Climbing Up The Stairs

Andy becomes very good at going up the stairs by himself. A video here.

The Ravet Cousins

They have a lot of fun together and Andy learns from Quinn (6 weeks older)! He picks up the word "that" after a day with them.

Thanksgiving in WI - Day 7 Children's Museum

This must be the Disney World for little kids. There are lots of scene areas and Andy seems to enjoy it all. We'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Thanksgiving in WI - Day 6 Dinner at Weary Traveler's

Hao, Irene, I, and two toddlers, got together at this neat little bar restaurant tonight. The ambient atmosphere and music are nice. They hang instruments on the wall.
The restaurant gives out board games to play. Andy and Lilian entertain themselves with domino. Andy behaves pretty well (other than the mass he makes on the table and floor). The kids seem to enjoy the music and the lively atmosphere and we adults enjoy some catching up while feeding them.

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Andy gets a haircut (or half, incomplete as he doesn't like the buzz) in the afternoon.

From 20081128Madison

Eating Grandma Zhong's Food Video

I joke Andy "doubles the input and output" while eating my mom's cooking. He seems to have extra good appetite for a variety of flavorful veggies. See the video below.

From 20081128Madison

Thanksgiving in WI - Day 5 More Library Story Time

We check out the new Sequoya branch library story time today. It's far less crowded than the ones in Seattle. The library is very spacious and has more kids play areas than the one we visited yesterday. We spend a long time there after the story time.

From 20081128Madison

We also check out the huge kids play Santa area in the late afternoon. Andy is very happy about that. I do my yoga for the first time in more than a week to the library DVDs here. Andy is surprisingly happy about that. He starts waving as music comes on, slides around on the wood floor and climbing around me all giggling.

Thanksgiving in WI - Day 4 Mom's Cooking and Library

Mom cooks a lot while we are home. It's Qi's last night here and he'll miss all the good food. Andy has been eating double the amount to show his opinion on food. Most the dishes are veggies, and Andy seems to like it all. He has gotten better with using a spoon, or he tries to eat rice and veggies with spoon now instead of digging his hands in. When he finishes a spoonful, he would hand the spoon back to you signaling wanting more if the bowl is not within reach.

From 20081128Madison

It's a long nap day today. Andy takes a near 3 hour nap in the afternoon. Grandpa Su and Grandma Zhong get to experience library story time this evening. The Alicia Ashman branch library very close to home has a evening family story time on Monday evenings. So Andy gets a little night out after an dinner and we adults learn about American children story culture. They show a movie story about gingerbread man and then the librarian talks more about it. He is all energized tonight, plays around with the puzzles in the kids area afterward.

From 20081128Madison

Thanksgiving in WI - Day 3 Snow day!

Big white flakes fly in the sky since mid morning. We get to experience the real winter! Andy is fascinated by this. He gives that curious look when holding a snow ball in his hand.

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He becomes warmed up to Grandma Zhong and Grandpa Su more today. My dad plays with him for a good 1.5 hours alone this afternoon. Mom has been training Andy to push the cart and make turns by himself. He could barely push the cart for more than a few feet yesterday. But as you can see in the video below, he has made a lot progress: he manages to push the cart steadily and even make some turns by himself!

The night before pushing the cart

Tonight pushing cart video

Thanksgiving in WI - day 2 Visit Waukesha

Visit with my friends Aciauw and Anh Tram and their three munchkins. They just had a 3rd boy a few weeks ago. Baby Paul was taking a nap while I was there. He is so adorable and tiny. It wasn't that long ago when Andy was that small. The last I saw them was more than 4 years at their wedding. We laughed about potty training accidents and amazed at how fast time went.

20081129WithAciauwFamily

Thanksgiving Trip - Day 1 in WI

The flight is ok. The first flight has lots of kids (I wait in line to get the gate-checked stroll). Andy plays with one of the 2.5 year old in an adjacent row. They share toy and play (but no sleep). I take out the camera to get some good shots. He is a bit cranky near the end of the first 3.5 hour flight, probably more due to the missing nap than the air pressure change. He finally falls asleep in my arms near the end of the second lag (~6pm CST, we start 10:30am PST). Then he naps for 2 more hours after the plane ride, has some dinner, plays a bit and sleeps by 10. He automatically gets on CST and gets up before 8 the next day. The worst part of the trip is that I lose the camera on the first flight after taking pictures! I file the Lost-Found info claim, but the odds of getting it back is slim.

