Welcome to the world baby boy!

 It's been super long since I've updated this blog.  Life was nuts.  We're still in a pandemic; work was super busy; Emily is an active 3 year old - but so many things have happened, such as...

WE HAD A BABY!  

Kevin Adam Sung was born on August 28, 2021 at 11:59pm.  It was quite an experience, as you would think.  Kevy's real due date was supposed to be Sept 4, but I knew he was going to come early.  For an entire week before his due date, Sy and I were so nervous that he was going to come that night.  We were especially anxious because none of our family was around to help out if we went into labor.  Sy's parents were in the Poconos with their friends, and Sy's sister's family was in the Hamptons for a week.  If we went into labor, we had nowhere to drop off Emily while I had to go to the hospital.  Thankfully, Kevy didn't come so early where our family wasn't around.  But he did come early on the Sat night before my scheduled c-section that Monday.  

We had spent the day at the Long Island Children's Museum with Sy's sister's family, and were enjoying an easy McDonalds meal with the kiddos, when I felt a strange contraction around 7:45pm.  I had been experiencing Braxton hicks contractions for quite some time, but this one had felt a little more painful than before.  I mentally checked the time to see if I needed to start timing anything.  I gave Sy a look of apprehension and told him I just had a weird feeling.  We both groaned with anticipation that this could be it - that our easy life of 3 was coming to an end.  Sure enough, 30 min later, I felt another strange contraction.  I told Sy we should go home asap.  When we got home, we quickly got Emily ready for bed, and I started to notice that the contractions were now happening more like every 15 min.  I called my doctor, and even while on the phone, I started noticing the contractions were coming like every 5 minutes.  My doctor told me to head over to the hospital and she would meet me there.  We called Sy's parents and told them to come over our house asap so we can head to the hospital.  I started feeling very emotional thinking about the fact that I would be leaving Emily for a few days.  If I stayed in the hospital for 3 days, that would be the longest we'd been apart since she was born. 

When we got to the hospital, my contractions just kept coming faster.  They were coming about 3 minutes apart, and they put me on a bed to start to measure my contractions.  I was already dilated at 4 cm, and I was really starting to feel pain.  My doctor was still not there, and we were all just waiting for her to arrive so I could go in for my c-section.  However, time just kept ticking, and she was still not there.  My contractions were coming 1 min apart, and I was in a LOT of pain.  Each contraction felt so painful, and I felt such a strong desire to push the baby out.  Very soon after, I thought I had peed myself, and when I told the nurses, they saw that my water had broken.  I was dying with pain, and I kept begging for an epidural, but they wouldn't give it to me bc I was going to go in for a c-section, so they wanted to wait until I was ready to go into the OR to get my epidural.  But my doctor was still nowhere in sight.  I was cursing and yelling at Sy "where the f*ck is dr. ahamed!?"  And just trying to bear the contractions.  I'm pretty sure I was pooping myself with every contraction.  Finally, my doctor had arrived, but by the time she came, the baby had reached an emergency state.  I was looking like it might be close to potentially rupturing my sutures from my last c-section.  So my c-section turned into another emergency c-section, and then they rushed me to the OR.  From there, I had to sit super still while they tried to get my epidural in despite my contractions, and finally, I felt sweet relief.  From that point on, the c-section happened super quickly, and the baby was born/out by 11:59pm - a minute before midnight.  By the time I was done being stitched back up, it was close to 1am, and I was exhausted.  By the time we finished the 2 hours of recovery floor time, I didn't get to my hospital room until about 4am, and we were so tired and just ready to sleep.  

We stayed in the hospital for just 2 days bc we wanted to be home with Emily - since she had been staying with her grandparents.  I was still pretty sore and not walking well, but it was already a sign of how different giving birth to a 2nd child is.  Life is still more about your first child than yourself. 

For the past 2 months, it has been a crazy whirlwind of exhaustion, never-ending tasks, and busy-ness.  I never imagined that life with 2 kids would be THIS hard.  But it surely is.

Week 1-2 - Adjusting to being so sleep deprived from the constant feedings, but never getting to nap bc of needing to entertain a 3 year old is so hard.  It was definitely not like when we had Emily.  With Emily, we napped when she did, and we were okay.  This time around, we were not napping during the day, and we still had to find time to cook Emily's meals, clean up the house of her toys, do her laundry, play with her, and what not.  On top of that, Emily had just started nursery school.  So it was a lot to figure out our new school schedule with her, and figuring out lunch box packing, and just dealing with her new life as a school student.

Week 3-4 was the beginning of Kevy becoming fussy.  He stopped napping well, and was also dealing with pain from his circumcision procedure.  We also discovered that Kevy had reflux issues.  He would cry super hard as he drank his milk bottle.  He arched his back, turned red in the face, cried and cried, and looked like he was in such pain.  I really dreaded all the feedings bc I was scared he was going to have a reaction and it would be a difficult feeding.  I worried so much about him and how much pain he was in.

Week 5-6 was super hard bc it was leading up to the peak of fussiness (week 6), and he was just not sleeping at all.  He would sleep 20 min naps, and then that's it.  We'd spend the rest of the hour and half trying to put him back to sleep with vigorous rocking and shushing.  On top of that, he got his first cold (thanks to Emily getting sick), and we think that added to his discomfort. 

Week 7 - Kevy got sick AGAIN bc Emily got sick again from school. 

I'm going to publish this entry now bc it's taken me months to write it.  I'll try to write again when I can!

2 years 2 months old

I meant to write an update when we hit Emily's 2nd birthday, but time has just flown by again!

Emily is now a little past 2, and her developments continue to astound me!

Talking: Emily is such a little chatterbox!  At our 2 year doctors appointment, I asked my usual question of what milestones should we be on the lookout for.  And our doctor asked if Emily was speaking with sentences with 2 or 3 words yet.  And I was proud to say that Emily uses sentences with 4 to 5 words!  He was happy to hear of her speech development and I'm glad that she's a little ahead of the curve!  What shocks me is how Emily's storytelling is getting so good.  She not only remembers memories from weeks ago, but she recounts these stories in pretty good detail!  Here's an example:

About a month ago, Sy was pulling out a tupperware from the fridge and he accidentally dropped it, causing it to shatter and we had to clean it up.  This is Emily's version of this story:

Us: what happened this morning?
E: appa dropped mama!
Us: then what happened?
E: umm, glass was everywhere!
Us: what did appa say?
E: appa said stay on pink mat! don't come to kitchen!
Us: why did you stay on the pink mat?
E: appa have to vacuum!

She loves retelling this story all the time.  It's cute (and sometimes tiring. haha)!  It's also funny how she's learned to say "umm" and sometimes she'll go "hmm" if she's thinking.  She also loves to ask "what's this?"  Sometimes it's genuine bc she wants to know what it is, other times it's just her way to get us to ask her what it is so SHE can tell us what it is.  Haha.  I guess she's proud to flaunt her knowledge of stuff.  What cracks me up is when she mimics the sounds of things she hears.  She'll say things like "blowdryer goes woooooooooo" or "humidifer goes waeeeeee."  Her imitations of things are so funny and accurate.  She's even learned how to imitate her cousin trying to poo on the potty.  She clenches her fists, and pretends to push imaginary poo out.  Her face gets a little flushed from the physical exertion, and she grits her teeth and bares them as she pushes.  Haha, cracks us up so much!

