We be Parents

For those not able to quickly divide by 30, that would be about 9 months and 20 days – way too late for a 9 month update and not quite ready for the 10 monther. Hazel has definitely transformed quite a bit since the 8 month update – she’s moving around more (not quite fully crawling though), pulling herself up into a sitting position, clapping her hands, making lots of noise, and generally being a lot more active. Holding her is a lot more difficult than it used to be – now she just crawls all over us and doesn’t seem to want to sit still. She’s up to 4 teeth – two on the top and two on the bottom, and she’s eating a wider variety of food, including Cheerios and other ones that she needs gum away on before she can swallow them.

At her 9 month checkup a couple weeks ago she measured up well – she was ‘off the chart’ on height, coming in a just over the highest line on the growth chart at around 30 inches. She weighed in at just under 20 pounds (70th percentile) and her head circumference was around the 75th percentile.

One of her biggest changes in behavior has been her stranger anxiety. While she is cautious around just about anyone she doesn’t see on a regular basis she is much more weary of men…and the scariest of them all seems to be my dad! Last week he came for dinner and Hazel burst into tears before he even stepped in the house – the mere sight of him did it. After a while she (mostly) lets down her guard – here she is after a couple hours:

One of the big things we did was to go on a short road trip down to LA with the sole purpose of satisfying Yenari’s craving for Korean food. The Bay Area definitely has much better Korean food than most other areas of the country, but it is still no match for LA. This was a very similar trip to the one we took about a year earlier except this time we had little Hazel to keep us busy. She did great on the drive down to LA and was fairly well behaved in most of the restaurants we went to. Here’s the Korean food connoisseur and Hazel taking in the end of a crab feast at OnDal:

And a quick stop for ho dduk – a sugar-filled Korean dessert pancake. This was the first of many visits to this place and was inspiring enough to Yenari that she was talking about wanting to open up a ho dduk stand of her own!

Hazel had a blast in our hotel playing on the big king size bed:

On the way out of town after three days of gorging on Korean food and watching the Korean Olympic speed skaters kick some serious butt, we stopped by the house that my great grandfather build – the house where my grandmother grew up, my mom lived for many years, and the first house I lived in in the weeks after birth. Hazel didn’t seem very excited about any of this and slept through the visit:

On the way back home from LA we took a detour to Delano to see Carol, Yenari’s buddy from nursing school:

This trip to Korea town in LA was just practice for the real thing – this coming Thursday we’re flying to Korea for a two and a half week vacation. This will be the first time Hazel meets her grandfather, great grandmother, uncle, many other relatives, and Yenari’s friends. While we’re not looking forward too much to the 10 and 12 hour flights, we are excited about having the chance to take a long vacation and spend some time with Yenari’s family in Korea.

And now…more pictures:

On January 31st Hazel bumped up the month mark to 8 months…and to celebrate that we woke her up at 5 in the morning in order to hop on a 7am flight to New York.  I had a conference to attend in NYC and Yenari was able to rearrange her schedule so that she and Hazel could come too.  Because the flight was so early Hazel slept most of the time and made the flying experience a lot easier than it had been when she was 3 months old.  We only had two and a half days in the city, but it was an action packed couple of days.

My mom, Duncan, and my grandmother came down from Connecticut to spend about a day and a half with us.  I was at work during the day, so everyone hung out at the hotel, played with Hazel, and ate food.  My mom saw Hazel just a few weeks ago, but Nana hadn’t seen Hazel since she was about 3 months old, so the 8 month old Hazel was definitely a much different baby.  Hazel was in excellent behavior the whole trip and kept everyone laughing.  Here’s Hazel with her Meemaw and Nana:

The New York trip was also the first time Hazel got to meet her great aunt Janet, great uncle Bill, and their daughter Sarah.  Here are a couple photos of Hazel meeting them:

This trip was also Hazel’s first time meeting my good friend Michael Ross – we met him for a BBQ dinner.  The last time we’d seen him was when Yenari was pregnant and Michael was still living in Chicago – it was great to have the chance to see him now that he’s in NYC.

On the way back from dinner with Michael it started snowing – Hazel’s first snow! So we headed the block from our hotel to Times Square to take a couple late night snow photos:

The trip was definitely too short and we didn’t get to see all of the people we would have liked to have seen.  It was an exhausting couple of days and only got more tiring when we got back since our 6am flight back home brought both of us into full work days resulting in 24 hours of awake time!

Switching gears to the 8 month update…teeth are still coming in and she’s doing a lot of chewing, whether she’s eating or not.  She’s been a more adventurous eater, with a particular love of beef related food such as the beef broth from Korean gom tang soup and Gerber beef baby food.  Other things that she seems to like are yogurt, tomato, avocado, and chicken.  This newfound interest in ‘real food’ has made going out to dinner a lot trickier as she is no longer content to sit in her car seat and watch us eat – now she wants to be an active participant in the meal and also does her best to knock over drinks, pull table cloths, and reach for hot and sharp things.

Hazel is sitting like a champ – she started sitting on her own about a month ago, but now she can really do it without us spotting her.  She’s a big hand waver now – not actually waving goodbye to anyone, but just generally waving her hands and opening and closing her hand like she’s petting something.  She has much better hand eye coordination – she’s got the pincer grip down and she also is able to use both hands together to play around with things.

Here’s to the next month of new adventures and changes!

Last weekend my mom, Meemaw (!), came to visit us for 4 days.  It had been about 4 months since she’d seen Hazel so many many things had changed.  Hazel has been fairly weary of strangers, so my mom was worried that it would take a while for her to get used to her…luckily Hazel only gave her an abbreviated hour of probationary time before she started giggling and smiling and letting my mom hold her.

We had a fairly action packed start to our weekend with Meemaw with a trip to see Cirque du Soleil’s OVO in San Francisco.  Hazel handled it extremely well and actually seemed to enjoy it for maybe the first hour or so.  She managed to drop a bomb of a poop which we had a heck of a time with – no bathrooms except for porta-pottys, so we had to change her right in the middle of a big pavilion on a concrete floor.  After that we went to one of Yenari’s favorite Italian restaurants in SF where the duration of our trip started to take its toll on Hazel and we didn’t have the easiest time eating…nonetheless, a great trip into San Francisco with my mom and Hazel.

My mom’s visit also allowed Yenari and I to go to our first movie together since the night before Hazel was born when we saw Up!  This time we went to see Avatar and both enjoyed the movie and actual ability to do something without Hazel.  My mom fared well in Hazel watching – she went through three trials in feeding Hazel…her bottle, a sippy cup, and finally the winner: a shot glass!  On returning home Hazel didn’t even seem to care that we were back – Meemaw did a good job!

The night before my mom left my friend Sarah, who I’ve known since high school, came over for dinner.  Hazel was the total center of attention of the evening with cameras in her face, puppies, and lots of faces – here she is handling it fairly gracefully:

It was great to have my mom visit for a few days, though the days went too fast.  Luckily we’re going to see my mom (and others) again soon when Yenari and Hazel accompany me on a business trip to NYC at the end of this month.  Yenari had a tough time deciding on whether she should come along or stay at home with Hazel…both would be very tiring, but in the end travel won out so that my mom and my grandmother could spend more time with Hazel.  It’ll be difficult though…both ways we have 6am flights and Yenari even has to work on the day we travel home…eeek!

The biggest downside of the weekend my mom visited was that Yenari got sick – what started as just a sore throat and cough in the mornings turned into full-on bronchitis.  While that was nasty enough, Yenari added to the fun by getting a stomach virus which brought its fair share of nausea, vomiting, delusional thoughts (thinking of cutting out her stomach), and other pleasantries.  The past week has seen three trips to the doctor, a week and a half of sick leave from work, and a very sick mommy.  The whole family suffers when a mom is sick and this was certainly no exception.  She’s getting better now, but her cough is still pretty nasty and she’s not up to eating spicy Korean food yet!

At the height of Yenari’s sickness I brought Hazel into the eye doctor for her first checkup.  Every parent should take advantage of the InfantSEE program – thousands of doctors participate in this program that provides free eye screenings for babies older than six months.  Yenari had some eye problems as a child that could have been much easier on her had they been discovered earlier, so she was very eager to have Hazel checked out.  Luckily everything looked great and Hazel cooperated just about as well as a baby could be expected with the lights, lenses, eye drops, and all the other fun things that come along with an eye doctors visit.

Finally, a couple photos we took yesterday:

Closeup where you can see her teeth coming in:

Hazel's chompers

I’m a couple days late, but Hazel is now 7 months old.  Its hard to pinpoint individual things, but it seems like Hazel has made some major transformations in the last month.  Physically the smallest little changes are two teeth that are making their way up in the bottom middle of her mouth.  She’s seems to be somewhat annoyed by it, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering her too much – just a little extra drooling and gnawing on anything she can get her hands on.

She hasn’t started crawling yet, but she can spin around, roll, and scoot backwards.  She can also sit up now without support…though we keeping our hands close by to catch her from falling when she sees something interesting that she wants to lean out for.  She has a lot more fun playing now – studying all the little gadgets on her exersaucer, throwing toys onto the ground and waiting for us to pick them up, and playing peek-a-boo.  More noises and laughing and baby gibberish has come as well and is pretty fun to listen to – Yenari responds to just about any noise Hazel makes with the response ‘did she just say mommy?’.  No mommy yet, but I’m sure its on the way sometime soon.

She’s been doing a better job eating both solids and from the bottle…though she’s still a far way from eating full meals while I’m watching her.  Her favorite solids are carrots, squash, and prunes.  mmmm.  Luckily her digestive system has somewhat caught on to the solid foods, though she’s not quite regular yet.  The other funny thing is that she’s become obsessed with trying to drink water from a cup – she doesn’t quite know what the goal is, but she starts chewing at the edge of the cup and tilting it back.  When the water actually makes it to her mouth it surprises her and either rolls down her chin, causes her to cough, or miraculously gets swallowed properly.  We’ll have to get a video of it, it’s pretty funny.  Here is a photo of her messily eating some food, totally zoned out (she doesn’t normally look this ridiculous while eating):

We had a good and relaxed Christmas.  Yenari had to work Christmas Eve but had a remarkable 4 days off in a row starting on Christmas.  Here’s Hazel with some of her Christmas stash:

We think she enjoyed playing with the wrapping paper and ribbons more than the actual toys, but she’s grown to like them too.  She’s very entertained by her ‘Pal Violet’ (no not that Violet)…the first baby toy that has a USB jack to plug into a computer.  We got to pick her name, favorite food, color, and animal….we are endlessly entertained by doggie Violet mispronouncing bibimbap as her favorite food.  She liked the other presents we got too – here she is trying to eat a bacon wallet my mom got for me:

I think we’ll end it on that note, because what can really top eating a wallet made of (fake) bacon.  Well, maybe a couple more photos:

Wowzers, a half year goes fast.  The Shins sing that “the years have seemed short but the days go slowly by” – for my last half year I’d say that the minutes have gone slowly but the days are just flying by.  The days have gone fast enough that I’ve neglected to write anything here since the 5 month milestone and I’m even a few days late on the 6 month mark which Hazel hit either Monday or Tuesday….since she was born on the 31st I’m not sure whether she should get credit for 6 months on 11/30 or 12/1.

Hazel has changed a lot in the last month, but it is hard to point to any single thing.  She hasn’t learned too many new tricks, but she’s improved quite a bit in the old ones.  She’s a lot more focused, she’s able to entertain herself with her toys, and she’s gotten a lot stronger.  Her eating habits have changed quite a bit as well as she’s caught on to eating the solid foods.  The solid foods have been great for me because it means she actually eats when I’m taking care of her while Yenari is working.

The solids have had a downside though…the switch from breastmilk only to rice cereal, oatmeal cereal, veggies, and fruits has brought her digestive system to a screeching halt, going from many dirty diapers a day to none for many days.  It got bad enough that we even brought her into the doctor because she hadn’t gone in about 5 days!  Her doctor checked her out and said that she didn’t seem to backed up, but that we she start her on some prune juice or prune solid food and proceed on to child suppositories if that didn’t work.  She actually seemed to like the prune baby food (gross!) but it didn’t quite ‘clear the road’, so the suppositories were the answer after she hit the 8 day mark…and once we went for it the action started up in seconds!  She still hasn’t quite figured out pooping with solid food, so hopefully we’ll be seeing more stinky diapers soon.

In the last few weeks we’ve been busy taking Hazel on many social engagements.  Hazel and I had a great time and Jeff and Sarah’s place for Thanksgiving – Yenari was working, but everyone there was really helpful in playing with Hazel.  Luckily I’ve gotten quite good at eating while holding Hazel, so I was able to enjoy an incredibly tasty meal! Here’s the little lady all dressed up in her Thanksgiving outfit before we headed to Jeff and Sarah’s house:

That same weekend we stopped by to see Rebecca, Troy, and Ewan at there house.  Rebecca took some great photos of Hazel and Ewan playing together – this was definitely the most interaction Hazel has had with another baby.  Hazel was busy grabbing Ewans hand, checking him out, and wondering how a 4 month old could be bigger than her!  Ewan was playing hard to get, or maybe just a little preoccupied with trying to jam his whole hand into his mouth! Here are the two lovebirds:

This Monday we took Hazel to the doctor for her checkup.  She is moving right along in the growth department, measuring in at the 90th percentile for height and head circumference and the 75th percentile for weight.  She was only at the 50th percentile for head circumference at her four month checkup, so her head has done some serious expanding!  Though they’ve made mistakes in measuring her head many times, so maybe her head didn’t get so much bigger.  She got a bunch of shots which she really didn’t like, but otherwise survived the visit without too much trouble.

And to finish it off, a couple more photos from the last month: