How The Kiddos Are Doing

Generally when people ask me these days how my kids are doing, my answer is usually, “Well, one of them doesn’t sleep and the other one doesn’t stop talking.”  At this point I’m not sure which is worse.

In case you didn’t guess, Julian is my non-sleeper.  Poor little guy.  He even has the really dark undereye circles going on.  See?

As you can imagine, he can get pretty cranky from time to time, but overall he’s still my happy-go-lucky baby:

If you were to ask me to describe Julian right now, I would tell you that he’s cheerful and happy, very mellow but at the same time he loves attention and looking at people. This means that if we happen to leave Julian in a room by himself, he’ll make a noise that sounds like two cats fighting until someone comes over to him and then he’ll just be the most chilled out guy ever and will sit in your lap quietly observing until he needs something else (and then cue banshee-screaming).  It’s actually quite cute. And funny since Noah was not like that at all when he was a baby.

Noah, on the other hand, sleeps…but just doesn’t shut up when he’s awake.  It’s gotten to the point where it feels like my ears are bleeding from hearing the words, “Hey Mommy!  Hey Mommy!  Hey Mommy!” over and over.  He’s also at that age where he tries to be funny, but his attempts at it are funny in an unintentional way.  Like when he tells jokes:

Noah: Hey Mommy. I have a joke for you. The chicken crossed the street. (Laughter — him because he thinks the joke is funny and me because he has just butchered the easiest riddle in the world.)

Last week at his school it was Artists In Residence week. The school had six visiting artists (a dancer, an actor, a painter, an illustrator, a storyteller and a composer) for the week and they got to work with each of the classes. Noah’s class worked with storyteller JoAnne Lower and composer/pianist Warren Wills during the week and at Monday’s school assembly, his class got up on stage and sang the song they had composed together as a class with Warren (“The Elephant’s Child” which was based on a story told by JoAnne).

Noah was just amazing to watch onstage. He was comfortable, he wasn’t shy and he sang. Loudly. When I asked him afterwards if he liked being on stage, he told me he did and that he wasn’t nervous. Keep in mind this was in front of the entire student body (preschool through high school), including parents. I was so proud of him and I hope he never loses that fearlessness.

And speaking of not being afraid, here are some pictures from last Sunday’s Peak Market:

Hey Munoz 05! That’s a nice necklace you got there. Why don’t you turn around and show it to us:

Ahhhhh! Snake! The kickass shirt, by the way, is courtesy of my awesome friend Cristina. She also sent over a matching onesie (™!!!) with Munoz 09 on it for Julian.  Ok, Noah, we get it…you’re not afraid of snakes:

But hedgehogs, on the other hand, are a totally different matter…

Oh, and my PSA this week…you know all those reports about Crocs-wearing kids getting their toes eaten by escalators? Yeah…those are for reals. Noah had a close call at Ocean Park the other day. No blood drawn, but we did end up with one very scared child and an incredibly panic-stricken mom. So watch those feet!

Hong Kong Side Effect

There must be something in the water here in Hong Kong. Or perhaps it’s all the air pollution. Because in the three days that my parents have been here, my mom appears to have grown a second head:

Thing One and Thing Two

“I will pick up the hook.
You will see something new.
Two things. And I call them
Thing One and Thing Two.
These Things will not bite you.
They want to have fun.”
Then, out of the box
Came Thing Two and Thing One!
–Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

Just a few, quick things about my Thing One and Thing Two.

In Which Noah Learns About Addition
A couple of weeks ago I was in the kitchen minding my own business when Noah walked in very upset and asking what happened to his fingers. They looked ok so I asked him what was wrong and the following conversation ensued:
Noah (in a very whiny voice): My hands! I used to have ten fingers and now I only have five!
Me (laughing): What?! You still have ten. Count your fingers again.
Noah: (counting one hand) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. See? Only five.
Me: What about your other hand?
Noah: (counts the other hand) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Only five!  I told you!
Me: No, I mean add them together. Count all of your fingers.
Noah: (counts both hands) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…7…oh.

