Category Archives: What’s She Doing Wednesday

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Le Artiste

Jia:

Our Little Artist: As you can see from the post photo, Jia now has an art table. I snagged this table + 2 chairs from good ol’ Ikea for $19.99! A steal! Regular price! It weighs about 5 pounds and it has great little tiny person chairs that come with it. I haven’t been to Target yet, to stock up on some Washable Crayons or those special magic kid markers that only mark on special paper, but those are on the Target shopping list. She really loves her little table and the markers, really likes trying to eat the markers in between scribbles, actually. But, she is really good at putting the caps onto her markers (my highlighters) now. It only took her a few minutes after I showed her. She’ll turn the cap to the correct side in her hands and insert the marker tip. She loves doing it! I’m guessing this is the appropriate age for this sort of thing, but all I’m thinking is, “you’re such a little genius!” Haha…
- So since she loves putting the caps onto markers, she like, REALLY loves it. She’ll hand me markers so I can take the caps off of them, and if I don’t, she lets me know. (by yelling at me) So, as the loyal servant to my child, I keep uncapping the markers for her, and she keeps on scribbling on the table itself, scribbling her chin, drawing on the paper, getting blue and green on the corners of her mouth, dropping markers on the floor, and then, eventually, re-capping them.
Our witching hour is now 4 PM until bath time. No, scratch that. It’s 4 PM-bathtime and then again during PJ time. She becomes irate if she doesn’t have additional food options in front of her. She’s irate if I don’t pick her up, after I was just holding her and she pushed away from me. She gets mad if I take her clothes off for her bath, but squeals out of giddiness to run down the hallway naked. Ha 🙂 Little crazy person.
But if she’s mad, taking her outdoors completely eases her frustration and keeps her occupied for an unknown length of time (because I have always taken her inside before she even hints at being finished with the yard).
She’s experimenting with different terrain, learning to steady herself while walking and standing.
I think we’ve weaned away from one of her four feedings. She used to nurse at 8 AM, 11 AM, 4 PM, and 7 PM, but for the past week she’s been pretty much completely dropped the 4 PM feeding (disinterested, would rather play, impatient). I wonder what’ll happen naturally with the remaining feedings; if they’ll drop naturally at all.

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What’s She Doing Wednesday: Ponytails and Bows

Here’s a recap of the last week:

She started doing this funny face when my mom was doing it – you know that face you make when you don’t want to scratch your nose but you have an itch? Like an overemphasized whistling face? She copies that face when you do it to her, hehe
We Asian people are generally familiar with the expression “aiy yaaaaaa!” The Asian equivalent of “Oh geez!” Jia will copy this saying, it’s really funny to us 🙂 Mom was saying it to her during diaper changes as she wriggled around and she would say it back!
Generous Doggie Feeder – I filled up her snack cup with those organic rice puffs and she was playing while munching on them. The pugs came up to her and were so excited, trying to find one she’d accidentally drop on the ground as she grabbed fistfuls of puffs to shove into her mouth. So she tried to feed them individual puffs. We’d say “No! No feeding the doggies!” so she walked into the kitchen and started to empty fistfuls of puffs into the doggie food bowls haha!
Little Baby Bum wins again – I’ve mentioned quite a few times on here how my daughter really doesn’t like car rides. She’ll never be one to conk out when buckled into her carseat. So when she is cranky or just wants to play but we have to go somewhere in the car, she’ll protest… In an effort to minimize how many times I actually have her watching Little Baby Bum on our phones, I decided to hook it up to the car tape adapter and play it through the car’s speakers. Turns out this is just as good! She is completely happy to listen to the nursery rhymes! At least, so far.
Bath Crayons – I bought her a pack of bathtub crayons for her Easter basket, hoping it would ignite a little artistic expression in her. She loooooved them! She drew all over the bath tub sides and when she was finished with one color, she places it back into the soap holder in the wall, swapping it out for a different color. She has such a great time in the bath tub, she could care less about her toys. Only drawback is she gets VERY upset when it’s time to put the crayons away and exit the tub. This is the link to the Munchkin 5 Piece Bath Crayons Set here.
What she’s snacking on lately:
- Plum organics Mighty 4 nutrition bars (mango/banana and strawberry are all acceptable to Jia)
- Happy Baby Puffs – the easiest and most portable snack for her to travel with
- Happy Baby Gentle Teethers for portable carseat snacks
- Ella’s Kitchen (organic) Nibbly Fingers (mangoes + carrots)
- She scarfs down Happy Creamies (I mentioned in the last WSDW post, those coconut milk snacks blended with fruit)
What she’s turned against:
- She’s over raspberries. I guess I overdid them.
- Happy Yogis – yogurt and fruit snacks

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What’s She Doing Wednesday: Peekaboo!