Games: It's crazy how Emily's interests have changed more into toddlerland.  She recently has learned how to play with a princess magnetic dress up kit.  She enjoys putting the shoes on the princess.  She also constantly wants to show her bunny stuff.  She'll read books to her bunny, or she'll have bunny touch stuff, she'll have bunny watch her brush her teeth.  It's super cute.  Emily is enjoying her Peppa Pig playhouse a lot more now.  She has them pretend to take baths, or eat food, or watch tv, or go to bed.  When we go to other people's houses who have play kitchens, she puts ingredients in pots and pretends to make soup and drink from soup spoons.  Even her doctor play kit, she knows how to extend her pretend play - and she'll just use random spoons to feed me medicine, put imaginary lotion and bandaids on me, etc.  I'm so proud that she is developing such an imagination!  Emily also has learned how to hide - well, so she thinks.  When she hears us coming, she'll say "Hide!" and then she'll just bury her head in a pillow or something.  We can fully see her, and she's pretty much unhidden, but to her, she's hiding.  She's a terrible hide-er.  She also gives herself away by giggling uncontrollably, and also by answering questions we might say.  For example, if she's hiding, I'll say, "Appa - Emily is gone!"  And he'll say, "Is Emily in the kitchen?"  and she'll say, "noooo."  Hahaha.  She really doesn't get that she's a terrible hide-er but it's fun to watch.  When she plays with her cousins, they do a better job to help hide her, but she still always gives herself away.  It's hilarious.

Food: Emily's love for sweets continues to grow.  Now that her cousin Carol is potty trained, she gets a lollipop everytime she successfully poos in the toilet.  The problem is that now, Emily also gets one whenever she gets one.  So Emily is always wanting lollipops.  Hence, she also likes to tell the story of how she got a lollipop when she went to the doctors office.  Haha!  Emily also really loves chocolate.  For some reason, she now must have some kind of chocolate after every bath.  So we have to give her bites of candy bars now.  SMH.  Perhaps it's bc her cousin gets to eat more sweets than she does, but she loves chocolate pocky sticks, those coffee chocolate sticks (pirourettes), chocolate chip cookies, and ice cream.  We have a lot of leftover ice cream cake from my birthday, and every few days, she'll ask for cake.  Haha!  She also loves donuts (particularly those from Doughnuttery), and she loves ice cream.  Even though she is a big salty-snack lover, I do believe she has my love of sweets as well.  Thank God she is a skinny baby.  I don't know how I'd be able to say no to her cute face if she were on the overweight side.  On an interesting note, I recently made her a pea pesto pasta, and she absolutely LOVES IT.  She constantly asks to eat the green pasta, and while she often gets sick of eating the same food for multiple days, when it comes to her green pasta, she can eat it forever.  It's really great that she loves this super healthy food!  Emily's been really big on grapes these days, and going to the supermarket is always tough bc we can't pass by the grapes section without her wanting a bag, and for me to feed her grapes the entire supermarket session.  She's also recently learned to like chicken fingers - which makes going out to restaurants easier bc that's almost always available for kids menus.  Similarly - she loves juice so much.  Haha.  And the sad thing is, she loves full-sugar juice more than kid-friendly juices that are healthier.  She loves orange juice, and she loves drinking from mini juice boxes and pouches.  But flavor-wise, she does not prefer the HonestAdes of the world bc they're simply not as sweet as a Tropicana.  I have created a monster.  Emily's fickleness when it comes to snacks can be frustrating.  She is a snack machine, and yet, she is so picky about her snacks.  She'll stand in the kitchen and reject every snack until we get to one she's in the mood for.  For me, that means I try to stock up her snack pantry with all kinds of snacks, but then Sy disagrees and that she should just not get a snack if she doesn't like what I give her.  I see his point, but it's so hard for me to say no to her!

Sleep:  Emily's sleep is normal for the most part.  The interesting thing is that i've noticed that emily occasionally sleep talks!  There was one night when she was "crying" in her sleep and she shouted, "nooo!  emmy-kkuh!"  which translates to "that's mine!"  and sy and i just laughed as we realized that she must be dreaming about her cousins taking stuff from her!  Hahaha!  The stressful dreams of a toddler... so funny.  Overall, she's become a bit more whiny in her sleep.  I think she really must be dreaming.  On a side note, Emily is a very fearful child.  As she gets older and older, she becomes more scared of things.  She gets scared of scary looking animals on tv - wolves, dinosaurs, bad guys, etc.  She also gets scared by unknown sounds - a lawn mower in the distance, etc.  She even gets scared of scary events she sees on tv - like a fire scene in her cartoons.  So my guess is that she must have anxious dreams too in her sleep.  Maybe they haunt her in her dreams too.  I wish that she wasn't such a scared child, but what else can we do?  We do our best to tell her that things aren't scary, but I understand that you can't help what you're scared of.  On the flipside, it's incredibly sweet when she cuddles up close and clings to your arm when she's scared.  She trusts so much that she's in good hands if we hold her.

I have lots of other updates to write about, but I think I'll save them for my next entry, which will cover a different topic.  But for now, here's what's been going on!

Speech! Speech! 1 Year 11 months

Emily's 2nd birthday is almost upon us, and I've been so amazed at how much she's developed recently.  Her sentences have really grown, and she's really learn to express herself a lot more.  What's surprising is how much she remembers of her daily life.  In the past, something that happened a week prior would just be gone from her head.  But now, she remembers everything and talks about them all the time. 

Every morning during the week, she remembers our usual drop-off routine.  She'll say in the car, "appa drive train station.  umma drive hammee house.  umma go work."  She knows her routines so well.  Even things like her rascal-y ways of doing teeth brushing, she stands at the end of the hallway and says, "umma catch emmy!" and i have to chase her down the hallway as she runs to our bathroom.  Then she throws herself on the floor of our bathroom and yells, "emmy fall down!  appa pick up emmy!"  and then when he picks her up, she says, "so high!" meaning that's when sy is supposed to lift her up to the ceiling so she can touch it.  This happens twice a day every day.  Haha.  She remembers that once she accidentally spit water in sy's face during teeth brushing, and always recites that story of "emmy did bleh appa's glasses."    Her memory expands so far.  She still tells us the story of how she cried with Santa Clause.  And even though it's been weeks since we went to the doctor, she retells the story of how she cried at the doctors office, how they gave her a lollipop and how it was "not bad" in hindsight.  Haha. 

She's such a creature of habit.  It's crazy to see how she has to always do everything just so - exactly like she's done it previously.  Her memory is awesome.  She must do her night time routine of testing the humidifier, throwing her puppy and lovey out of the crib, laughing hysterically, and then going to bed.  She cracks herself up so much.  I love how happy she is.  These routines make her laugh so much and fills herself with so much joy. 

I also think it's funny how she knows how to ask for things she wants now.  She'll say, "Alexa - play moana."  and when the song ends, she'll say "Alexa - play again."  Haha.  She's also recently been saying, "alexa - play yeah yeah yeah song" - which is the Maroon 5 song called Girls Like You.  She knows what she likes, and she tells us.  If a song she doesn't like comes on youtube with her favorite shows, she'll say, "not this one!  new one!"  She even once yelled "still watching!" when Sy tried to turn off the tv.  Haha.  She talks so much and communicates so much with us.  It makes life so much more fun to ask her for her opinions on things to help make decisions.  Yes, she's still a baby and sometimes she can't make decisions, but when she does, it's so much more fun.