Boys vs. Girls
Another conversation that Noah and I had recently:
Noah: Mom, I don’t like girl friends.
Me: What?! What are you talking about?! But you have lots of friends that are girls.
Noah: I know. But I don’t like girl friends.
Me: Whatever. Girls are cool man.
Noah: Well…you’re ok.

Conditional Love
Noah also let me know where I stand recently when he told me this right before I took him to his swimming lesson, “Mom, sometimes I love you and sometimes I don’t love you. But right now I love you.” Thanks, kiddo.

Why Elton John Rocks
For some random reason, it turns out that Julian loves the song Bennie and the Jets. And by loves, I mean that if he is doing his inexplicable crying thing, he almost immediately calms down as soon as he hears those first few opening piano chords. My guess is that the song encourages me to perform the ideal combination of bouncing and swaying that will magically calm babies down. I downloaded that song only two months ago and iTunes shows that I’ve played it 97 times already. And that number doesn’t include the times I hit repeat without waiting for the song to completely finish or the zillions of times we’ve played the version sung by The Sippy Cups. So yeah, he’s a fan.

Julian Laughing
I take a lot of pictures of Julian to try to capture this very brief, but awesome, part of his life. But there are some things that you just can’t capture with a camera. Like laughter. Which is why video comes in so handy:

Kids + Sugar = Lots of Noise

Today was the day of Noah’s birthday party, or as Noah likes to call it, his “real birthday”. Beginning at around 6 am, Noah started asking if it was time to go to his party yet so when 11:15 finally rolled around, we were more than happen to pack everyone in the car and head over to Babycakes to set up:

This is Noah with Isabella, who despite coming all the way from Shenzhen was still the first one to arrive:

And my giant, sleeping baby (this is literally the only picture of Julian I have from the day so I had to include it):

While the kids spent the first hour playing in the the playroom and eating, the grown ups got a chance to meet one another and talk since this was really the first time all of the parents in Noah’s classroom got a chance to gather in one place:

Later the Babycakes staff lined all the children up, took them into the kitchen and gave them a tour of the bakery. Mark and I opted to sit out the tour — partly because they didn’t allow pictures inside the kitchen, and partly because with all of the kids gone, it was a good time to give our poor eardrums a rest. When the kids came back out, they got to sit down and pretend to mix up their own cupcakes:

And afterwards, the staff brought out real cupcakes, little icing bags and cups of sprinkles for the kids to decorate their own cupcakes:

Just a quick note to any cupcake decorators out there — green icing equals a really disgusting looking mouth once you start eating it:

After the cupcakes had been eaten, the kids ran around and played again which obviously meant that they hadn’t had enough quite enough sugar yet so we brought out the birthday cake. Here is Noah being suddenly bashful when his friends started singing Happy Birthday to him:

And what kind of parents would Mark and I be if we didn’t insist on a Ben 10 cake for the boy? Oh look, more green icing:

After the candles had been blown out, the boys got to argue over which one would get the cupcake with the Omnitrix on it:

The kids got to play and run around a bit more and shortly afterward it was time for everyone to go home. I was a little afraid that I might have overloaded everyone on the sugar, but apparently they had a lot of opportunity to burn it all off at the party. Here is the boy not even 5 minutes after leaving Babycakes:

Naturally he woke up refreshed and ready to tackle all of his presents:

I think this clears me and Mark from having to buy Noah any more toys for the rest of the year. Yay! At the beginning of the party when Noah started seeing his friends trickling in, he whispered to me, “Mommy, this is the best party ever!” I’m half afraid that Mark and I have set the bar a little high for all of his future parties but considering this was the first time Noah’s been old enough to grasp the concept of a birthday party, I’m just glad we could give him something that he enjoyed so much.