The weather here has been great: beautifully sunny with cloudless blue sky, a little chilly but manageable to be outside.

We meet Irene and her almost 2 year old Lilian at the Olbrich garden on Friday morning. It has a nice rain forest tropical garden, which is great for the cold Madison weather. Andy loves it there.

14 mo observations (espeically on verbal)

- He's got a couple more words down: "bu2 yao4" (=don't want to, i.e. no), zai4 jian4 (= bye) and bye. For a while, he really likes to pull others' noses for fun. I tell him "bu2 yao4", and he'd loosen the grip and take his hand back. He responds to both "zai4 jian4" and bye with hand waving. It's nice to see the bi-lingual training taking effect.

- He shows preferences for some books more than others. For the ones he doesn't care for, he tends to wander away while you read to him and eventually take the book from you and throw it off the bed to stop you from reading. For the ones he likes, not only does he seem to focused, he makes the surprising "oh" sound whenever getting to a page that he finds fascinating. He continues making that sound for his favorite pages as if seeing them for the first time every time. Right now his favorite books are the "Baby's First Numbers" and "I Spy". He liked the "Baby's First Words" book for many months but eventually lost interest in it recently. Ffor a few weeks I've been asking him "where is the dog" in Chinese when we get to page 10 in the Number book (has 10 dogs for illustration), and then hold up his stuffed animal dog. He now looks around the bed for his dog and bring it to me when I ask that question.

- It seems some words learning are associated with the environment (or at least initially). For example, I often say "wo wo shou" (means shake hands) in the car when we are at stop lights. Initially he starts to clap as he confuses it with the clapping word in Chinese. After while he learns the distinction and always extends one hand out for me to shake. But when I say "wo wo shou" in different settings, he doesn't always extend the hand out (still confuses with clapping sometimes).

- He has more stranger anxiety now. He cries loud and hard when he doesn't see mom or dad around on his 13mo going back to WI trip for Thanksgiving than on his 8 mo WI trip. It takes him a few days to warm up to the grandparents, but once he does, he couldn't stop his bumping heads greeting with them.

- He hasn't figured out the classical sorting block toy yet. He likes to open the top and dunk all the blocks in that way. So he's got a homemade bigger sorting toy now. It's a Costco size Oatmeal box with a cicle and a square cut out on one side. The circular is the easy one as it doesn't require any rotation to fit the object in. He practices with round and rectangular juice bottles. After lots of practice he is able to push the rectangular bottle into the square hole consistently one night. But he regresses the next few days and when he gets frustrated, he just throw the bottle on the floor.

Homemade Sorter (Spending the most practice on the middle one)

- He practices pushing a cart borrowed from Irene while in WI. After a bit of training he is able to make some turns by himself by starting to turn before it hits furniture. Then he regresses. He likes pushing his truck now since coming back. It is a little harder to steer as the handle is narrower, so he roams along from the living room to the hallway to the front door straight (mostly).

Fire Station Rendezvous on a Sunday Afternoon

Sunday 11/23
As we were walking into the park across the street from the fire station side, we saw a bunch of kids holding the water hose at the fire station. One guy with a mustache looked familiar. Could he be one of the 3 fire fighters that helped with the delivery? I went up and asked "did you by any chance deliver a baby across the street?" "Oh yes, we delivered one right across the street there." The conversation started. "Oh this must be Andy... yes yes it was a cute card with his footprint last year..." Amazing that they remembered his name! One of three men was also named Andy and they joked the baby was named after him when they got the Thank-you card. So we met Todd, the man who cut the cord, and Cliff, the man with the mustache (Andy was not on the shift that day). It turns out that the fire station rents out a room for kids birthday parties and it includes a tour and some demos. We hung around for the demo, chatted lots, sat in the driver seat of the fire engine, and got pictures with the men. What a wonderful surprise (perfect for my birthday :-)!
The only unfortunate is that I lost the camera on the flight to Madison, so there went all the precious pictures I didn't get to download! :-(

We went to Rebecca's for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner afterwards. It was a lot of fun with all the babies and good conversations and good food. Again, sorry for the picture loss:-(

13 mo Observations

- He gets from crawling to standing position whenever he finds something to hold on to. He 'walks" his way around the living room quite a bit by holding on to furniture.

