A Couple of Firsts and a Makeover

First Number One

Have I mentioned that we started Julian on solid food?  Yeah.  Already.  Given Noah’s history of allergies, Julian’s doctor had recommended that we wait until Julian was six months old before introducing solids (the later a baby starts, the less likely they are to develop food allergies) but Julian went from needing to eat every six hours one week, to every five hours the next week, to every four hours the following week, and by Thanksgiving weekend he was hungry every three hours.  It was a little much.  So Mark and I decided it would be a good time to start him on solids.

I found an organic four grain porridge from a UK company for babies starting at four months, and I know you’re supposed to start with single grain food but a quinoa/rice/millet/amaranth blend sounded so much more appetizing than just plain old rice.  Plus, Julian loves this stuff.  Like, seriously loves it.  From past experience I was expecting the first feeding to be messy — more a chance for the baby to get acquainted with rice cereal than to sate his appetite.  But Julian took to solids like an old pro.  He pushed some of the food out of his mouth with his tongue of course, but surprisingly most of it ended up getting eaten.  And when we ran out of cereal, he screamed at us until I fixed another serving for him and fed him that too.  Halfway through that first feed he started grabbing for the spoon and trying to guide it into his mouth, not letting go until the spoon was empty.  He also screams when we take too long putting cereal on the spoon and his mouth is empty for more than two seconds.  Yep…I have a good feeling that of my two boys, Julian is going to be my adventurous eater and potential chef (which more than makes up for the fact that he is a crappy sleeper).

Naturally, I have video of the first feeding, but it’s boring and I don’t feel like trying to edit it into something watchable.  But here’s a picture instead:

First Number Two

Mark has been trying to convince me for the last three months that Julian needs a haircut. I’ve been resisting because his hair is finally long enough that it doesn’t stick straight up all the time (plus it’s kind of cute like that and it smells good). Part of it is also vanity because I see so many babies — some twice Julian’s age — with less hair than he has so I like to flaunt his long, flowy locks (and no, I really don’t mind that most people assume he’s a girl because of it). But with Christmas coming up (read: lots of photo ops), I finally conceded that the boy looks a little on the raggedy side. So this morning, while Mark held a sleeping Julian in his arms, I grabbed my hair scissors and started snipping away. And now the boy has gone from looking like a baby girl with shaggy hair:

to a baby girl with a bad haircut:

Oh well. At least it’ll grow out.

A Makeover
Way back when Noah first outgrew his crib, Mark and I were kind of unprepared for it so we ended up buying the first toddler bed that we happened to come across — which just happened to come from Ikea. Mark and I have a love/hate relationship with Ikea. Ikea has saved us many a time when we’ve been too broke or busy to buy real furniture and a lot of their stuff is actually really cute, but we have quality issues with them. And sizing issues…that is, furniture from Ikea doesn’t seem to come in standard sizes so if you ever want to accessorize them or, say, get new bed sheets, you’re kind of forced to buy them at Ikea too unless you want something that isn’t quite the right size. I hate Ikea bedsheets. Especially their overly cutesy children’s sheets which we had because, surprise, they were the only ones that fit Noah’s bed. So, we’ve been itching to redecorate Noah’s room for a while. We finally found a children’s furniture company in HK that we liked and that wasn’t exorbitantly priced so we designed and ordered a bed for Noah. After four weeks, it finally came yesterday:

Mark loves it because he designed it to look like a castle; I love it because the steps are also drawers so there’s a ton of storage in his room now; and Noah loves it because it’s got steps and a curtain for privacy. So happiness all around. Here it is after four hours of rearranging books and toys:

And if the new bed provides an incentive for Noah to stay in his room all night long rather than coming into our room in the early morning and crowding me, well, to me (and my poor achy back) it’ll be well worth the money.

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!

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.

Noah’s Birthday in Pictures

Given my incredible sense of timing, I managed to come down with a cold on Noah’s birthday. This means a picturepalooza of the boy’s birthday because I don’t feel like thinking/writing. Hooray for you!

Noah started off his day with a traditional birthday doughnut:

He got to open up a couple of birthday presents before heading off to school for the day:

It’s BenWolf!

