April reciting Chinese poem and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars

April likes Chinese poems for a very short period of time, early 2 years old, then her interest moves away and now she claims that since her classmates don't know these, she doesn't need to learn. Talking back at age 3 like that, what Mommy's going to do with her when she's a teenager???


So far singing is still going pretty okay, not sure when the rebellion will come.

Mommy's tale - diaper training

After we got back from our Asia trip, here comes the point Mommy can't stand changing diaper anymore. April was 2 months after 2. Mommy tried it once at Dave's apartment in Beijing, we were all staring at the TV screen after taking the diaper off April. So April peed on his sofa. It was embarrassing but Dave didn't care, it was his landlord's furniture. According to grandma, kids in Fuzhou got tained early, couple kids she knows of got diaper trained way before 2. So April is really late with the game already. Yet according to our daycare lady, she suggested doing it as early as 2.5 years old. She warned us, kids have to be ready. When they are ready, it works fast, couple weeks time, they will be trained. Some kids understand earlier, but don't worry if you have to wait until 3 years old. She also explained, couple kids there the mothers got anxious, so they trained from 1.5 years old, and it took them at least half year to train. Think about 2 weeks time vs. half year? It is much better deal. But after changing diaper for 2 years, it's the time when you say " I am sick of it period" So Mommy started her solo journey, since the other person in the household doesn't agree to do it. By deduction, there are only 3 person in the household, it's not hard to guess who that person is. He claimed forcing the kid too early will have psychological damage to the kid. The end result is the kid will grow to be annal on lots of everything if trained too early. Training too late, the kid will be slobby with everything. Neither is good, just need to find the right time to do it, then the kid won't be on either extreme. Yeah right, easy to say, when is that precise point of time? 5 years old? Eventhough he disagree, same as my daycare, they do help me around, not enthusiastically, but they did help and I should credit them. Anyway, this kind of training obviously involves lots of cleaning and washing, emtional and mental stress to both the giving and receiving ends, countless repetition of the discipline even the recieving end clearly understand the reasoning behind it from the start. Training the brain to control that muscle on demand is not as easy as understand the reasoning Therefore, it took us 4 months, and there is a bummer towards the end. We did our annual visit to MN to grandma, grandpa and auntie Linda. We bought those late night flight ticket, cheaper and April could sleep on the plane. All is good when we landed on MN airport, everyone is half asleep, then April told us she needs to pee. Found the restroom, put her down on the edge of the toilet, suddenly it started flushing, so loud, even I was startled. April cried, she got really scared. She refused to sit back and hold it until we got home. Those are the automatic kind, the sensor fired off too early, and the flush is very powerful. Then April started being afraid of adult toilet, it's not obvious to her whether it's the automatic kind or not. So I started to notice she's not doing as well as before, but couldn't figure out why until 1 day, I only put her on her plastic training potty. She did fine the whole day. Then I started to realize what caused that. We had to bring a plastic bowl around for sometime whenever we go out, and April slowly gains back her faith on adult toilet. It took about 2-3 months for her to re-adjust. Potty trained is such a relief for me, I probably didn't do it at the "right" time, since it took so long. April still on and off for night time, so I still put training pant on her before bedtime. I hope she will be off that too, then again the second is coming...Sign!

April dancing clip at Andy's wedding

April likes to move along with music early on, around the time she started crawling, 7/8 months old. So we played lots of different kind of music to her. Not just classical. Daddy who's a media crawler brought home all kinds of music, rave music, cuba music, budda mood, lounge music, Beattles, of course Cantonese/Chinese pop music. April moves along any good melodies, we hope she would like all kinds of music.