As usual, here’s what she’s doing this week:

As she lay on her changing pad, I found out that she knows how to play peekaboo now! She’ll cover her eyes with her fingers, smiling, then I’ll say “Where’s Jia?!!” and she quickly moves her hands away and laughs.
Meet me at the Carwash – I was getting us ready to go to the park one afternoon and as I carried her around the kitchen, she spotted Jeff’s bottle brush (he uses for sports bottles and such) so I gave it to her. I put her on the floor and she started “cleaning” out the cup holders on her car.
Bubble Baby – We went to Axel’s 2nd birthday party and in her party favor bag was a small bottle of bubbles with a tiny little bubble wand (among many other really awesome trinkets!). We knew she loved bubbles because there was a little bubble machine at the party, so we started blowing bubbles with it. The next day, she walked over to her bubbles and I said “here, bring them to me!” and she walked over to me, carrying the bubbles (that’s pretty impressive, too!). Then, after watching me dip the wand into the bubbles, she wanted to take over. So, she took the wand from me and tried dipping it in herself. Only thing is, she put the wand into her mouth instead of blowing through it, ha. After about a dozen times demonstrating how to blow on it, she did once (no bubbles though)!
If you start laughing at something (or someone, the tv, etc) she starts laughing.
She really follows my gaze. I looked at the ceiling while in thought, and I noticed she looked up at the ceiling then looked back at me smiling. I know this one sounds pretty insignificant but I mean, I find it very very amusing.
If she hears clapping on TV (I was watching Dancing with the Stars and when the audience started clapping) she claps.
She can blow a kiss (partially)! When you blow a kiss to her, she puts her hand up to her mouth and smiles, but just doesn’t have the “release” part of the blowing a kiss down yet.
Buckle Up! Whenever she’s placed in her carseat, climbs into her toy car if she wants to go for a ride, or is seated in her kitchen table booster chair, she tries to put click her seatbelts together.
At the end of bath time, Jia started putting her bath toys away in the toy organizer.
Winky Blinky – When she was watching the shapes blink in Little Baby Bum’s Shapes Song (click video below), she would squint and blink her eyes just like the shapes. It’s so cute!!! Picture at the bottom!

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What’s She Doing Wednesday: And She’s Off!

Update on Jia:

FIRST STEPS! This just in! As of 3/24/15, she is walking! Slowly but surely, it took our little sprout 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, and 1 day to get her first steps in! She took a total of about 6 steps on 3/24 and then this morning (3/25/15) she took about 7 steps in a row! Our video quality isn’t so great, so we’ll document again later. Recall, she did take 10.5 months to crawl but was crawling like a speed demon, so pretty soon I imagine she’ll be walking confidently!
I read from a BabyCenter newsletter that if your toddler isn’t yet walking, what you can do to encourage them is to pretend to trip over your feet while you walk – showing that even adults have trouble with it. So I did this. And fell over. Many times, and she belly laughs a LOT! This was good for when I actually fell down the stairs trying to step OVER the baby gate (instead of opening it, since Jia was standing at the gate), she laughed while I gripped hurt parts of me in pain.
Sprouting a left bottom molar and a bottom right tooth, for soon to be a total of 8 teeth. This means she’s temperamental! She really had no distress through the first 6 teeth, so this is the first time she’s just a crabby unpredictable mess hah…
Because of the above, her naps are unpredictable. It’s a few days of 1 hour and 30 min naps and then a day of 30 minute napping after rolling around flailing her limbs and chattering to herself for almost an hour. Or even 1 hour and 15 minutes of blabbering and rolling around. That day we had no nap until 4 PM that afternoon.
She loves Happy Family Brand’s Happy Creamies! While at my weekly run to Target, I picked these up from the baby aisle, along with teething crackers. Gave them to her after she picked through all the peas in her macaroni and cheese and ate an orange and she scarfed them down.
She’s also back to her Happy Baby Puffs, yay! I like to put this in a snack cup for her to nosh on while she and I go jogging.
I hate to admit this, but LittleBabyBum nursery rhymes (on YouTube) make her so happy. After jogging with her and I need a quick shower – I play this on my phone and she is just quiet and happy. I don’t like to show her screens, since The Academy says not til after 2 years, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I also handed her my iPhone when she for some reason is screaming and upset in the car (babies and toddlers are not fans of traffic and mine in particular dislikes car rides IN GENERAL) with the video playing. It works like magic. Only to be used in dire times of need. (To view Little Baby Bum’s YouTube Channel click here)
Scavenging Around: My friend (and one of Jia’s godmothers) Megan was here the other day and Jia was digging through her purse. She pulled out her car keys and then crawled over to her princess mobile and tried to use her keys with the car. She also did a cute thing where she took an item out of Megan’s purse, looked at it, then placed it back in (versus throwing it aside).
MyPhone… She took Megan’s iPhone and put it up to her ear and said “bababababa!” Apparently Jeff has been teaching her how to use the phone on her learning farm toy that has a pretend phone, quick little learner!

