The World Needs More Ninjas

So, I just got back from a business trip to Shanghai, China…my first time to Asia. It was a lot different than my previous international travels (Ecuador and Spain). The first thing that hits you is the sheer number of people. The roads are crazy…bikes and scooters everywhere. If you use your horn you can pretty much do anything (like turn right in front of a bus). Pretty much every on an elevator exceeds the capacity. You’d better learn to push a bit on the subway and buses or else you’ll miss your stop.

Me and Yao...Chillin'

The parts of Shanghai where we were felt very safe. I guess they’ve pretty much modernized the city in the past 20 years or so and it does have a feel comparable to big cities in the US. Their metro system is great. The language barrier is hard when you don’t have someone along to interpret. After a week, I was glad to be back to some place where I could ask simple questions without needing to do makeshift hand signals.

Gumby's long lost brother, the Expo mascot

The food was great (and pretty cheap). I love American Chinese food and obviously it’s different over there, but it’s the same basic idea (once you get over the fish and shrimp being served with heads still on). It’s great when you have someone who’s Chinese that can just order a bunch of stuff for your table. The most exotic thing I ate was jellyfish (eh…weird texture and not particularly a great flavor) and the only thing I remember not eating was the duck feet (it actually didn’t look bad, but, still, it’s duck feet).

Yuyuan Market

One thing I didn’t think of was I should have learned to use chopsticks before I went because, yea, I was that American that had to ask for a fork at every meal. They have a lot of good beef, pork, and duck dishes in addition to the veggies. Surprisingly, it’s not like every meal just comes with rice (like American Chinese). You get it if you ask for it, but it’s not like they just bring it out like we bring out bread. For sweets, I found these little egg-based pastries they had pretty scrumptious. When you didn’t have someone Chinese with you, ordering was hard. You had to get a picture menu and then make an educated guess what kind of meat it was for a lot of dishes.

Obama Mart

So, what did I do there besides work? When I got there, I met up with the people I was supposed to see before I even got to my hotel room and pretty much went straight to the World Expo. They have a bunch of pavilions for various countries. You’d just wait in line for potentially hours to get into one. It wasn’t that bad because we went in the evening, but it was still pretty crowded. I guess sometimes folks spend the entire day there just to see 2-3 pavilions for the entire day (another interesting side note is that a lot of stuff closes at 10pm over there and doing stuff during the day seems more popular than doing stuff at night). Honestly, I didn’t really find anything there worth the wait, but I guess it’s part of the experience.

At the Pearl Tower

It was nice to have a fellow co-worker and his wife to tag along with in the evenings. On Tuesday, we went to the electronics market. I wasn’t brave enough to buy any electronics, but the Food Republic (a big food court) was pretty nice. On Wednesday, we went out to eat with our hosts (and then stayed up at the hotel to watch that exciting US soccer match against Algeria). On Thursday, we went to The People’s Square and walked around there for a while. They had like a nine story mall there, but it was mostly Western-like stuff at Western-like prices. On Friday, I did my souvenir shopping at the Yuyuan Market. That was pretty cool because you can bargain for a bunch of trinkets for the kids and I went a little “back alley” to get Leigh Ann a “Prada” purse. We also went to see the Pearl Tower and all the stuff around it (didn’t go up since the visibility was poor). Saturday morning, we set out to find the 1933, a former slaughterhouse now supposed to be a architectural piece of work, but that metro ride took us a bit further out of the city and no one seemed to have a clue where it was, so we gave up on that little jaunt.

Lots of bikes

The flight back was fine and it was great to see all my girls again.

Evie’s birthday is still a couple of days away, but I thought it was close enough to go ahead and wish her happy birthday here on the blog! This year has been very busy and gone by so fast – I can’t believe my little baby is a year already (sniff, sniff).

We had Evie’s 1st birthday party (ladybug theme) this past Sunday and I think she throughly enjoyed it (especially the cake smashing part). Here’s proof:

At one year Evie is saying these words:
uh-oh, ball, book, bird, baby, bye bye, Kaelyn (“Kay”), mama, dada, papa

She also does the baby sign for “milk.”

Crawling is still her main form of transportation, but her walking has really taken off the past couple of weeks. She’s been taking one or two steps for a while now, but lately she has gotten more into walking across the room. I think it’s only a matter of days before she is walking full time.

She LOVES her big sister, playing outside (particularly the water table and sandbox), and being in the pool. She is amazing at being able to entertain herself. (Maybe it’s a 2nd child ability??) She especially loves whenever she has a few minutes of playtime alone in the playroom without big sister coming in to take her toys away.