Productivity

It turns out that when you cut sleeping out of your daily routine you can get a lot more done during the day. Mark and I just had one of our most productive weekends in a long time, knocking a couple of big things off of our To Do list, and it happened to come after two brainmelting sleepless nights. Coincidence? Perhaps…perhaps…

Big Thing #1 — We hired a new helper.
Clarita left us at the end of July to get married back in the Philippines. Her replacement, Diane, has been with us since the beginning of July so there would be time for Clarita to train her and for her to get used to us.  Unfortunately things just aren’t working out with her. Primarily because she’s…well, she’s just not very smart. Mark and I have a long list of grievances against her but here are just some of the highlights:

• Very bad listening skills.  As in, we’ll ask her to do something, she’ll say ok and then turn around and totally not do it.
• Leaving the bucket with all of our cleaning supplies lying around the house even after I’ve asked her to always put it away so that Noah won’t accidentally ingest something poisonous.  (See also: bad listening skills)
• She’s always blaming Noah when things go wrong.  Like when I asked to make sure she always locks the balcony door, she told me they were unlocked because Noah did it (never mind that I had been with Noah all afternoon and there was no way he could’ve done it unless he has an evil twin).  I’m so tired of hearing how everything is Noah’s fault even if I’m just asking a simple question like, “What time is dinner going to be ready?”
• Poor common sense.  She gave Noah a cup of spoiled milk and when I asked her about it, she said she didn’t know if she should throw it out because she didn’t want to waste it.  I mean, really — it was completely curdled.  When I poured it out, it fell out of the cup in big chunks.  Milk should not make plopping sounds coming out of a cup, it should runneth over.  My poor boy.  I still feel bad that he drank that.
• She can’t make mac & cheese.  This might seem like a pretty silly grievance but is there anything easier to make than Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  I mean, this should be part of some sort of universal common sense litmus test.  But she looked completely perplexed when I handed her the box and asked her to make it for Noah.  I even pointed at the directions (which had illustrations!) before I ended up walking her through the steps and eventually doing it myself.  Unfortunately it turns out that I forgot to show her how to do the really hard part — cooking the pasta — because she kept trying to put the lid on the boiling pot of water causing the entire pot to boil over and flames to shoot out from the stove.  Repeatedly.  (See also: poor common sense)

She’s a sweet girl so I do feel guilty having to replace her but it really comes down to the fact that I don’t really trust her and have little faith in her abilities. She’s been doing well this week but a lot of that is because I’m taking on more responsibilities around the house because I don’t trust her to do it right.  Mark and I decided to go through an agency this time around to find a new helper.  The agency we’re using prescreens each one of their applicants so they know each one personally, they have each applicant complete a training course and then they score them on specific skill sets (like baby care, hygiene, emotional maturity, etc.).  The owner met with us for an hour to get to know us and get a sense of what we need and then recommended people based on that.  We found someone we like so we’re going through the whole immigration thing again so hopefully in 6 to 8 weeks we’ll have our new helper.  Of course it’s all still hit-and-miss and this new girl may turn out to be a bust too, but she can’t be much worse than having Diane around, right?

Big Thing #2 — We booked Noah’s birthday party venue.
Yes, his birthday is still a month away so laugh if you must, but this birthday party thing has been seriously stressing me out.  First of all, it’s my first time planning a party for him all by myself — my mom threw him his 1-year birthday party (because she wanted to, not because I was lazy) and since then we’ve been able to get by with just taking him to Disneyland. Secondly, this is the first birthday where Noah knows what that means. And he’s been to a bajillion parties in the last few months so he knows what parties are (balloons, cake and presents). Throw in the fact that Noah’s best friend moved to Singapore and Noah just started a new school so I have no idea who his friends are now…it’s a lot of pressure! One of the women in my knitting group mentioned a while back that Babycakes — a local cupcakery — throws birthday parties and after a lot of back and forth on my part, I finally decided to go with a cupcake party. Girly? Maybe. But Noah loves Babycakes — cupcakes and a playroom…what’s not to love? — and he’s getting a Ben 10 cupcake cake so I’m pretty sure he’ll enjoy it. On top of the playroom, they’ll also give the kids a tour of the bakery and let them make some cupcakes and decorate them afterward, so that’s one less activity that I need to worry about. And now that the venue is booked, I’m actually pretty excited about the party. Now if only I can get over that fear of “What if I throw a party and no one comes?”…

