it into the solution) or she wanted to play with more pretty bubbles. So we got a bubble fan machine for her and she is so happy and entertained!
Camera-Ready! This was by far the most entertaining discovery this week! We were at the playground at the outlet shopping center near our house and wanted to take pictures of Jia and Jeff since they were wearing matching Orioles gear. Jeff was holding Jia and I held up my phone, counting “1…2…3!” and she knows to plaster this huge excited enthusiastic smile, it’s the cutest thing ever! Such a huge smile that you can count all 10 of her teeth! haha… I love this!
She loves walking – Never really crawls unless she’s climbing on the playground equipment. She squeals with excitement as she runs and is being chased by us or she goes back and forth from Jeff and me, showing us twigs, flowers, leaves, anything she finds that interests her. She’s just such a happy baby! We’re so lucky 🙂
My little eater is getting a bit better! Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches on whole wheat, even scrambled eggs with smoked salmon are going well so far. Her favorite cheese so far is goat cheese (takes after her mama), she’ll eat chunks and chunks of it by itself. She likes hummus with little pieces of pita bread. Loves Boston Market’s meatloaf (doesn’t like my homemade meatloaf… sigh) and their lemony garlicky spinach. Still into homemade sweet potatoes, which I prefer her to eat since they’re purely seasoned with unsalted butter and cinnamon. I also mashed cooked cheesy cauliflower for scrambled eggs and she did well with those, too.
Naps are still 1 hour 15 minutes to 2 hours and 30 minutes. It changes day to day, with no predicting which it’ll be. Jia still goes to bed at about 7:30/7:45 PM, we are now waking up at 6:45-7:15 AM (boy do I miss the days she slept in until 8 AM or even 8:30 AM!) and takes one nap at 11:30 AM until about 12:45/1 PM.
Stridin’ Rite! We got her first pair of rubber soled shoes! She’d been wearing a pair of Robeez that her Gran got for her for Easter and put some good yardage in with them. Then we’ve noticed she is getting much better at walking, so we took our trip to Stride Rite and got her some pink sparkly Mary Jane sneaker-shoes on sale for $29.99. Those suckers cost around $40-42 a pair at Stride Rite! Anyway I love them, she loves to wear them and walk around everywhere now!
Got her first boo-boo. We were walking outside before her nap and she took a little stumble to her hands and knees but since she was on the slight downslope on the driveway, she tipped head-first when she propped herself on her hands to get up. She was tough and cried for about 10 seconds but didn’t like when I cleaned up her scrape and put cold triple antibiotic ointment on. She forgot about it pretty fast.
She is getting very mom-attached. She used to let Jeff play with her in the morning after waking up. But, now she makes a bee-line to our bedroom door to find me and is an unhappy camper if he doesn’t let her into the room. No more sleeping in an extra 45 minutes while Jeff plays with her, it’s go-time right from the start!
Where’s the Milk?? She’s starting to tug at my shirt and play with the clips of my nursing tops before feedings. Uh oh… Hahaha…

Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Bubble Baby!” »