I have to watch her because she has gotten into the habit of climbing on things and then standing up on top, for example: Kaelyn’s little rocking chair and the kiddie table. She also loves climbing the stairs.

Lately she is really starting to exert herself more and will be sure (with very loud noises and points) to let you know what she wants. If she doesn’t get what she wants she throws a little baby temper tantrum. She has already had to sit in time out several times.

Speaking of pointing, I love it when that little tiny pointer finger starts pointing at stuff. It’s usually pointing to whatever she wants, but also she will point up in the sky at the sound of an airplane and things like that. It’s just such a sweet little finger.

She loves music and will dance whenever she hears any. She has the funniest facial expressions and the biggest grin that will just make your heart melt. One of my favorite faces is when she grins from ear to ear and scrunches up her little nose and squints her big, brown eyes (sigh).

Evie Wren, Mommy loves you more than you can ever know! I love your determination, your charm, your curiosity, and your sunshiny personality. You have already brought so much joy to me, daddy, and Kaelyn. We are so blessed to have you! Happy Birthday sweet one!

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Enjoying a pleasant February afternoon in North Carolina with a walk to the neighborhood playground (and it was Evie’s first wagon ride)…

One of Kaelyn’s favorite things to play right now is pretending with her toy flies. Here pictured is what she has named Baby Fly, Mama Fly, and Grandma Fly. They enjoy doing many things together. Among their favorite is jumping on a pretend trampoline. Kaelyn informed me this morning that “we need to buy a daddy fly.”

One of Evie’s favorite things to play right now is chase the ball. She particularly loves this little Dora ball that goes with Kaelyn’s baseball bat set. Evie will chase it all around the house like she is a little puppy dog. In fact, the other day Kaelyn was running through the house trying to get Evie to crawl after her saying, “come on doggie.”

And a couple more pictures just for fun….

Pretty much as long as Kaelyn’s been walking, one of her favorite games is “Daddy chases me repeatedly from the living room to the family room and back”. The latest instantiation is Kaelyn is a mouse and I’m a squirrel (if I happen to carry Evie with me, she becomes Evie Bunny…for inquiring minds, Leigh Ann becomes a Croc-craisin which we have no idea what that is).

So, the other day I decided to up the ante so to speak by maneuvering our couch cushions such that they became a mouse hole, complete with a blanket as a door. She’d run to her mouse hole, get inside, and I would hide, then she’d start running out of the mouse hole and I’d jump out and get her.

Great fun for all involved. In fact, Leigh Ann decided she wanted to join in, so when we were in the other room, she snuck into the mouse hole and shut the blanket-door. When Kaelyn game back, she started trying to get in the mouse hole, but couldn’t since something seemed to be blocking it. All of a sudden, Leigh Ann popped her head out. Kaelyn just threw her arms back and had a look of sheer terror for a second before the fell straight backwards and landed flat on her back, crying hysterically. All she could say through her tears was how she wanted Mommy to run away and she didn’t calm down until Leigh Ann went upstairs.

Some other Kaelyn-isms that you may have seen on Facebook:

• One morning, right when Kaelyn woke up she told me, “My tummy growled…it said it wanted blueberries!”.
• On Sunday, I caught her randomly singing, “I’ll spin you right round, baby, right round” a couple of times. Hearing your 2-year-old singing 80s lyrics is kind of surreal.
• “I’m going to play Candyland and celebrate Jesus.”
• “Jesus is going to help Baby Evie walk.”

Many months ago Kaelyn seemed interested in the potty. I bought all the potty gear and let her go when she wanted. I never really “trained” or pushed the issue. Honestly I think *I* was not ready. I was just too busy either being pregnant or taking care of a newborn to also think about taking her to the potty every few minutes or cleaning up accidents.

Then we hit another phase when Kaelyn lost all interest in the potty. She would scream “NO – DIAPER, DIAPER!” if I suggested the idea of wearing panties. I didn’t stress about it. We have no deadline, so I figured I would just wait until she was ready to start working on it again. There was no sense in stressing us both out.

Then this past weekend she seemed interested to go on the potty. I had been thinking that I would try working on it again right after the New Year, but since she showed interest I just went with it. That was Sunday and now she’s on her 4th day of wearing panties (except for sleep times)! Yippy!

She has had a few accidents, but really I think she is doing very well. At this point she still doesn’t usually tell me when she has to go – it’s more of me putting her on the potty every hour or so and getting her to go. But, over these past few days I think she has learned to control it and will hold it until I put her on the potty to go. She hasn’t had any pee pee accidents the past two days, only one poop accident each day.