- His new greeting: head bump. When he gets friendly with people, he does that repeatedly with giggling smiles.

- He makes more variations of sounds on dada, mama: he says nana, baba, etc. now. The sounds he makes tend to cover general meanings. For example, he makes this "pheuw" sound when he is excited or sees something new or sees food (so that's a happy sound).

- He uses color pencils to draw instead of for eating finally! Though he likes to draw all over the place (hard wood floor, etc) instead of confined to the paper.

- He's been enjoying library story times a lot! Often he is more interested in other babies in the room than the stories. He seems to be fascinated by the group environment and always enjoys group activities like shaking musical pros or clapping (when he is not distracted by neighbors :-) . The public library system here is really nice that there are usually story times every day of the week in different libraries.

- He likes bath now! For a long time he screamed and wailed at the sight of running water (that's why bath wasn't part of the night routine). Gradually he becomes interested in water falls. Then shower became easier (only screamed the first minute of it). Now he has learned to entertain himself by splashing water: washing hands and taking a bath become fun activities (so still can't make bath a nightly ritual for the time it takes and the excitement it brings).

- He starts to become selective about food. He likes the steamed bread I make. It's multi-grain plus veggies and egg bits and sometimes salmon or chicken bits. He likes being able to hold the bread bits and feed himself. When he doesn't like a broccoli or bigger green looking veggie by itself, he'd pick it out and hand to you or drop it on the floor and then say "oho" as if by accident.

- Misc events
- Sunday 10/26. We have a nice visit with Bill from my drawing session. Bill is like a grandpa to Andy. Then Brian & Qiaolan come in the late afternoon. We play at the playground across the street for a while. Then Rebecca and Tom come to join us. We have a cozy dinner gathering together with 3 babies! Andy gets toys gifts from them. He has been cautiously pushing the truck around.

20081026BillRebeccaBrianVisit

Halloween

We have a Halloween party at work on Friday that has a bunch of kids activities ranging from pumpkin carving, cookie decorating, to kids dance floor and balloon artists. Andy groves with the music and looses up on the hand grip: he stands on his own and holds one handed a few times.

20081031Halloween

Fall Colors (This page continually updated with more albums)

20081018WoodlandPark

20081021LeavesOutdoorPlay

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12 mo Observations

* Andy finally learns to say mama the evening after the 20081012PlayDate where Sophie babbles mamama and he babbles dadada back and forth for a while. We've been practicing "mama" for a couple of weeks, and he finally got it that night after some learning from his peers.
* He goes from crawl to stand up position much more frequently (child-proof house time).

Pumpkin Patch

A sunny Sunday afternoon. Andy enjoys the cello musician and lama and chicken.
More pictures here.

Kids Museum on Friday night

Andy enjoys other kids and water fun at the museum, and then the Petco next door.

20081017KidsMuseum

Playdate at the RoseHill Woodland Park

We have a little play date on Sunday afternoon. Participating parties: the Whitneys, Shelly and 14 mo Sophie, Qi and 22 mo Sophie. We played at the Castle playground across the street. Andy observes Shelly's Sophie's movements intently.

20081012PlayDate@WoodlandPark

First Birthday

It feels like not so long ago when Andy makes his dramatic entrance into the world and it's been a year already! It is sunny off and on in the morning and rains harder as the afternoon goes on. Andy spends some fun time at the Seattle Public library.

Sleep Routine Progression Illustrated

Sleep habit development last month illustrated:

"Good morning" grin delivered standing in crib: oh so cute


It turns into the "Let me out" cry from the Prisoner of the Cage


To "I'm taking over the bed now" big stretch in the morning now

Misc events and pictures in the last couple months

Dad is here for the month of August and then mom here for September. They've both been great help with Andy and house chores. They also manage to be quite mobile and frequent multiple libraries, shopping malls, and Chinatown all on their own by bus. They keep themselves entertained well. Dad even scouts out for cultural shows that I'm not awar of. Mom is very efficient, completing multiple sewing projects, making me tons of special zong4 zi (bamboo wrapped sticky rice) and bao1 zi (stocked up freezer), in addition to keeping the place spotless when she is taking a "break" from Andy.

