2 posts from August 2009

pictures added to the previous post

another long post combining what should've been a bunch of shorter ones, shall i call this a monthly update?  it's been a month!!!  if you can see by the date of this post, i had intended on posting before i left for china, but i never finished writing the post until much later (today is august 16).  to top it off, i can't find any of our USB cords for our cameras so i can't even upload and post pictures or videos.

pregnancy update

i gained 10 pounds last month!  ugh!  but i looked back at my weight gain last pregnancy and i had gained 9 lbs in the same month so hopefully i'm on the same weight gain pattern.  my appetite is voracious!  i cannot satiate myself.
and i'm having contractions like crazy.  one night (22 weeks), i was so tempted to go to labor and delivery because i think i had like 10 in an hour, but i was also thinking about the embarrassment factor that could ensue should my contractions magically stop once i'm hooked up to the monitor.  i just tried to drink water and sleep them off and the contractions calmed by the morning.  i am now 25 weeks-ish?  i keep forgetting i'm pregnant, it's just been too busy.

i know all the pregnant women out there might understand this but last time i had an anterior placenta (in the front) and i didn't feel movements until 18.5 weeks.  this time, i have a posterior placenta (in the back) and i felt movements starting 15 weeks.  but the movements are so much more pronounced this time.  it's like i can constant feel movements and sometimes i can even make out body parts, which i hadn't been able to do with alison until i was in my 3rd trimester.  gross, huh?

thursday date nights

husband and i have been allowed awesome thursday night date nights because we've hired a nanny/housekeeper once a week.  she comes and plays with alison for an hour, puts her to sleep then cleans for 2 hours.  she doesn't always finish (laundry, dishes, vacuum, pick up dog hair, etc.) but she comes every week, which is more frequent than any cleaning help that we've hired in the past.  i feel like weekly date night has helped us reconnect as a couple and relax.  we were getting such cabin fever from staying in all the time. 

china trip

i was so excited to be going to china and w/o baby! but i was so nervous about alison as we have never left her overnight anywhere without us.  i'm totally fine with the separation part of it but i'm scared that something will happen to her. before we left, i dreamed my MIL forgot to install alison's carseat and told me she was just going to drive around while alison sat in a big wicker basket.  strangely, it sounds like something she would do.  she thinks 6-year-olds can baby sit alison and i keep on telling her that she needs to watch alison because that 6-year-old has dropped my 20 lbs. baby before.  i was so nervous about leaving alison, that i rented an international cell phone and when i told husband, i got a long lecture about how we're on vacation and we need to cut ourselves off from our daily lives and alison is not going to die and if something happens to anyone, they'll get a hold of us yadadadaa.... so there is my botched cell phone attempt.  basically, we're calling no-one and no-one should be calling us.

overall, china was one HOT SWEATY trip.  i don't think husband ever stopped sweating.  he had to pay to get his laundry done and it cost us close to $100.  had i had known 1 million chinese people were also on vacation and wanted to tour the major landmarks of china, i might have chosen to go to greece instead.  however, i'm glad we went because china is one place i felt like i should go to at least once in my life and it's not travel-friendly for the retired folks or families with young kids. first of all, i'd like to get my complaining out of the way then write about what i enjoyed.
 
complaints:

• chinese people don't understand the concept of a line. i had to pee so bad one time i was standing in the middle of a 4-stall bathroom and 3 people cut in front of me.  you literally have to be the 1st to touch the door that opens to get that stall.
• when people say china is overpopulated, they aren't kidding!  on top of that, it was so hot and every sun-hating asian had an umbrella.  so try navigating through doorways and structures with a million asians with their umbrellas with no concept of a line and you can see how hard it was to see a landmark.

 

• no one speaks a word of english unless they are a tour guide or work in a hotel.  i know i'm ignorant when i assume most people can understand basic english, but we literally had to point out where we wanted to go on the map to each taxi driver.  one taxi driver couldn't understand "westin hotel" and another couldn't understand "airport."  it's funny, when each taxi driver realized we were not chinese speakers, they would yell stuff and be very obvious in their frustration.  then they would talk louder as if we could magically understand chinese if we just heard it being yelled to us instead.  luckily we still got everywhere we needed through hand signals and our map.
  

enjoyed (no real surprises here):

• food.  i was pleasantly surprised at how delicious the food was.  we asked some of our private tour guides where they like to eat and we were able to taste authentic chinese food.  2 of our tour guides each to us to restaurants that were so local, they had to order for us. some of the touristy food places that we enjoyed were soup dumplings in shanghai in yu yuan gardens, peking duck in beijing at da dong duck restaurant, and some totally tourist-only stop in xi'an right near the terracota warriors where they had the best noodles that simply tasted like cooked wonton wrappers stir-fried in oil with a little bit of salt.  so simple, yet so tasty.
  

