Amyblog var sc_project=1172607; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_partition=10; var sc_security="e8e56473"; html hit counter Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Back to main weblog Archive 2010 February January 2009 December November October September August July June May April March February January 2008 December November October September August July June May April March February January 2007 December November October September August July June May April March February January 2006 December November October September August July June May April March February January 2005 December November Amy's Brain is 47% Female, 53% Male Amy's brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy. Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed. But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve. What Gender Is Your Brain? Feel free to email me your comments, suggestions, and/or random thoughts. March 2010 Comments (1) One of the most frequent questions I've been asked since having a baby is how Toby has changed and whether he's jealous of baby. I must admit, Toby have been affected by the changes, but it hasn't been all bad. Since baby's bassinet is in our room, Toby has been sleeping in the living room. This was his own decision though, we've invited him into the room many times, but I guess he prefers the peace and quiet in the living room. I guess I can understand that. Another change we've noticed about Toby is that he's become a little protective of our property. For the past seven years, Toby has never chased a cat in his life. He used to just bark at my old neighbor cat but ended up being friends with him. He also used to ignor cats we see on our walks while other dogs would chase them. But one day, after we brought baby home, Toby discovered a cat in our front yard. Not thinking much og it, I didn't restrain him. Well, to my surprise, Toby took off after the cat like an Olympic sprinter!! To my horror, Toby even hopped over our front fence into our neighbor's front lawn. Thankfully, the cat squirreled away fast enough and Toby came back after I screamed his name. I definitely attribute this behavior to protecting the baby. Other than that, Toby's been holding up well. He's been amazingly sweet with baby and have accepted less play time with us. We've also not taken him out on car rides for a while since baby's in the back seat. We'll slowly introduce him back into the car once he's more used to the baby. Someone also asked me if I love Toby less now that we have baby. My response is that it's two different things. It's like comparing oranges and apples. I love Toby now as much as I loved him before baby was born. I don't believe that there's a limit to one's capacity to love. By that token, will someone love their child less if they have more than one child? I sometimes get nostalgic when I see pictures around our house of the times when there was just Toby in my life, before boyfriend, fiancee, husband, or baby! It was just furry Toby and me, he's been with me the longest in our household! I am very happy that baby will get a chance to know Toby and learn what a special dog he is. :-) .......................................................................................................................................................... I have always tried not to fall prey to retailers by not purchasing unnecessary products, especially when it comes to pets and babies. But I gotta admit, the toy makers have done an enormous amount of research to win over our hard-earned money. They do know what babies like! Case in point, Sean got this little turtle blanket as a gift and I've secretly thought that the turtle was a bit frightening looking. To me, it kinda looks like a skeleton. Yet Sean loves that turtle!! He would grab it and snuggle it up to his face, all the while giggling. I've also heard many of our friends telling me how much their babies love play gym mats. I've been putting off buying one because baby didn't seem interested in dangly stuff. But, I finally broke down and got one for him because I found one for a reasonable price. Well, turns out baby loves the play gym!! He loves to grab the handles and shake them to make the bells ring. He also likes spending some tummy time on the little half-moon pillow. I guess a toy or two won't spoil baby too much... .......................................................................................................................................................... Happy Spring! It has been extremely warm the past week so baby is enjoying a sweet nap without his onesie. He looked so comfy wrapped up in one of his softest blanket. Thankfully, we have a cool, gentle breeze that blows through our backyard and into our living room in the afternoon from the ocean. I can't believe I only have a few more weeks until I have to go back to work. I am not looking forward to that because I will miss baby so much! I will miss those wonderful mornings when we have our conversations. Baby likes to chat with me for about an hour each morning, mostly shooting the breeze about baby things. He likes to coo and ah, he will also agree with me most of the time. Then we do a little math for fun. He enjoys adding these days. A friend of mine recently quit her job to become a stay at home mom. It was a big deal for our friends because we're all in the same industry and many of us all recently had babies. But with two kids, she decided that it was the right thing to do, to be with her children during their formitive years. I am extremely jealous of her courage!! I wish I could do the same, but that choice is not the right one for us at this point. But we have long term plans in place to care for baby after I go back to work. Thankfully, baby will have the care of his grandmother for the first few weeks after I return to work. She will