The USA trip, part 1, Grandma's place

Day 3 of being in Oakland, Calinfornia, somewhere next door to San Francisco, or is it just a suburb of San Francisco? I have no idea.

The flight from Sydney was very pleasant considering I was with my 3 year old daughter, Kaitlyn. I packed her little Trunki suit case full of toys, snacks, nappies and wipes, and of course her Dolly. And it turned out, she did not want a bar of Dolly, did not even need any activities/toys. She was fascinated by the airport, then the plane, then the clouds, then was zombie-ised by Playhouse Disney and Toy Story 3 for much of the trip. She got over tired and had a bit of trouble getting to sleep on the plane. But then, it's not very comfortable on a plane, I wouldn't really blame her. I probably fed her too many Tiny Teddies anyways. All in all, she was a perfect angel the whole trip. I was not as nervous a flyer this time, probably because I am so distracted with Kaitlyn there all the time.

When we get to the SF airport, we waited for almost 2 hours LOL. I was so worried that I told my family in SF the wrong date/time, I frantically called everyone in Sydney to try to get hold of any one. Silly me for not having local people's phone number with me.

Soon as we get out of the airport, all I could see was bridges and overpasses, EVERYWHERE and stacking on top of one another.... It looked like a perfect maze. I am very glad I am not driving. There's no way I could get from point A to point B anywhere in/near town.

I am very impressed with the LONG LONG bridges connecting sides of the city.

Soon we arrived at Grandma's place in Oakland. It's a elderly residence converted from an old old hotel. It has nice period looking ceilings and a very old worn out piano in the lobby area. Grandma's place looks and smells like grandma/grandpa's place in Guangzhou. It's a very familiar feeling and brought back quite a lot of childhood memories. It's a good sized one bedroom apartment and grandpa's photo was hanging in the most visible place. I miss grandpa, a lot...

Grandma is getting old... although she did not look much different to when I saw her in 2007, except having shrunk/gotten shorter a little more. It's good to see her again :)

She was very happy to meet Kaitlyn, so was everyone else in the family that came to meet her. I had forgotten what having a big family is like... the noise, the crowd, the opinions and the bantering. Kaitlyn was very good with everyone, and actually greeted people and towards the end of the day even gave people hugs and kisses. And she talked with people. I am very pleasantly surprised.

Kaitlyn was exhausted by dinner time and fell asleep AT the dinner table. We had one of those Funniest Home Video moments where she was dozing off and falling and I had to very briefly struggle in my head whether to catch her or grab the camera... I caught her, bathed her quickly and put her to bed. The Peapod travel cot we bought worked wonders! It only took 2 minutes to set up even with inflating the mattress and Kaitlyn slept very well. So well in fact, grandma kept checking on her because she thougth Kaitlyn was too quiet and may've soffocated.

Day 2, the family went to yum cha in the morning. Once again, I forgot about how long it usually takes a big family to actually get out of the door to go anywhere. We decided to leave the apartment at 15 to 9, and we had 5 gatherings at the lift door and people kept disappearing back into the apartment. We ended up ACTUALLY leaving about 15 to 10! I was so glad that my cousin Jack knows what a big family is like and did not take me seriously when I said to pick my up at 10am, or he would've had to wait a long long time...

After Yum Cha, Jack took us into San Francisco itself. I still think SF is quiet, even downtoan is quiet. Oakland actually felt a lot like Cabramatta or Bankstown, but almost deserted most of the time. At night though, Oakland is a lot of Telopea... lots of cop cars driving by with sirens blasting at full volume.

We walked around town a bit, and had lunch at a Thai fast food place. The serving size is just too big here... and it is worse with Kaitlyn because I have to eat 1.5 lots of food as she never finishes her food. I have a feeling I am going to gain quite a few kilos here.

We then went to the Cable Car Museum. It's actually the powerhouse that is ACTUALLY moving all the cable cars in San Francisco. It's quite fascinating to watch all the giant gears and cables in motion.

It's an interesting city. It's in an earthquake zone, BUT it has double decker bridges that are miles and miles long, and it has caverns under most city streets to house the gears and cables that pulls the cable cars along. I guess it's all out of necessity, sort of like having Nuclear Power Plants in earth quake zones in Japan?