Time Flies

Last Friday, Mark and I took Julian to the doctor for his one month checkup. I can’t believe that over a month has gone by now since I had the boy, but you know what they say: time flies when you’re completely sleep-deprived having fun. Julian, I’m happy to report, is thriving. When I was still pregnant, one of the reasons Dr. Doo wanted to induce my labor was because Julian’s growth had slowed and eventually stopped during my eighth and ninth months. Once outside the womb however, he’s gone from 7 lbs, 3 oz and 19.5 inches at birth to 12 lbs and 22 inches in just four weeks. Yes, my child likes to eat.

Before he was born, Mark and I were preparing ourselves for a difficult baby. The reason being that Noah was an incredibly easy baby — he only cried when he needed something and he very laid back and easily soothed — and we figured we couldn’t possibly luck out twice. But Julian, for the most part, has proven to be a relatively chilled out baby too. He’s had a few random, inexplicable crying episodes, but nowhere near the insanity-inducing colic that I was preparing myself for. Even Dr. Wong remarked on what a mellow baby he was. If I were to complain about anything, it would be the frequency that he eats. The boy was on a two-hour schedule for two weeks and just recently settled on a more reasonable three hour eating schedule, although for some reason — quite possibly just to torture us — he still insists on eating every two hours between midnight and 8 am.

Aside from my occasional crying jags at only getting to sleep for two hours at a time, everything else is going great and we’re all adjusting pretty well. Maybe it’s leftover pregnancy hormones, but I have a hard time believing how fast this last month has gone by and a lot of the time I get really sentimental just looking at Julian. If everything goes according to plan, Julian is our going to be our last baby (at least, the last one that I’m popping out myself) and I get sad thinking that this is the last time I’m going to hold a baby this small. It’s so exciting to see him growing and changing every day, and besides that, he’s just so darn cute but still, it’s a teensy bit sad at the same time.

But anyway, in other news…

More Changes At Home
Because having a new baby isn’t a big enough change for us, we also got a new helper this last month. Clarita, who had been with us for the last two years (which also qualified her as the person we’ve known the longest in Hong Kong), moved back to the Philippines last week to get married. Enter Diane. Diane actually started working and living with us at the beginning of July so we’ve had some time to sort of get used to each other before Clarita left for good. As happy as we are with her, Noah still misses his Ate Clarita from time to time. Noah went along when Mark dropped Clarita off at the airport and as he said goodbye to her, Noah gave Clarita his new Wildmutt action figure — a toy that he’d wanted for weeks that I had bought him just the day before — told her that she could have it and that when he saw her again in the Philippines then she could give it back to him. Noah and his Ben 10 toys are not easily parted so it made the gesture that much sweeter.

Conversations With the Boy
Speaking of Noah, here are a couple of conversations that I’ve had with him in the last week…
Me: Hey Noah, I have a new game for you. Do you want to play?
Noah: Ok!
Me: It’s called Twenty Questions and the way you play is I’ll think of something and you ask me questions about it and try to guess what I’m thinking of. Ok?
Noah: Uh, Mommy? I have a new game instead. It’s called Keep Quiet and when I point at you, you stop talking ok?

(I’m reading out loud to Noah a card that we received in the mail addressed to the Munoz family.)
Noah: But Mommy! What about me? I thought the card was for me!
Me: It is! It says for the Munoz family and you’re part of the family, right?
Noah: Oh yeah. You and me and Daddy and Julian are in my family.
Me: That’s right.
Noah: And shoes. The shoes are part of the family too.
(That’s my boy.)