Humungosaur and BenWolf fight it out to see who gets to eat the last chocolate doughnut:

Noah reminds us how old he is (post-doughnut):

After school (during which he said he “got lots of birthday hugs” from his friends) and after his swimming lesson, we hunkered down in the kitchen where the boy helped make his birthday cake:

Blowing out more birthday candles:

Finally, examining his new light-up animals of the world globe:

Bullet Points

My poor, sad, neglected little blog.  Obviously I haven’t been updating it lately.  But not for lack of stuff to write about.  September’s been packed full of stuff but I’ve been so preoccupied — doing stuff for Noah’s school or for his birthday among other things — that I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write about them [Fun fact: it takes me, on average, a good two to three hours to knock out a blog entry.  Really. Hours.  Either because I’m such a diligent writer or else I have a hard time forming coherent sentences…it’s a toss up.].  And because my mind works in a very linear way, I feel like I must write about what’s been going on since I last wrote before I can move on and write about anything else so here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on with us lately…

• Noah just finished up his first month at his new school and, besides me being incredibly busy with school stuff, so far everything else seems to be going great.  Miss Joanne wrote me another note extolling the boy’s wonderful manners, leaving me scratching my head and thinking, “Really?  What the?!”  I can only assume that Noah has a daily reserve of good manners which he’s depleting in class so that by the time he comes home at noon he is back to his normal, rowdy, heathenish self again.  Lucky me.
• Noah’s back to school night was on Tuesday this week.  I feel like I’ve been to the school so many times since his first day but still, it was nice to go and hear Miss Joanne’s presentation on what they do in class everyday.  The teachers had put up artwork that the kids had drawn so after the presentation I took a quick look around.  It was interesting that while a lot of his classmates drew pictures of their daddy, family or pets (and in the case of one child, “something that could be fire”), Noah’s drawing was of Ben 10 and his aliens.  Have I mentioned that the boy loves Ben 10? Yeah…
• Julian had his two-month doctor appointment earlier this month.  He currently weighs in at 6.7 kg (14.7 lbs) which puts him in something like the 97th percentile.  Dr. Wong is trying to convince me that he’s overweight — his height of 60 cm only puts him in the 75th percentile — but I’m not buying it.  It’s not like I’m going to put the baby on a diet and besides, I like fat babies.
• Speaking of diets…Julian has broken out with eczema recently.  Noah’s eczema was allergy-based so I assumed Julian’s was probably allergy-based as well.  I cut eggs and dairy from my diet and, lo and behold, his eczema magically cleared up.  So fare thee well milk, cheese, ice cream and omelettes.  Until we meet again…
• On the sleeping front, we are both still sleep-deprived.  I promise to stop complaining about this soon because you figure we wanted a new baby and should’ve known what we were in for, but honestly, I remember getting quite a lot of sleep when Noah was still a baby.  Julian is almost sleeping through the night.  For most of the month we’d usually put him down for the night around 8 pm, slip him a final bottle around 11 pm while he was still asleep and he wouldn’t wake up hungry again until about 5 am.  However, he will wake up if his pacifier falls out of his mouth — which, last night, meant getting up every hour between 1 am and 6 am to pop it back in his mouth — and in the last few days he suddenly decided that 3 am is the perfect time for a cuddle.  Not that I mind cuddling — I love cuddling him — but then again I also like to sleep.  Sadness.
• By the way, I’m currently shopping around for a new camera lens and I’m torn between getting a prime lens (most likely a 50mm lens) or a wide angle (quite possibly even a fish eye lens).  Naturally there are pros and cons to each lens but I’m pretty much split 50/50 and could go with either.  So if anyone has any opinions or preferences with one or the other, please let me know — I’m terrible at making decisions.
• Finally, I took this (blurry) picture of me and Julian the other day:


and I was struck by how much he looks like me when I was a baby.  If anyone has ever wondered what I looked like when I was a baby (admit it, you do think about it, right?) this is it — crazy, spiky hair and all.

So that’s it — our month so far.  Next week will also be quite busy with me and Mark’s 7th(!!!) anniversary on Monday, Noah’s 4th birthday on Wednesday and his birthday party on Saturday.  Not to mention that my parents are flying in to visit for a couple of weeks the following Wednesday so I’m super super excited (plus my mom generously volunteered to haul over 50 balls of yarn that I ordered online and had sent to their house so that’s like icing on the cake for me).  So more busyness ahead (but good busy) but hopefully I won’t fall too far behind on my blogging this time around.

Excuses, Excuses…

So I’ve been a little bit not here lately, but I have a good reason.  It turns out that by writing the following sentence in my last blog:

“But Julian, for the most part, has proven to be a relatively chilled out baby too.”

