Presents Completed!

Today we finally finished opening all of Esme's presents and she's been so excited to have new things to play with - her shopping cart, her pretend fruit cutting set, Mrs Potato Head, lots of puzzles, Duplo Lego bricks, Play-Doh, and so much more.  However when all was said and done she was pretty excited just to play in the pile of wrapping paper and throw it up in the air.

 

Then when she finished with all her playing she decided to take a little break and rest on the stairs and in her new recliner chair.

 

Esme's daycare has been closed all week so mommy's been home with her the whole time.  We've had lots of fun playing with all the toys, singing, dancing, going for walks, having playdates, etc.  Esme is catching on to words at an amazing speed right now.  She still loves to say "What doing?" to figure out what's going on.  Now she's even saying catch-phrases such as "Oh my goodness!" and "Oh man!"  She misses all her friends at school and is constantly talking about them. 

 

We put all the Christmas cards we received this year on the fridge and one of Esme's favorite daily activities is to look at each card and name all the kids and dogs in the cards.  If she doesn't know who it is then she asks "Who's that?"     

Merry Christmas





Phew, what a day!  And the crazy part is that we didn't even go anywhere.  We purposefully planned a day at home so that Esme could just relax and enjoy all her new toys and gifts.  She woke up and was surprised at the gifts waiting for her under the tree from Santa.  They weren't wrapped so she was able to dive right in and play with them.  When she got bored we switched to our stockings while I made breakfast.  Once stockings were over we took a break to eat and then Esme played with some of her new Santa toys again.  Every so often she'd open a new present and then take a break again.  This is how our day went amidst naps, snacks/meals, and some outside playtime.  Now Esme's tucked in bed, fast asleep, and we still haven't finished all her presents under the tree.  We figure we'll just let her open the rest whenever she wants in the next few days.  We even started opening gifts one at a time before Christmas but we still couldn't finish it all today.  And thankfully we didn't have any meltdowns today either so all in all it was a great day.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Practicing "cutting" fruit

Pushing her new shopping cart

Playing in her new tunnel/playhouse

Hugging her bear and taking it for another ride :)

Halfway There - Baby Shih #2

 

I keep telling Esme about the baby in my belly and then she points to her belly and talks about the baby :)  We went for our 20 week ultrasound today and everything looks great - all body parts are present and all organs are functioning normally so that was good to know too.  Baby weighs 12 ounces which is within normal range and was super active during the entire scan.  We even got to see the regular ultrasound images and then some 3D images.  One thing we did notice was the baby seems to have mommy's nose again.  We noticed that on Esme's ultrasounds too and it turned out to be true.   

 

I've been feeling baby move very slightly but no strong kicks yet. The fatigue has started to set in during my daily routine, like trying to get out the door with Esme. I feel winded just coming down the stairs with all of our stuff for the day and trying to help her at the same time. It passes quickly so I just have to take it slower. I'm still exercising and feeling good otherwise. My belly is definitely showing now and I'm in that weird transition between normal clothes and maternity clothes. I got my maternity bin out from last time to refresh my mind on what I have when I'm ready for it. 

 

Baby was crossing its legs and so we got a foot imprint

The baby's profile shot

The 3D image

Esme-isms

Esme's been talking up a storm lately especially with all the new words she's learning this holiday season.  Allen put lights up inside the house and she makes sure to remind us all that they're "dada's lights."  She loves to point to the Christmas tree and name off the things that she knows - tree, lights, ornaments, presents.  And then she points out the window and says all the neighbors names when she points to their lights.  She's a very particular girl...and also VERY bossy!  She loves to tell Allen and I what to do and she prefers when we copy her faces or movements.  If we don't, she stamps her foot and says "do it!" Esme definitely likes being in control.  She narrates whatever we're doing throughout the day and then when she doesn't know she asks us "what doing?"  She also likes to help, even if it does slow us down.  It makes her feel soooooooooo important. 

Last weekend we went to a small birthday party and midway through Esme turned to me and said, "mama, I tired."  I didn't truly know if she knew what she was saying but then just 30 minutes later she looked at me and whined "mama, wanna lie down."  Luckily we were just a few doors down from our house so I immediately took her home and put her down for her nap.  It was the most bizarre thing!

Her favorite song right now is Baby Beluga and she can sing most of it by herself.  However she prefers to dance and sing to it at the same time.  When she requests it she says "Boo-guh-la."  She's also got a huge pike of favorite books and loves to recite the words she knows when Allen reads to her at night before bed. 