 

• forbidden city.  i never thought it was so big!  when our guide was telling us there was an outer court and and inner court.  we kept on walking around and at one point i was for sure we were in the inner court, but we were still in the outer court.  it was so fascinating to imagine ceremonies and traditions that occurred inside the forbidden city.

• beijing hotel.  we stayed at the opposite house, a boutique hotel in beijing and the customer service was top notch.  like they bent over backwards for us, arranging drivers, reservations, providing us with water, free laptop use, free minibar, and allowing us a 6pm late checkout.

• train travel.  even though we could've flown from city to city, i wanted to take the train for the "experience."  although husband could talk about how crazy i was for making him take overnight trains rather than fly an hour from city to city, he just doesn't appreciate the experience.  on one train, we had a private room with it's own bathroom and we each slept a nice 10 hours and the bedding was nice, not westin heavenly bed nice, but very comfy.  and although husband won't admit it, he had one of his best meals on the train... a $0.60 breakfast of rice porridge and 4 cold side dishes of marinated bean sprouts, seaweed with tofu, some pickled brown root, and marinated cucumbers with carrots.  he went searching for it our first morning back in los angeles.    

4-berth train cabin

you know, it seems like there are no pregnant women in china?  i know there is a 1 child policy there but i would think with 18+ million people or so in beijing and shanghai each, i thought i would have seen several.  i saw 2 the whole week we were in china.  i was so paranoid that maybe pregnant woman aren't allowed outside the house then i got worried so i never left the hotel by myself.  they also potty train babies really young there, like around 1.  most babies wear pants with slits from front to back and their parents just squat them on the side of the street to pee/poo.  it got me thinking that maybe i could potty train alison before baby #2 arrives.  babies are also really fascinating to everyone.  we would see all these people posing and taking pictures with other people's babies.

once we got back to L.A., alison didn't recognize me!  she cried every time i held her.  she only recognized husband when he said his secret phrase to her, then she was all smiles.  damnit!  why didn't i think of having a secret phrase with her?  i just thought it was so juvenile at the time, but i guess she is a baby.  the next morning, she was back to knowing me but she just became really whiny because she was so spoiled while we were gone.  my parents and husband's parents each told me she might have drank 2 oz of formula every day at most and the rest was adult food.  she came back fat so she must've eaten a lot.  i heard a partial list of what my mother fed her and i'm just glad that alison is fine (crab, cupcakes, chocolate, nuts, you name every forbidden food plus some healthy ones). i'll have to work on de-spoiling her now.  good thing is she slept well and gave no-one nap or nighttime troubles. 

i also missed her learning to walk!  =(  she learned how to walk while we were gone.  i knew there was a big possibility we would miss this milestone since she had taken a few steps here and there on her own before we left.  but now she can walk like 10-20 steps on her own although she would still prefer to hold on to our finger.  she is always is pulling our fingers to go outside and take a walk and she gets so mad when we don't oblige.

13 month milestones overdue by a couple weeks

(taken by the cardiologist)
weight    21 lbs even (35th percentile)
height    30 inches even (60th percentile)

• this first month i felt like she understood what i was saying to her.  examples: i ask her to say bye to daddy and she turns around, looks at her dad, then waves bye.  another time, i told her to get elmo and she went and got him off the carpet (i was trying to clean up and too lazy to pick elmo up).  
• she plays fetch with the dogs, although it's more like she picks the object up and drops it a couple inches in front of her.  the dog is a good sport and still plays.
  
• when i say "i love you," she mumbles something that resembles i love you then comes and gives me hugs. 
  
• walks a few steps here and there.  she's now walking more, but it was after the 13 month birthday so it'll have to fall into the 14 month milestones.
  
• says mommy and daddy for real, although she said daddy first =(  i don't know why she likes him so much.
  
• says "doggie" when she sees a dog and she points to every one.  it's so funny, i'll be out strolling her on the streets of L.A. and even though i can't see her face, i can see her finger constantly pointing out from under the sunshade and hear her calling out "doggie"