Kaitlyn was such a trooper. She walked with us, carrying her own little backpack, all day. She had a lot of fun shopping at Macy's and Old Navy. She was trying on stuff and TELLING me which she wanted. The girl definitely has an opinion on most things.

Emma and Jack took us to a very nice seafood restaurant called Woodhouse Fish Co. in Fillmore. The food was excellent, company was great. AND we get to see San Francisco at night when we drove back through Van Ness and such.

I like the fire escapes/stairs outside of the buildings, reminds me of the show Friends, and probably many others.

Kaitlyn was exhausted again by the time we got back in the car after dinner, and was asleep within minutes.

Day 3 is relax day and spending with Grandma. We walked around Oakland Chinatown to get to a lunch spot. I wanted Fish Ball Noodle Soup the way they make it in Guangzhou, but was disappointed to find that they also make it here the same as Sydney. It's really just a noodle soup with 5 fish balls and some green vegies. I guess I will have to wait till the next time I visit Guangzhou for the proper fishball noodle soup. Grandma could not walk very far anymore without having very sore legs, hips and back. :(

The weather here is wonderful at the moment, it's almost warmer than Sydney.

Tonight we will be checking into a little hotel about 3 minutes walk from Grandma's. I am hoping Kaitlyn can sleep in a big person bed. :)

Kaitlyn, 2 Years 4 months

It had been a very strange, exhausting, exciting, challenging month, emotionally and psychologically for everyone... Kaitlyn has had many new experiences and adjusted rather well to all the changes.

She's gotten 3cm taller in the past couple of months. Many of her pants and tops are too short for her now. Her weight is still hovering around 10.5kg due to all the colds and flus she keeps picking up from child care.

She makes up stories and reads books to herself now. She can almost recite "the little red caboose" as daddy reads it to her every night before bed. She does a lot of pretending and acting with her toys. She spent 3 hours giving her dolly "medicine" each day a few weeks ago after her course of antibiotics LOL. All mornings, she would go to a drawer, use a pen (pretend it was a syringe) to "suck up medicine", and give it to dolly. I am sure the poor dolly is quite drugged up for a week. She also puts on different people's clothes and prance around in front of the mirror checking herself out. Max's clothes are too small for her, so she puts them on her head. :D

She claims everything and everyone as "Kaitlyn's". Now we have Kaitlyn's park, Kaitlyn's shopping centre and Kaitlyn's moon, etc. She also wanted to touch the moon the other day.

In the evenings, when she is tired, she gets a little jealous of Max, and would ask me to put Max down and hold her instead and tells Max, "Kaitlyn's mummy". Most of the time though, she is quite sweet with Max. If Max cries, she would ask, "why maxi cry?" "you ok maxi" and start burying him with toys. She would also sit with him or sit in front of him and do baby talk with him to make him laugh.

Kaitlyn had her first taste of gingerbread man a couple of weeks ago and talked about it for a few days afterwards. She loves the gingerbread man, especially his chocolate eyes. She also had her first taste of chocolate milkshake and loved that too. Although it took about 40 minutes convincing to give the milkshake a try.

She now knows about 10 colours very well, and also started to know the days of the week and what she does for each day. She is starting to sing more in tune too.

The other day, she didn't want to go to childare,
she came to me with dolly and said "dolly is crying. Why is dolly crying?".
I asked, "why is dolly crying?"
Kaitlyn: "Kaitlyn going to childcare. dolly crying at home, dolly sad kaitlyn going childcare."

She is still quite addicted to "In the Night Garden". She now knows all the character's names and their introduction songs and will sing and dance along with them.

She played by a pool for the first time too, hopefully she would get over he fear of water in her face by summer so she could learn to swim.

Kaitlyn: 2 years and 3 months

So, it's 1.30am and I cannot sleep because my throat is so sore I can hardly swallow at all.. Here I sit waiting for the pain pills to kick in before I could attempt to sleep again, guess I'd better try to finish this late late update for Kaitlyn.

