What’s She Doing Wednesday: Ice Ice Baby

Here’s what Jia has been up to in the short week that just past:

Helps get her dressed. She punches through sleeves to help you put her shirts and jackets on.
Gets mad when you try to help her put on her shoes and socks – she wants to put them on herself! She’s not exactly able to at this point, but she’s able to get the sock opening stretched and puts her toes near the opening. It’s really so adorable to watch. Such a little person. 🙂
She recognizes her face in photos. I’m so serious. When I’m on my computer on say, Facebook, she just wants to bang on my keyboard. But today, when I opened to the Little Sproutings homepage, she pointed right at herself in the banner and said, “Schaat?” (what she says for anything she’s pointing to, kind of like saying “Look there! That!”)
Says “uh oh” when she drops things.
When we sing “dim chong chong” (a Cantonese nursery rhyme that involves hand gestures, “touch the little bug, the little bug flies!”), she does the hand gestures right away as soon as she hears us sing it and has a huge smile on her face as she does it.
When we say “up!” she puts arms up if she’s on the changing table so that you can help her up, and if we’re downstairs and we say “up up!” she crawls towards the stairs repeating “up up!” and starts to go up the stairs.
She really enjoys flip books! Bottoms Up is the one we read together and she likes to pull up the flap to each animal (see below)
Turns pages of a book as you read.
When I get to a page in her Hugaroo book where it says “A good job hug makes you feel great, you’ve done so well let’s celebrate!” she starts clapping after you say “good job” because she knows we clap when we do a good job 🙂

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

Nutrition in a Nutshell for Your Sprout: Infancy

Sorry for the delay in posting this week, I caught a legit real cold for the first time in about 2.5 years and luckily it came on a Friday, which meant Jeff was able to let me off the hook for baby duties. However, this also meant that I wasn’t going to be able to publish a Sproutings Saturday post. The sinus pressure was way too uncomfortable (along with feeling like my head was unattached from my body) for me to write a real post and it wasn’t nearly at the point where I was comfortable publishing it.

(Quick Jump Links)

Part 2: Nutrition in a Nutshell – Toddler and Pre-Schooler

Part 3: Nutrition in a Nutshell – Children 5 years and Older

About this Post

As a little intro, I wanted to write this post because 1) it was a topic that a couple of my readers suggested, and 2) it really makes me cringe to read all of the bad advice some moms give to other moms on the topic of infant nutrition. I feel like I can justifiably say that this is “bad advice,” because I got my Bachelor’s in Science in Dietetics (nutrition, to the rest of the population) and focused a lot of my undergraduate projects on Maternal, Infant, and Child Nutrition (heck, I even chose my Master’s focus on Maternal and Child Nutrition when I started at UCLA). I’m not saying that I remember everything I learned in college about every phase of infant and child nutrition, but it’s the basis from which I stem off and do my own investigating and writing.

This series of posts will be divided into: Infancy, Toddler & Pre-School Age, and Child Nutrition 5 & Up because: 1) It’ll take me a substantial amount of time to cover nutrition for infancy through 5 and up – there is an overwhelming amount of information on nutrition for each group; and 2) It’ll be easier for you guys to click to whichever post is more relevant for you when you read it. Continue reading “Nutrition in a Nutshell for Your Sprout: Infancy” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: One Year

It came and it went and it’s over and she’s now A ONE-YEAR OLD! Ahhhh! I guess I mourned her infant days in the weeks leading up to her birthday/party, because her actual birthday (February 16th) I didn’t become a weeping mess of emotions.

Birthday Recap

Her party was on Valentine’s Day and we had a smallish get together with close family and a small handful of friends, nothing spectacularly huge or Pinterest-Pimped out. I crafted a couple banners (pictures below) that weren’t complicated, made her a no-sew tutu that lasted for a good (MAYBE) 1 hour before I decided to take it off since all it did was continue to get dragged down while she crawled from toy to toy and person to person, I made her a no-sugar added healthy smash cake that didn’t get smashed (was barely eaten at all), we had champagne-spiked raspberry/lemonade punch made by yours truly, and noshed on Lowcountry Boil made by my fabulous and sweet mom. The grown-ups had yummy raspberry-lemon cake (from Jeff’s Dad’s favorite yummy bakery) with Jia’s little face on it (which of course was the last piece to go, the next day) and a few little tots played around on the floor. Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: One Year” »

A Special Valentine’s Day Post from Dad

It was exactly one year ago today when Jeni (39 weeks pregnant) and I finished an exciting-but-romantic dinner at our favorite DC restaurant in a most ceremonious celebration of many events: First, we started dating 5 years ago (on the 15th of February), due to months of many insistent phone conversations from my end. I knew I had met the woman of my dreams, and she had swept me off my feet. I wanted to start the rest of my life, but there was some disbelief on the other side. Secondly, and most obvious, was that it was Valentine’s day, and we always made a point to share a lavish dinner together and reflect on where we’ve come and what lies ahead. Third, as my wife was “with child” as they say, we were tipping our caps to the lives we had put together as boyfriend and girlfriend, and husband and wife. We had to say goodbye consciously, because the birth of a child changes everything.

