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  

Hanging Out With The Girls

We made it to North Carolina in one piece and it was sooooooooooo much better than our last flight to the east coast.  Of course Esme was healthy this time and that made all the difference.  She only slept about 2/3 of the overnight flight and the rest of the time she just wiggled around in our laps but was happy.  The flight was longer too since we flew straight from Seattle to Charlotte, NC and I think that helped.  We spent an early morning in the Charlotte airport and then flew to Wilmington which we've decided is the cutest airport we've ever seen.  It looked like you were flying right into someone's plantation home with rocking chairs and all.  We were greeted with lots of humidity but Esme's adjusted just fine.

Since we've been here we've just been having fun hanging out with cousins Makena and Capri, and Aunty Bee and Uncle Josh.  It's been nice to not have to worry about having things to do and being go-go-go.  Esme's even been having fun playing with their boxer dog, Koa, too.  It took her a day or so to get used to him but now she has no problem.  The outside swing/playset provides a lot of entertainment but Esme has yet to go down the twisty tube slide again, after the first time which scared her pretty good.  Pictures to come later :)

More Airplanes

So tomorrow night we're embarking on another adventure to the east coast.  I'm definitely hesitant after our last trip but at least this time we'll be staying for 9 days so we'll all have more time to adjust.  We also went ahead and bought Esme her own seat for our return flight which is during the day.  Tomorrow night we're on a redeye again and we figure she'll just sleep on us anyways.  We're headed to Sneads Ferry, North Carolina to visit Aunty B, Uncle Josh, Makena and Capri.  I've been having Esme practice all their names and they end up sounding like "Ah-Bee-C" for Aunty B, "Kena" for Makena and "Pea" for Capri so we decided to use her other nickname, Cici, which she can say with no problem.  For Uncle Josh she can say the correct amount of syllables but it sounds nothing like his name. 

Since our last trip Esme's sleep has been awesome.  Bedtime is still at 7pm but now she's sleeping in till about 7am (previously it was 6am) and sometimes (maybe once or twice a week) till almost 8am.  It's so strange on those days to get ready all by myself without having to distract her the whole time.  When we're all home and she gets up we just pull her in bed with us and she'll lay there quietly until one of us opens our eyes and makes eye contact with her.  Then she's all over us and no one's going back to sleep ;)

We took this picture on our last trip when we met up with my sister and family on her birthday in Corning, NY.  It was Labor Day so the town was pretty much shut down so we decided to take a picture on the sidewalk.  We put the camera on a timer and placed it on a storefront ledge.  Well all of a sudden, right before the camera was about to go off, this man in an electric wheelchair appeared out of nowhere and had no idea we were taking a picture so he's just inches from the camera when it went off.  That explains some our silly faces cause no one knew what to do :)

Esme The Biter

Yep, you read that right.  Apparently Esme bit a kid at daycare last week and then today she bit two kids and one bit her back afterwards.  Hopefully she got a taste of her own medicine and won't continue this little trend.  At home when she's playing and gets frustrated she'll bite her toys or something and she's tried to test us by putting her teeth on our skin without pressing down but we usually stop that before it goes any further.

She's doing great with pottying at daycare though.  She's dry in her diaper most of the day but it's not cause she's telling them she has to pee or poop.  It's just because she wants to go anytime another kid is going (which can sometime be every half hour) and she's productive most of those times.  They laugh cause she even finishes and claps for herself like we do at home.  I still put her on the potty in the morning and evening but that's it.  I ask her randomly during the day and it's hit or miss whether or not she wants to go.  She's still not telling us when she has to go so we're just waiting for that to start to really push it any further. 

Here's a random compilation of pictures from the past few weeks:

Esme loves to get in the front seat of the car when we get home.  She pushes just about every button possible so that everything's going off the next time Allen or I get in our cars.  Sometimes we even have to wrestle her out of the front seat to get her in the house. 
                    

Esme gets all kinds of ponytails now that her hair is getting longer.  And daycare has fun with it too.  Sometimes they'll send her home with 3 or 4 sprouts coming out of her head. 

                    

Esme loves her berries and could seriously finish that whole tray in one sitting.  She likes to put the raspberries on her fingers and to get our attention she says "I see you!"

                    

My cousins Shyla and Luke recently moved back to Seattle from London with their 8 month old daughter Tabitha.  Esme loved playing with a new baby and showing off all her old toys.  We took Tabby our old jumper, walker, etc and Esme was even interested in them again too.  She also wanted to play with Tabby's things like wearing her bib (even though Esme hates bibs at home, we stopped using them ages ago) and slobbering all over her rings and giving them back to her ;)