A couple of weeks ago, the flu hit our household.  First, I got sick with the flu.  It was a pretty tough time.  I was so weak and sick that Sy had to do the majority of caretaking for Emily and also for me.  After I was officially diagnosed with the flu, I had to quarantine myself and not touch Emily.  That was a sad time for Emily bc we told her she can't touch me.  And while she listened and obeyed the rules, she always made a sad face when she wanted to come and touch me, but she had to stop herself.  She would frown and look down in sadness.  It was really sad for her AND for me.  I wanted so much to hug her and kiss her, but I couldn't do any of that.  Then a few days later, Emily developed a fever and we took her to the doctor to check for flu - and sure enough, she had the same influenza A as me.  So we were able to start touching again since we were the same sick - but it was still tough on Sy to take care of both of us.  In the end, Emily's flu was WAY milder than my experience.  She only had the 102 fever for that first day (even though I had it for 3 days).  She slept fine and played fine and only suffered from a cough and a little bit of a decreased appetite.  The only hard part was how much she disliked the taste of the liquid Tamiflu.  We had to syringe squeeze medicine into her mouth, give her a piece of chocolate, then squeeze more medicine, then more chocolate.  Repeat until all of the medicine was ingested.  I was super proud of her bc despite the fact that she hated the meds and would scrunch up her face and turn away - she always came back and ate more bc she knew she had to.  What a good girl.  Although, by the end of the 5 days, she really was enjoying all the chocolate she was eating.  Hahaha.  Crazily enough, Sy didn't end up getting the flu.  He felt somewhat sick for days and like he was fighting off a cold for more than a week.  But he never got as sick as I did.  Thank God.  If we both were dead in bed, I don't know how we would've survived.

Food-wise - Emily is starting to come around on rice dishes.  So that's a relief!  She also recently ate yellow dak-kwang at a jjajangmyun restaurant and enjoyed it!  We were surprised to see how much she enjoyed it.  So interesting to see how tastes really do change over time.  Emily had her first bite of a pickle recently.  It was SO funny to see her reaction.  We put a small amount of pickle in her mouth, and she immediately froze and looked up at us with a furrowed face of what the heck is this??  She did not want any more pickles.  When it was time for dessert, we gave her her first m&m.  She had a similar reaction where she froze and looked at us.  But then after a second, she broke into a big smile and did a little happy dance as she asked for more candy.  Hahaha.  She was so excited to eat more candy.  Good news is she understands restraint.  When we tell her, all done - she obeys and doesn't ask for more.  She's such a good girl!

We recently bought Emily a doctor play kit.  She absolutely loves it so much.  She likes to check her bears and us all the time.  She checks our heart, our temperatures, our ears, etc.  After each check, she yells, "bear okay!  umma okay!  appa okay!"  It's SOOO cute.  We bought it in the hopes that it would help her to cry less at the doctor's office - so she would know what to expect and be less scared.  It kind of worked.  She did slightly better at the doctor's when we went for the flu.  She knew what would happen but she still cried.  At least she didn't cry as hard.  Just cried at half loud - and just waited for the exam to be over. 

It was my birthday this weekend, and Emily had so much celebrating with me.  We took her to restaurants and family parities.  She loves blowing out birthday candles and she was so happy to yell "happy birthday umma!"  And also gomoboo.  Hahaha (who is her best friend apparently!). And now that she knows her birthday is next week, she has been waking up daily yelling, "emmy birthday next week!"  We've been training her to learn that she's turning 2 and to say she's 2 years old.  It's so fun.  She likes to look at the birthday banner we have hanging in our house to remember it was my birthday and that her birthday is coming.  I can't believe she's almost 2.  It's going to be so fun to celebrate her.

We've been trying to train Emily to stop lying about her dirty diapers.  Lately, she hasn't been telling us when she poops, and then it ends up sitting in her diaper for too long, and then she gets a diaper rash and then cries hard bc it hurts to clean her butt.  Whenever we ask her if she pooped, she tells us no, and then fights us when we try to sniff her butt.  But because this just keeps happening, we are trying to really buckle down on the importance of not lying to us.  (Side note - it's been very interesting to learn how Emily knows to speak to us in english more and korean with her grandparents more.  When they ask her if she pooped in korean, she replies in korean "ahn-haessuhyo."  We were stunned to know she could do that!).

I wish I could keep track of all the funny things she says.  She makes us laugh all the time.  It's crazy how a less than 2 year old can make such funny comments.  Having Emily in our lives is truly the best thing we ever did.

It's Karaoke Time! - 1 year and 10 months

Emily has been a singing machine!  It's been so fun to watch her learn how to sing songs - and also super impressive at how much she memorizes lyrics!  So far, Emily can sing Happy Birthday, the Alphabet, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, God is So Good (in english AND korean!), Old Macdonald, and a few songs from Little Baby Bum - her favorite tv show.  It's been so so fun watching her sing - and she just loves to sing all the time.  Sometimes, she'll just lie in her crib singing by herself.  Other times, she loves to grab the mic on her mini piano and just sing straight into the mic.  And the rest of the time, she just loves to sing all day long.  It's pretty cute that she doesn't even want me to sing sometimes.  She'll say "Emmy sing it!"  and not let me sing along.  Haha.  Or otherwise, she demands I sing it first and then she sings afterwards. 

It boggles my mind how much she can learn these songs.  I mean, the alphabet is 26 letters.  That's a lot to remember!  I'm so incredibly proud of her and also thrilled that maybe music is in her genes!  Maybe she'll be a singer like me! 

She's also been really into dancing these days!  Her dance moves have evolved from her baby days, and now she likes to move her arms up and down in alternating movements or do little fist pumps in the air and I'm surprised with the agility!  Her old baby days, it was mostly just swinging her arms side to side.  But this new coordination is pretty cute! 

On another note - Emily has begun telling stories.  It's pretty cute that she's learning to string words together to make sentences and turn them into stories.  She also repeats these stories over and over and it's so interesting to see how her memory has improved so much.  She remembers events from weeks ago.  She remembers facts and details we tell her.  This new brain development is so fascinating! 

Emily's top stories: "Emmy fall down downstairs.  Carol put bandaid Emmy face.  Umma sorry."  "Emmy fall down bed". "Santa Habujee - Emmy cry". "Habee take Emmy jokee". Haha, these stories crack me up!  Emily fell down the stairs while I was talking to Sy's mom, and it was a pretty big fall.  She fell from half the stairs downwards, and then bit her tongue on the way down and bled a little.  Overall, she was fine, but she definitely loves telling this story.  She recounts her story of how she cried when we tried to sit her on Santa's lap every time she sees someone wearing a santa costume.  She has learned that "Santa bring Emmy presents!"  but when I ask her if she wants to sit with Santa again, she says NO!  Hahaha, what a greedy girl - wants the presents without the action to get it.  Sy's mom once tossed Emily's vest to him to take down with the laundry, and Emily flipped out bc he took her vest.  She cried and they eventually had to give it back bc she was relentless.  And now, she will constantly tell us how her grandfather took her vest.  Haha, I guess it was traumatic for her!