8/30 Saturday

We go to the Bellevue Botanical garden in the evening. There are lots of flowers in bloom and all look very pretty in the sun set.

9/13 Saturday
Went to visit Rebecca today. Always fun to see Andy and Tristan get together. We train the two to shake hands for bye.


9/27 Saturday
It's mom's last day in Seattle today. We go to our family friend Ye Qiang's house for lunch. They have a 2 year old. Andy like his toys and watches him like a big brother.

We go to the Bellevue Botanical garden in the evening again as a farewell tradition. It's still very pretty in the sunset.

20080927BelvBotanicalWithGrandmaZhong

9/29 Monday
Play date with the neighbors. Tiffany brings the 3 princesses and 2 year old Caleb. And Jessi brings Katy and Kiki (6 mo). They sing, blow bubbles and play with Andy. Tiffany brings over dishes and the older girls Ashley and Ali help me cook. We have dinner together with Tiffany's and take a night walk. It's a very lively fun evening! I'll have to have them over more often.

20080929 PlayDateWithPrincesses

Other random pictures:

Play date @ Shelly's

It's amazing how fast babies grow! They've grown so much each time we get together. We have a fun gathering at Shelly's this Sunday afternoon. The babies range from 8 to 15 months. Shelly's 13 months old Sophie was the most mobile one. She walks around steadily and gives hugs and big smiles to each guest, very adorable. She shows Andy her favorite Piggy bank toy and they play piano duet together.

12 Months Observations

Time flies, especially for babies! They grow so much so fast in their first year.
- Tooth #5 has peeked through.
- He learns to clap, and responds to the verbal cue of it! Just say "pai1 pai1 shou3" and he'll happily clap and smile for you.
- He waves back and smile sweet on bye-bye.
- He discovers new plays all the time. Digging through the recycling box is one of his favorites. One day Joe finds him moved one side of the large empty toy bin to the couch. And shortly after he gets Joe to help him onto the couch, he pulls the entire bin onto the couch on his own! The other day he starts out standing by the toy bin, and then I hear the TV a couple of minutes later while doing dishes. He manages to maneuver to the TV nearby and turns it on, and then he tries all the other buttons and starts to channel surfing. He then turns it off and repeats.

"Let me show you how to work the TV"

- His new morning play routine often involves banging on the electronic keyboard for a while (he would even shake his body in rhythm when he's in a groove) and standing by the toy bin and picking out toys one by one. He is fascinated by buttons. He learns which pocket Joe keeps his cell phone and as soon as he gets Joe pick him up, he goes for the phone. He has managed to dial Joe's brother Brad several times.
- Bad sleeping habit. It's been a tough month. Just when mom seems to have it under control the first week, he starts to protest the crib greatly. He no longer sleeps in the crib at night. One person goes to accompany him until he falls asleep. This ritual starts with more than an hour gradually reduces to 20-30minutes. He doesn't fall asleep until way past 9 at first, but it's been moved up to around 8:40 lately. His night time routine has totally regressed. He wakes up 3-4 times a night, nursing puts him back down (but sometimes he is more difficult). I miss mom now after she leaves last weekend. I hope he grows out of this phase soon.

"I'm taking over the big bed now"

Month 10, 11 Observations

- More mobility. He often stands in the crib now! He loves to be held by both hands and walks around the house. Sometimes he even let go of one hand. He crawls much faster too. He picks up any speck from the floor and stuffs into his mouth. He loves grass. Taking him onto the lawn is like herding a sheep. He keeps pulling grass and putting into the mouth.

- Night routine. This has totally changed since his newly gained mobility a couple of weeks ago. He stands up repeatedly after being put in the crib. He doesn't know how to sit down yet so he gets scared standing. Mom devises a new scheme of accompanying him to sleep in the big bed in his room. His favorite bedtime toy is no stuffed animal but magazines or the "First Baby Words" book. He sometimes exhausts himself shredding the magazine. It also takes a long longer to get him back to sleep when he wakes up at night now. He would roll around and squeak for play time for a while after nursing. He skips naps a lot and doesn't go to sleep until 10-11 the first few days when he learns to stand easily. But mom adapts to him quickly and worked out the new way of putting him to sleep so he's back on the good 2-naps ritual.