Diaper News
Yes, I’m putting in an update about diapers. Mostly this is for my mom because she totally laughed at me when I told her that Mark and I were going to use cloth diapers for Julian. When we first brought Julian home, the hospital had sent us home with two packs of newborn diapers on top of the pack we used up during our three-day stay. When we started running low, Clarita picked up two more packs of newborn diapers and when we started running out of those, we still didn’t feel prepared to make the switch so we picked up a pack of small diapers. And when we started running low on those, I did some quick math and figured out that in the span of just three weeks, we had burned through over 200 diapers already (35 diapers/newborn pack plus 60 diapers/small pack).  200 diapers!  In three weeks!!  Insane.  So we finally switched over to cloth diapers. I love these things. Seriously. They aren’t that much more work than disposables (of course, it helps that we have a helper who does the laundry), Julian’s diaper rash — which he’d had for two weeks straight — cleared up immediately, we’ve had fewer leaks with these than with disposables (sorry Earth’s Best – you may be earth friendly but you leak like crazy), and they’re so much cuter than regular diapers. I’ve even been known to try to coordinate Julian’s outfits with his diapers:

We still use disposables at nighttime but still, 2-3 diapers a day sure beats the 10-12 we were burning through (and leaving to sit in landfills) before.

And You Thought Your Passport Picture Was Bad…
When we were filling out all the paperwork and going through the process of registering Julian’s birth with the Hong Kong government and the U.S. Consulate, we figured we might as well go ahead and apply for a passport for him. After all, you never know when you’ll need to leave the country at the spur of the moment. We got Julian’s passport last week and I had to share his picture because it cracks me up:

He took that picture when he was two weeks old. It makes me laugh that his passport is valid until he’s five years old but that’s the picture that’s going to be on it until then. Hehe.

A Sweet Surprise
I’m sort of notorious for being really bad at checking our mail. Partly it’s because I’m hardly in the lobby where our mailbox is but mostly it’s because we rarely get anything interesting — mostly just bills (yawn!). So imagine my surprise when I checked our box to find we had gotten a package. My kickass sister-in-law, Lien, who coincidentally also runs a kickass (one might even say crazy) cake company, had made and sent us a box of cookies to welcome Julian:

Noah, who can’t read yet but knows how to spell his name, immediately spotted the “Noah’s Lil Bro” cookie and claimed it as his own. Later that afternoon, he caught me online checking out some cakes that Lien had entered in a cake competition. That, on top of the yummy cookies, was too much for Noah and he immediately went to his art desk so he could “draw a cake just like Tita Lien”. So here is Noah’s drawing:

which was (obviously) inspired by this cake. Obviously.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough and now you’re probably longing for the old too-tired-to-blog Cathy, but here are some more pictures anyway:

Short Weekend, Lots of Catch Up

This past weekend was Mark’s last weekend before heading back to work after a two-week, baby-induced break.  I was hoping for something low-key and relaxing so naturally it was weird and hectic instead.

A Family Outing
Noah starts school at Hong Kong Academy in one month so Mark and I figured it would be a good time to finally pick up his school uniform so on Saturday we set off for Causeway Bay for a little shopping. Admittedly, our goals for the day might have been just slightly overambitious considering it was our first family outing together — going out and doing stuff is much different with a preschooler and a baby in tow. Two hours after setting off from home, we had yet to accomplish anything on our To Do list. Still, we did manage to cross off three out of the four things on our list and tossed in a haircut for Noah as well. Not bad at all. Being a product of the public education system in the U.S. I’ve never had to deal with school uniforms before so I geeked out a bit at the thought of my little boy in a uniform and as soon as we got home, I made him try on his new clothes and parade around the house with them on while I took pictures (nerd!):

Typhoons and Cyclones and Hurricanes, Oh My!
Apparently, there’s really no difference between a typhoon, cyclone and hurricane except for the global area where they form, but that’s not really important. After over a week of beautiful, clear weather, the Hong Kong Observatory issued a level 9 tropical cyclone warning early Sunday morning after tropical cyclone Molave made landfall near Hong Kong. Normally I’m completely oblivious to weather and storm reports but after going into our bathroom at 4 am on Sunday and stepping into a puddle of water, I quickly realized we were in the middle of a storm. Of course, what better time to discover that your apartment has leaky windows than during a typhoon? Wheee! So Mark and I spent a good part of early Sunday sopping up puddles and pushing towels up against all of our sea-facing windows and doors.