We had scheduled an induction (due to “pre-eclampsia” watch) late on the 14th of February, 2014 for these three reasons as well. (That and my having my my hand in the baby shower pool for a 15th of February due date, too. Bragging rights, no prize) Continue reading “A Special Valentine’s Day Post from Dad” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Mommy’s Little Love Pug

So, not a lot to talk about this past week, really, but here’s a recap:

Bounces up and down on her crib mattress. She’ll actually do this if I say “Bouncy Bouncy!” She’ll look at me with a huge smile on her face and start bouncing. This is probably not a great idea to encourage her to do this, but for now I’ll go with it.
“Daddy” is coming along much clearer. She used to just say “Dada” but she’s now making the “E” sound at the end!
Pets the doggies REALLY nicely now. Pats them softly on the head only OCCASIONALLY pulling their fur. Such nice, patient little doggies we have.
We are BACK TO EATING BROCCOLI CHEDDAR BITES! Yay!!! She ate 2 whole bites one morning for breakfast (used to only eat part of one a long time ago, after I baked them originally)!
Chows down on yogurt + cinnamon. She’s also up to downing an entire (completely peeled) mandarin orange at breakfast and really loves popping plain simmered peas and sweet corn kernels (no seasonings or anything).
She’ll now eat the Happy Baby Rice Cakes that I got her a few weeks ago, too. I think eating crunchy wafers (like those Happy Baby Teething Wafers) and the rice cakes have gotten her more accustomed to the texture, so eating the Broccoli-Cheddar bites wasn’t as unfamiliar.
Plays tug of war with Mei Mei as she holds onto her rope toy
She picks out her books to read for story time. I usually default to “Won’t You Be My Hugaroo” and “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” for our pre-nap story, but lately she has been pointing to other books for me to read instead. Like, today she pointed and reached for “Count My Kisses, Little One” because she didn’t want me to read the Caterpillar.
She discovered a baggie full of pacifiers that she never liked. Now she’s found minutes and minutes of happiness rifling through them and try them all out, spitting each one out trying a new one out, spit it out, repeat. She gave one to Mei Mei and Mei Mei actually liked it and kept it in her mouth haha… Yes yes, we washed it off.
Here’s looking at you, Daddy! When daddy winks at her from across the breakfast table, Jia does her version of winking back. It’s just the cutest thing ever, she scrunches up her nose and squints both of her eyes. I’ll have to try to catch that on camera somehow.

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Sleep Training Part 2: Sleeping Through The Night

(Excerpted from Sleep Training Part 1) To SKIP this section and go straight to Part 2, Click Here

Sleep Training isn’t new. The formal rules/guidelines are rather new, but I asked my mom what she did with my brother and me, and she said she didn’t train us to sleep. She had me in my nursery room, they didn’t have a monitor, and she closed my door and closed their bedroom door. She said “Yeah you probably cried, but you were fine.” ha!

Some parents choose not to formally sleep train and to let their baby grow into their own natural rhythms of sleeping and needing comfort through parental intervention. That’s completely fine and each and every family goes about the topic of sleeping at their own approach. After hearing some horror stories of non-sleep trained babies, we decided before Jia was born that we would read up, take notes, and train Jia.

So what’s “Sleep Training”? Continue reading “Sleep Training Part 2: Sleeping Through The Night” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: “Little Toddles”

“Little Toddles.” That’s Jeff’s new nickname for Jia, along with “Boogie-Boo” because she is always dancing or boogying. 🙂

Says “Up” when she goes up the stairs and when she is standing up after a diaper change on the table, mimicking the word “diaper” pretty well, too.
Says “Shoes” uh oh, this could be a problem haha… Saying “Mei-Mei” is getting better. When she sees Mei Mei enter the room, she actually says her name.
She excitedly digs into her toy box and can spend a while just sifting through it.
Can feed her Chomp and Count Dino toy (can’t quite push the food far enough into his mouth to the point where he recognizes the food, but she understands where the Dino’s mouth is and tries to feed him)
Free stands for longer lengths of time while holding something, does this more frequently nowadays. If she doesn’t realize you’re not holding onto her she stands for a decent length of time.
Throws tantrums and pieces of food when she gets frustrated.
She’s VERY vocal, I love hearing her voice. She vocalizes all the time, especially when she reaches to try to get something, it’s like she’s talking her way through it. It’s so endearing, I love it.
Points meaningfully at items that she wants. For example, when she’s eating she points to her sip cup because she’s thirsty.
Loves pears (this is good, because even if she loved a bunch of vegetables, meat, and all sorts of fruit when it was pureed, if you’ve been keeping up with these WSDW posts, you’ll know that it’s a gamble on what she wants now), ZUCCHINI (I chopped into small pieces, put on the stove in a pan with olive oil, sprinkled with thyme and cinnamon… it worked. And it was better-received when it had been refrigerated!), and (de-skinned) mandarin oranges but *sigh* she may be tired of deli turkey! What now?! That was my old faithful backup meal that I knew she would take. Well that was a good three week run.
Her feet are ticklish! So cute watching her smile and pull back her feet when I tickle her. She’s especially ticklish in the bathtub haha!

Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: “Little Toddles”” »