- Talking. He speaks a lot more now, dadada is his favorite word.

- He starts to wave back to people more the last few days.

- He becomes more aware of music. When something starts playing, he would quietly listens to it for a good few minutes before shifting focus to something else.

- It's interesting to observation his problem solving process. He is very persistent at trying. Tonight, he finds a new toy -- the toilet. He stands by the bowl, one hand supporting himself by holding onto the seat, the other trying to pull the fulsh level (this one is a pull up). He tries many times, but he is just a tad short to be able to lift it all the way up for a full flush. He kees pulling and then looking into the bowl, He keeps this up for at least 10 times, sometimes makes small flushes. More reasons to keep the place clean.

Crawling Forward

Andy makes a motor skill developmental break through this past week. Joe notices he is able to crawl forward late in the week. A jar of lip gloss rolls out of my pocket as I do one of the balancing yoga movements on Friday. So I get to see Andy racing towards the rolling jar! Previously he only moves backwards as he pushes his arms against the floor and makes turning maneuvers in circles. Now he learns to pull himself in quick small increments and inches forward.

He also manages to lean forward enough from a sitting position to a crawl position this weekend. So he is more mobile now.

Early Childhood Cognition Lab Volunteer

Andy is volunteered to be a study participant at ECCL at UW last Monday (7/28). The study asks infants to watch adults playing with objects and tries to understand how infants learn actions.

He sits in my lap in front of a desk that has two toys, a red car and a green frog. He watches an adult repeatedly acting out a scene of picking up the red car. He focuses intensely for the first couple of times. Then his focus time drops drastically and he squirms and moves around quickly when the same act is repeated; this indicates that he has learned the event.

He is then moved to a new environment and watches the similar act of the same adult picking up a toy, except this time the adult picks up the green frog some of the times. The camera again tracks his eye focus time. In this series, the first act holds his attention long again (18 seconds), indicating it is viewed as a new event. Then the focus time quickly drops to about 5 seconds in the succeeding acts indicating he understands the act.

The last part of the experiment takes him back to the initial setting and he is placed in front of the two toys. The study poses the question of whether watching someone having preference influences baby's choice of action. And guess what is Andy's response?

At ECCL waiting room. So many toys...

Earns a Jack-in-the-box toy for devoting himself to a scientific experiment.

He picks up the green frog. And then he picks up the red car too with the other hand. So I guess he has his own mind at this age already.

After I write all this, I discover an official description here under the "Understanding Others' Preference" study.

The First Tooth is Coming!

Finally, after 9.5 months! A tiny bony part has peeked out of the lower left front part of the gum. Joe notices it when he hears this funny noise of his teeth clenching on the metal spoon today. Andy has been good, no crankiness during this teething phrase so far. He only drools more profusely in the last couple weeks. That's probably the sign for the tooth coming. If feels like a gardener waiting for the flowers to bloom. We watch him grow stronger by day, and finally see a flower bud.
He also starts this bottle strike since I return to work a couple of weeks ago, but finally ends the strike and takes the bottle more in the last couple days.

He makes a bunch of speech like sounds this morning (must have been a good dream); his sound vocabulary has grown a lot.

This apple will be easier soon eh?

9 mo Observations and Checkup Stats

* Emotional development: he starts to show likes and dislikes since a few weeks ago. For example, his attempts to share food with baby Tristan, his holding a hand out when Grandma Wang holds hers out to shake.

* Motor Skill: he can roll from back to tummy now. When he woke up at 4am on Friday (7/11), I found him propped up on his belly, laying widthwise in the crib! He turns easily when propped up on his arms now that he has more arm strength. He crawls backwards a little.

* He is taking a break from formula and becoming more interested in solids. He eats a whole bowl of food for both lunch and dinner now. It usually has an egg, mushy grains and veggies, tofu, meat or fish bits. He only takes some formula after both naps and before the second nap but loves nursing. I nurse him 3-4 times a day now: morning, lunch, and a couple times in the evening.

He has his 9 mo checkup on Thursday 7/17. He is now 18 lb 12 oz, 27 in, and 49.5 cm head circumference. The doctor says at his age, he should be taking about 20 oz of formula and breast milk combined, so I feel more relieved that he's getting that much ok.