That being said - Emily's terrible 2s have come early.  She now cries hard whenever we do something she doesn't like.  It's surprising to see how the tantrums are so ridiculous.  We tried to put a new green jacket on her, and she cried bc she wanted her black jacket.  I told her no iPad right now, and it was full on crying.  She doesn't want to take off her backpack - full on crying.  When we tell her no, she cries.  She throws things.  It's very frustrating.  The interesting thing is, she has somehow learned the concept of sorry.  When she's been bad, we tell her to say sorry.  And every time, she looks down, and quietly says sorry as if she were ashamed.  I don't know how she learned this emotion or even this gesture, but it's so interesting that she understands that she was misbehaving.  There was one time when she was being so tantrum-y, just yelling and crying and whining, but not using her words.  And I kept yelling at her to say - I don't understand what you want!  You have to use your words!  You can't just whine bc I don't know what you want!  Tell me what you want!!!!  And finally, she looked at me sheepishly and in a nearly-whisper, she said "kka kka" (snack).  I think she knew that she was being a brat about something unimportant, but it was still what she wanted.  It has been a frustrating and trying time, but interesting regardless.  (I will say - I just hope that she doesn't get any worse than this.  Emily's cousin is in the terrible 2s as well, and she cries bloody murder for 1 hour if she doesn't get her way.  I hope that we don't come to this!)

Emily's sentence structure has gotten better!  She went from 2 word sentences like "emmy jacket" to now 3 to 4 word sentences like "emmy eat that," "emmy did it," "umma shower all done," "where are you?"  It's pretty awesome to see her learn how to string words together.  I've been told that Emily's speech development is pretty fast for her age.  I hope that this never slows down and she just continues to excel!

In more fun developments, Emily has learned our names!  She first learned my name because there's a song on Little Baby Bum about names, and the main character's name is Mia.  So she learned Mia a while ago, but it was fun when she learned that my name was also Mia.  So then she learned that appa's name is Sy.  So when we test her, she's always right!  We have now trained her on Adam's name, Carol's name, Gomo (Gina)'s name, and Gomoboo (Eric)'s name.  She legit remembers, and it's really fun to watch her think as she tries to remember!  She's even getting better at remembering where things are.  Like if I tell her to go get her bubbles, she knows which drawer it's in (which is actually better than Sy - bc he never knows where all her toys go.  haha). Even if I tell her about something she might not remember where it belongs, she remembers the general details and vicinity of things.  For example, Emily has a picture flashlight that you has 3 different reels of film (purple, blue, green).  One time, I was searching for the purple one bc it was missing, and I asked her - Emily - do you know where the purple one is?  And I showed her the green one and the blue one, and i said - where's the purple one?  And I watched her face comprehend that 1 of the 3 was missing.  And she started looking around for the purple one.  Haha.  It's so interesting how she remembers.  The funniest is when she remembers promises - like when we promise to give her a bite of chocolate after bathtime.  She'll patiently sit through the lotion, diaper, putting on clothes process and then run out and look for chocolate.  Despite so many things to distract her, she still remembered the chocolate process.

Emily's ability to count has become fun bc now she likes to shout 1, 2, 3, 4 before she runs or jumps.  It used to be 1, 2, 3.  Then it increased to 4.  and sometimes she goes up to 6 before she propels herself.  It's pretty funny.  She still has a little trouble recognizing her numbers.  She usually gets 1 right and 10 right.  The rest is still shaky.  Same for the alphabet - W is her best one.  She can find W really well, but the others not as well. 

Emily's stranger danger seems to have gone up to another peak.  While she still doesn't cry, she seems to be recoiling more and burying her face in our bodies.  And if she can't bury herself, she'll just close her eyes to avoid eye contact.  While it's hysterical to watch her close her eyes, it's still hard to deal with bc you want your child to interact and be friendly with other people.  It can be a little disheartening when other people (mainly adults like aunts and uncles) don't show her as much love bc she's being too shy to make them see what a fun little girl she is.  And while I get that this is just who she is, she's just a shy person, it's hard on my soul to know that she isn't being fully her wonderful self in front of other people.  Instead, they just see a somewhat rude, petulant toddler who won't say hi, won't smile, won't do high-five, won't give hugs, won't say thank you when she accepts your bribe, won't do anything - and no one likes that child.  It's tough bc Carol is such a friendly, social girl.  So the juxtaposition can be stark and also immediate when it comes to the lack of affection for Emily.  I truly hope she gets over this phase soon and that people will get to see what a fun-loving girl she is. 

Emily is such a little rascal and goofball.  She loves to be mischievous and laugh at her own jokes/practical jokes.  She makes herself laugh, and she loves to deliberately do the opposite of what you tell her - all while giving you a sly smile and side eye.  It's super funny and cute to watch.  Sometimes I wonder who she gets that from - me or Sy.  Sy is one of the funniest people I know - so I wonder if Emily just has a good sense of humor bc of him.  Or is she like me - just a corny goofball who likes simple jokes like "boo!"?  One of her favorite jokes is to say "don't throwwwww" before she throws her puppy and lovey out of the crib.  She cackles with laughter every time.  She loves giving us funny kisses with her mouth wide open - just because it makes us go Nooooo!  It's pretty sweet.

She's also little miss independent now.  She's learned how to go down the slide by herself (or at least low ones), and she always says Emmy do it!  or Emmy honjah (alone)!  She wants to feed herself, and walk by herself.  It's times like these that I feel so much like my baby is gone.

Food-wise, still loving all soups, maybe starting to come back to liking rice again. She's coming around on avocado again, and really loving clementines.  She has been eating a little more frequently at her little table, but maybe bc she just is so active during her meal times. Her preferences and dislikes over specific snacks is annoying bc who wants to waste money throwing away snacks just bc she doesn't like that flavor anymore!  Still hates animal crackers, starting to dislike ritz crackers, but going strong on all puffs.

It's been a busy month for us - celebrating Sy's birthday, Thanksgiving, and just doing lots of friends hangouts.  It's been really wonderful to continue making new memories with Emily - our night drives to the city for pizza and cookies, blowing out birthday candles, playing with cousins, it's all been great.  I can't wait to see how our Christmas enfolds as we make even more memories.  The holidays are chaotic, but they sure are nice.  

Beach baby! - 1 year 8 months

We have just returned from our Bahamas trip!  And boy was it was exhausting!

To celebrate Sy's father's belated 70th birthday, we took a big family trip to the Bahamas - an all-inclusive resort for me, sy, emily; sy's sister's family, and his parents.  Overall, it was a great trip - but note that I used the word "trip" and not "vacation."  This was the most exhausting trip I've ever done - more than our Arizona trip where we hiked and walked all day!  Traveling with 3 kids is no joke - and pretty tiring!

Emily was pretty good during the plane ride.  And though she didn't sleep, she didn't scream or yell, so we were pretty thankful.  Emily, as usual, loved the pool.  She constantly asked "pool?" every time she saw any body of water and wanted to go swimming.  She mostly just enjoyed jumping off the steps of the pool and into me or sy's arms.  we did that OVER and over.  can you imagine our delight?

As expected, emily did not love the sand.  i even tried putting the sand shoes i had bought for her to help her not feel the sand on her feet.  But alas, it did not work.  She refused to walk on the sand.  We were lucky to have gotten a few steps out of her, but that was it.  The good news is that she learned to enjoy sand play!  Sy's mom brought a bucket, shovel, and some sand toys, and Emily loved shoveling sand into her bucket.  It was really cute to see her sit still and just keep shoveling. 