Esme's getting pretty good with feeding herself with her silverware but she prefers asking Allen or I for our fork, spoon or chopsticks and then she tries to give us hers in exchange.  Thankfully she's still a really good eater.  As for potty training, she continues to go potty with all the other kids at school but she also goes in her diaper.  And just in the past week she's been requesting to go to the potty at home but only after we've just changed her diaper.  She's getting there I guess :)

Here's a pic of her visit to Santa last week.  As you can she she wasn't happy to be out of her mommy's arms :( 

Holiday Happenings

 

We were doing laundry this weekend and Esme usually likes to help us transfer the clothes from the washer to the dryer.  She's never done this before but all of a sudden she just climbed in the dryer and thought it was so funny.  It even brought out her cheeser smile :)  She really is a goofy girl, at home and at school apparently.  

 

 

 

 

Nana sent Esme her very own holiday dress so she was excited to wear it to her first holiday party this year.  We usually leave her at home with a babysitter since her bedtime is 7pm but since the party we were going to was early - 6pm, there were going to be lots of other kids, and we weren't planning on staying late we decided to take her.  She had a blast with the other kids and playing with all the new toys.  She became attached to the doll stroller and we had to peel her out of it by the end of the evening.  She also discovered olives and how to stick them on her fingertips like she usually does with raspberries.  Prior to this she's never liked the taste of olives but obviously that's changed now.    

 

I took this last picture of Allen and Esme and as soon as I saw it I thought, "wow, this is how Esme is gonna look when she gets older."  I just felt like she looks so different in this pic as compared to others. 

The Holidays Are Here

 

The Christmas tree is up and decorated, Christmas cards are sent, the shopping is all done and so now we're ready to celebrate!  Esme likes driving around in the evening and seeing all the lights on the houses in our neighborhood.  We even took her to a downtown tree lighting and I think it was more overwhelming than anything.  She just kept staring at all the lights and the other kids.  I gave her a candycane to hold and was surprised that she wanted to open the wrapper and eat it.  I didn't think she'd like the taste but she fooled me.  So far she hasn't shown any interest in taking the ornaments off the tree or trying to play with it so we're happy with that.  

 

Helping decorate the Christmas tree

 

Esme continues to love to dance and sing whenever she gets the chance.  Her next favorite activity is making faces and looking at herself in either the mirror or pictures.  We took family photos last month and here's the face she kept making whenever the photographer would say smile...

 

 

This was Allen's vote to go on our card this year but I couldn't do it.  Here's some other runner-ups that didn't make the Christmas card either...

 

  



Thanksgiving Weekend Update

Well I had every intention of coming back to the post from Thanksgiving evening to put up pictures but somehow time got away from me and now the weekend is almost over.  And it was an awesome weekend at that!  Allen, Esme and I spent a lot of quality time together and I barely remembered that I was on-call the whole time.  We even snuck in a quick day trip to Portland on Saturday to see some family and Esme handled the day so well.  During the drive down there she snacked, slept and kept herself entertained with a bunch of doggie hand puppets that she's named after all the dogs she knows.  We even made time for the Portland Children's Museum which was AMAZING!  Esme was so happy to play and see all the other kids and it helped to break up all the driving and visiting with family that we were doing.  We timed our drive home just right with her bedtime and thanks to a yummy and filling dinner she slept the entire way. 

Today we're busy rearranging the living room in order to make room for the Christmas tree.  Esme had fun playing with the furniture in the new configuration.  We're slowly trying to teach her about Santa, christmas trees, lights, etc. 

I'm 18 weeks pregnant this week and the nausea is definitely gone however I'm still a little particular about what I eat.  The insomnia is getting better and hopefully fading itself out.  As for the dizziness, I just move slower to avoid anymore problems.  I think this Thanksgiving weekend has helped my appetite and I'm almost back to my pre-pregnancy weight after losing so much in the first trimester from barely eating.  No maternity clothes yet but the time is coming soon.  Now I'm just waiting to feel the baby move!  Next appointment with our midwife is at 20 weeks and we'll have our ultrasound at that time.  We're going to keep the sex of the baby a secret again because it's so fun :)

Playing with cousin Tabitha last week

The cheeser smile might be back!

    Enjoying the rearranged furniture

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was on-call this weekend and have been in a major nesting mode so I didn't feel like doing anything big for Thanksgiving.  We spent the morning at Greenlake feeding the ducks and walking around the lake, and checking out all the other families preparing for their feasts later in the day ;)  Once we got home we had a late lunch with the usual Thanksgiving spread and then some.  Esme quickly decided that ham and cauliflower were her favorite dishes and that's about all she ate.  While we missed our family and friends, it really was a perfect day for just the three of us. 

Pics to come later!

Happy Birthday Baba!