Height: around 90ish cm
Weight: 10.5kgs (Lost 200gms again... arggh)

We are still getting sick all the time, everyone in the family gets sick one after another and then start all over again. I think it's probably all thanks to childcare and the germs circulating amongst the kids there. I get sick the most out of everyone though, so far I have had fevers, mastitis, sore throats, swollen tongue, bad headaches, and I busted my back lifting Max out of his rocker... I just cannot CANNOT wait for this darn flu/cold season to be over.

Childcare has really helped with her shyness around unfamiliar people. She also talks heaps more in English now. (although now we worry that she doesn't speak Chinese much anymore). She finally started napping sometimes when she goes to Childcare. She had made a couple of friends too.

She talks quiet well and asks questions such as what is that, where are we going, what's wrong, what happened. Whenever Max fusses, she runs up to him, pats him on the head and asks, what's wrong?

She also consistently use "please", "excuse me", "Thank you", "I am sorry" in the right context.

Her little brain is starting to come up with "schemes" to get her way. Such as refusing breakfast on the days she needs to go to Childcare, hoping that by not eating breakfast, she won't have to go.

I think she's getting quite jealous of Max for taking so much of my time and attention, that she has become increasingly clingy to me lately. Whenever she's home, she's always going "mummy, mummy, mummy" in increasing volumes until I get to her. She also regressed when we go out, instead of walking contently on her own for hours, she now will ask me to pick her up and carry her. I am only a little person, I am not made to carry a 10+kg kid around!~!! So yeah, I've been putting her in the stroller when we go out now. I feel bad that she doesn't get to walk as much but I just cannot carry her for more than 5 minutes at a time.

She continues to enact things she does/sees. She would go through her entire bed time routine with her doll. 1. putting the doll in the bath. 2. arranging a "towel" the same way daddy does on his shoulder before getting the doll to "say" "1-2-3", then picks it up. 3. put lotion on the doll and put nappy on. 4. put the doll in "position" (i.e. having a pillow proping it up on her lap), and feeds her "milk". 5. reads to the doll. 6. puts doll to bed and sings "if you are happy and you know it". 7. walks away and says "good night". Never misses any minute detail!! And the other day, she lined up all of her stuff toys and dolls on the floor, each having a piece of paper as "bed", each sleeping on the tummy! Apparently that's what they do in Childcare, making rows of temporary beds and have the kids all sleep lined up. She refused to put them away before she goes to nap, because they were her friends and they were sleeping too!

She loves to draw and write. She can write "W" and "K", her favourite letters for the month. She also draws pictures of circles, lines, traces her hands, dots etc. and then tells us a story of what she is drawing.

She can tell some of her colours "red", "pink", "green", and "orange". and some shapes, "circle", "square" and "triangle".

She totally knows how to dress herself now, clothes, pants, socks and shoes, although sometimes she puts the shoes in the wrong foot still. She has become very particular on what she wants to wear each day. I try to get really plain stuff for the inside layers, otherwise, she refuses to another layer on even if she is still cold. I also have to put stockings inside her pants because she loves to take off her socks!

Her half yearly report from childcare is coming up, I am looking forward to seeing her porfolio. I had been flipping through the class "date book", there are some really gorgeous picture of her mixing with the kids and doing activities.

Oh and her first ever "school" pictures will be taken next Tuesday! I hope it wouldn't be a screaming pic...

Max: 4 Months update

Our little chubby bubba turned 4 months old on the 30th April, but we were away for a while, so this update is late! It's strange how the first time the first 7 months felt like an eternity, and the second time these first 4 months just flew by.

Height: not sure, he is too wiggly to measure
Weight: 6.7kg

He is now doing the following:

• constantly rolling from side to side
• occasionally rolled from tummy to back and a couple of times from back to tummy
• sucks hands ALL the time, now that he has found both of his hands, he attempts to stick both hands into the mouth at the same time and make very loud sucking noises
• laughs out loud a lot and smiling whenever anyone is paying him attention, such a happy baby.
• when on the tummy, lifts his head and chest 90 degrees to the floor
• able to sit with minimum back support
• loves to stand with a little support
• has a stable routine, eating every 2 to 4 hours during the day, and every 4 to 6 hours at night
• twiddles both hands together and "counts" his fingers
• kicks and bats at toys
• getting louder and louder and makes many different sounds
• his head doesn't wobble at all when sitting or standing, and his head doesn't fall backwards when we pull him up to sitting
• able to hold and shake rattles
• recognises and follows my voice and footsteps around the room
• gets very cranky if left lying flat for too long, he likes to be able to see what's going on in the rooms.
• Blows raspberries and dribbles a lot
• Smacks his lips to make loud smacking noise
• squeals

The 2 kids finally syncronised their midday nap, so I get a couple of hours to myself each day, it is wonderful to get some housework done or just to take a bit of a rest.