I ended up totally screwing myself. Yep, you guessed it. Adios chilled out baby and hello crazy freaking out baby. I know, I know, you’re probably asking yourself how such a sweet looking baby

can possibly cause so much trouble, but this little guy can definitely scream.

Mark and I have had our hands (and ears!) full (of crying) lately trying to maintain some semblance of peace and quiet in our little house but poor Julian has his days when he’s just inconsolable. Poor little guy. It’s so heartbreaking to hear him crying so much and for so long, but in a weird, twisted way, a part of me is glad for this. Not because I like torturing babies but because it’s helped me really come to terms with one of my pre-baby #2 fears. A part of me has always been concerned with how I would feel about baby #2 because Noah was pretty much the perfect baby for us. There was an underlying fear that Noah would always be the favorite child — especially if it turned out that baby #2 was a difficult baby (hello Julian’s crying jags) — and that we would unintentionally shortchange #2 because of it. But if I’ve realized anything these past couple of weeks, it’s that it doesn’t matter. Even with my sore, aching neck, back and shoulders and as sleep-deprived as I am some days, I can still hold Julian (after he’s been crying for the last 10 minutes straight) and feel nothing but a huge surge of love for him. Chilled out or not, colicky or not, I’m finding it doesn’t matter at all.

Of course it helps that I think Julian is a total cutie pie. Even if he has turned out to be the Amazing Exploding Baby. My little Fatty McFatty has managed to almost double his birthweight in just six weeks and weighs in at 13.5 lbs. So much for having a nice, normal-sized baby this time around. But if my back has to suffer from carrying him around all the time, I get some consolation from the fact that I can make fun of all of his chins. Just check out that neck roll:

So that’s part of the reason why I just haven’t been around lately.  Another reason is that Noah started at his new school last week and I’ve been busy with that.  One of the reasons I’ve always loved Noah’s school is because of its emphasis on community and parental involvement and I got a firsthand taste of that last week.  Noah’s first day was last Wednesday and I’ve already been at the school four times — orientation, hanging out with other moms in the school library waiting for our kids to get out of a short school day, a training class for the school’s intranet system, and today’s new parent coffee morning.  Even before school started I had gotten a call and email from Pam, my buddy family (this year the school paired up a new HKA family with an existing HKA family to help us get comfortable and to answer any question we newbies might have).  I don’t know about Noah, but I’m definitely feeling the love from HK Academy.  And as hectic as this past week has been for me, I’ve really enjoyed the chance to meet and get to know the other families.  Yep, introverted, antisocial me actually likes talking to people now.  Either hell is freezing over or I’m really desperate for non-baby human interaction.

From what I can tell Noah is also doing well at school. Of course, trying to get information out of him is like pulling teeth (“What did you do at school today?” Lots of stuff. “Did you have art time? What did you draw?” Pictures and things. Thank you, Captain Obvious) but luckily his teacher, Miss Joanne, emailed me to tell me that Noah has been wonderful:

“He has such lovely manners and is interacting well with the other children. He’s been drawing lots of pictures…usually about Ben 10 and the other characters Ben transforms into and best of all, he is just enthusiastic about everything.”

Oh, if only I knew who this lovely mannered child is Miss Joanne’s talking about. He sounds like a dream.

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:

Mandarin Songs

Friday was Noah’s last day at the Woodlands Montessori School. The night before he and Cathy baked brownies for his class. Cathy stayed up late to make some extra M&M cookies. Noah was not excited or sad about his last day of school or the brownies. His real excitement was having his baby brother come to school. Cathy promised to bring him when she dropped off the food. It was all he could talk about the night before. He is such a proud big brother.

The only sad part of the entire day was when Noah kept insisting he was “going on holiday”. Since all his friend’s ‘holidays’ consisted of going to England, SIngapore, Thailand or other foreign countries. Noah would be stuck with us in Hong Kong (at least until October when we do plan on having a proper vacation). It dawned on him this morning when we had this conversation…

Noah: Daddy, where are we going on holiday?

Me: What holiday? I’m working. We’re staying in Hong Kong. You start your new school in a few weeks.

Noah: AAAAHHHH man.

His Mandarin teacher was kind enough to make a CD of the songs they sing in class. Noah really enjoys playing the CD and singing along at home. For your viewing pleasure here is a short video.

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: