Max's first social smile and a bit of an update

Max smiled today. Real social smile too, not just a grin when he's dozing off.

I was poking my tongue out at him for about 20 seconds, and he smiled at me LOL. I did it again and he smiled again! He then smiled after peeing on my mother. :P LOL Cheeky little guy.

He's gaining weight pretty well, although I am exhausted from the round the clock feeding and pumping. Sometimes I wonder how on earth I lasted so long last time with Kaitlyn and didn't give up on breastfeeding. I had been so tempted to give up numerous tgimes already this time... I will try to stick it out for 6 weeks, hopefully it will get easier.

Max has been a very good baby so far, as long as he gets enough to eat, he's a very easy going and happy baby and can settle himself to sleep quite well. I feel very blessed. Sometimes I am tempted to hold him till he falls completely asleep but then I had to resist because I don't want to repeat all the mistakes I made with Kaitlyn and cause sleeping/settling issues for Max.

I still haven't had the chance to write his birth story yet as I am still sore and very tired. I will try to do that soon.

Max finally has a Chinese middle name, Yiyang, meaning vast ocean. Now we can finally register his birth.

Kaitlyn 23 months update

Kaitlyn had an explosion of in speech in the last month. She uses conjunctions and makes complex sentences now, such as "I want to eat stirred fried noodles because it smells nice and it's smooth"; and things like "Grandpa's surname is Guan, mum's surname is also Guan." Her Mandarin is still quite a bit better than her English. Guess we have to speak to her a bit more in English to prep her for childcare later this year. She answers simple questions correctly such as "how old are you?", "what is your name?" "what is your surname", "where is ?" etc. She started asking "why" last week. oh the fun begins now...

We are trying to also introduce Cantonese to her. She understands much of it but she doesn't speak it much just yet because we speaks mainly Mandarin and English to her but speaks Cantonese with each other.

She is learning to read and recognises the Chinese Characters in her own name and can spell half of her English name.

She loves to draw and write. Unfortunately our furniture, floor boards and electrical appliances had all fallen victims to her pens and crayons. She coloured in our fridge orange last week!

The Terrible Twos are kicking in more and more. She squeals and barks when she's not getting her way. Very annoying sounds... /sighs. Although, most of the time, she's still very independent and well behaved. Sometime I think she's too independent, because my mother just sits her down to play on her own for hours at a time instead of interacting with her more, which annoys me. I wish I feel a lot better so I could actually play with her more very soon.

She threw her biggest/longest tantrum to date last night... She decided she did not want to eat dinner, instead she wants to go to the playground and play with swings and slides. So she whine and screamed and cried or a WHOLE HOUR. I think my head is STILL ringing from all that noise. Anyways, she did not get to go to the playground. After screaming for over an hour, she finally ate her dinner. ah the joy of terrible twos...

She's back under 10kgs again and her appetite is still very good. Maybe it's just fast metabolism? I shall ask the pediatrician at our next appointment in February.

She has a great imagination. She does pretend tea parties with her dolls and stuffed animals. She projects how she feels/wants onto her toys sometimes. Like she told us last night that her dog wants to go to play on the slides, when we ignored her repeated request to go to the playground. LOL

She does 10 nursery rhymes/songs now and loves to sing and dance. She sings herself to sleep most nights.

Where did my baby go?

I've always thought Kaitlyn is this tiny skinny little girl as she is still under 10kgs (lost 200gms the last 2 weeks). Then yesterday morning, she woke up hysterical, screaming her head off. So I had to go in and cuddled her for a while. As I cuddled her, I was like wow, she's BIG. After handling a newborn for a couple of weeks, I realised how big and grown up my baby girl really IS. She's definitely not a "baby" anymore, but more of a child!

It seemed like only yesterday we brought her home from hospital and only last week that we were having countless sleepless nights trying to get her to eat and sleep properly. Then, all of a sudden, she's so grown up! She's now more than half of my height and is able to have proper conversations with us, and is eating everything we eat!

Time goes by way too fast, and when you have kids, you see such tangible evidence of it going by, every single day, in your growing child(ren). Just where did my precious little baby girl go?! I cuddled her for as long as I could yesterday morning, before Max woke up for another feed. I am too afraid that the next time I get to hug her, I'd be sending her off to school, or university.

Kaitlyn's FIRST success at toilet training!

Kaitlyn successfully did a #2 at the big people toilet today!!! She's been telling us when she wants to use the toilet and has been gradually getting better at sitting on the loo, but this is the first time she managed to do SOMETHING while on there.

The whole house applauded :D :D :D Yep, so proud, over poop LOL.

My 2 babies

So... do siblings look alike? (Kaitlyn/Max)

• Asleep on the Boppy Pillow:

• Hours old

• Stretching

Kaitlyn, the big sister

I am pleasantly surprised so far about how well Kaitlyn is adjusting to the new baby. She loves to see the baby, whenever she sees him, she cuddles and kisses him and gives him her toys. She even shared her rabbit and pillows (her favourites). She's completely fascinated with Max's full head of hair and loves to touch it, saying "hair, brother's hair". She would then point out all of his body parts, "eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hand, shake hands, foot, toes, legs". She's adorable really. Max just peacefully sleeps through all the hugging, poking and grabbing. This boy sure can sleep, it's waking him up (even for feeding) that has been a challenge...

