Tag Archives: Milestones

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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Nutrition in a Nutshell for Your Sprout: Children (5 Years+)

Child Nutrition (5 Years and Up)

So back in my public health days, I worked for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s department of Child and Adolescent Health. Much of my work was dedicated to creating an educational program that supported healthy diets and physical activity of pre-school and school-aged children. I spent hundreds of hours designing a program and performing bill analyses that were written to improve overweight and obesity in the LA Unified School District. So, for a portion of my early adulthood, this topic was my jam.

The diet of a 5-year old (and up) is very similar to what our diets, as adults, should resemble: healthy and lean meats, half of the plate consisting of a variety of brightly colored fruits and vegetables, whole grains (not refined white flour that has been stripped of its healthy fiber), etc. It’s hard enough for us to follow, but it is of paramount importance for us to get our kids off on the right foot in these early years.

If you missed previous Nutrition in a Nutshell posts, click the links below

Nutrition in a Nutshell For Your Sprout: Infancy

Nutrition in a Nutshell For Your Sprout: Toddler & Pre-schooler

So, what should be the focus for these (still) growing sprouts? Here’s a summary:^1-9 Continue reading “Nutrition in a Nutshell for Your Sprout: Children (5 Years+)” »

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: 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 🙂

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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” »