I made these baked sweet potato bites a week or so ago and she seemed to really dislike them. But then I tried again a while after and it turns out, she really likes them 1) cold; and 2) sitting in their foil pouch (not on her plate). So I ripped off a square of foil to put on her plate and housed the sweet potatoes in there and it was just about the only thing she ate for dinner.

Steam a sweet potato for about 15 minutes. Remove.

Cut into small finger-sized pieces

Place on non-stick foil (or spray with cooking spray or drizzle with olive oil)

Cut pieces of unsalted butter and arrange over sweet potatoes. I used a cheese grater and grated a cold stick of butter over them. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

Place in oven at 350 deg for about 15 minutes. Watch them, because I really didn’t pay attention to how long I really baked them! Allow to cool and serve!
Pasta! Whole wheat noodles and these spinach/garlic noodles from Trader Joe’s, cooked then mixed with some butter then organic marinara sauce is something she apparently likes!
Claps and bounces when music is playing, a LOT of clapping!

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What’s She Doing Wednesday: Jogging Buddy

So this is what Jia’s been up to:

Very very talkative, blabbers every chance she can get! She’s communicating really well, pointing to what she wants, happy-vocalizing about 90% of the time.
Climbs as much as she can on as many things as possible.
Still doesn’t want to walk yet, but doesn’t mind walking one-handed with us.
She’s been sleeping in until about 8:30 AM clocking in about 12.75-13 hours of sleep per night. Usually goes down at 7:30 PM. That nap is still somewhat unreliable. (Now I’m going to jinx myself)
Task mimicry: putting clothes in her drawers, trying to help put dishes away from the dishwasher, wiping the kitchen table with a paper towel or baby wipes after her meals, putting toys away into the diaper bag.
Deli turkey is back on the table! She’ll eat it again, not as eagerly as she did before, but she’ll eat it. Thankfully.
It feels like she’s becoming a pickier eater. I don’t know why I say it “feels like,” because she definitely is.
She’s not scared of the slide anymore. Not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but when I took her to MyGym back in January (?) she started crying when I put her on the slide (while holding her). Tuesday we took the jogging stroller to the outlets (up a precarious hill) and Jia and I played at the playground. There were two kids already climbing around (an 18 month old and a 3 year old). After watching the two of them happily go down the slide, I put her in my lap and we went down a few times and she was smiling once we got to the bottom. After that, I put her on the slide (while I was on the ground) and held her torso as I slid her down and she had the biggest smile! Wish Jeff were with us so we could get some good pictures!
Easily gets thrown into tantrums, especially if she wants my phone and I don’t give it to her. She yells at me (as other toddlers do) hah
Swept off her feet. Most of the time she wants me to still carry her everywhere. I’ll take this as a cherished moment that is soon to end once she learns to walk.
Peekaboo Pro. During bath time Tuesday 3/17, she was standing in the tub and grabbed the shower curtain and hid behind it. I said “Where’s Jia?!!!” and she yanked it open laughing! She went on to keep doing this over and over and over! So so funny!

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What’s She Doing Wednesday: Earning Her Keep

Here’s what she’s up to!