Going into the ocean was another big hurdle to overcome.  At first, Emily was scared to be in the ocean.  Perhaps the uncontrollable waves made her feel uneasy.  But after several attempts, we finally got her to like the ocean.  She really enjoyed sitting on the flotation mat, while we held her as we floated ourselves.  She also enjoyed being in our arms in the ocean water as well!  After she finally came around to it, it was hard to get her out!  In general, taking Emily into the ocean is a bit of a scary thing to do.  When the waves were a little strong, I didn't feel safe holding Emily and had Sy hold her instead.  I'm short - waves can overwhelm me pretty easily and I just didn't want the water to accidentally hit her in the face, or God forbid, I get knocked over by a wave, and we both end up in the water.  And when I was holding Emily as she sat on the flotation mat, it gave me major Castaway vibes and conjured up thoughts of what it would be like if I were to be shipwrecked with Emily and had to survive on the ocean alone with her.  How would we survive?  I couldn't ever not hold her, but how would we get food or water to drink?  What if there was a storm?  It was the most terrifying thing to think about - ever. 

Overall, the kids had a lot of fun on this beach vacation.  Adam, who is now 6, was basically a fish and was constantly swimming in every pool, beach, and water activity he could find.  For the parents, beach vacations are super annoying!  First, you have to go through the long process of changing into swimsuits, sunblocking everyone, packing up all your snacks and toys.  And then after the pool, the process of washing up is even longer!  You have to bathe the kids super well to get all the sand, chlorine and sunblock off.  And then you gotta lotion them up.  And then all the parents have to shower and wash up.  And you also have to rinse out the swim suits so that they can be worn again the next day.  It was such a long process that it took most of the day!  I'm so glad that we don't have to wear sunblock again for a long time!

Food-wise, the trip was a little tricky.  For breakfasts, Emily surprisingly did not want to eat things like pancakes, waffles, or french toast (even though she eats it fine at home).  She only wanted to eat peanut butter.  It was so strange!  And yet - breakfast was the easiest meal of the day!  Lunch was tough bc we usually were on the beach for lunch time.  None of the toddlers wanted burgers or hot dogs.  One time, I ran into the buffet line and brought back pasta for the girls.  And other times, we just packed PBJ and bread to eat at the beach.  But bc the kids just didn't eat a ton at lunch, by dinner time, they were starving - and often hangry.  emily ate pretty well for dinner.  once, she ate lamb meatballs and conch fritters and i was like wow, i'm surprised she ate that!  I was pretty worried about emily getting constipated on this trip, and I was constantly trying to get fruit and vegetables in her.  But it definitely wasn't easy since we weren't at home to chop things up finely to hide it in her food.  In general, she ate SO much PBJ on this trip, and also SO MUCH JUICE.  She really got spoiled with having juice at every meal.  smh. 

Sleep-wise, that was hilarious, in hindsight.  We had to share our small hotel room with Emily's crib.  So at night, we'd put Emily down, and then head into bathroom where I had set up a pseudo-hangout room for us.  We put pillows on the floor to feel "comfortable" as we just looked at our phones waiting for her to fall asleep.  I had thought we would need a lot of entertainment in there, but it turned out that we were so exhausted from the day that we just wanted to go to sleep early ourselves.  The first night, we did phone stuff for 40 min, and then went to sleep by 10pm.  The 2nd night, we did the same thing.  The 3rd night, we were a little more ambitious and watched half an episode on Netflix, and ate some of Emily's snacks.  The 4th night, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the bathroom floor.  We never made it past 10:30pm at the latest.  I think sun activities are more tiring than regular activities.  Couple that with the fact that we got pretty much no breaks from Emily during the day, it really drains all your energy.  Some days, Emily didn't nap during the day.  That means 13 hours of continuous watching Emily - that's a lot of work!  During the 2 days that we did nap Emily, sy and i actually left the room and watched her on the baby monitor and tried to enjoy our free time.  The first time, we lounged on some beach chairs and when we heard her wake up, we ran for our lives to get to the room as fast as we could.  I shake my head at myself in hindsight now. 

The plane ride home, Emily fell asleep in Sy's arms.  It was pretty sweet to see.  She was so exhausted from not getting to nap and she quietly just closed her eyes and fell asleep.  It was a nice 40 min of peace.  Again, I basically watched movies with just closed captions and no headphones.  Emily just doesn't allow me to wear headphones.  haha, that girl.  She was pretty good again after she woke up.  Mostly watched tv and ate snacks and didn't make too much of a fuss. 

We have returned from this trip more exhausted than ever despite getting 9-10 hours of sleep per night - which is WAY more than we get on a normal night.  The memories were priceless.  Seeing Emily and Carol interact all weekend was so fun.  I'm glad we did this trip despite all the weariness it comes with.

From a developmental update, Emily is talking more in sentence-attempts!  She's learning to pair words together - especially possessives - like Emmy's car, umma's jacket, appa's bag.  She is also sort of learning to narrate a little - she has been trying to say things like duck go bus, duck go train. She's learned how to say "umma mugguh" which means "umma eat it."  It's pretty amazing to see her learning how to speak more. 

She's also learning to sing more.  At night, when I put her to sleep, she sings "God is so good" with me as I sing it to her.  She now sings baby shark a little better too - baby shark shoo doo doo doo doo.  Baa baa black sheep has gotten better, and her W, X, Y and Z is pretty good too. 

Emily is a coloring monster.  She wants to color non-stop.  I've had to tape craft paper onto her table bc she just gets crayon everywhere.  We had to pack crayons and a coloring book for the trip!  She also really likes paintbrushes too.  I'm deathly scared to let her actually paint though.  She always gets crayons on her clothes and on the table and sometimes the furniture.  I'm so afraid to get paint on everything.  Markers are still off the table for her.  She is not to be trusted.

Emily is also a running monster.  All she ever wants to do is just run.  She loves long, open spaces for her to just run with no obstruction.  It's a great way to kill time with her.  I have no idea how we're going to survive the winter without parks to go and run in or swings or slides to ride. 

Food-wise, she's still fairly picky.  She's still not loving rice dishes, but loves red sauce pastas and korean soups with rice.  Even her snack preferences have changed.  She hates animal crackers, but loves all cheesy, puffed snacks.  She still hates pouches, and is 50/50 on korean rice snacks.  Sometimes she likes them, sometimes she doesn't.  And sometimes she just gets sick of her own snacks if she eats them more than once in a row.  Man, what a little diva!

Diaper change is super annoying bc she hates it, fights it, noodles her body to try to escape.  And so has teeth brushing!  She went from hating it, to loving it, to now hating it again.  The good news is that she's finally getting better at learning how to spit water out.  And us cheering her on has made that more fun for her.

Overall, Emily has entered the terrible 2s.  She entered it early, and it's hard.  The tantrums are definitely patience-testing.  When she doesn't want to do something, she screams (mildly), she whines, she says no, she crosses her arms, she noodles her body, she turns her body away, she runs away, and it is HARD.  It makes me want to yell at her and just manhandle it.  It's hard to remember that she's a toddler and doesn't necessarily understand the reasoning behind everything.  But man, I wish it hadn't started early.   I do hope the terrible 2s will end earlier too then.  Sometimes I think about how this could stretch on for a year - and the thought of going through a year of this very annoying behavior is daunting.  She's lucky that she's cute and that I often forget my frustrations with her.  But man, toddler life is tough.

Even the way she plays now is so different as a toddler.  She wants so much to jump off things and that is a big test of patience as well.  She's really been enjoying trains, cars, and trucks.  Watching her zoom her cars is so fascinating to me bc it's so different from her baby days.  She likes cutting her play fruit, still crazy about bubbles, and using her flashlight. 

Hopefully, I can keep updating at a faster pace so that each entry doesn't have to be a novel!  The holidays are coming soon.  I can't wait for her to experience it again as a toddler!

Not a baby anymore! - 19 months

I feel terrible that I've been so bad about updating this blog, especially when I love reading old entries in posterity.  But life has been so busy - in a great way!

We had a busy summer, but it was such a memorable one!

1. We went on our first airplane trip!  in late august, we took a short family vacation with sy's sister's family to atlanta!  sy and i were pretty nervous about getting on a plane with emily for the first time.  but we hoped that bc it was a short flight of just 2 hours, it shouldn't be too bad.  good news was - emily was great on the first plane ride - bad news was we were terribly delayed.  our plane was stuck on the tarmac for 2 hours - not even moving.  we filled emily with snack after snack after snack - and she watched a ton of little baby bum on sy's phone.  i had bought her headphones to use on the plane, and after maybe 20 min, she no longer wanted to wear them, and was happy to just watch it on his phone with no audio.  so strange to me - but i'm glad it worked!  emily was great despite the long flight, and we had also been blessed with a free upgrade with more legroom.  emily didn't cry, nor shout.  people complimented us after the flight was over that emily was the perfect baby!  on our return flight, we again, we were delayed - this time in the air.  and we spent an extra 1 hour in the air.  emily was crabby for this flight bc she hadn't taken ANY nap that day, and was getting more antsy to move.  she had a few outbursts of yelling NOOOO!  but at least she didn't cry.  afterwards, sy and i were so proud of how well she really did on both flights considering how badly it could've gone.  and it's given us the courage to keep trying to go on more flights!

2. atlanta was great!  we rented an airbnb with sy's sister's family, so it was really nice to have all the kids together.  we went to the georgia aquarium and emily was scared of any large creature or creature that looked a little scary.  she was so cute how she clung to us in fear.  the pictures we took make us laugh so much.  interestingly, she was not scared of sharks at all bc of her love of Baby Shark.  hahaha!  and she also loved penguins so much bc of her book at home that has a picture of some penguins sleeping.  so everytime she saw penguins, she went shhhh.  emily loved eating georgia peaches, and had such a fun time running around as much as she could.  eating out was always a struggle with her and the kids in general.  emily has gotten picky with food and while we were at restaurants, we didn't always have much luck with getting her to eat what we chose for her - even though they were things she normally would've loved!  who knows if it was bc she was out in public, or if she just wasn't hungry.  but that was definitely the most annoying part of the trip.  on that trip - emily had her first day of not napping at all.  we were pretty nervous she'd be a hot mess, but it turned out she was not that bad.  she was just her usual active self - maybe just a tad more impatient.  overall - the atlanta trip was so much fun.  emily got to explore and play; we made some good memories as a group family trip; and it felt good to finally go on a real vacation!

3. sleeping - sadly - emily has officially transitioned over to 1 nap per day.  at first, i had thought maybe it was just a fluke bc we were on vacation and just not giving her the chance to sleep properly, or bc we were out so much, it just messed with her schedule.  who knows if those are what caused it, but emily is now a once a day napper.  i'm still waiting to see if she will now sleep longer as a result of it.  some days she sleeps 1.5 hours, other days she sleeps 2.5 hours.  i hope for my own sake, she will sleep at least 2 hours and we can all get some peace!

4. in the first week of august, we went on a short vacation to Boston!  we rented an airbnb apt and drove up to boston first thing in the morning.  to prepare for this, we purchased emily a new car seat - one that was roomier - in the hopes that she wouldn't hate the car ride.  i was prepared to basically feed her snacks the entire car ride up, but luckily, she DID fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion for a small bit.  she cried a whole bunch leading up to it, but at least she slept!  once we were in boston, we had SO much fun!  it was a short trip - basically a day and a half - but we jam-packed it with so much sight seeing - like the boston public garden, the park, the water side, etc.  emily loved running around, eating so much bread and snacks, and basically hanging out with us all day.  actually - we had taken that whole week off - and we went on a several small day trips.  we went to go get lobster rolls in port washington on 1 day - and that was emily's first taste of ketchup.  and man, does she love ketchup now.  we went to boston for 2 days.  we went to greenwich, CT for a day.  emily had so much bread, ice cream, fries, and ketchup.  it must have been so fun for her too!

5. zoo - we took emily to the zoo with a bunch of our friends with kids.  and emily really enjoyed that as well.  she was scared of any animals that looked scary - but again - super surprisingly - she was not scared of bears bc of her love of bears.  hahaha.  what a funny girl.  she loved penguins again, and was fascinated by the red pandas.  she held hands with a boy for the first time, and it was the cutest thing i ever saw.

6. beach - we took emily to the beach twice this summer.  the first time, emily was so weirded out by the sand.  she kept telling us to "ddakkuh" - which means "clean this" in korean.  but trying to clean the sand off her feet was an impossible task bc she just kept on getting sand on her feet.  emily loves the water so much - but she was definitely a bit scared of the ocean.  she was scared to be put down into the water - but it could also have been bc of the sand.  so we ended up staying just like 30 min at the beach.  haha!  the 2nd time we went to the beach, she again was not happy about sand, and was still scared of the water.  but sy was persistent to get her to keep trying to step in the water when the waves came up, and soon she was loving it bc of her love of splashing in the water.  we all got drench in our pants bc she just wanted to stay and play and splash.  we ended the night with a pizza dinner before the long drive home.  (ps. emily LOVES pizza now.). it was such a fun night that sy and i will always treasure.

7. pools - emily spent a lot of time in the pool this summer!  like i mentioned - she loves the water so much.  sy has a friend who has a pool, and she was always so happy to go in the water.  she's actually pretty natural and likes to paddle her feet too!  sadly - she also seems to get sick almost every time we took her to a pool.  so that was not cool.  haha!  we also bought an inflatable pool to use at sy's sister's house.  emily and her cousins pretty much spent the whole summer in that kiddie pool like every other day.  they loved playing in the pool so much.  it started off with them playing inside large kimchi tubs, and that's when we invested in the pool.  haha.  on the first day that emily used the large kimchi tub as a pool - we didn't have swim diapers yet - and emily pooped in the tub.  hahaha!  the rest of the summer - carol talked about the time emily pooped in the pool.  hahaha.  but overal - emily loves the pool.  she loves splashing her feet, she loves pouring water, she just loves being in the water.  i even bought a water table for our house to put on our balcony.  she loves it and it's impossible to get her out!  hence - now she LOVES bathtime too.  she probably just thinks it's more pool time!

8. overall travel - we've been doing lots of stuff with emily all summer.  she loves taking the train, so going to the city is a lot more fun.  with each activity we do, we find it gets easier and less daunting to try to do stuff with her.  and then it becomes so rewarding when we make these fun memories and not just stay home playing with her usual toys.

