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!
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 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.
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.
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 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!
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!
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.
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!
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).
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!
Connor loves to be helpful. Especially with housework such as taking the dishes out of the dishwasher, turning on the dryer, taking the clean clothes out of the dryer, wiping the table, picking up lint off the floor, and now he's able to help clean the floors using our Swiffer! Aren't kids great! :)
I've been keeping my mom very busy so she hasn't been posting anything new for my blog. So I put together this little slide show to give you an idea of what's been happening for the past couple of months. I hope you enjoy it!
Hi everyone! Hope you are well! I have been doing great. This is a photo of me from today, Mommy said "Look how much taller you are than the back of the chair now!" Yes, I have grown a little bit bigger I guess, lots of my shirts are now a wee bit too short. I have busy playing and learning things, which keeps Mommy and Daddy quite busy as well, as I always like to have them around me, especially Mommy. Yes, I am all 'take, take take' but so far I can get away with that without any problem.
I can walk really well now, and I really like to run, too! I like to take Mommy's hand and take her to where I want to play. It's great to be able to do that! I started to walk without having to hold on to anything around 14 months. My girl friend Ellie also walked at 14 months. Now that I can walk, I love being able to stroll around wherever I want, especially when we go out to the park or to the mall. Here's a picture of me from mid-October - very happy to be outside!
I have a set of flash cards with pictures of items like a cat. If they ask me "Where's the cat?" I can find the cat card for them. I can find the cat, dog, keys, baby, apple, fish, teddy bear, shoes. For some reason they find this very cool. Speaking of shoes, I love wearing shoes. I wear them in the house every day. My favourite pair is one that squeaks! If I'm not wearing them like to take my shoes and put them in my drawer.
On Saturdays Mommy and Daddy take me to a class at Gymboree, which is lots of fun. I was scared the first time and I was REALLY scared of Gymbo the clown, but I think I am finally used to seeing him and have stopped freaking out everytime the clown kisses me (Mom says to tell you it's a clown puppet). The class has a lot of physical activity play items set up, like slides and climbing gyms. Each class they set it up a little bit differently. Then there are some group activities, where all us toddlers push a big soft log, or we sit on the log, or we sit around and the lady there sings the bubble song and blows out all these bubbles. I learned how to hit the floor with both my hands when they say "Thunder", and when we call "Gymbooooo" for Gymbo to come play, I knock on the floor. Mommy and Daddy have fun there too, once Mom climbed into one of the big soft barrels and rolled around a bit.
Here's a few photos from Gymboree.
I still have swimming classes on Sundays. I am not really into swimming these days. A few weeks ago, Mommy dunked me underwater and I got really scared. And then the next week she did it AGAIN. I did NOT like that, and now I'm always scared that she will do it again. I only have fun when I get to play with the swim toys.
I still really like my Baby Einstein videos, and I like to read, too. My favourite for a while was my Old MacDonald Had a Barn Flip Book. I would make Mommy or Daddy read it over and over and over.
I am still resisting eating whatever food they try to give me. I like being a baby and drinking my milk and eating cookies and Cheerios! But I will eat honeydew, bananas, peas, cream of mushroom soup with ABC pastas, and PoPo gives me rice noodles for lunch every day and I really like that.
One of the things I'm trying to learn right now is going down a step. Anytime I can, I like to step up on an item and step off the item. The big people all pay a lot of attention to me when I do this. They keep saying I'm like a little monkey.
I am also very fascinated with the inside of the refrigerator. So many things to look at in there! I took out a bottle of hot sauce yesterday and hid it, they still have not found it. Hee hee.
Well that's all for now, I'll try not to take so long for another update!
Did you all have a Happy Hallowe'en weekend? I had a great one! I love playing dress-up as Tigger the Tiger. Hear me roar! We went to the mall where I got free candies (not that I got to eat any of it) and I got to see other kids dressed up, too. Dad also played with me lots, he pushed me around on my horse (see the video!). In the evening kids came to our door asking for candy, and I handed some out.
We went to the park today. I love going outside and walking through the leaves and on the gravel at the playground. I got to play on the swing too, that was fun!
On Sunday we visited my girlfriends Addison and Avery, who have a new sister Makena. Most of their toys are girl toys, like strollers and Dora dolls, but I played with them anyway.
Aug. 26, 2012 - Liam's 6 month updates
Aug. 8, 2012 - Liam's lower left front tooth comes in
Jul. 28, 2012 - Liam's 5 month updates Jun. 18, 2012 - Liam can roll over Mar. 30, 2012 - Connor is 34 lbs
Mar. 2, 2012 - Connor is 32.5 lbs
Feb. 24, 2012 - Baby Liam arrives
Feb. 12, 2012 - Connor is 95cm tall
Dec. 15, 2010 - Connor is @85cm tall, 30lb
Nov. 21, 2009 - Connor is @75cm tall
Apr. 1/08 - Connor is @68cm long
Mar. 21/08 - Connor weighed in at 18lb 10oz.
Mar. 17/08 - Connor discovered first tooth coming in
. The author, 
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. 