I asked her to get in her infant car seat and she did! Too bad it’s just in time to make the switch to the new big convertible seat. We did end up going for the Graco Milestone for $200 after a 20% off coupon from Buy Buy Baby. It’ll go rear facing til 40 lbs and then forward harnessed and as a high back belt positioning booster. I really like it, it’s sturdy, seems much more comfortable, and it was really easy to install.
She climbs into our laps for mid-afternoon story time. If she’s playing with toys and she sees a book, she’ll take the book and hand it to us and then climb into our laps.
She’s getting unbelievably difficult at mealtimes! She’s very defiant and really won’t eat much of anything now! Man, I thought it was hard before, whew, this new phase I’m eager to pass on!
Understands how to fill up cups with water and drinking from it. Especially if this is in the bath tub. Ew.
Loves her new big girl car seat! So far. I mean, she hasn’t complained and pulled at the straps or hit it or anything. She seems content in it, I think the strap cushions at the shoulders help the comfort, and I imagine it’s much more padded and structured more comfortably than the curve of that infant car seat.
Daylight Savings Time wasn’t a breeze. Her whole Sunday was thrown off, starting from Saturday night only sleeping 10.5 hours after tirelessly rolling around for an hour, and then on Sunday night crying for a half an hour and rolling around restless for 2 hours after being put down by Grandma (Jeff and I were out celebrating my 31st birthday).
She understands what diapers are and how we put her wet (cloth) diapers in a diaper pail next to her changing table. When I was unloading her Honest order (we use their disposables overnight) and Jia was “helping.” I was mixing up patterns of diapers into our storage basket and she took a disposable diaper and put it in the cloth diaper pail.
Tries to put her shoes on my feet.
She pretends to wash dishes and her high chair. She grabbed a napkin off the living room table and brought it into the kitchen and started “scrubbing” the dog dishes (video below). Later she crawled over to her booster seat at the dining table and started wiping it down, haha. I think she’s sending a message that all mommy does is chores ha!

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What’s She Doing Wednesday: Home Sweet Home

So as usual, this is what our Little Toddles has been up to!

She’s perfecting her fake-cackle laugh haha… it’s so funny! Jeff does this obviously fake witchy laugh and Jia tries to mimic him. It’s a very deliberate fake-laugh, that goes sort of like “eh-heheh-eh”
She’s learning how to speak use her tongue, by saying things like “dibba-dibba-dibba”
Pushes herself along in her princess car, pushing off with her feet while seated
Getting better eating with a spoon! Gran helped her learn to do this while I was in Philly. She is now scooping food onto her spoon (some of the time) and moving it toward her mouth at the correct angle!
knows the color yellow and can pick out the yellow block out of pink, purple, and green ones
Is very eager to turn lights on and off with the wall switch, she’s really good at it too. When we walk past a light switch, she points it out (“shaaaast?!”) so she can turn it the other way. When she switches the light on, she points at the light above to show me that she knows they’re connected. She’s very proud of herself for being able to turn the light switches. We’re pretty proud of her too 🙂
Can stack 2 blocks together
Is getting very defiant when she’s holding something in her hand and we remove it – she gets visibly pissed off if you take it from her (specifically the iPhone)
Definitely getting to that stage where she can’t stand to sit still
Getting the hang of walking one-handed, practice practice practice!
When I yell at the dogs for doing something they shouldn’t be doing, Jia says “bad boy!” and smiles at me, because she knows this is the response they’ll get from me, haha. This comes after a string of events of Kona pooping in the house because he refuses to poop out in the snow, or eating my kleenexes from the trash can.
This isn’t new, but since it’s cold, dry, and wintry, we (like lots of babies) have frequent cases of the boogers and I thought I’d share. I got a Nose Frida Snot Sucker as a registry gift way back when and bought some Boogie Mist saline spray for when the time arose. Time has arisen. But the funny and cute thing, is that Jia really likes the saline spray and likes it when I suck those boogers out! I have no clue why, but she lowers and positions her nose on to the saline spray nozzle and to the Snot Sucker tube for me to use on her. Same goes with Q-tips, she knows I’m going to clean her ears, so she stays really still and angles her ears to me. Girl likes hygiene, can’t argue.
While I was gone in Philly: Jia did really great and so did Gran (Jeff’s mom). Of course Jeff was home while I was gone, but he had to go to work obviously, so Jeff’s mom stayed at our house and watched Jia from Tuesday evening (I left Wednesday afternoon) until Saturday afternoon. Jia went down for naps and bedtime without any crying and zonked out! She learned a lot with Gran (the spoon, yellow blocks) in the short span they were isolated together and I rested easy knowing she was happy. The evening before I came home she had a tough time after Gran showed her some photos of Jia and me together, but she was back to her perky self when dinner time came around.

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