Esme was excited to show us her birthday singing skills tonight to help celebrate Allen's birthday.  We were surprised at how well she knows the song in both Mandarin and English but we figure they sing it at least once a month at daycare with all the birthdays there.  She even helped blow out the candles and was requesting her cake right afterwards.  Again we were surprised because it's not like she has cake all the time with us.  

 

For the past month or so Esme has been obsessed with her socks.  She always asks for them and at night she even requests a pair of socks under her footed sleeper and then another pair over the feet on her sleeper.  So basically she has three layers on her feet at night.  She's recently found some new obsessions to take over for the socks though - pockets and hoods.  Can you tell we live in the mainland?  Ha ha!  She always looks for pockets whenever you put her clothes on and then puts her hands in them like it's a secret compartment.  The love of hoods just came about in the last 2 days and she wants to wear them in the house too.  Silly girl!  

 

The owls on her jacket are actually pockets

 

Today I had my 16 week pre-natal visit with the midwives that delivered Esme.  Allen had to work so Esme accompanied me to the visit and did really well.  She even got up on the exam table and laid down next to me when they listened to my belly for the baby's heartbeat.  Everything checked out fine and I also had some blood work done today.  Again Esme just sat in my lap and watched intently as the phlebotomist drew my blood.  So far this pregnancy has been pretty similar to the symptoms that I had with Esme.  Extreme nausea, loss of appetite, fatigue and weight loss in the first trimester and then insomnia and horrible dizziness when I stand up so far this trimester.  I take Benadryl to help me sleep on the nights I have to work and then try to just get by on the nights that I'm off.  My belly really popped out this week so it seems more apparent that I'm pregnant.  We keep talking about it all to Esme but we have no idea what she's thinking :)       

Parenthood

Happy Anniversary to us!  Yes, today was Allen and my anniversary so we decided to go out for sushi so I didn't have to cook dinner.  Well Esme had different plans and as soon as I picked her up from daycare she seemed a little off.  I just thought it was because I don't normally pick her up so she was out of her routine but I was wrong.  As soon as we got to the restaurant and ordered our food Esme puked all over the table.  It was a good thing there was no food on it yet!  We were still shocked cause she's not normally a puker.  We quickly cleaned up and got our food to go and went home.  Luckily we did cause she ended up puking in the car too even though we were less than a mile from our house.  She was definitely out of it by this time and when we were getting her bath ready she just put her head down on the bathroom floor like she was ready to curl up and go to bed.  It was so sad!  We got her all clean and in her pj's and then she puked again.  Needless to say we had lots of laundry to do tonight.  Allen and I finally got to our take-out awhile later but we were exhausted by this time so it was an early night for all of us.  Esme will stay home from school tomorrow and hopefully she's better by then.  Our poor little sick girl!   

Happy Halloween Part II

Esme had an awesome day!  I picked her up from daycare and she was excited to be able to carry home her plastic pumpkin full of goodies.  She even dug in and found some Smarties and wanted it as soon as we got in the car.  We've never really given her candy and barely any sweets  and she's never been really interested till now.  So I figured I'd let her try it out and she ended up eating two little rolls of it!  I made sure she got some good dinner in and then we got her dressed in her cow outfit for the evening.  We went to just four of our neighbors houses and that was enough.  Everyone was excited to see her and she was in awe of all that was going on around her.  Plus she was excited about all her new candy.  After that she was content hanging out at home with us and opening the door everytime we had trick-or-treaters.  We let her stay up past her bedtime to be a part of all the festivities too.  By the time we put her down, about an hour after her normal bedtime, she was wiped out and didn't make a peep!  We're just glad we made it through the day without any major candy meltdowns and we'll make sure to hide her plastic pumpkin and all the candy remnants tomorrow :)

 

My pumpkin pre-cutting

Allen carving out Boba Fett from Star Wars

Practicing giving candy to Addy the garden gnome

 

Her cute little cow tail

My little cow

Checking out her loot on our front steps

Delivery goody bags to her neighbor friends

Happy Halloween Surprise!

Mommy and her TWO skeletons for Halloween!  Yep, that's baby #2 on the way.  Due date May 1st.  I'm now 14 weeks and been dying to tell people but when I found this shirt I knew we'd have to wait till now cause it's too cute.  I'm wearing this shirt to work today and Esme will wear her skeleton suit to school.  Tonight she'll dress up in her cow costume for the little trick-or-treating we're going to do.  I'll post more after the evenings festivities!

