We're Back!

We've been trying to organize pictures to upload, but Jim told me I took 1700 pictures, so it's taking a while. whoops :)

In the meantime, here's a longer video of the one I posted on Facebook last night of Lily talking to the iPad.

Lily's Birthday

On Lily's actual birthday, August 7th, we let her open presents that morning before Jim went to work. I remembered my mom had gotten her a tutu for Christmas, so I decided to dress her up a bit for her birthday. I think she looks flippin adorable!

We decided to go simple for her birthday. We just got her a few books and one new toy.

I thought she would love tearing the paper, but she really wasn't interested and we had to do it for her.

When Jim got home that afternoon we had cupcakes! 

This was really her first taste of anything like that. The only other sweet she's had is a bite of frozen yogurt and some banana muffins I've made.

She really didn't know what to think. I thought she would tear into it because she pretty much eats whatever we put in front of her, but she just picked at it for a while.

She didn't eat more than a quarter of it and Jim and I finished it off for her. Darn!

On August 9th, I had a few of our friends over that we see pretty regularly at either playgroups or swimming. We had 4 moms with their kiddos, two 15 month olds and two 5 month olds. I'm sad I didn't get a picture of all the kids, but I was busy wrangling Lily who's been pretty fussy since her 1 yr shots. 

I told the moms not to bring gifts, that we weren't having a big party, but all of them did. It was sweet and I'm just grateful to have friends to celebrate with.

Of course Lily was more interested in the card than the gifts.

We have playdates often with these two moms and these three kids are always stealing/sharing/begging for food! Poor Kim pulled out a snack for her little boy Luc, and all three walkers swarmed her!

I finally got Lily to sit in my lap for a few seconds to open her gifts.

I got this cake from the Bloomingdale's bakery in Dubai Mall. I know it sounds hoity toity, but it's the closest thing to us and I knew I could walk there and pick up the cake if Jim couldn't drive me. I still don't have my driver's licence! :)

Everyone sang to Lily then the moms had cake.

I pretty much only decided about a week ago to even have a party. We just don't know that many people and I feel like our apartment is too small for too many kids. I'm glad we did it though. It was the first time I invited the girls over, and they invite me to their place all the time. I need to get better about inviting people over, but I let it stress me out too much. You should have seen me the night before. We've been having an ant problem and I turned into a mad woman on the hunt for ants. Jim finally found where they're entering and we caulked up the hole, but I was freaking out that the poor little 5 month olds were going to have ants crawling all over them. Embarrassing! 

I'm off to eat some leftover cake! Diet or no diet, you can't waste a Bloomingdale's cake!

(scroll down for another new post!)

Lily James is 1 Year Old!

Where has the time gone?? Actually, I hate that phrase, because I know exactly where the time has gone! Lots of smiles, kisses, hugs, diapers, snot, bottles, playing, naps, eating, crawling, walking, crying, laughing, tickling, and just recently...talking! Here's what Miss Lily has been up to in just this past month:

- She is walking full time! No more crawling for this big girl. In fact, as I write this, Jim just took her to the grocery store without a stroller (first time ever) so she could walk the whole way. It's a great way to tire her out for naptime or bedtime.

- She is saying Mama and Dada! I can't believe I haven't blogged about this yet, but Mama was the first word. She started saying dada first, but never used it directed at Jim. Then she started saying Mama and quickly used it directed at me, so we counted Mama as the first word. It's so cute when she walks into a room, sees me and yells "Mama!" in her high pitched voice!

- She just started doing sign language for diaper and eat, but still only uses her signs when we say the word; she doesn't use them yet to get something she wants. However, she does sign milk first thing when I get her out of her crib in the mornings.

- Her favorite toys are books, and she can recognize when a book is upside down and promptly flips it over. This always impresses people that meet her! She also loves her new bouncy ball we got her and laughs when we dribble it.

- She still takes 2 naps a day, 8:30 and 1:30 for 1.5-2 hrs each. Bedtime is 7:30 and she wakes up about 6:30.

- She's on 100% formula now and did not have any problems switching. Actually, I don't think it could have been easier to wean her. Now for bedtime we give her a bottle, read a book then put her to bed.

- She's been eating significantly less lately, and I think it may have to do with being on formula now.

- She gets diaper rash pretty often, and I think I finally figured out that carrots irritate her when they come out the other end. We've been cutting back how often she eats carrots and it seems to be better.

- She still does her independent playtime in her crib for 30 mins 1-2 times a day and does great. In fact, when I go to get her she doesn't jump up to me and continues to read her books.

- She wears size 12-18 month clothes, 18 month bathing suits, 18 month pj's, size 3 shoe and size 5 diaper.

Happy Birthday Lily James!!

(P.S. This was the last of her monthly photos, thank goodness!! These have become so frustrating trying to get her to sit and not pull off the sticker! ugh!!)

One Year Ago

Tomorrow we celebrate our first, first birthday!! I feel like I need to write down Lily's birth story, because the details are only going to get more and more fuzzy. Hopefully one day she'll care to hear about how she came into the world!

I  found out I was pregnant on December 2nd, 2011. I had just gotten back from a 10-day girls vacation in Vietnam and Cambodia on December 1st, and I knew it was a possibility. We decided to wait and take a pregnancy test the next morning since they say the tests are more accurate first thing in the morning, but looking back, we should have just taken taken the test twice and not waited. Anyway, I woke up that morning to take the test before Jim left for work (normally I slept way past when he left the apartment) and it was positive!

We started to regret our decision not to go back home for Christmas that year, realizing it would have been the perfect opportunity to tell everyone in person. However, it ended up being a good decision because morning sickness kicked in big time at 6 weeks and I was miserable! It seriously took all my energy just to get out of bed and get dressed. I would have been miserable on the flight and I was glad we stayed in Taipei.

We decided to wait until Christmas to tell everyone, which was torture! Every time my mom called me and asked how things were going all I wanted to say was that I was miserable with morning sickness! Finally Christmas came, and we were very thankful for Skype! We ordered a book of grandparent names and had it sent to my parents' house before Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had my whole family (including Grandma, parents and sisters) on Skype and I told my mom to go get it and open it under the guise that she might be able to use it Christmas morning. She opened it and screamed (and screamed and screamed and screamed)! Everyone was shocked of course because we had been adamant about not having any kids while we lived in Taiwan.

For Jim's parents, we knew his mom wanted to be called 'Granny' after her own mother, so we ordered a kitchen towel with "Granny's Kitchen" embroidered on it and had it mailed to her house. We called Jim's family on Christmas Eve as well and told them to call us back on Skype so we could see each other. Well, they took their sweet time calling us back while we had an anxiety attack! I think a very looooong hour went by before we got back on Skype with them, then we used the same trick to get Susan to open the gift. Unfortunately, it was not immediately clear that the Granny we were referring to was the "new" Granny, not Jim's grandma. However, it was exciting to watch as everyone in the room eventually 'got it' as we asked "what do you think it means?"

Fast forwarding 9 months...The night of August 5th, I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions. I laid in bed staring at the clock to see if I could time them and they were pretty erratic. I decided to get up and take a shower and by the time I was done they had subsided and I fell back asleep.

The same thing happened the night of August 6th. I didn't feel like taking another shower in the middle of the night, so I decided to just wait it out thinking the same thing would happen as the night before. Well, the next thing I knew, my water broke at 4:30 am!! We called the nurse hotline for Dr. Maryam Baird and they told us to come right to the hospital. My previous plan was to wait to go to the hospital until the contractions were consistent, but of course we listened to the nurses. Jim took a quick shower while I paced around making sure we had everything we needed and ate a quick bowl of cereal.

We got to the hospital about 5:45 am. My nurse hooked me up to the machines to monitor contractions, and that was about it. Thank goodness for a shift change at 7 am because we ended up with the best nurse in the hospital, Jenny. Since we were there on a Sunday, my doctor wasn't on call, so we ended up with Dr. Greg Shepherd. NOT the best doctor ever, but I guess he did his job and that's all that matters. I remember Dr. Shepherd was annoyed with me when I told him I didn't want pitocin right away [to induce labor faster]. Is it really that strange for a woman to want to see if her body can figure out what to do on it's own??

At 9:30 am I was 4 cm and at 11:45 I was 5 cm. My contractions varied between 3-5 minutes apart. The pain was kicking into a new gear at this point and I got the epidural. I don't even remember getting the epidural. The idea always scared me beforehand, but it was so not a big deal at the time and barely felt like a bee sting.

I decided to let Dr. Annoying give me pitocin at about 1pm, and was still 5 cm at 2pm. Things picked up after that and I was 8 cm at 3:45, and 9 cm at 4:30pm. At 5:00 we said goodbye to my parents and sisters and Baby E was born at 5:37pm!

I think it took about an hour before we realized that we needed to go get my family before they took Baby E for her first bath. As Jim was heading out the door he stopped and turned back around and said, "Wait! We need to decide on her name first!" In all the excitement we had forgotten to name our poor child. We quickly agreed on Lily James and Jim left to get the proud grandparents and aunts.

Jim was able to Skype with his parents (thanks to the hospital's WiFi) and they got to see Lily in the nursery taking her first bath.  They flew in the next day to Houston.

We brought her home on August 9th and then the real fun began! 

Life, According to My iPhone

Here's a few pics from the last few weeks.

The lengths we go to to got our Dora ball under the cabinet. Yes, she was stuck in this picture.

Our newest obsession: looking at the world upside down and between those chubby legs.

The new favorite reading spot. Someday we need to move to a house with a real window seat for her.

I caught her carrying around her baby doll. Too cute.

Now that we are walking, our hands are free to carry stuff around, including mom's shoes, or anything and everything that crosses our path as we walk in circles.

Sittin' in our favorite reading spot again.

I saw her trying to balance her pink phone on her shoulder under her ear like an adult would do. I tried to get a pic but this was the best I could do. Too funny!

Like my shirt? It says "Breastmilk. The Original  Fast Food."

We leave for Rome in exactly one week! I'm off to do some pre-vacation shopping!

Big Time Walking Baby!

I took this video two days ago of Lily walking around the apartment and playing soccer with Jim. Also, the outfit she's wearing is one of the first I bought when I found out we were having a girl. I got it in Singapore when we went for a weekend when I was about 4-5 months pregnant. And as I keep doing with all her clothes, I waited to long to pull it out and now it barely fits!

It's been hard to pull myself away from the TV to blog (or do anything else). I'm addicted to the Olympics!