When A Child Is Born: Sickness, sickness, go away!!

Our house was battling with the sickness almost the whole month of September. During the Labor Day weekend, Andy had a diarrhea and Emily had a cold. Then Andy got a cold despite of our best efforts trying to separate Emily and Andy. Not long after that, I was sick before Andy and Emily got well. The sickness was so disruptive to our daily life that the stress level in the house exceeded the one four months ago when Emily got sick after Andy was born. I found myself unable to handle two sick kids very well. Besides that, we had to do sleep training for Andy again after he was well. (It was hard enough to do that once, not to mention twice within a couple of months. Little Andy only had three weeks of perfect peaceful sleeping in between. Sigh!) I prayed that the sickness will not visit our family again this year - we had our quota already.

Other than the sickness, there was a lot to update on Emily and Andy. Andy turns five months old today. He loves playing in his play mat and travel swing. He enjoys the mobile and the soother (he turned on the soother himself sometimes). A couple of his favorite things are: a smiling face or a silly face, a song or the sheep sound, a kissing sound (or maybe a kiss?),

the yellow bear album (his most favorite),

and the smiling octopus. He smiles at them constantly.

What I love the most are his sweet smiles, bright eyes and broad voice. Here are some information on Andy by the numbers:

90 percentile on weight; 95 percentile on height; 11 hours of sleep in a row (max); 2.5 hours average between feedings; 5 oz per feeding; 3-4 naps a day; 2 sleep trainings; infinite number of kisses ...

The following pictures just reminded me so much of Emily when she was this age: same toys, same looks and same smiles ...

Emily started to play "make believe" on her own and she loves hide and seek game. One day I caught her talking to her doll, "Are you hungry? ... Want some milk? ... No? ... OK!" She also started to recognize her baby pictures. Before this she always told others "That's Andy." Now she says "It's Emily." (Well, she can't quite pronounce the "l" sound yet. She says "w" sound instead of "l" sound.") She is an easy conversationer. One day she saw the mosquito bite on my knee. She crawled over and touched it. "(Emily:) Mommy, mosquito bite!" "(Me:)Yes, I know." "(Emily:)Oh, I'm sorry! Huuu--" She began to blow on my knee. Isn't she sweet?! Another day when I was feeding Andy with the bottle, the water on the bottle dropped onto Andy's clothes. Emily came over and said, "Andy's clothes are wet!" "Really?" I asked. "Yeah!" She pointed to the wet spot. She always keeps an eye on her brother. She often gave compliment on the food she ate "Hmm, yummy!" or "Oh, it smells good." She even brought David's books to him Sunday afternoon and said, "Daddy's FriendSpeak!" This little girl just amazes us every day. One afternoon I was cleaning her car seat and threw away some puffs that dropped in the seat for the birds. She picked up the puffs and ran towards the jogging trail. She raised her handful of puffs and said to the ladies who were walking their dog, "This is for doggie!" The two ladies stopped and waved at her before they went on. Precious!

These are Emily's new friends:

Puppy dog from Macy's (the clerk gave to her when she was shopping with David)

Turtle night light that we got for Andy

Rathyon bear from David's office

Emily also got a box of Easter eggs with toys in them from a lady driving by the neighborhood. She thought Emily was precious when she saw her playing in the front yard so she jumped out of her car and gave Emily a box of new toys.

Several areas that Emily is still working on are: she still is confused about the colors; she still doesn't know the meaning of "No" when she said it; she still doesn't use the directional words correctly. For example, she says "Mommy, help you - It's heavy!" when she actually asks me to help her. Emily knows all the upper case letters. We started working on the lower case letters. We do one letter each week and plan our activities around that letter. So far we did "A a" and "B b".

"A (a) is for Apple": We learned the trinity of God using the apple analogy.

We colored the apple picture.

We ate the apples (Emily examined the apple and said, "Mommy, take the skin off!" because she never ate an apple with skin before)

And watched the video about Animals.

We also studied the verse "Ask and you will receive."

"B is for Bug and Bean":

We played with beans and watched the sesame street videos on the bugs "Spring Time". Emily had never watched any videos or TV except "Praise Baby" and "Signing Time" before. She loved the sesame street video right off the start. We may begin to introduce her to other videos since she's almost two years old now. The verse about B is "All things are possible to him who Believes.”

Shovel beans

Feel and drop the beans

Make rattles out of beans

Besides the weekly FriendSpeak sessions, Emily attended many events with Daddy. She attended the September birthday party held by Janice and Clay; she went to David's co-worker's going away party at his office; she enjoyed the LST Harvest/benefit dinner; and she went to Jenny's house warming party.

Nathan and Amy came to see Andy

Visit Daddy's office

October marked the end of the helping from the girls. We are all sad about it. I can't imagine what my days would have been like without their help. Emily learned so much from them and had so much fun. We thank God for sending them to us when we needed the most. We'll forever remember them and remember the time we had together. When we said bye bye to the girls on their last days, Emily chased them to the street and waved until their cars disappeared. Our tears welled up. Hopefully they will still come to see us when they have time.

Last day with Weiting

With Andrea

As far as David, you can already tell that he had a busy month from Emily's status. Besides all those activities, he also went to the State Fair and the Rush concert as part of his birthday gift. I was glad that he enjoyed all of them. As far as me, life gradually rolled into the normal state. And, my mom may come to visit us if she gets the visa. We are all really excited about it.

Here are some random pictures of the month:

Ready for a ride

Lefty or righty?

Still flexible

I'm in bumboo now~

The cool guy

Perform "Itsy bitsy spider" (We also have a video version of the whole performance. So cute!)

Emily plays on her own when I put Andy down to sleep (I'm so glad that she always obeyed my command and stayed where I asked her to until I came out of Andy's room)