Kaitlyn hasn't been bothered much at night from Max's crying, and hasn't woken up cranky yet. It helps that Max is not a screamer like Kaitlyn was as a newborn. When Kaitlyn cried, she was LOUD and doesn't even stop to take breath. Max cries loud too but at least he stops frequently to give the adults a chance to respond... LOL

I hope she continues to be nice and happy about having a baby brother. I feel guilty at the moment not being able to spend much time with her as I am having a difficult time recovering from the birth with much pain and we have stairs in the house, which is not exactly great for me right now. I spend most of my time upstairs.

I do try to spend some time each day with Kaitlyn and Kaitlyn is very clingy when I am around. She runs up to me, hugs and kisses me and tells me she misses me. Such awww moments. She doesn't quite understand that the baby is now been BORN. She still sometimes lift up my shirt and hugs, pats and kisses my tummy and says "hi baby". That always makes me a little sad that I am no longer pregnant (especially when this is most likely my last baby).

Kaitlyn's 22 months update and Christmas!

Height: 83cm
Weight: 10 Kilograms

Kaitlyn started saying 3 syllable words! Her best efforts at the moment are "position" and "abacus". She speaks proper sentences with correct grammar in English and in Mandarin. She is still a bit confused about You and I, for example, sometimes she will say "mummy feeds you" when she meant "mummy feeds me." She actually knows she is not getting those right, so to get around it, she substitutes any references to herself with her name, it's quite cute really.

She apparently has a thinking sound/gesture. At night, we go through flashcards of objects and nursery rhymes with her, and sometimes when we ask her to tell us what something is, she taps on the card when she thinks. She knows all the words in the flashcards and most of her books now. I think it may be time to buy her different cards (maybe numbers and alphabet?) She can repeat the entire alphabet after you, i.e. you say A, she will say A etc. and besides W, she says all alphabets correctly. She actually counts without prompting now, and does 1-5 in Mandarin very well. Actually, she counts to 10, except most of the time, she forgets 4 and 6... LOL

She is phasing out her afternoon nap, which is making life a little harder on my parents as dad needs to do more work after he gets home, so can't take care of her if she's up, and mum has to cook. Good thing I am on maternity leave, so hopefully can look after her a bit more

Oh, she started posing for the camera. Whenever she sees the camera, she gives a huge grin where you see her teeth but can't see much of her eyes, and she wrinkles her nose when she smiles.

Her hair is getting a little longer too. I don't know if I would take her to get it cut. She was bald for SOOOOO long, I just don't have the heart to even shorten it now that she has SOME hair. It's still a pale brown colour. Her eyebrows are starting to be more visible now, and have changed from very blonde to light brown.

The BIGGEST news of the month though is that she FINALLY reached TEN KILOGRAMS as of tonight! I thought it'd take another few months seeing how she gains a couple hundred grams and loses a few hundred grams from week to week... But the last 2 weeks, she's done quite a bit of growing, gained about 500 grams and gotten a little taller too. 10 KILOs! I think a celebration dance is in order LOL...

She popped SIX teeth in a week, so was a bit of a little terror last week and didn't eat very well. I am very relieved that she made 10 KILOs though.

Her tantrums are still more or less under control. She does whine and cry when things don't go her way, but she calms down in a couple of minutes when everyone just ignores her. She sometimes throws things, which annoys me. When she does that, she gets a loud "No" from us, and she runs off to whoever in the house that didn't "yell" at her, and cries for a couple of minutes and gives the "yeller" dirty looks. She behaves very well generally when there's only one adult in the house watching her. But she plays us against each other when there are more than one person in the house. She especially know how to have my father do the dirty work for her and get him to yell at anyone else that had been "mean" to her. It's amazing how manipulative little toddlers are...

She's very creative/artistic. She loves to draw, particularly fascinated with rabbits, cars and little people. She draws lines very well now. She likes orange coloured pens. She also sings quite well. :)

Kaitlyn seems to think I could fix anything. The other day, she picked a flower from our garden. She accidentally broke one of the pedals off the flower. She walked up to me, holding both the flower and the fallen pedal and looked at me expectantly, "flower is broken" and handed me the flower and pedal. It was sort of a "aww" moment for me... to know how the kid things we could pretty much do anything, and also know that there are and always be things that breaks that no matter how much we want to help, still wouldn't be able to fix...

4 more sleeps until baby #2 joins us... We have most things ready and have been trying to prep Kaitlyn as much as possible about the new arrival. I think she sort of understands, but she really wouldn't "get it" until the new baby comes home and then she'd have to share our attention. I worry and don't know how she would react. I do hope the kids will get along and Kaitlyn wouldn't be too traumatised.

Christmas this year has been very low key because I am so hugely pregnant and we have so much to do to get ready for baby #2. It was still wonderful to watch Kaitlyn open the presents and how her whole face lights up. We kept some of the presents we bought for her birthday because we thought 5 pieces were more than enough. She got the following for Christmas:

* An wooden abacus
* A doll that she can dress/undress and would open/close the eyes. She loves the doll and carries it everyone, kisses it, hugs it and pretty much just mothers it.
* A tea set, she likes to pretend she's drinking tea and making tea (with tiny stuff animals LOL)
* A toy frying pan with toy foods and spatula, bottle of "oil" and bottle of tomato sauce. She actually knows to put in oil first before putting the food in.
* A very large coloring-in activity book.

She handled Christmas and crowds very well. I took her to work Christmas Eve and we took her to a BBQ Christmas night. She didn't throw any tantrums at all. She just acted stand-off-ish, which is her norm outside of the home anyways.