Esme's First Pumpkin

Esme got a visit from Allen's parents last weekend and she was so happy to have all the attention.  They spent lots of time together making faces at each other, playing games, dancing, coloring, etc.  She even stayed home from school to spend extra time with them.  By the end of the visit it was apparent that she thought the entire world revolved around her and so we were glad to be able to send her back to daycare to get her back into shape ;)  And she wore Allen's parents out so it was good timing!

Due to rainy weather (surprise, surprise) we decided to skip the pumpkin patch this year and just got some pumpkins at the store.  Esme had a Mr. Potato Head Pumpkin Kit that was perfect for her.  We just poked the holes in the pumpkin and she could put in all the body parts and that was about as long as her attention span for that activity was anyways.  At daycare they got to carve real pumpkins and as the bigger kids pulled out the eyes and mouth parts (after the teachers cut them out) Esme said, "Uh-oh, broken!"  Allen and I are still working on our pumpkins since our only time to do it is after Esme goes to bed. 

Esme's been talking up a storm lately and picking up on all kinds of phrases.  Last week she came into the family room, pushed a button on her music cube, came up to me and wrapped both her hands around my arm and tried to pull me up, and then she said, "Let's dance!"  I was shocked.  Then a few days after that we were driving on the freeway and I said, "We made it!" after crossing 4 lanes of traffic to get to the carpool lane (I always narrate our drives for her since she's still sitting backwards in her carseat).  Then she turns her palms up and says to me, "What happened?"  All I could think was, who is this kid!  She's turning into such a big girl! 

Putting the lasso on her cowboy pumpkin

The finished product

Esme Update

Esme took about a week to get adjusted back to the west coast time zone after our last trip.  The first morning after we got back she woke up at 4:30am which is 7:30am in North Carolina.  Yikes!  It was a little bit of a shocker for us but luckily it's staying darker in the mornings now so we would leave her in her crib for an hour or so and sometimes she'd fall back asleep or she'd just talk to herself for awhile.  Each day she woke up later and later until she got back to her normal waking time of about 7am.  Now that we can handle!

The tantrums have entered our lives in the past few weeks and Esme goes to town with them sometimes.  It's a little stressful when we're trying to get ready for school and work in the morning but with a lot of patience and redirection we've been getting by.  She still lets me pick out her clothes but she's all over her shoes.  She's got a bin in the garage of her shoes and she's very particular in which ones she wears each day.  This girl REALLY loves her shoes.  If we're in a store and she sees kids shoes then she takes hers off and wants to try on those ones. 

She's still pottying a lot at daycare and at home it's hit or miss.  Sometimes she wants to sit on the potty and other times she doesn't.  And whether or not she produces anything varies too.  I finally put away the small potty seats that were on the bathroom floors cause she really just likes to use the ring on the big potty.  Now we need to get a stool so she can climb up there on her own. 

Esme continues to be an awesome eater.  We make it a point to eat dinner together every night which is a little tight since I get home around 5:30pm and we start her bedtime routine at 6:30pm.  As long as we're prepared then we can whip something up pretty quickly and she's good about eating the same things we're eating.  We're also letting her drink out of a small cup without a lid when she's in her highchair and she likes that. 

I've recently cleaned out her closet and drawers to replace all her summer clothes with winter clothes.  She's also grown out of anything sized for 12 months and now she's into 18 month clothing.  She still really loves sucking her thumb for comfort when she's upset or tired.  Another thing that comforts her are her "bee-la's."  That's blanket in Esme language.  When she wakes up in the morning she collects all her bee-la's in her crib so they're piled so high in her arms that it's hard to see her face and then she wants to be picked up.  It makes for a little difficult trip down the stairs to the kitchen.  Then once we wiggle them out of her hands we can sit her down for milk and whatever else she wants.

Grounded For Awhile

We made it back from North Carolina and we're happy to say that we have no more airplane travelling adventures for the next 9 months.  While Esme acts just like any other 19 month old stuck in a plane for 4 hours at a time, it's still exhausting on all of us.  We were very glad that we splurged for her own seat on the way home so she could wiggle and squirm all she wanted from the seat to the floor.  It's not so fun when she's doing that in our laps.   

                    
                          Learning to "fly" on the swings                                                                Esme didn't get the memo about the pants ;)
                   
                     Circle time with cousin Capri                                                                                     Just taking a break
                                                                      
                   Makena showing off her moves before ballet                                                  Esme wearing cousin Makena's shiny shoes
                    
                         Eating breakfast with cousin Capri                                                                  Esme testing out the doctor kit on Koa
                    
                        Wearing Aunty B's sunglasses                                                                 Getting a nature lesson from Aunty B
                                            
                         Walking to the horse stables                                                                         Esme trying to climb in the horse stalls