no doubt take wonderful care of him. After that, baby will be at an onsite daycare at my work. I will then get to see baby periodically during the day. In the mean time, I will savor my mornings with baby...plenty more pictures to come... .......................................................................................................................................................... Happy March! March is a very special month for us in many ways. First, this week in particular has three special days; Pi Day, St Patrick's Day, and the first day of Spring! Secondly, last March we found out I was pregnant with our first baby! Well, a year later, here we are, our little guy is almost three months old and he's developing quite a personality. He's known as the smiley kid in our house because he can smile on cue! I will ask him to smile for me and he'd give me a sweet smile. If I give him a kiss, he'd give me a big smile. Each morning we'd play with his stuffed buddies (a yellow bear, minature Tigger, and miniature Pooh) and he'd giggle. If I read a book to him, currently his favortie is the numbers book, he'd break out laughing. We are truly blessed to have such a happy baby. .......................................................................................................................................................... As a new mom, I'm learning a thing or two about baby clothes. I'd like to share some of my experiences with you. Before having a baby, I always knew that I'd be afraid of pulling something over a newborn's delicate head so I purchased multiple packs of these Gerber sidesnap onesies. They are fantastic because all you have to do is to lay out the onesie and place baby onto it. Then you just have to pull the baby's arms through the sleeves and start wraping and snaping and baby's dressed. The nice thing is that they also have long sleeves for warmth. The only problem with these onsies is that I could not find them anywhere!! No one sells them, not Babys R Us, not Target, not Walmart, no one! Gerber's own website doesn't even carry them! It took me a week to find a website that carried them. But they only had four packs left, so I bought them all! Why do people not make more sidesnap or kimono style onesies for newborns?? It's so much easier to dress a newborn without having to pull something over their wobbly heads. Baby Sean has been wearing these exclusively for the first two months of his life. He's finally outgrowing them now. So I've been in search of new long sleeve onesies. But so far, it's been difficult to find long sleeve onesies! I found only three in the entire Babys R US store!! Why do they not make onsies in long sleeve? It's too cold to be wearing short sleeves even in the house. After spending two hours I finally found three long sleeve onsies in the entire Babys R Us store!! They are all pullovers by the way. So here are my list of baby clothing discoveries in the past few months: 1. Sidesnap/kimono onesies are best for newborns. 2. Long sleeve onsies are also best to keep newborn warm. 3. Watch out for baby clothes with itchy/scratchy tags and designs on the skin-side. 4. Watch out for bibs with scratchy velcro tabs against baby skin. Plus, baby does not like the sound of ripping velcro! 5. Clothes with snaps on the back are difficult to put on baby! 6. Baby sizes are inconsistent! 0-3 months are drastically different from one brand to another and fron one style to another. The last discovery I made is that what mommy wears matter! I almost scratched up baby's head with the metal zipper from my jacket! Also be careful to not harm baby with rings and jewelry you're wearing when handling baby. One last thing, scratchy sweater is uncomfortable for baby when baby rests his head on mommy's shoulder. Sigh...so much to think about!! .......................................................................................................................................................... I can't believe that two months just flew by. Though there were times I felt like time stood still, I'm dreading going back to work in another month or so. February was a big month for us. We discovered that baby is lactose intolerant. He had been breastfed exclusively since birth and have been gassy and suffered diarrhea after each feeding. But the most important symptom is his slow weight gain. At his two month checkup the pediatrician was very concerned with his weight. Although his length and head circumference measured normal, his weight was of concern. He only grew a pound in one month. So they ran blood, urine, and stool tests to rule out all other issues. Thankfully, all the tests came out negative. So we switched baby to a lactose free formula for one weekend and went back to see the pediatrician. What a huge difference it made!! Baby was happy after each feeding, he only pooped once a day. He ate, played, and slept with hardly any fussiness. But the mose important sign was that he had gained 7 ounces in 3 days!! I could literally see his tiny fingers getting fatter. It was such a relief to find out that lactose intolerant is the problem and that nothing more serious was going on. We're not given up on breastfeeding just yet. With the pediatrician's guidance and monitoring, we will slowly introduce breast milk to baby in small amounts. Hopefully his body will learn to produce more lactase over time. We wouldn't want baby to grow up not being able to eat some of the most wonderful foods his Daddy makes, usually with tons of cheese. :-) We are almost done with our kitchen renovation. We still need to put up a backsplash so I'll hold off on the big reveal. But here's a glimpse, cream cabinets and black granite countertops. :-) Happy March! Oh, and I apologize for the lack of blogging but my host server suffered some hardware issues and my sites have been down for about a week last month.