Plein Air Demo and Drawing Session

We visited the Plein Air demo at the Fall City Art Studio on Saturday. I enjoyed watching the masters turn mundane scenery into art while Andy enjoyed the rib (for close to an hour, must be the best teething toy).
I took Andy to visit the drawing session on Sunday. People haven't seen him in a long time and all amazed how much he has grown. He sat on the floor and played intently by pulling things one by one out of the drawing bag for a good half hour, so I got some sketching done.

Posing with Bill

More pictures here.

July 4th at Juanita Beach Park

There is quite a bit of festivity going on at the Juanita Beach park today. We sat at a picnic table and listened to a band for a while.

Strangers came to play with Andy at times.

He's just chilling out enjoying the band.

There were lots of kids activities. I made him a making bracelet, and we played the Guess the Duck number game and won a toy.

Pictures here.

Grandma Wang

I got to know this visiting Chinese grandma (Wang) in the neighborhood on a walk on Monday. Andy hit off with her really well (me too). I got to know her quite a bit on our walks. She shakes hands with Andy at the end of walks. Andy even held out one hand for her and grabbed her cheek on Wednesday. Andy never does this to other strangers. I asked her to babysit on Wednesday night when I had to go teach at the library. Andy was naughty and cried his heart out that almost got Grandma Wang cry. So she played with Andy all night. He greeted me with a big grin when I came back. I was amazed that he didn't cry at all while playing with Grandma Wang; normally he cries non-stop with strangers when I'm out of sight.
Grandma Wang asked us over for some of her handmade noodle dinner on our afternoon walk yesterday. When we got there, she had put a bowl of freshly made noodle in front of me and told me to eat without worrying about kid today, and she fed Andy. Both Andy and I gobbled down a bowl of noodle. It was so good! Pictures.

Andy Showing Love

Andy is starting to show emotional maturity this week. Rebecca and Tristan came to visit on Tuesday. Rebecca helped me watching the kid while I got busy cooking up a storm for the youth shelter dinner. Rebecca told me that she pulled out a piece of veggie chip from the package and gave to Andy and later Andy took the pack himself and emptied out the chips on the floor! So I guess he understands the "Object Permanence" concept: he knows there are goodies in the bag even though not readily visible (picture). By the time I came over, Andy was sitting next to Tristan while Tristan getting changed. Then the amazing thing happened: Andy held out his half eaten chip and put it on Tristan's forehead. He repeated this gently several times. The intention to share was unmistakable. I was surprised that a baby is capable of such emotion at this age. See pictures.

Making Distance on the Floor

I was surprised to find Andy at the edge of the rug after a few minutes of self playing time (he was near the middle of rug at the start) on Wednesday (7/2). It looked like he had aimed for the new game of pulling the stroller brake. Did that mean he was crawling?! But I've never seen him crawl. A couple days later I had a conjecture of how he did it. He has been able to spin himself around 180 degree recently: he supports himself with two arms and turns by pivoting on his tummy. In the process of turning, he can pull himself forward a little. So he must have made a few turning maneuvers to make it to the stroller. I watched him doing such to move a couple feet on a later occasion. I learned babies have all sorts of ways of making movements before they crawl. Shelly told me her Sophie used to keep rolling herself to get to a destination.

Nap Training

I used to wonder why he doesn't take any naps while other babies have routine naps. He would doze off in the baby carrier or car seat when he's tired but never solid regular naps. When I learned from Irene how it affects brain and temperament development, I became eager to work out a regular nap schedule. In late May I read the "Healthy Sleeping Habits Happy Child" book. I find this a revolutionary book, it explains the hows and whys. Some notes from the book that helped me (I hope my new mommy friends find it helpful too):
- Babies need to sleep after 1-2 hours of wakefulness.
- When infant/child appears wired, he may be over-tired already.
- Sleep begets sleep: The more rested you are, the easier it is to fall asleep and stay asleep. The more tired you are, the harder it is.
p119: Most common cause for waking up too early before 4 mo is fussiness; after 4 mo, is a too-late bedtime.
p121: The common cause of an absent or a too-short morning nap is an interval of wakefulness that is too long bw the wake-up time and the beginning of the nap.

P248 Nap1: 9am, 1-2 hrs.
Restorative if it's about an hour or longer. 40-45 is sometimes enough but most babies this age sleep at least 1 hr.
If a nap doesn't occur, it is best to keep you baby awake and go to the next sleep period. Probably the next sleep period will take place a little earlier.