On another note, I had been fascinated by the view of the sea and sky outside our balcony recently and just randomly started taking some pictures before and after the storm blew through so here they are…

Friday evening: On most days the sky outside is so hazy that you can barely see the mountains in the back but on Friday the sky was freakishly clear. Well, clearish…if you can ignore that blanket of yellow just above the mountain outline.

Saturday, noon: This is the view during a moderately heavy rain. If you squint you can make out the ships in the picture:

Sunday, noon: The aftermath of the typhoon. This is about eight hours after the T9 warning was initially raised.

Monday afternoon: The good thing about a big storm is that they really help to clear the air.

Hospital Again
After our wet, 4 am wake up call, on Sunday morning I woke up exhausted. By early afternoon I was still feeling pretty crappy and to top it off I started experiencing some really heavy bleeding and clotting — all signs of a postpartum hemorrhage. I called the maternity department at Matilda Hospital for advice and the midwife told me to go to the hospital immediately so I quickly stocked up the diaper bag while Mark got the two boys and soon after the four of us headed out to the hospital. Luckily for us Mark got a hold of Clarita even though it was her day off and she met us at the hospital and took Noah back home with her. After an examination, my doctor scheduled me for a routine surgery later that evening to treat the hemorrhage. By then I wasn’t feeling as scared and freaked out as I had been when I initially called the hospital (which reminds me, What To Expect When You’re Expecting is quite possibly the worst book to read if you’re worried about anything. Seriously. You will end up thinking you’re going to die.) and I was more worried about having to stay overnight and how much trouble that was going to be for Mark and Noah. The surgery itself though went by quickly (hooray for general anesthesia!) and Dr. Doo cleared me to go home that evening if I wanted to, but we had paid for the hospital room overnight and by god we were going to stay overnight. Mark, Julian and I had a bit of a rough night — in large part because we were unprepared for having to stay overnight — but Dr. Doo checked on me again in the morning, gave me another green light to go, and we were off in time to make it to Julian’s first appointment with his pediatrician.

Doctor Appointment
Julian’s doctor appointment was pretty routine. Being our second baby, Mark and I didn’t have too many questions or concerns this time around. Not to mention we were both pretty unprepared for the appointment. I had been worried about Julian’s eating because he only nurses for 10 minutes before completely conking out but it turns out that he’s gained quite a bit of weight so Dr. Wong had no doubt that he was getting enough to eat. She was actually quite surprised at just how much weight he’d gained. Apparently, by 10 days old most babies are usually back up to their birth weight (babies lose weight after they’re born in case you didn’t know) and then gain about 1/10th of a pound a day after that. Julian, at 13 days old, not only regained the weight he’d lost but at 8.25 lbs was already a full pound heavier than when he’d first come out. That made me happy to hear. I guess I just like fat babies.

A Milestone Of Sorts
Not to be too braggy (ok, maybe a little braggy) but I was pretty happy on Saturday when — after realizing that all of my pregnancy jeans were either dirty or in the wash — I tried on a pair of my regular pre-pregnancy jeans and found that they fit. I’m not claiming they fit all that comfortably right now, but dammit, I can get them on, zip them up and button them so to me that counts even if I have a hard time breathing in them. It’s not that I’m not happy to lose the weight — I did work out with my trainer through my eighth month since getting back into shape was one of my big concerns, especially since my metabolism now isn’t what it was when I first had Noah — but there seems to be something not right about shedding so much weight so fast. So during my examination on Sunday I mentioned to my doctor that I was concerned about the weight loss. He mocked me a little bit at first for complaining about it but he’s also running some tests on my thyroid…just in case it is a problem. Still, hyperthyroidism or not, a milestone is a milestone so when we got home I made Mark take a picture of me so I can remember the moment forever and to help motivate me to eat more chocolate (yay!):

Family Pictures
Finally, I’m posting some more pictures. Just because I can.