He runs very warm! We were down in Albury for a week last week. I had to wear 3 layers of clothes, and had 4 layers of blankets/doonas at night. He only wore a short sleeve onesie and a long sleeve onesie, wrapped, and covered with a single bedsheet, and he still got sweaty sometimes! He hates his little feet getting too warm.

Our routines are getting much better now and it no longer feels like a struggle with the 2 kids. :)

We traveled to Albury to visit the grandparents, and Max traveled very well on the long car ride, rarely cried at all. The trip back to Sydney, he just slept through it all, waking to eat whenever we stopped to rest. He also slept pretty well and stuck with his routine more or less while we were there. It was a great trip. :)

We can no longer leave him in his pram, change table, or rocker without strapping him in properly. When we went to dinner last week, he actually wiggled his way out of the pram and landed on the floor!! He was fully wrapped too... Such a little Houdini.

Kaitlyn, 2 year 2 months update

Weight: 10.4kgs
Height: 87cm

This month passed a lot slower than usual, mainly because everyone in the household has been sick on and off. I was sick with flu and mastitis for over a week. Kaitlyn had the runny nose for a few weeks but didn't seem to bother her, until last week, she woke up one morning after childcare day with a fever. Then for 3 days, she refuses to eat or drink anything. Also, it was quite a task to get any meds into her. Poor girl must had very sore throat and couldn't swollow anything. The doc gave her antibiotics saying that she had secondary infection in the throat and chest while still getting over a cold/flu. The one "good" thing about her being sick though, is that she became very cuddly. It was nice to just sit around and cuddle up to my little girl. Usually, she's always running around all over the house and wouldn't sit still.

She had the swine flu vaccindation a couple of weeks before she got the cold, and she didn't have any reactions at all. She was very brave at the doctors and only cried for a few seconds each time (there were 2 shots).

She also had her 2 years check up at the peadiatrician's. She's growing very well, ahead on most development milestones. She is on 50% on height and head circumference, but only 3% on weight. Doc still thinks she's ok being so skinny, so I try not to worry too much. She still walks on tip toes a lot, so the doc asks us to put shoes on her most of the time and correct her whenever we see her walk on tip toes. He checked her over and said he didn't see any neurological or physical reasons for her to be walking on tip toes all the time, so it's probably just habit for her. If she continues to walk this way in 6 months, we need to go back for another check. Otherwise, the next Peadiatrician checkup will be at 4 years old, before she starts school.

She is adjusting very well at childcare now. She is eager to go every Monday and Tuesday and last week, she didn't even cry when we left. She was sick this Monday and Tuesday but she asked us to take her to childcare to play and we had to try to explain that she is sick and can't go. She looked disappointed. She has made a little friend there too.

We can now have simple conversations with her! I think it's rather cool to find out all the wonderful, funny, silly things that little mind of her is thinking.

She loves to sing and dance, and loves to do the hand/feet actions when we sing nursery rhymes. Although, sometimes it gets a little annoying for me when she insists that we sing "I am a little tea pot" or "incy wincy spider" for the m'th time...

What else... mmm... can't think of anything much at this particular moment (too early in the morning LOL). Will post another time when things come to mind.

Kaitlyn 2 year 1 Month

Another month has passed. I am late in writing this update as I am rather exhausted due to a roller coaster of a week. A few major things happened in our family in the last month...

Anyways, onto Kaitlyn:

Now that Max's feeding problem has been corrected, I get to spend more time with Kaitlyn. Also, some unpleasant happenings in the household lead to my mother not talking to us for a couple of weeks, and I really enjoyed those couple of weeks as I took full time care of both kids and I now feel a lot more confident about my abilities as a mother. It works wonders when you are not constantly being criticised and second guessed.

I am amazed how much Kaitlyn has grown and how well she speaks and expresses herself.

I took her out and played with bubbles a couple of weeks ago, and she had so much fun just watching the bubbles fly around and chasing them. To her, it was pure wonder. She kept asking for more bubbles. :)

We go to the playground almost every morning, when Max goes down for his first nap. It's a pleasant short walk for both of us. She is a pro now on all the equipment in that playground. She is usually such a cautious little girl, but when she is there, she has absolutely no fear. She climbs on everything, goes up and down the slide in all sort of ways, asks me to push her really high on the swings. It is nice to get out of the house each day, we both get some exercise and tiring her out means she would eat better and nap a bit better.

I finally stopped her from grazing all day. She now has 3 proper meals and 2 snacks in between, plus a bottle of milk before bed. It is much better now that she is no longer constantly snacking on junk, such bad habits. She feeds herself most meals too and will sit on her chair until she finishes her meal. She even started gaining a little bit of weight!

Of course the most major thing is that she started childcare! She had 2 half days last week and did 2 full days this week. She will be going 2 full days each week from now on. She is adjusting pretty well. Each day, she cries a little when I said bye bye but generally stops quick enough. She has a bit of a fit at nap time, so we gave her a pillow to take with her, and the teachers said that she stopped crying when she got the pillow. Although she cried again when they took it away after nap time. The rest of the time, she is very quiet and well behaved. She is still not talking yet at Childcare. That will probably take a few weeks. She is eating though, which is great. She is already getting a bit of a tan LOL

She is still wonderful with Max. Although she is a bit bossy. LOL She is constantly telling Max off for sucking his fists. She helps me to take care of Max. She comes to get me if I didn't hear Max cry. Even when she is napping, she would call out, brother is crying, brother don't cry. It is so cute...

The last week she has been obsessed with counting. She is constantly counting 1 to 10 in English and Mandarin. She sometimes forgets the number 6 in English...

I finally caught her singing ABC on a video! I shall upload that one of these days. I also finished sorting the photos that are on our computer. Now just have to do the thousands that are on my parents computer... LOL The curse of digital cameras.

Max 3 Months Update

Our little man is growing like a weed. :D He is already way over half of his sister's weight! He is now 6kg and Kaitlyn still hovering at 10kg. He has these adorable chubby rolls, double chin and a very round tummy. He can sit with support now and looks like a little buddha. I just love chubby bubba...

He had his 2 months shots and amazingly did not get sick at all. He didn't even get more cranky than usual. It was still terrible to watch him getting jabbed twice and forced to take meds though. Next one is at 4 months I think...

He rolled both ways now, tummy to back and back to tummy, although he would only do the full rolls when he is very mad/frustrated. He is constantly rolling to his sides though.

He has very good neck control now and can lift his head up for quite some time.

He does this silly thing while feeding... He would look up at me, stare at me for a while, and if I make faces at him, he giggles and laughs out loud, and sometimes make faces back at me. I try not to do that too often though because he forgets he is eating and chokes and coughs sometimes when he laughs too hard. But it's so very cute and such great bonding moments.

He makes lots of cooing and sounds and is getting louder everyday. He does the same thing as Kaitlyn when he yawns, making a very cute long yawn sound. He also started to imitate some simple sounds that we make.

He loves to be tickled, also loves to have his head rubbed. These always make him smile wide or laugh out loud.

He now follows faces and objects and grabs things. He recognises my voice and foot steps and would always look around for me if someone else is holding him.

He finally starting to have a pretty stable schedules. His last feed is between 6:30 and 8pm, after that feed, he baths and goes to bed for the day. He would wake for a feed between midnight and 2, then back to bed till between 5 and 7. Sometimes he would nap a bit after that, sometimes just lie there entertaining himself for a bit. He would wake for the day between 8:30am and 10:am. Then feeds from there every 3 to 4 hours. He gets 6 to 7 feeds a day, awake for 1 to 1.5 hours and naps for 1.5 to 2.5 hours between each feed.

He loves Kaitlyn I think. He always smiles and coos when she talks to him and plays with him. He lets her move his arms, legs and rubs his tummy and head. She points at his face and names all the facial features, and he just giggles.

I just LOVE the toothless baby grin and the loud baby laughs... can't get enough of them.