Jalen is 4 years old!

It feels like we were celebrating Jalen's 4th birthday for over a week. On May 7th, we had a joint birthday party for Jalen and Trenton. This is the first year I completely outsourced the birthday party and it was the best thing ever! We had the party at a bouncy house called Kidz Bounce and they basically took care of everything. They even provided place settings and balloon bouquets at each table. We had about 20 kids at the party and they all had a fantastic time. Jalen was very happy to have quite a few of his preschool friends at the party.

Then on his birthday, we had a play date at our house with his two best friends, Trenton and Katelyn. The kids had a screamin' good time, literally. I don't know what it was but the kids were constantly screaming in excitement while playing. Afterwards, we went to the new Disney Store at Bellevue Square and let him build his own custom Disney Cars character. He chose a custom Mater. Then we went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner where he enjoyed a birthday sundae.

On Monday, the day after his birthday, I brought some ice cream sandwiches as treats for his friends at preschool. Jalen got a birthday crown and his friends sang happy birthday to him. Phew... What a lucky kid.

Today, I took him to his 4th birthday checkup. Jalen has grown like a champ. He is 40lb 6oz (50-75%) and 42" (90-95%). Yes, I'm a proud mommy and I'd like to take credit for his excellent growth rate. :)

Max is 15 months old!

Our lives have been so hectic that I've been pretty behind in my blog posts. In fact, I feel quite guilty that I didn't take pictures of Max on his month birthdays. For his 15 month milestone, I took him to his wellness checkup. Max is now 22lb 9oz (25%) and 31.25" (50% - 75%). He is following the 25th percentile curve quite consistently since his 12 months checkup after having been at the 50th percentile curve for his first year. Our pediatrician says not to worry too much about his weight gain. Many toddlers are quite picky with food. I'm just not used to it because Jalen was always and still is a great eater. Max is still not walking whereas 90% of 15 month olds are walking. The doctor says not to worry unless he is still not walking by 18 months. My friend Dorothy's daughter didn't walk until 19 months and she's doing great now. I just keep telling myself not to worry, he will walk when he's ready.

Max is doing much better at daycare now. He is eating better, at least according to his daily report card. He still wakes up once in the middle of the night a few times a week. Luckily, he goes back to sleep fairly quickly such that it doesn't interrupt my sleep for too long. On the nights that he does sleep through, I wake up so refreshed it seems like I've been sleeping for 10 hours when it's only like 6. I can't wait until both kids are both sleeping through consistently so I can finally get good sleep at night.

Max's hot and cold appetite

One of the biggest reasons why this year has been so stressful so far is that Max is turning out to be a challenging kid to feed. He ate great when he was just eating baby food but when we transitioned to table food he became very unpredictable. I started experimenting with different things that I thought he would like: scrambled eggs with cheese (nope), instant oatmeal (yes!), yogurt (sometimes), avocado (his favorite), fish (maybe)... The most frustrating part is that sometimes he will eat a full meal of say, salmon, and the next day if I offer him the same thing, he won't eat it. Mornings are the hardest when I try to get him dressed and fed and still get out the door at an reasonable hour. Some mornings I'll offer him up to 3 different things and he won't eat any of it. Nowadays, I discovered that he likes instant oatmeal so I've been feeding it to him everyday. Luckily, I can prepare it pretty quickly. Dinners are harder because I can't exactly give him the same thing everyday. My first attempt is always to give him what we're eating but cut up in small pieces. When he rejects that, I'll perhaps heat up some left overs that he showed interest in the night before. When he pushes that away too, I might go to the old stand by of avocado. Sometimes, I think he purposely holds out for him favorite. The reason I say that is because after I give in and offer his favorite, he'll eat some of the other things that he rejected earlier! So infuriating!

Staying above water

2011 has been kicking my butt. Since the beginning of the year, I feel like I've been struggling to find some balance and routine in my life. Every time I think I'm barely getting the hang of it, something happens to change things. After a while, I'm really just forced to roll with the punches and expect the unexpected.

