Happy Birthday Kolton!

My cousin Kolton is 3 years old today!  I hope he enjoyed his birthday cupcake from school - his Mom sent me a video to watch.

Cousin Kolton, here is my video birthday greeting for you!!

Sleepyhead Liam

Liam had his second weigh-in at the doctor yesterday and he is doing well. Last weigh-in he was 7lb 12oz, and yesterday he was 8lb 3oz which according to the doctor is right on track - she even predicted that, if he gained accordingly (1oz a day, I think she said).

Here is a video from March 4th of Liam being very sleepy and I'm trying to wake him up. This little guy is a GOOD sleeper. No complaints there, but I do have to wake him up to feed every 2-3 hours to keep the milk supply up (the body produces as much as is needed). Note how his legs are crossed and one arm is again near his head. I think this must have been his regular position when he was inside me, as every ultrasound I saw did have one hand near his face and it would make sense that his legs are crossed when he was all curled up inside me.

Liam at 10 Days Old

Liam has been eating and sleeping well. It took a few days for him to really catch onto this business of breast feeding (had some trouble latching on each time and he always gets his little hands in the way), but he finally got the hang of it and I think he's starting to plump up! The photo of him sleeping here is from Friday, his one-week birthday!

After a feeding, Liam sleeps in his bassinet or in his crib without crying. This is such a new thing for us since Connor would never let us put him down to sleep when he was a baby.

We've been doing a lot of laundry too since Liam is very good at relieving himself right when we are changing his diaper! That plus the occasional diaper leak, milk spit-up (rare so far), and a few cloth diapers makes for lots and lots of laundry.

Connor has been excellent with Liam, thank goodness. He's always kissing Liam's head and petting his hair and saying "I love you, Liam". Connor decided to use his bear Keswick as his own 'baby'. He put a diaper on the bear and pretends to feed it breast milk from his own nipple!  It's so cute. Here he is posing for some photos with Liam and he's all smiles.

Connor recently had a growth spurt. He looks much bigger now, his thighs and arms are much larger. I had not been lifting him up for the past month or two while pregnant, and now I feel he's SO heavy I can barely lift him up (keep in mind I am still recovering though plus I'm a weakling!). We weighed Connor yesterday and he's 32.5 pounds, which is in the 50th-75th percentile according to this percentile calculator http://www.justmommies.com/articles/childrens_growth_calculator.shtml.

Our first family outing (the four of us)

We had our first family of four outing today. Where? To the mall, of course! We took out our new Joovy stroller, which we had on our registry and was gifted to us by Auntie Rose and Uncle Pau. What a great stroller for two kids! Here is a video of the stroller with Connor standing on the back and the baby in the car seat in the front. The one down side would be that when you have the car seat in front, the child cannot sit in the back but he can stand. But the stroller is quite light and handles easily, it's great!



We ate at Spring Rolls where they had all-you-can-eat lunch, Thai and Japanese. Yum yum, and Connor got a nice little cheesecake cupcake dessert for eating part of a vegetarian spring roll (he still refuses to eat a lot of foods). He was very happy with the dessert of course and licked the plate clean!

Little Brother Arrives!

We are so very happy to announce our new addition, Liam Allen!

Stats:
Born: Feb. 24, 2012, 12:30 EST

Weight: 3610 grams (7.95 lbs)
Length: 53 cm
Hair: Light brown

Connor was just 6.04 lbs delivered by C-section, so Liam is a bit bigger but Liam had the benefit of being inside mommy for a couple of extra weeks.

I am so pleased that I was able to have a successful VBAC (vaginal birth after Caesarean). It means I was able to be on my feet pretty much right away. Not that there isn't other pains to go with a natural birth, but definitely way better than the pain of recovery from a C-section.

Here are some pics of Liam's first few days of life!

It's fun to be 3 years old!

Yes oh yes to be 3 years old again!  Connor has lots of fun flying through the air as an airplane with Daddy - see the video. Connor also loves jumping on us (which annoys me to no end right now, with my big tummy!) and loves piggy-back rides.  



He also loves - and is pretty good at - playing with 'big boys' Lego these days! Linds started buying sets for ages 4, 5 and even 6 years old for Connor (and for himself too, he says!).  Well, some of these sets actually Connor picked them out himself at the Lego Store, it's not that Linds actually picked out the ones for 6-years old. Connor picks the ones that are police vehicles, helicoptors, and I know he wants to get one that's the entire police station / jail but of course that would bankrupt us :). The picture of the Lego vehicle here is one that Connor built himself! Just goes to prove that you never know what children are capable of. There's also a video below of Connor and his Daddy playing with Lego, although in this video Connor is mostly just singing and Daddy is the one creating a Lego boat.

Connor's New Wall Decor

Connor and I put this wall decor up this morning. It's a stick-on that I bought from eBay for about $10. Connor picked the design himself. He stuck on all the pieces except for the track, which is a growth chart.

He measured in at 95cm! He is still the shortest in all his classes.

He is also holding Lego in his hands. His Dad helped him make a Wall-E. Lego (not Duplo) is his new favourite toy. Connor is very creative with it too -- more on that another day.

Baby bump from week 36

An early morning pic of me and The Bump two weeks ago, week 36.
It's been a bit rough. I've been wearing a maternity belt and can't walk much without pain (round ligament pains - soreness, bruise-like pain in the lower regions). I am lucky to be able to work from home since Christmas.

Hoping to be back blogging

After a long absence from blogging here, we might just be back!

So much has changed in one year. We moved across Canada to Toronto, Ontario in June 2011. In August, sadly our beloved Gung Gung passed away from cancer. And through these major events, I have been pregnant with Baby Boy #2, due Feb. 25!!

As you can imagine these events have kept me a little busy. But the main reason I may be back posting is because my Mom has a link to this site on my Dad's old laptop, so she asked me to post pics and videos here. She cannot really navigate Facebook.

So here we are... Starting with this little video of Connor writing! This was in late December, we were at Boston Pizza. Sorry for the ugly black sides, it was videoed using iPhone in portrait.

Connor's Handstand

Connor has been attending a gymnastics class on Sundays at a community centre. He's been very shy during the class, not participating at all during circle time and willing to try only some parts of the gymnastics circuit. But each class he has been willing to do more. One of the things they show you is to do a handstand against the wall. Connor never attempted this at the class, but then suddenly on Sunday evening (hours after the class) he decided he wanted to try it. See the video to see his results!

Advent Stockings

Grandma Jackie sent Connor a set of Advent stockings. I had no idea what this really meant until Linds told me! It was fun to find out that the tradition is to have a little surprise gift for the recipient from December 1st every day until Christmas!

Connor loves his Advent stockings and looks forward to finding out the goodies he will receive each day. Especially when the goodies are chocolate balls and mini candy canes!

Here is a video of Connor on Day 4.

Toddler Talk

It is quite amazing to witness the growing bilingual toddler talk. Connor started speaking single words shortly after turning two, and before I knew it, within two months his spoken English vocabulary had expanded to at least 50. He did not speak many Chinese words then.

Now two months later at 2 years and 4 months young, he has added a lot more Chinese to his vocabulary. He gets 'Chinese immersion' during the daytime with PoPo and he fully understands everything she says to him. Even she is amazed when Connor suddenly says a new Chinese word. Sometimes Connor will refer to something in English and then again in Chinese, or vice versa. He's teaching his English-speaking father some Chinese to boot!

About 3 weeks ago Connor has began to string two to three words together. At the time, he would say things like:

"Mommy, wake up!"
"Too big"
"Monster truck"
"One bear"
"Yellow slug"
"Follow me"
"Oscar, come!"
"Oscar, out!"
"Oscar, wait!"
"Oscar, eat!"
"Best friends" (the name of a picture book)
"Tummy hurt"
"I don't know"
"Hip hip hurray"
"Come here please"


I was somewhat worried as Connor reached two years old and still not many words were forthcoming. Two years old was the age I've read as when to contact the doctor about possible speech issues. Then I heard about a theory dubbed The Einstein Syndrome. The author, Thomas Sowell, had a late-talking child and investigated and held studies on late-talking children. His two books on the topic, The Einstein Syndrome, Bright Children Who Talk Late and Late-Talking Children provides the results from his studies, which revealed that many late talkers are boys and grow up to excel in their careers. His research found late-talking children to have excellent memory, musical abilities, strong wills. This certainly describes Connor!  Another interesting finding was that these children had close relatives in jobs requiring analysis or in music. You could count myself as an analyst, and the musical side comes from Linds and other relatives on his side whom are musically inclined as well.

Reading the The Einstein Syndrome gave me some peace of mind at the time, as Connor did show many of the same traits as Sowell's test children, such as (what we believed to be) an exceptional ability to understand what we are saying, to remember and associate words to objects, and learn things in general. Having said that, while we do perceive him to be very bright, he doesn't demonstrate any exceptional capabilities that I would personally classify to be out of the ordinary (such as, in Sowell's book, he describes how his son as a toddler figured out how to undo a child gate lock).

Well, thankfully those concerns are a thing of the past for us now. Connor can now be as chatty as any toddler. Often he will repeat words to himself, as if he were teaching himself to remember. If you tell him a word once, he will repeat it and remember it. He can now string more words together and can speak short sentences with a subject, verb and object. Not only in English but in Chinese - I think his Chinese vocabulary is just as good as his English vocabulary!  He mixes up his English and Chinese together in one sentence too. Gets his Daddy quite confused! :)  This week he also started to stutter a bit when beginning a sentence, but I believe this is only when he is struggling to say a larger sentence. We are definitely at the point too where we have to watch what we say, as he often repeats our words exactly; it's like there's an echo in the room!

Here's a video where at the end I ask Connor to say hello to a few people. We were playing with some home-made play dough. We've since purchased him a Play-Doh set, and he absolutely loves it and it's the first thing he wants to do in the morning. He's watched a lot less television because of Play-Doh.  He had, in the previous weeks, been hooked on the movie Finding Nemo and also the TV show Super-Why; although I don't mind him watching Super-Why at all, it teaches the alphabets and reading.

Connor Meets Santa

Last weekend we braved the malls and visited Santa at the mall! The lineup was not bad at all, just four other families in front of us. Connor was excited to meet Santa, but he was very shy as usual. See the photo, the boy just would not smile! But I can tell you he loved meeting Santa!

First Snow Winter 2010-11

We had our first snow 5 days ago, on the weekend (Nov. 20). Connor loved it, and he got to make his first snowman. He loves snowmen, ever since he started watching this snowman video at Starfall.com.

Today we got a big dumping of snow all morning. I think it's just stopped now (2pm).

Click on the pics below to see a few more photos!

Milestones today

Has it really been six months since any posting was made? Well, instead of trying to play catch-up, I'll just start with a quick update on yesterday's milestones.

Yesterday was Day 5 in Connor's CEFA (pre-preschool) JK1 class. For 'gradual entry' it was the last day where I was to stay at the school facility while he is in class. I left Connor about 5 minutes after arriving. He cried and kicked and waved his arms, of course. He eventually did settle down, apparently bringing one of his bears worked and he held on tight to the bear all morning and stuck to Ms. Chan like glue. I an able to peek into the classroom from another office (it's peering through 2 windows so it's not a clear view) and the times that I did he wasn't crying at first and then he did, for no reason that I could see and it just broke my heart. Not just a little cry but a huge sobbing heaving cry. I had to stop peeking.

Despite crying for 'Mum Mum' on and off, the ladies of CEFA JK1 did not feel they needed me. Connor even went down for nap time all by himself - they asked him to lie down and sleep and he did! That was amazing to me. This is MILESTONE 1 today.

The ladies asked me back into the classroom a while after Connor awoke (he napped for 1h10m), and that was only because another child was crying and Ms. Chan is also the only one that can comfort her. Currently Ms. Chan has two little ones vying for her attention.

I decided to stay awhile with Connor to play, to keep him comfortable with CEFA. He likes the stacking blocks and wooden animal puzzles. We then went to draw. Recently I will always draw a big heart and a small heart, Connor likes them and he likes to say "big" and "heart".  After I drew the hearts, he slowly and deliberately placed small scribbles for what appeared to be eyes, nose and mouth for each heart. He said MumMum for the big heart and he was the little heart. Then he drew scribbles where ears should be and he said "ear". Wow, I said, what about Mommy's hair? And then he drew in a few lines where hair would be. This is MILESTONE 2 today. His FIRST DRAWING that made sense! Actually though my Mom says he's been drawing more so it might not really be the first, but it was the first one with me! I brought it home and framed it.

That evening, Connor went Number 2 potty in the toilet! Did you catch that - the TOILET. This is MILESTONE 3. He did it with encouragement from PoPo. She bought a cheapo $3 soft toilet seat for toddlers and here I have my $50 one which I haven`t yet tried - so for all you parents, just get the cheapy one it will do! There is a funny part to this little story. He said he was done so we went upstairs and we were in the kitchen cleaning up his puzzles when suddenly he ran away and the next thing you know I saw a poopy bouncing on the floor. LOL! I asked if he had to go more and he said yes. We rushed downstairs again to PoPo`s toilet and boy did he have a lot more to go! Who would have thought potty training could be this exciting.

That night Connor and I were in his bed as usual for sleep time and there are many nights where his face is next to mine, face to face, and he`ll open his eyes and give me the most special, best smile ever and I just melt. And I`ll say, I love you Connor, Mommy loves you. And he'll just nod. This time I asked him to try to say it and he tried it several times! This is MILESTONE 4. "Aiiii nom mono" - He can't say Mommy but he can say Mum. So sweet!