P256 Nap2: 12-2. Should begin before 3.
Common problem is the interval of wakefulness following the first nap is too long. The causes baby to become overtired and he has difficulty either falling asleep or staying asleep.
If missed this nap, try to nap in early evening say 4 and limit to 1 hour.

I find the key is in timing: start the soothing process before he appears tired. The book makes an interesting analogy between catching the wave of drowsiness and surfboarding. "Perfect timing produces no crying" is very true. I watch for when he becomes quiet and learn when he starts his long humming it means he is a little overtired already. I also started a sleep log to learn his sleep pattern and see if he's getting enough sleep. After a couple weeks of training, he is pretty good with his two naps, 10:30-11:30/12, 3/3:30-4:30, and bed time routine starting a little after 7. He now often coos for a few minutes and may cry for 5-10 minutes on a normal routine schedule. He usually doesn't get up at night, but does once in a rare while.

I also extrapolate the sleep theory to adult sleep, and learn that I've been depriving myself sleep. I find I am able to fall asleep while he naps, which means I need more sleep than what I've been giving myself. I protest sleep even more than the baby. So now I try to sleep when he naps instead of working on chores (well, I'm not so good at that yet, since I'm writing blog while he's napping here).

sleep log

Sunny Day on the Lawn

On a walk on this sunny day I let him loose by putting him down on the grass. He was happy as a little puppy (see picture).
He grabs grass and can't wait to stuff into his mouth. When I try to trade grass for toys, he doesn't care for toys at all!

First teaching Lessons

On one rainy day I cut out some pictures from ads and glued them to a brown grocery bag, with actual objects illustrated on the side. I wanted to teach him the correlation of the pictures with words, sound and objects. But this might have been a little to early for him -- he was more interested in chewing the objects at this point.



Still, I always put out a few objects while reading to him these days to help developing the correlation and object identification.



I also tried drawing with colored pencils and then handing him the pencils. He examined the pencils up and down, and decided chewing on them was more fun :-) A bit too early for art lessons...

He likes the game of Peek-a-poo a lot. This is supposed to help developing baby's understanding of "object permanence" concept. Object permanence refers to the understanding of the existence of an object when the object is not readily visible. Babies at this age are starting to grasp that, so they are fascinated to learn that you are behind the scarf when they can't see you. One experiment I tried was to put a toy under an upside down pot and a clear plastic container. He knows to flip over the container to get the toy but not always the pot. When he does pick up the pot, he is more interested in chewing the rim of it and forgets about the object under it. So it's not clear if he gets the Object Permanence idea there.

Here is a game that I was excited about. Like most babies at this stage, Andy loves sounds. I put in front of him a plastic container, the aluminum rice pot, and a metal pot lid, and started banging with a wooden spatula. He was fascinated with the sounds it made! After he watched for a while I handed over the spatula. He examined it a lot, moving it up and down, changing hands. It looked like he was going to chew on it, and I went out the room to get the camera in case he decides to make music instead. And sure enough I heard the banging in the other room! That was an exciting moment! He managed to bang all three. And eventually he picked up the pot to chew on its rim. I then showed him to bang on the "drums" with bare hands and he held his hand out and followed on the rice pot right away. I was proud.

Bigger pictures here.

8 mo Observations

Andy has grown a lot.
- The biggest development is that he is able to sit stably for much longer now. This allows him to play longer and me starting some lessons with him. More on that in a separate post.
- He has grown long enough to reach the floor when standing in the Exersaucer now. So he is able to reach all the musical toys in that and discovered for himself how to make each toy make (e.g. bang a key, turn a page, pull a lever). My yoga session has got longer as he plays in it for close to half hour now. He gets so excited with the Exersaucer that he often starts his own dance of beating legs and pushing arms.
- He is on a regular 2 nap schedule now after a week training.
- He continues to drool and chew on everything he gets his hands on. He likes all regular human food so far. I cook him thick multi-grain stews with meat and veggie bits.

Dinner at Apu's

We had a delicious dinner at Apu's the weekend after coming back from WI. Apu's dog Cobbey was very friendly and Andy really liked him!

chef Apu

Andy loves patting Cobbey