The boys — all squished together on Noah’s bed:

For my mom, who swears she hasn’t seen the baby’s eyes yet:

New Baby Recap…One Week Late

It’s been a week now since I had the baby and still no update from me which is a little ridiculous. So before this gets to be too out-of-date, for anyone who Mark hasn’t yet regaled with the story of Julian’s birth, allow me to do the honor.

Last Monday I had a final doctor appointment scheduled with Dr. Doo. My due date was Wednesday, July 8th and because of my propensity towards gestational diabetes he didn’t want me going too long past my due date. He had been in Europe for a conference the last week and a half and Monday was his first day back so that evening, after examining me and not finding much progress in the effacement/dilation area, we decided that he would just induce my labor on Wednesday evening (with the baby being delivered the following morning). I got home that night and started announcing to my friends and family to expect the baby on Thursday. Naturally, as soon as I had announced the date I began having contractions.

When I had Noah, I spent an entire day trying to get admitted into the hospital before they finally took pity on me and admitted me on my fourth try (for the record, I wasn’t being wimpy — I went when they told me to, that is, the contractions were so long and so far apart — I just wasn’t progressing fast enough for their liking. Stinkin’ doctors). I wasn’t about to be that woman again so I waited a couple of hours to call the hospital only to have them tell me to wait it out for a while longer in case it was a false alarm. An hour and a half later, at 1:30 am, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a false alarm and we called to let them know we were on our way. I packed up a few more items, grabbed my hospital bag, kissed a sleeping Noah goodbye and we were off. By 2:20 we were at the hospital and in one of their delivery rooms. After another examination, the wonderful, wonderful midwife on duty immediately ordered an epidural for me. The anesthesiologist seemed to take forever. I’m pretty sure the midwife knew I wasn’t about to start pushing without any drugs though so she made sure the epidural was in before calling my doctor. It barely had time to start working before Dr. Doo came in and I had to start pushing. And a little over an hour later, at 3:39 am, little Julian Munoz was born. I know that they say the second labor/delivery goes much faster than the first but this was unexpectedly short for me. Not that I’m complaining. My first time with Noah, I was in labor for about 40 hours. This time around it was about six hours. A definite improvement.

Here I am, post-epidural. Hooray for drugs!

And Mark, later that day with little Julian (if he looks a little tired, it’s because at this point Mark hadn’t slept in two days. Poor guy):

I think most people know that Mark and I had a hell of a time deciding on a name for the baby. We had come to an arrangement a couple months back that Mark would choose the first name and I would choose the middle name (which would also be the name that the baby would go by). For a very long time the baby was supposed to be Dash, but after test-driving the name for a couple of weeks, Mark still couldn’t get into it so we agreed to start over. We picked up more baby name books and came up with a new list of names but with three weeks to go until my due date we still hadn’t found a name that we both loved. Finally Mark brought up the name Julian. Julian was a name that hadn’t made it onto any of our previous lists. For a very long time, it was actually supposed to be Noah’s name. When I was seven months pregnant with Noah, we both decided that Julian didn’t seem to fit and we decided on Noah instead. This time around though, after hearing Mark mention the name Julian again, for some reason it just felt like the right name for the right baby so Julian Munoz it was. [If Jae is reading this, just disregard this entire paragraph. Of course I named my son after you. Because I lurve you that much.]