Mommy's tale - struggle with the plastic nipple

April took bottle first couple days before my milk came. She took it fine and then we were 100% on breast milk. Until Mommy started feeling tired of breast feeding, and tried bottle with her. It was bad experience and it's almost always a waste. She pushed the nipple out. First we thought it's the shape, so we bought those NUK style. She took those a tiny bit better, but it's far from getting her to finish a few oz. Then Mommy thought, maybe it's because Mommy's milk ran fast, she might want something that flow fast. We took the scissor and cut big hole on each NUK. How big the hole? As big as our chopstick can go through. That helps a bit more, but still not to her liking. Mommy stopped breast feeding by 8th month, the milk naturally ran out. It could also be possible after the 5 months of stressful life, my body just said no more milk production for you! There are 4-5 more months to go before she could have cow milk, I do have reserved for 1 whole month, but won't be enough until 1 year old. We had to get formula. She hated formula. She couldn't finish Mommy's expressed milk with bottle, with formula it's even worse. But we can't offer her cow milk yet. It was a pain forcing her to accept formula on bottle with the nipple we could doctor it as much as we can. After 1 year old, we switch to straw kind sippy cup with cow milk obviously. It works like magic! She finished 10 oz in 1 gulp, there is no stopping for breathing. The difference is like heaven and hell. April was always the first one to finish milk in daycare during milk time with 5-6 kids sitting in a row. Then Mommy learnt some other kids even drink milk directly from cup when they are 6 months. This problem could have been easily resolved by giving her a straw early on. But it was never appeared to be appropriate to my mind, for some stupid reason! If the next one hates nipple/bottle again, I am ready to offer something else!

少言的女孩

一般女孩早说话爱说话，但April就比较另类。她一岁快半才开始说话，而且总是小心翼翼的，那怕说错了(唯一的优点是她对懂的字发音都挺准的,可能就是小心的原故吧)。晚上给她讲故事，她还会多说点话，一但在人家面前就成了一个哑巴, 尤其在爸爸妈妈的朋友面前，她还会摆出一付不高兴的嘴脸。但在陌生人面前又特别的有好，在餐馆常常离开本桌，像亲善大使一样，带着笑容向邻桌的陌生人挥手。我们搞不懂她呀！爸爸妈妈讨论过这个问题，也许是像她讨厌奶奶一样，这些人都把爸爸妈妈从她身边抢走。她现在是明白了，不再讨厌奶奶了，对叔叔阿姨也有礼貌了。头俩年的April是很壤我们抹不着头脑的。还有当她传心玩一样东西的时候，她是十问十不答的，叫她的名字100遍也没用。有时也会怀疑她耳朵有问题。如果她愿意答上1，2个问题，妈妈哪天会开心死了。她的耳朵是过滤器，没兴趣的问题不答，有兴趣的呢? 反应特快。要从她嘴巴里得到一个答案，就像在挤一只已经用完的牙膏一样困难。辛苦的日子总算过去了，现在是好多了。还不是十问十答，不过是有进步的。不可以奢望她像有些小孩那么好教呀！

April's bad habits

April didn't sleep through the night until 1 year old.
Around 5-6 months, she started waking up once per night (not as lucky as those parents who has babies sleep through the night as early as 3 months old). That is an improvement, not great but helpful to working parents like us. Yet improvement stopped there. She persisted 1 charm per night, mostly Mommy's fault and partly due to her personality.
The routine is like this...half sleeping Mommy will pick April up from her crib (Her crib stayed in our bedroom until it's replaced by the toddler bed. MISTAKE #1, putting the crib in the same room will not encourage independent sleeping) then feed her which comfort her and put her right back to sleep (MISTAKE #2, night feeding make sure sleeping through the night will never happen!) After breast feeding, we kept a warmed bottle of milk for her night feeding. April probably won't need any night feeding by then, but Mommy didn't get the click(MISTAKE #3, Laziness and sleepiness is no help in correcting the situation) Not to mention, Daddy is no help in this arena, he will snore through the thunder (aka April's crying)
Initially, after the feeding, Mommy will put April back to her crib and that's it, we can have the peace until morning. Later on, Mommy skipped this last step and let April slept between us.(MISTAKE #4, she will hold on to this and never let go) Here's the magical moment, since that's pretty much the time April sleep through the night, she need the comfort and security from Mommy. It's not the night feeding probably, or say, it wasn't really her target. Therefore sleeping through the night by herself didn't really happen until we moved when she gets her own room. But sometimes, she will wake up at night and finds Mommy in the dark and continue her sleep.
We tried and we really tried a few times but we failed, hopelessly. We told her what's going to happen. Then we put her in bed, sang to her, told her we gonna turn off the light and she is going to sleep by herself. Then we closed the door. The thunder came and it's endless. The worst time was she crawl out of her crib, luckily we had beddings on the floor(we were trying to move some bedding to storage) so she landed unhurt, then she crawled to the door and banged on it. We have tenants at home, 2 of them(Mommy was very amazed why they never complained). We heard the banging and knew it's not right, opening the door finding her right by the door full of tear and rage. And that's the point, we knew we shouldn't try it again until we can talk some sense into her. We will try our best for our #2, but hope is not high.
Then there starts another bad habit, pinching Mommy's elbow and fingers. April hates pacifier. We never bought one, we got one from the hospital. Tried it couple times on her, when we can't calm her down. She will suck a few time then spit it out, and cried even more with anger, it's like she got cheated. But she definitely need something to help her fall asleep. Just not the pacifier or any object. Mommy needed things like that when she was young, it was a super soft blanket. Mommy likes to rub it and that helps her falling asleep. Not to April, she needs human flesh, the crease part of elbow and fingers. She will straighten your arm or your fingers to get the maximum folding and her pinch could be painful at times. This bad habit persists until now. She understand it's not good to that, but she can't help it. It's an addiction to her already. Nothing can replace the skin, no stuffed animal, toys, books, blankets, nothing. It's a strange habit to have, Mommy wonder when she will stop doing it. On another note, when Mommy told the daycare lady about this habit she had. The daycare lady told Mommy that has never happen to her and same stays true in preschool. April doesn't need anything to help her falls asleep! But when she's with Mommy, it's a different story. Mommy also tried to restrict her pinching, but so far it hasn't been successful. She knows "No elbow" but she will still try for fingers.

Mommy's tale - skin problem

When I was pregnant with April, my hormone generate lots of oil. I started to have acne below my left cheek, but I didn't pay much attention to it as there are just a few of them. It persisted like that until delivery. After starting breast feeding, it slowly increased it's invasion on my skin. From just a small area, to both my cheeks, and down to my entire back. I should have gotten myself checked by a doctor, but afraid of taking any medication will have side effect to April, through milk. I resisted for a while, my face looked horrible, I don't even want to show my face in front of people. Couple weeks before I went back to work, I need to get my face fixed, so I saw the doctor and expressed my concern. He flipped through his dictionary taking him quite some time actually, and found one medication that won't be harmful to nursing. He also warned me, some of my skin is permanently damaged, I need to take the medication asap. If I would have known earlier, I could probably save my skin earlier. But oh well, my learning always come with a price to pay. The oil was actually good for April. If I let my expressed milk sit there on a bottle, after a few seconds, you will see about half to 1 cm thick golden oil floating on top. My father-in-law was shocked to see that milk could looks like this.

Mommy's tale - The challenge of adjusting working life with April

Being said I am done with recollection, not really, more things surface to my mind.

I am definitely an inexperienced first time mom. I took 12 weeks off with paid after delivery but didn't plan for daycare. Just couldn't get myself to hand over April when she's this young. I do know coworkers who do that, just can't see it in myself. So we went with "Ah Q" spirit and see what will happen. First week was horrible, I relied on Will doing contracting, he could stay home take care of April during daytime. Then he will go to work after dinner but he won't come home until dawn. Taking care of a little one while trying to work from home is impossible, especially engineering work that need concentration. Then I talked to my boss and got a new plan. I will go in early, but leave by 2:30pm, so Will can go to work earlier. We will do the exchange at 3pm. I will work from home for couple more hours. This plan works out, but it didn't work well, both Will and I are very tired trying to stick to the schedule. I will apologize when I am late for exchange. Sometimes I have afternoon meeting, coworkers will hear her yelling. Another thing is April only get to see either of us at one point, unless it's weekends. I don't get to talk to Will much, he came home earlier, that means 3am when both April and I are asleep. When I leave for work, both he and April are still sleeping. That is our life for 5 months. It takes time to find a desirable daycare, I also want April to be a bit more interactive before sending her out. Therefore, I send her to daycare when she reached 8 months old, it's stretching the limit already, I initally told my boss I will only do the weird schedule for 3 months, thanks to him he let me do it however long without asking. Both our schedule works much better after send April to daycare, plus my parents came to help for a few months. That's my easiest time, I gain a few pounds because of ease of work load and with pampering from my parents. Next time, I hope I will plan it better, or I should just take more time off even if that's unpaid.

Finally...

The recollection of the first and second years is pretty much done, please scroll down for added details including April's sickness record.

Now Mommy could focus on 2 years old and forward, things are relatively fresh in her hard disk.

One chuck done

Finally, first year's videos are all loaded. Please scroll down to "Videos from the long forgotten camcorder", we might appear a bit "abusing" in those videos, but we really just want to have fun with April.

I will start on the second year videos, still slowly working my way up to DateTime.UtcNow :|