9. roseola - for memorial day - we went on our annual hamptons trip with our friends.  one of the babies there was really sick, and then lo and behold - a few days later - emily was terribly sick.  we discovered she had roseola when the rash broke out.  it was one of the toughest illnesses she's ever had.  she had zero appetite and wouldn't eat anything but snacks and yogurt pouches.  she had so much trouble sleeping and we regressed so much with all the rocking her to sleep and middle of the night wake ups.  seeing her body covered in little red bumps was so sad.  i really hope she never gets roseola again.

10. crib - which leads me to the next story.  after emily got sick after one of the pool events, she regressed as usual to wanting us to hold her to sleep.  when she was all better, we had to re-sleep train her bc she wouldn't sleep unless we held her til she got drowsy and that was not cool.  i was fearful that emily would climb out of the crib, but sy didn't believe me.  and one night, while we were trying to eat dinner while emily cried for us, i kept panicking that emily was going to fall out.  she kept trying to lift a leg amidst her crib slats.  sy thought i was overreacting, and then just when i started yelling - she's going to fall over - and sy started to run down the hallway - we heard the thud.  she had climbed out and fallen out.  she had landed a little on the step stool we keep near the bed bc i'm too short to put her in the crib.  she did not cry - just laid there stunned.  we ran in there and immediately picked her up and her silence scared me more than if she had cried.  she just was so stunned and in shock that she had fallen out of the crib that she literally had no words.  i was scared that maybe the fall had impacted her speech capabilities bc our normally chatty girl was silent.  we had to try to coax her to say something to make sure she still knew how to talk.  it was a scary night.  and we lowered the crib the next day.  man, i really wonder what we will do when she outgrows this lowest level of the crib.  what if she falls out again?  it's really terrifying!

11. talking - emily is a talking machine!  the sheer volume of words that she knows is so incredible.  our doctor thinks that emily is definitely a little advanced for her age.  most kids her age should be able to speak about 15 words.  emily is definitely over 100 words.  we've lost count on all the words she knows.  emily can name almost every image in the vocab book she has, and she can identify so many things when we're out in public.  emily also knows the sounds that lots of animals make.  it's so much fun to test her on them: dog, cat, whale, cow, monkey, chicken, shark, bee.  and she's lately begun to sing a little.  she can sing the first verse of baa baa black sheep; she can sing A, B, C, D; and we just discovered she can sing Baby Shark a little bit.  she says "baby shark doo doo doo" and repeats for mommy, daddy.  it's pretty impressive how she knows the sequence too!  i swear for baa baa black sheep, i heard her trying to say "have you any wool. yes sir, yes sir"!  it was so cool.  we also randomly found out that she knows how to count from 1-10!  she obviously memorized it from songs - but still!  sy and i were stunned that she knew which numbers came next and could just do it!  sadly - every time we tried to record her doing it, she stops and won't.  eugh.  she's so camera shy!  emily is also starting to use 2 word phrases.  it mostly comes in the format of emily's ___.  she likes to point out emily's car, emily's bear, emily's water, etc.  but she's also learning to say the phrases we tell her to say - things like "i love you," "goodnight," "i miss you."  she mimics us, and though it's super garbled, it's really adorable.

12. playtime - emily's playing has evolved over the past few months.  she feels like such a toddler now.  she loves to "color" with her crayons, pens, and paper.  she always finds her crayons and demands paper to be given to her.  she also has started doing imaginative play by pretending to pour tea and drinking out of tea cups.  she loves sitting in her "car" and putting her stuffed animals in the trunk.  and she also needs to make sure she feeds her animals whatever she is eating and drinking.  puppy has become her new favorite stuffed animal.  she must sleep with puppy, and she brings her along to most things.  she loves stuffed bears and always wants her bears to participate in her activities.  she really likes to run around and climb stuff.  so it's really cute to see when she's at her cousins' house and they race down the hallway over and over.  emily also loves toy cars, trucks, and trains.  i wish that we could have a bigger house so that we could get her larger toys to play with.  at her cousins' house, they have a battery operated car that she loves to drive.  and she enjoys things like scooters even though she can't really use it yet.  we bought her a mini table and chair set bc she loves sitting in her own sized chair - we just haven't found the time to set it up, nor can we decide where it'll fit in our house.  she likes getting getting behind our living room curtain and playing "where'd emily go?" by saying "emmy go" over and over.  she also plays this game by going in and out of my closet in our bedroom, and also sy's closet.  she recently discovered our ottoman opens up.  so she likes going inside there and putting toys in there.  she's also obsessed with bubbles and balloons.  she makes us do bubbles at least once a day.  and whenever she sees a balloon, she must touch it.  we once brought a balloon home from a party all the way from the city.  it was quite a pain.

13. eating - emily is a full blown toddler now and now really eats regular people food and has become much pickier than her baby days.  as a baby - emily ate anything and everything.  now - the word no is much more prevalent.  if she doesn't like it, she'll cross her arms, turn her face and say No!  she also goes through phases of liking and disliking stuff.  right now, she's loving all kinds of soups/guks.  she's currently going through a phase where she doesn't like rice-y stuff.  still love pasta in red sauce.  not so much a fan of chicken pieces.  she still loves bread to death.  she no longer likes kiwi.  went through an anti-banana phase, but i think she's back now.  loves strawberries, watermelon, blueberries - but disliking melons.  she still loves yogurt, but she's kind of anti yogurt pouches.  she loves eating bagels with cream cheese, and man, she loves pizza.  when we finally introduced pizza to her, she went nuts for it.  even her pronunciation of pizza is spot on now!  emily still eats pretty well for the most part.  but on days when she doesn't, man, it's so mentally exhausting and frustrating.  those are the days that sy and i fight the most bc we both are so on edge from dealing with her tantrums and trying to figure out what the right thing to do is - and then our different parenting styles go head to head.  i'm always on the side that she needs to eat - needs the calories.  if she won't eat, then i'll give her something else.  sy is on the side that saya she needs to learn how to not be picky and eat what she's given.  i don't want emily to go to bed hungry, he says it won't kill her.  we're both right, but what's right in each scenario?  aside from that, she's a snack-eating machine.  she has an endless snack belly.  but it's also interesting to see how her snack preferences change through time as well.  she used to love dried fruit, now she likes it less.  sometimes she likes cornflakes, sometimes she doesn't.  same with cheerios.  she officially doesn't like honey grahams anymore.  but she loves goldfish, most salty snacks, triscuits.  sometimes she likes bbongteegee and popped rice rolls, but sometimes she says no.  it's fascinating.  i guess she's like us - sometimes you're just not in the mood for a certain snack.

14. stranger danger - we're learning that emily is a pretty shy person.  even though she's super social and active when she's with us and family, when she's with strangers, she sticks close to us.  she usually hides herself between my legs or burrows her head into my neck if she wants to hide.  while she's still good and doesn't cry when people try to say hi to her, it does make me a little sad that she's such a shy girl.  the good thing is, she usually warms up after about 20 min of seeing that you're a safe person.  but it's still tough.  church service is only about 30 min long.  she usually spends the first 20 min sitting with me before being brave enough to venture out away from me.  and then by then, it's time to go back home.  she especially is scared of men.  she'll warm up to women a little faster.  i hope that this phase continues to get better bc i do want her to be a social person.  but i guess i can't force it if it's not her personality.  my poor brother in law - emily was so scared of him for so long.  and even now, she still doesn't like him much.  but at least she's warming up to him after spending more time with him this summer.

there's probably a ton more that i could keep updating on, but it would take forever.  i'll stop here for now, and try to do a better job of updating more frequently.  she's growing up so fast, and i don't want to forget any of it.  these blog entries help preserve these memories so much better than my brain can in a few years.

sigh - love that girl so much!

13 Months - A Toddler Before My Eyes

It's been a super busy time for me - learning how to my job, going back to the crazy working mom life, the exhausted evenings.  I wish I could've done a better job updating this blog, but a recap will have to do.

For the past few weeks, Emily has been SO MUCH FUN!  Emily is developing so much and so fast!

1.  Talking:  Emily talks SO much!  And I am absolutely loving it!  She really imitates everything she can.  One of my favorite new memories is that Emily loves to watch Little Baby Bum on Netflix.  And there's this one song about shapes, and she tries to imitate it as best as she can!  She imitates the words: square, circle, triangle, rectangle, star, heart, oval.  She gets stuck on hexagon and pentagon, which cracks up me and Sy.  Haha!  She has learned more that objects have names and she calls out those objects and points to them.  She says bbin = hair pin; buh = bird, puh = plane, cluh = clock, she's getting close to saying "light", she mispronounces yangmal (socks) as meymee; mee = mool (water), etc.  I can't even remember all of the words she can say or tries to say.  All I know is, she is a mimicking machine.  Once Sy yelled out Dang!  and she yelled out da!  and then we switched to Man!  and she went mahh!  If we go Shhh, she'll copy us.  If we whisper, she'll whisper.  Watching her learn how to talk has been so much fun.  And the fun part is that she's getting her cousin Carol to talk more too bc she wants to do what Emily does.  Haha!

2.  Walking:  Emily has been getting pretty good at standing up on her own.  She stands up, smiles really big and is so proud of herself for being able to do it by herself.  She's starting to take a few steps too.  She can do about 2-6 steps on her own as she goes to you with arms outstretched.  The cutest part is that she closes her eyes a little while she walks.  Probably bc she's a little scared.  But she's still so excited to do it and does her steps with a big smile on her face.  I feel like she's going to start walking by the end of the month.  I can't wait to see her accomplish this fully!  Yesterday, at church, she actually took a few steps walking AWAY from us.  and Sy and I were so proud of her and also stunned by her bravery!  So crazy and exciting to approach this milestone!

3. Cognitive skills: If we ask Emily where's her nose, she can point to her nose!  She's not as good at pointing at her eyes and mouth.  But at least she's mastered nose.  Haha.  And we have a book full of vocabulary words with pictures.  And she can identify things!  At the picture of string cheese, she'll say ch.  And the picture of bananas, she says nana.  At the picture of a baby - she says baby.  Haha.  She also calls every child a baby.  And we have to remind her that SHE's a baby!  Emily also now understands that diapers are dirty, and she likes to throw out the diapers herself!  We hand it over to her, and she crawls her way over to the trash can and throws it in while we hold down the pedal to keep the lid open.  It's pretty fun to see her "help" out.  We also taught Emily how to do "geedo sohn = prayer hands" before meals.  She'll clasp her hands, we'll say a prayer, and then she claps when we're done and is learning to say amen.  It's so cute to see.  My mom especially is loving this video.  That said - Emilyhas also learned how to clap!  She really loves clapping to If you're happy and you it.  So she loves to clap - especially when we sing that song.  When we go get her from the crib, she calls out "kkuh" = turn it off, to shut off her humidifier and sound machine.  It's so funny.  And nowadays, she's realized that she can kind of say her own name - and she pronounces Emily as emeeyah.  She also knows that the wooden sign over her crib says Emily, and she points to it and say emeeyah.  Oh, she also has learned over the weekend who she is.  So when we say where's Emily?  She points to her chest.  haha!  We learned that Emily knows who everyone is as well.  If you ask her where's hamee (grandma) - she'll look in her direction.  And we tested her with everyone: grandma, grandpa, adam, carol, aunt, uncle.  It's pretty amazing! 

4.  Car rides with emily has gotten hard again.  My suspicion is that she now feels super restrained in there bc all she wants to do is crawl around and explore.  So for a while, I tried to give her toys to keep her entertained.  But then she would throw the toys to the side and then cry super hard bc she couldn't reach them.  I tried singing to her in the car, but that only worked for maybe 10 min at a time.  The best solution I then found was to give her a piece of bread.  she would slowly munch on that and stay quiet in the car until she finished her bread, and then cry super hard again.  (AND it would leave me with a car seat full of crumbs.  smh). BUT, we have now found the perfect solution.  We discovered that Emily's favorite Little Baby Bum was available on youtube, and we found that if we streamed it over bluetooth, she was happy as a clam to listen to her favorite songs.  It's been a miracle godsend.  And now our long car rides to and from Long Island are way more tolerable for her and for us. 

5.  Food:  Emily's eating has totally gone back to normal and she eats really well again.  Granted, she still doesn't like tofu nor eggs.  But she loves to eat other food.  We gave Emily her first taste of jjajjangmyun - and she loved it.  We also have been letting her eat croissants - which she loves as well.  She definitely loves carbs.  People always marvel at how much she eats - especially for her size.  But I'm super proud of her eating skills.  And yes, she's a little picky, but she's still a pretty great eater.  In terms of milk, Emily is slowly starting to drink more milk now.  We still can only give her milk int he morning and night bc she really doesn't like to drink milk with anyone else but me.  But hey - we're getting close to 7 oz per feeding.  That's pretty amazing according to Emily's history.  I'm finding Emily's smartness to be so endearing.  Every time it's time for milk or meals, she always asks for her "bi" for bib.  If she sees me in the kitchen preparing her food, she tells me we need to get her bib.  Same for milk time.  And when she drinks milk, she always has her favorite position - head in the crook of my arm, her leg draped over my leg, bottle cap in one hand, her pluto doll at her feet.  She's a creature of habit.  But it's pretty darn cute.  Teeth-wise, Emily has gained new teeth.  She now has almost 4 bottom teeth, 3 on top, and 1 on the side back.  It's so nice to know her teeth are coming in and soon she'll be able to bite things better.  I am looking forward to when we can slowly stop spoon-feeding her.

6. Child-care:  In big news - we have hired a nanny for Emily.  Our nanny search was pretty tough.  We had a lot of no-shows, weirdos, people that just found other jobs fast, etc.  I was pretty stressed for a while. But we've hired someone finally.  She doesn't have any direct babysitting experience, but she's a retired hakwon owner who is a friend of a friend's mother.  I've been spending the past 2 wednesdays training her via half days.  I just don't think Emily can handle being left alone with her without any form of time to build a relationship of trust.  So despite how awkward it can be to spend 4 hours a day with this woman, I'd rather endure that than to know that Emily will be scared out of her mind being left with a stranger.  I'm hoping that after 3 sessions, Emily will be familiar enough with this woman and it will not be a disastrous day of crying.  I hope that this woman will grow to love Emily like her own grandchild and that Emily will grow to love her too.  But man, it is still terrifying to entrust a stranger with your child.  We've been lucky to have Sy's parents watch Emily.  At the end of the day, they are her family, and they love her to death.  But a stranger is a stranger.  I really, really pray that Emily will do okay with this woman and it will be a fairly smooth transition.

It's been quite the month since I last updated.  I hope that I'll be able to update a little more frequently.  But in the meantime, our little baby bloomed into a toddler, and I feel like she's become cuter than ever.  It's crazy how you can continue to grow and grow more in love with your child.  =D