Last weekend when we were talking about using the potty she told me she was “scared to have an accident.” I think that’s why she wanted to wear diapers because she knew she might have an accident in panties. I don’t know if she just didn’t like the feeling or if it embarrassed her, but clearly she didn’t want to have accidents. She even comments on one time a while back when one of her little friends was here and she had an accident in our play room. She clearly remembered that and didn’t like the thoughts of having one herself.

I started a little reward chart to help encourage her even more. I bought Thomas the Train stickers (which she LOVES) and then I found this train potty chart online. The chart is hanging on the bathroom door and every time she goes potty she gets a sticker to add to the chart (1 sticker for pee pee and 2 stickers for poo). When she reaches the end of the track she gets a sucker.

This morning she completed her first track and she was over joyed to get the sucker that she worked so hard for!

I think there has definitely been improvement everyday and I am looking forward to when this is more a natural part of her day. I have stressed about this in my mind for a long time, but she is doing a great job. Also I should mention that Evie is such a supportive little sister – she is always very content to play with toys while I spend a lot of time taking Kaelyn back and forth to the potty. I am so proud of both my girls!

Here is Kaelyn’s first potty chart which she worked so hard on completing:

Here is the new chart we started today with the new sucker she is working towards:

(1) I am wondering where the past 6 months has gone?? Evie will be celebrating her HALF BIRTHDAY on Friday. Wow – I just can’t believe it. I probably sound like a broken record by now, but the time is just seriously flying by.

(2) I am wondering how such a tiny little thing like Evie can crawl all around the floor going after her sister and all the toys?? I am anxious to see how much she weighs at her 6-month check-up next week, but judging by my home scales she’s right around 14 pounds. 3-6 months clothes are still mostly baggy on her, but size doesn’t matter for her…this girl is definitely on the move!!

(3) I am wondering how I got so blessed by my sweet, sweet girls? Kaelyn is so caring and compassionate. On Monday she asked me over and over if we could make cupcakes so that we could share them with our friends. Monday night I bought the items we needed and on Tuesday we bakes cupcakes together. In a few minutes one of her friends is stopping by to eat cupcakes with us. Also, anytime baby Evie is in the floor Kaelyn will take the initiative by herself to bring Evie some toys to play with. And Kaelyn always shares her toys with her. She has such a loving and sensitive spirit!

Yesterday Kaelyn heard Evie just as she was waking from a nap. Kaelyn ran into Evie’s room and started playing peek-a-boo with her. I walked in to the sounds of massive giggling coming from both of them. How fun!

Evie so far has a very content and charming personality. She loves to love on people. She’s very good at keeping herself entertained as long as she has some toys to grab onto. She almost never fusses.

Both of my girls are so, so sweet!

(4) I am wondering how I caught myself that hard-working, intelligent man of mine?! He found out today that he got a promotion at work. I am so proud of his accomplishments in his career. And all that on top of him being the most wonderful father to our girls!!

(5) Finally, I am wondering how to use that new camera of ours?! My brother gave me a crash course on all the buttons and such, but I still have a long way to go and lots of practice to figure it all out. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some cool pictures in the near future.

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Another friend of mine just wrote up her new little baby’s birth story and it reminded me that I never wrote up Evie’s story yet. Better late than never!

Evie’s birth was actually very, very similar to my birth with Kaelyn. My pregnancy with Evie was pretty much the same too except I didn’t have anemia this time. The doctor figured I’d need to schedule another induction so we went ahead and picked the date of June 4th since it worked for everyone’s schedule. At first I didn’t really like the idea of picking the birth date like that based around schedules, but it all worked out really well in the end. It was helpful especially because our family could plan when to come to town so that they could take care of Kaelyn for us while I was in the hospital. (Just an FYI – my due date was originally June 6.)

So around 6:30am on Thursday, June 4th I headed to the hospital along with Matt and my mom. My dad and brother stayed at home to take care of Kaelyn. They started my pitocin around 8:00am and the contractions started kicking right in. It was about 2 hours later before I had dilated enough (I think to around a 2) for them to break my water. Doctor broke my water around 10:00am and said if I wanted an epidural I could go ahead and order that so I did. I knew after my birth experience with Kaelyn that I was definitely going to get the epidural. I spent all morning just getting up and down going to the bathroom. I think I had to go a lot because they were also pumping me with fluids and I remember that i just felt better to sit on the toilet than to lay in the bed. That pitocin really brings the contractions on fast!

Then around 11:00am the doctor came in to give me the epidural. It was good timing too because my contractions had just started to get more intense. I had to stay in bed after that and I felt totally relaxed so I just took it easy and kind of dozed in and out of sleep.

Around 1:30 I remember feeling a lot of pressure every time I had a contraction. It wasn’t really pain since I had the epidural, but there was definitely a lot of pressure. I told the nurse when she came in to check on me the next time. She didn’t seem to think much of it and said she would check me during her next visit in another 15 minutes or so. Right as she was about to leave the room I had another contraction and I told her again how much pressure there was and that I really felt like I needed to push. She decided to go ahead and check me and sure enough I was a 10 already!! This was around 2:00 or 2:15.

I think the nurse was totally shocked. Evie’s head was *right* there. She told me to hold on and not push while she scrambled to call the doctor and everyone else in. As soon as the doctor came in and let me push Evie popped out! It literally only took one big push and Evie was out at 2:27pm. She weighed 6lbs 15oz and was 20 inches long.

She was perfectly healthy and beautiful! My first words were, “She looks just like Kaelyn!” She was a little bit cold so they had to warm her up under the lights for a few minutes which she really seemed to enjoy. She had the same hair that Kaelyn had at birth and weighed just a few ounces less (probably due to the fact that Kaelyn was born over a week late). Both girls were delivered by the same doctor too which I was happy about.

(One major difference between this birth was that with Kaelyn my water seemed to gush the entire day every time I had a contraction. It didn’t do that at all this time which was so much nicer not to be soaking my bed linens every few minutes.)

Mom cut Evie’s umbilical cord just like she did with Kaelyn. Dad, Jared, and Kaelyn got to come in the room just a few minutes after Evie arrived to meet her for the first time.

I still had some tearing like I did the first time, but other than that it was a pretty easy experience as far as birthing babies go.

A couple of pictures from right after the birth…

Matt has had a couple of days off of work this week (hooray!!). On Thursday just the 4 of us went to the Durham Museum of Life and Science which is always a fun day. Kaelyn loves visiting the new dinosaur exhibit there and seeing the bugs. The new surprise this visit was that Kaelyn didn’t like the butterflies. I’m not sure why since she normally LOVES them…just another 2-year-old phase I suppose.

PapPap has been here all week visiting and doing some work on his new business. On Friday we also picked up Nana from the airport who is visiting for a long weekend. We went straight to Cracker Barrel for a big breakfast to get fueled up for the NC State Fair. Then we spent the entire day at the fair!! We had a ton of fun!

They had a whole kiddie land with all kinds of rides just perfect for Kaelyn. I wasn’t sure what she would think, but she LOVED the rides – even the ones that were quiet daring for a 2-year-old. I think she must get this trait from me because I love all big rides. She rode the swings 3 times and this one fire truck ride at least 5 times as well as a whole bunch of others.

We had lots of yummy fair food and Matt and I rode a couple of the big rides together. We also saw, petted, and feed lots of animals including a camel! I think I had a permanent smile plastered on my face the entire day.

Today we had Kaelyn’s soccer class, lunch at chick-fil-a, and then the whole afternoon at a pumpkin farm. The farm was set-up so perfectly for kids. They had a huge tube slide, mountains of hay to climb, a corn box (like a sandbox except filled with dried corn kernels), a big corn maize, a kid size corn maize (made of hay bales), a “cow train” ride, hay rides, food/snacks, and rubber duck races. We all just loved every minute of it and Kaelyn didn’t want to leave.

Here are few pics from the weekend….

Feeding the Goats at the Fair

Playing in the Corn Box at the Farm

Everyone on the Hay Mountain at the Farm

A Recent Pic of the Girls Just Playing

And for comparison…one of these is Kaelyn and one is Evie…do you know which is which??

So this post might be a little lengthy since I have failed to update for the past couple of months. Things have been crazy busy around here.

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Evie
==========
Baby Evie is almost 4 months old already!! She is a little mover and shaker. She is so curious about everything and always so wide eyed. If I put her down on the floor she will roll to the other side of the room in no time. She is much more active than Kaelyn was at this age. I think she is just anxious to keep up with big sister. She loves playing in the excersaucer or sitting in the Bumbo seat and watching Kaelyn play. She’s also grabbing onto everything in sight (especially my hair) and putting it in to her mouth. It’s fun to see her hand-eye coordination developing. I swear sometimes she even pushes up on her hands and knees. I think she will be crawling by Christmas…we’ll see if my prediction is true.

Overall she is a very happy, smiley baby and never gets too upset about anything. She is sleeping great at night – usually about 7:30-7:30 with one wake up time around 4:00am to eat and go right back to sleep.

We had her baby dedication during a very nice service at church last month and Momsie, Papa, Uncle Jared, and friends Dan and Ariel joined us for that.

At Evie's Baby Dedication

Uncle Eric and Aunt Lisa came down for Labor Day weekend to meet Evie for the first time and we all had lots of fun! Right after that we headed to the beach with Momsie, Papa, and Uncle Jared for Evie’s first ever family vacation. She decided that sleeping on the beach to the sound of the ocean waves was very relaxing.

Relaxing on the Beach

==========
Kaelyn
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Now for the biggie – Kaelyn turned TWO in August!! I can’t believe my first-born child is already 2 years old. She is not a baby anymore but her very own, independent little person. I always knew that babies changed a lot from age 0 to 1, but I think they change just as much or even more from age 1 to 2. At age one Kaelyn was only crawling and saying a few words. By her second birthday she was running everywhere and speaking in complete sentences (usually several complete sentences at a time)!

This year has been so amazing to really see her little personality develop and to be able to find out what is going on in that brain of hers. I know I’ve written it here before, but she really does amaze me every single day with the things that she says.

By 18-months she knew her alphabet and numbers up to 20. She knows all her colors and shapes, many songs, and can tell you what the opposite word is to probably about 30 different words. Her favorite thing at the moment is to point out every traffic light and stop sign along the road as we drive. She will describe the stop sign, “It’s an octagon shape, and it’s red, and it has the letters O, P, S, T.” She will describe all the lights on the traffic light, “Red means stop, green means go, yellow means slow-up.” Seriously, she amazes me.

I don’t mean to brag so much, but that’s what a mommy is supposed to do, right?

Kaelyn continues to be an awesome big sister who is so loving, kind, and caring towards baby Evie. She’s always wiping the spit-up off her face or sharing her toys. I think it says a lot about Kaelyn’s heart in general which I think is so very loving in all ways. She honestly cares about other people and wants them to be happy.

She’s now fully into two-year-old mode and we are just starting to work on potty training. She’s getting more and more independent and is always saying, “Do it by yourself.” (Meaning she wants to do it by herself.) She still enjoys reading books as much as ever, loves being outside and playing with friends, and she is already taking soccer classes with Daddy on the weekends.

Here’s a comparison for the past year:

WOW – I am so truly blessed! I LOVE both of my wonderful, beautiful little girls.

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After watching this John Hughes montage, I came up with this theory: any video clip becomes twice as good when set to The Who’s Baba O’Riley in slow motion.

To test this theory, the original video of Kaelyn shaking her sillies out:

And, the new version:

Thoughts?

Baby Evie continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Her little personality has really started to shine through this month as she smiles and coos. I love it when she “talks”. When she isn’t sleeping she must be looking out at the world and you can tell those little eyes are sucking everything in. She really prefers if you hold her in a standing position. I think she is eager to catch up with her big sister.

She is so strong. She can already sit in the Bumbo seat and when she is in the bouncy seat she tries to sit up. It’s so cute – like she is doing little baby crunches. She can also roll from her back to her stomach. At first I thought it was an accident, but she has done it three times now.

Evie is still a great sleeper. She consistently has a 7 or 8 hour stretch of sleep at night, and a couple of nights ago she even went for 9 hours!! I feel so lucky because I know (from experience) that all babies don’t just naturally sleep so well.

She just has such a sweet and laid back personality. She very rarely even cries. She is definitely making it very easy on me to have two kids under two. While she is laid back and easy to care for, I do see a fierce curiosity in her that reminds me of Kaelyn – always looking, always learning.

Kaelyn has adjusted wonderfully as a big sister. She is such a great helper, very loving, and gentle with Evie. She will talk to Evie and tell her what she is doing, for example, “I’m eating cereal baby Evie.” She reads to her, shows her the toys, helps change her diaper or give her a paci. In return Evie just lights up and often smiles whenever she sees Kaelyn. She loves to be held so that she can see Kaelyn running around the room. I am loving seeing the interaction between my two beautiful little girls.

For comparison here is Evie with her dolly as a newborn and at two months. Look how she’s grown!!

I was running this (very hot) morning and pushing Kaelyn in the jogging stroller. At one point I had to stop and walk. I literally walked about 5 seconds and Kaelyn said, “I want to keep running Mommy!”

Thanks for keeping me motivated Kaelyn!