This week is a great example. On Tuesday, I had a dentist appointment in the morning. I decided to work from home since I had no meetings. Around 2pm, I get a call from the kids' school that Max is sick. He threw up and has a temperature of 101. I decide to pick him up earlier than normal but didn't end up getting him until around 5:30pm. Luckily, he was in a good mood. But coming home with a fever means that he can't go to school the next day. So I call around for reinforcements since Wednesday is a meeting filled day for me. I managed to find morning and afternoon coverage between Rick and his parents. Tonight, Max still had a slight fever of 100 before bed. I have to hope and pray that he wakes up without fever so that he can go to school and hope he doesn't get sent home again.

Lately, my routine has been a bit like this:

2am - 6:30am - Max will wake up any time in this range. I give him a bottle. I really should try to soothe him without it but I'm too sleepy and don't want to wake up Jalen. So I take the easy route and give him the milk.

7am - I get up and get myself ready for work

8am - I wake up Max and get him ready for school. Sometimes he wakes up earlier, around 7:30am. I just let him cry/whine in his crib.

8:30am - I leave and take the bus to work. Rick gets Jalen ready and drops both kids off to school.

9:30am - 5:30pm - work at the office

5:30pm - 6:30pm - commute home by bus, pick up Jalen and Max from school

6:30pm - 8:30pm - cook dinner, feed the kids, and get them to bed. lately, Rick has been working late, so 2 -3 nights out of the week I'm on my own. This part of the day gets pretty tough.

8:30pm - 12am - wash dishes, catch up on chores, then more work. We'll faithfully watch Glee on Tuesday nights but other than that, we're both just hammering away at the lap top.

rinse and repeat.

Max's one year photo shoot

I finally got around to scheduling Max's one year photo shoot. He got his very first haircut a couple of weeks ago in preparation for this event. His hair was standing up straight for a long time until it got so long that it started laying down flat. So we thought it was finally time to cut it. Here are some of my favorite shots.



Jalen was a great helper at the photo shoot, propping Max up in the group shots. He was a real ham, just having a great time and laughing up a storm. He looks so mature in these photos, you couldn't tell that he's not even 4 years old yet. He looks so grown up and handsome!


These shots of Max and Jalen together are my absolute favorites. These images feel like sweet rewards of all the hard work we've put into raising our kids.

Max is one year old!

My baby turned 1 on Feb. 1, 2011. We celebrated by going to our neighborhood Red Robin. Max devoured a whole half of avocado, nibbled on some french fries and then got his first taste of ice cream. Because it was a Tuesday night, Red Robin made a special appearance which didn't faze Max at all but totally freaked out Jalen.

On Friday, Feb. 4, I took Max for his one year check up. He was 20lb 11oz (10 - 25%) and 31" (75 - 90%). His weight gain growth curve has slowed down since he was in the 50th percentile at his 9 months visit. I explained he recently transitioned to table food from baby food and just started day care. The doctor said it was understandable given the circumstances and asked that we follow up in 6 weeks to check his weight again. So now I have to focus on fattening Max up!

Max's first birthday party

I had a long struggle figuring out what to do with Max's first birthday party. We hosted Jalen's first birthday party at our house when we had about 10 kids around the age of 1 and their parents. The kids were easy to contain and the adults had a good time. This time around, the same 10 kids are 3 years old and will have too much energy and not enough space to work it off if I were to have the party at home again. At the same time, I really didn't have the time or energy to clean the house pre party and post party. I didn't want to have the party at a bouncy house or something similar because then the party would be for the siblings and not really about Max. Maybe I was making things too hard for myself but my criteria for the party were: 1) not at my house 2) a buffet style lunch. After some trial and error we found the perfect location at Rick's friend Duke's restaurant. They had a private area for parties where we had 2 dedicated waiters. The party went off without a hitch and I was very relieved and happy at the end of it.