Here is Noah later that day:

And our first family picture:

Initially I was hesitant about having a baby in a foreign country with friends and family so far away, but it turns out that I had nothing to worry about. While it was hard at times being all alone out here, in terms of medical care, Hong Kong was amazing and makes my first birth experience in Orange County seem crappy in comparison. When I had Noah, I had a nice, spacious private room which I thought would be hard to beat, but then here’s my private room at Matilda in HK:

The biggest benefit of giving birth at Matilda though was their staff of midwives. The midwives were awesome. I didn’t realize just how much stuff I’d forgotten about babies (how do you breastfeed again? and someone remind me about this whole umbilical cord business?) and for three days I had a staff of nurses and midwives available to help me with whatever I needed. And they gave me painkillers as well. Perfect.

Noah is ridiculously cute with the baby. He’s been so excited for this baby for such a long time — if we have any problems with him, it’s that Noah is just a little bit too hard lovin’ with the baby. He’s always been an aggressive hugger and unfortunately for a newborn with soft spots, Noah prefers to hug heads. But he’s getting much better. He gets upset if Mark changes the baby’s diaper without Noah there to help; he tries to help out at bathtime; as soon as he gets home from school he immediately goes to our bedroom to check on his brother; and at night, no matter how drowsy he is, he’ll bolt out of bed if he forgets to hug and kiss Julian goodnight. He’s so proud of his new title of “big brudder” and asks me or Mark to remind Julian who he is because he isn’t sure the baby knows his name yet. So much cuteness all around. Of course, the sad side effect of having a newborn is that now whenever I look at Noah I see a giant. It seems like overnight the boy exploded — I don’t remember him being quite this big before. As recently as last Monday I remember looking at his hands and thinking how small they were and now I can’t get over how big and mature he is. No doubt, I can still wrestle the boy to the ground if I need to, but this new perspective on him is just the teensiest bit sad.

Guess The Baby

Julian and I have been back home from the hospital for a day and a half now, but between trying to get used to our new schedule, more doctor appointments and a quick get together with friends to show off the baby, I haven’t had much time to blog. So as I get some of my thoughts together (and sneak in some sleep), in the meantime I’d like to leave you with Guess the Baby. Mark and I are both amazed at how much Julian looks like Noah when he was a newborn. For sure there are differences, although if you asked us to name them we’d be hard pressed to say exactly what they are. We’re excited to see just what (or who) Julian will look like as he gets older, but for now we like to do things like play silly guessing games instead:

Guess which baby is which — Noah or Julian:

Mother-Son Stuff

Three days until my due date and still no baby.  This is both a source of annoyance and a relief.  On the one hand, I would love to finally have this baby out and be able to do things like bend over and tie my shoelaces, sleep on my back, eat fruit or wear ordinary pants.  But on the other hand, I realize how much our lives are going to change once this baby comes so I’m just trying to enjoy these last few days before everything ramps up and gets crazy.  A few weeks ago while taking Noah out for dinner, I suddenly realized that once we have this baby my Noah time is probably going to be very limited so while I’m trying to get Noah accustomed to the fact that we won’t be spending as much time together alone, at the same time I’m also trying to get the most out of what time we do spend together.

The weather has been kind of crappy as of late — heading into summer and being in the middle of typhoon season, it’s either been ridiculously hot or wet and gloomy or both.  Still, Noah and I have managed to get out for a few small mother-son activities.  So here are some photos from our last week as a three-person family.

Noah in his chair watching Ben-10:

Arrr matey. Pirate Noah:

Kicking the ball around at Cyberport:

Working on his nature photography. One of these days he’ll learn how to use the zoom button on that camera…

Me, Noah and black Spiderman:

What could be better on a hot day than an air-conditioned theater, 3-D glasses, popcorn and the new Ice Age movie?

Checking out the fish at the koi pond:

Trying to catch baby fishes:

Sort of a self-portrait with the boy:

My poor, hot, sweaty boy:

Finally, a public service announcement. If you are a grandparent, please don’t buy Transformers for your three-year-old grandchild. Yes, they’ll make him very happy:

But they’ll also make your poor daughter — who has the unenviable task of figuring out how to transform those bastards from robot to vehicle and back to robot — just a little bit crazy. Although, yes, it can be done…even if it took over an hour. But the point is, I can transform them now: