Evenings to myself...and Brian

I am starting to actually enjoy some time to myself in the evenings. Rhys has been getting a little bit better at sleeping on his own these last few days. Last night he slept for 3 hours straight and that gave me time to eat dinner with Brian, take a shower, enjoy some coffee and some Korean television. I think he was sleeping well when I was in LA with him, but back then I was too busy trying to get some studying done that I wasn't able to enjoy this free time that I had. But I should probably be using this time to catch up on sleep instead of wasting time going on the internet. But I love this time to myself since I am basically stuck to a baby during the day....or more that the baby is stuck to me. He is crawling these days and most of the time, he is crawling to me. Crawling on me like I am some mountain he needs to get to the top of....haha my boobs are the mountains that he needs to get to...haha.

Today was actually not a great day for Rhys. I was trying to read him the Go the F**k to sleep book this morning and he ended up falling on one of the corners of the book and put a gash right under his right eye. I felt so bad! He cried like when he got his immunization shots. I think I say "I'm so sorry Rhys" about 100 times as I cleaned his wound and put some A&D on it. I had planned on going to Target today, but after this accident, I seriously started rethinking my plans. I didn't want other people thinking that I did this to my kid on purpose. The wound made kind of an exclamation mark in red so he almost looked like a clown from afar with a teardrop under his eye. I decided to still go to Target because I didn't do anything that I was ashamed of...I just felt bad that it happened. Right when I get in, I overhear a man walking with his family saying something about the status of Rhys' face. I try and ignore it and carry on with Rhys in the ergo. We look at all of the aisles and end up at the toy aisle where I picked up two toys for him. I picked up a remote control and a Lion King toy push car-ish type thingy. He definitely likes the remote control, but I'm not sure about the other toy. We'll see. On my way out, I picked up a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino for 50% off because it was a Frappucino happy hour! Yay! Anyways...I think I drank that drink in like 10 minutes because I was done by the time I got back home.

The house smelled so yummy because I had a pork roast slowly cooking in the crockpot. MMMMmmmmm. The roast just melted in my mouth cuz I had it in there for 8 hours. Minimal work for me, but I get such wonderful outcomes. Love the crockpot!

I'm watching Rhys sleeping on the monitor and he is starting to move around. I partly think it is cuz he is cold. I think I'll go in and put a blanket on him or something. Here is a pic of him kinda curling up a bit...

Hanging out with Dad

I took my mom to the airport last night for her flight to Korea. She is headed there for my cousin's wedding and also as a religious ambassador for my aunt who is fighting colon cancer. She will be there on a 10-day trip. I'm hoping that everything goes smoothly and she has a great time and returns home safely. So today is day one of a mom-less world. I woke up at 7 in the morning and usually I would saunter over to the living room to see what my dad was cooking up for breakfast...but today...no one... I figured that without mom to relieve me of my baby caring duties, I would probably not be able to shower unless I did it before Rhys woke up. So I took my tablet and turned on the baby monitor and went into the shower with my door open a crack so I could check up on Rhys. He luckily stayed asleep the whole time I showered and got ready. He slept for a good hour after I got out of the shower. I had time to clean my mom's makeup counter and start heating up water so I could have a little oatmeal. Rhys and I played and then napped around 11 am. I was a lot more tired because it was just me taking care of him, so I decided to take a mid-morning nap with Rhys as well. We slept for about 2 hours and then headed over to dad's store to eat lunch with him and hang out with him. Rhys played really well with the customers, especially this big black lady who called Rhys a "healer". She had ginormous boobs and Rhys was patting them...probably thinking about all the milk that could be in this set compared to mine.

The next day...

I woke up again to an empty house...well Rhys was with me of course. I really started to miss mom today. I didn't realize how lonely it is without her. Well Rhys was a bit cranky this morning cuz he decided he wanted to wake up EVERY HOUR last night. Sigh... I punched the bed because I was so tired of waking up and putting Rhys back to sleep. Anyways...since he was cranky and needy in the morning, I just ate some eggs that I hard-boiled the day before. To sum up my morning...Rhys slept for only 30 minutes and wanted to be held by me the whole time. I decided that I couldn't spend the whole day with him in a cruddy mood, so I made some omrice and headed to dad's store. Dad gobbled up my lunch that I made for him and I saved him $10! Rhys is quite the socializer. He was happy as clam once we were out and about. We took a stroll around the block and I got some coffee from Tom Tom's or whatever. I had him in the front carrier and walked around the store and next door to the cafe where dad tried to get us some free drinks...fail...haha.

I got Rhys to sleep another 20 minutes around 4 ish when I took a stroll, but that was it...no more naps until 6:30 pm when we went home. That's when he decided he was gonna go to bed for the night. That gave me and my dad time to enjoy a nice and quiet dinner. We had an el pollo loco-like dinner...but this place is Korean so they gave us the sweet pickled radishes! Yay! (....Rhys is fidgeting.....please go back to sleeeeeeeep....)

I think I will stay in LA until Saturday morning if Dad doesn't have any plans for dinner without me. I should keep the man company since he will be alone for a week without anyone at home. Poor daddy. He fell asleep earlier this evening with hair dye still in his hair. I had to wake him up twice before he got up and showered. Love my dad. He sleeps so early...hehe.

Busy Monday Morning

I woke up today at 4:30 am to pump and leave for SD. I dropped Rhys off at his Grandparent's in Camarillo for the week. I'll be seeing him this Thursday. Good thing he's not with me right now because I came down with a cold today. I was feeling quite stuffy in the nose yesterday afternoon and kinda had a feeling that my body wasn't 100%. I think I may have overdone it with a hike at Griffith Park and a trip to Costco...all while carrying Rhys on my back and on my front, respectively. I think I hiked for a good hour. I was feeling actually quite accomplished that I did so much with a baby on my back...but around 4 in the afternoon that day, I realized that I lost my driver's license. I put it in the zipper pocket of my Ergobaby carrier on Friday when I went for my 1st hike with Rhys...but on Sunday, I also put my phone in there and when I went from behind to grab my phone out of the pocket, I imagine that's when the license fell out without me knowing. I looked high and low for it, but it was nowhere to be found. I think that was a bummer and all that searching probably stressed me out a bit too. What was worse was that I had to drive an hour in LA traffic (come on...traffic on a Sunday?!?) to drop Rhys off in Camarillo. Luckily Rhys fell asleep and stayed asleep throughout the whole trip. So around 7:45 pm, I drive back down to LA, pump and begin to pack my belongings to head back to SD. I was going to take a short nap and then just decided that I would wake up early on Monday morning. So I get in bed around 10:45 and ask my mom to wake me up at 11:30 so I can pump again and then went right back to sleep. Luckily the drive back down to SD was fairly easy. I arrive in SD around 7 am and frantically look for my passport thinking that I would need some form of alternative identification...but darn it...I can't find it. So I head over to the Poway DMV, ready to be sent back home without proper alt id, but apparently a fingerprint is more proof of identification than a picture! That makes sense. So around 8:30, I get outta there and decide to deposit some money at the bank. But poo...the bank doesn't open til 9 am. So I sit in my car for 30 mins until it opens and then deposit money. Then I was off to Trader Joe's to hopefully buy some veggies and fruit to make food for Rhys, but there isn't that much of a selection there today. I come home, PUMP, eat lunch, and decide to take a nap. I think this is where my cold really decided to kick itself in. I couldn't sleep for the first half hour because I couldn't stop this throat-itching cough. My feet were also unusually cold. I just couldn't warm them up. Woke up at 3 pm to feed the dogs a little early cuz I couldn't stand Julian whining at me...and then pumped again. So here I am...settling back down in bed to start studying before Brian gets home at 7 pm. Sometimes I feel like I don't do anything because I'm not working...but sometimes I think I'm pretty darn busy. I often think if I'm making more work for myself by insisting on continuing to breastfeed until a year, but at the same time, since Rhys was a preemie, I feel like he should get the best nutrition that he can get from me. I'm religiously taking my prenatals still and trying to eat healthy. I just wish this weight would come off!!! 7 months and I've still lost none of my pregnancy weight besides what I lost in the 1st month after delivering. I saw myself on video that my mom took of me changing Rhys' diaper and I was like..."Woah! Who is that chubby lady that sounds like me?!" Camera adds 10 lbs and I can't afford to look another 10 lbs heavier. I also found myself fibbing a little on my driver's license renewal form. I said that I was about 8 lbs lighter than I really am cuz I just couldn't bring myself to putting down my actual weight. Hopefully in the future I'll look at my license and go, "wow...I can't believe I weighed that much back then!". For now, I'm just gonna sit in bed and try to get some studying down.

Rhys with Big Gomo.

Sleeping through the night?

I bought this sleep training book called The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley in hopes of getting Rhys to sleep better because lately he was waking up every hour during the night and only taking measly 30 minute naps during the day. I was seriously going crazy and taking it out on Brian and also getting very frustrated at the baby, sometimes forcing my boob on him so he would just eat and go back to sleep..(which he did not appreciate). After about a couple weeks of constantly waking up every hour or so, I decided I needed a solution. I wasn't about to try the Cry-It-Out method so I found this book that claims you can get your baby to sleep better and longer without crying. I bought it, read it and really didn't find it that revolutionary what they were telling me to do. I really thought that it was going to be a step by step guide to help me, but it was more guidelines and various ideas that I could pick and choose from based on what kind of baby I had and what kind of method I used to get the baby to sleep normally. But in any case, I had to try something. So Monday night, I tried it out. I fed him, played with him in the dim room, had daddy play with him, came back into the dim room, put him down, pick him back up because he cried, nursed him again, put him down, picked him back up and rocked him, put him down, picked him back up and rocked him....I think I picked him up like 5 times. Every time I tried to lay him down, he would startle and cry and be angry. Finally after the 5th time, he was so tired that he went to sleep!!.....But only to sleep for 30 minutes and cry again. So I nursed him, rocked him and put him down and he went down again after a couple attempts, only to sleep for 45 minutes and then again later for 53 minutes. Needless to say, I was exhausted come 1 am...so I just picked up the little guy and moved back into bed and nursed him back to sleep and called it a night. He must have been tired because he slept for a 3 hour stretch after he came back into bed with me. Still, baby was cranky once morning came.

    I considered not doing the sleep training the following day, but I read a lot of positive reviews for keeping consistent and persistent with sleep training and that in the end, the baby and I would both sleep better. So I tried again to disassociate my boob with him falling asleep. I took the nipple out of his mouth when he looked like he wasn't sucking much to eat, but just to suck. I did as they told me and kept him mouth closed with my finger under his chin...and it worked! Although he slept for only 40 minutes, I was so happy that I got him to sleep after I took the boob away. 

   When the evening rolled around again, I decided we try this sleep training thing again. We fed him some carrots (he just started on solids last week) and I nursed him, burped him, held him, took him to daddy to play a little, looked around and said good night to the various things around the house, and then I took him into the room when he looked tired and put him down in the pack n play. He fussed and started to cry, so I picked him up, then I put him down and then picked him up again, and then put him down. I put a fuzzy blanket over him and then he started to fuss and pull the blanket over his face so I just watched him to make sure he didn't do anything dangerous. He started kicking both his feet up into the air and banged them down on the bed over and over, all the while he looks as if he is trying to smother himself or eat his blanket. I just kept an eye on him to see if his crying/fussing would get worse....but it didn't! He fussed with the blanket and his feet for about a couple minutes and then his fussing got slower and slower and finally, he stopped moving! His hands relaxed and he twitched a little, but it looked like he was actually drifting to sleep! It was aroud 9:15 pm. I made sure that the blanket wasn't covering his face and watched him....and watched him....and watched him. I was in my room watching Rhys and catching up on Downton Abbey until about 12:20 when Brian came in to sleep. He slept for 3 hours on his own! He fussed and shifted and kicked a few times during those 3 hours, but overall he was able to get himself back to sleep without much trouble. I was so shocked and delighted, but skeptical that it would happen again. Tonight is Thursday night, the 4th night of sleep training and he went down without much fuss. He was pretty tired though. I gave him 3.5 oz of breastmilk from a bottle, then rewarded him with my boob, and then I put him down in the pack n play and he just went down...no fuss! 

Here is a pic of him sleeping. 

The only difference with tonight is that he didn't get solids at dinner. It's my little experiment to see if it was the solids that helped him to sleep for 4 hours last night or if he is just maturing as a baby. 

Now, how to deal with him screaming his lungs out when I'm not around...hmmmm...I guess we'll have to deal with that when the time comes. I already feel bad for my mom...I better get her a nice gift. 

Thought to thought to thought

I think we finally figured out why Rhys wasn't taking his bottle very well. Being born premature and coming home under 6 lbs made feeding a big task for us. He was coughing and choking and taking in way too much air when we first were using the newborn (size one) nipples. We quickly found some preemie nipples and noticed that he was eating his food with much more ease since the flow was more manageable. We later on went back to the newborn nipple, but until today, had never thought that the newborn nipple might now be too slow for him. We just thought that he was refusing the bottle because he wanted the boobs (which is still partly true). Brian came home with the size 2 nipples and he managed to take in most of the milk that we gave him! Lets hope this is good news and not just a fluke. I may just buy a size 3 nipple and see if that would make things better because I know for a FACT that my breasts flow much faster than any of those nipples.

Right now, Brian is walking about the house with the baby in the baby bjorn, giving me some time to write in my blog and enjoy a little free time. He is asking to hold the baby a little more often and seems to be bonding more with the baby these days. It's gotta be all the smiles and giggles that Rhys is throwing over to his daddy that is melting his heart for sure. I am very thankful that I have a hubby who is so handy around the house and is still willing to spend time with the baby without any complaint. I even was able to enjoy a few hours shopping at the mall this past Sunday. 

On another note, I think I may be a little crazy because I heard the news that Jessica Simpson is pregnant again and....I actually got a little envious. I don't know why, but I wanted another one when I found out she was pregnant. I think this is how women keep having children. They get envious about other women having babies and get pregnant too. I really do think this biological clock thing exists. I have baby fever! I guess you could say that if I could be a stay at home mom without any big financial worries for the long run, I would probably want to have another child not too far from now. But since I live in the real world, I will probably wait 2 years before having another. 

I guess I should try and enjoy at least one year of real normal people sleep before doing this all over again since I only sleep in 2-3 hour snippets every day. I've been doing this since Rhys was born. I don't know how the moms who work are able to stay up and do a whole day's work after 2-3 hour snippets of sleep. The only thing that keeps me sane during the day are the naps that I take when Rhys takes his 1 hour naps. 

Another thing that has kept me sane is my tablet and reading. I'm currently reading a book called Nurture Shock that talks about the importance of the "right" kind of praise to give to children and how the wrong type of praise can actually make children afraid of failure. If you tell a child that he is smart and continue to praise him so, he will become driven by this type of praise and choose not to try things that he may not be good at. So, if a child finds something difficult, instead of trying harder to improve, he will just give up and say that he isn't good at it and have a fear of failure. It's pretty interesting. They also talk about how it's not television, video games or even nutrition that is making kids obese, but in fact the amount of sleep that children get that is causing children to get fat. Well, I know I didn't get that much sleep when I was in highschool...I always stayed up for Conan..hehe.

Anyways, here is a video of Rhys and Mommy having giggle time together. 

Cold Streak

I find myself again with Rhys on my back with my sky blue baby carrier. Rhys has been sick for the past week and is finally starting to feel better again. I believe he had two colds because he had a nasty fever on Monday night that got better on Tuesday and then on Thursday he got another fever during the day and also developed a cough. I think both of them came from Brian unfortunately. He seems to bring viruses home from work often since the people at his work come in to work even when they are sick because apparently there is no benefit to using sick hours. So last night, I had a coughing baby and a coughing husband in bed with me. So you can imagine how much sleep I got...

But I surprised myself that I was able to avoid getting a cold this season so far...(cross my fingers). I just hope that this cold streak will end after this one. I read that infants get from around 6-7 colds in the first year of their life!! So I guess 2 down, 5 more to go.

Post baby diet? ha! I can't even get sleep let alone some time to exercise. The one part of my body that is getting more workout that ever are my arms. I am getting major biceps from holding this 17 lb baby for hours and hours, esp in the last week cuz he's been sick and has wanted to be held more often.

One of the things that has been keeping me entertained during my sleepless nights has been my new/used tablet that Brian got for me. I am reading books, watching movies, and keeping myself updated with the world the best I can for someone who stays at home most of the time.

Rhys is starting to graps things and examine them with his eyes and then his mouth. When I lay him down on my pillow while I go to the bathroom (with the door open), Rhys turns his head and stares at me while I pee...hehe. I of course wave frantically at him so he is entertained. (TMI? perhaps...)
He is already starting to try and lift himself up. I prop him up on a pillow in a recline and he tries to do a little sit-up. He is also starting to notice that he has feet. He stares at them and I have seen him bat at it once. He is developing fast and I can't wait until he can sit up on his own so I can let my arms rest a bit. Oh yes, he also stares and smiles at the dog on the box of dog treats we have next to his jumper. He won't smile at our dogs, but a dog on a box....he LOOOOVES! haha.

Today Rhys is almost three months old...or he could be almost 2 months old since he was born 5 weeks early. I am not sure what to go by. But he has found his hands recently and has been sucking on it as best he can these days. He has trouble sometimes getting his fist to his mouth and you will find him with his fist hitting his cute chubby cheeks. Rhys has also started smiling more at us and at random objects around the house...namely our ceiling fan. He LOVES the ceiling fan. I put him down on the bed and spin the fan with my hand and he will stare at it in amazement!!

Brian and I have definitely gotten the hang of taking care of Rhys. We manage to go on outtings on the weekends and feel pretty accomplished when we don't have a meltdown. Last week, we even ventured out to 30th on 30th and met up with the gang to have some cheap food! We only ended up eating a WAY too limey ceviche and two small macaroni and cheeses, but it was still an adventure and we had fun. Yesterday, we went to Pearl to get some dimsum. He slept pretty much right through our meal. I feel so blessed these days to have Rhys in my life. Watching him grow every day makes me so happy! Thank you God for everything you have given to us.

Currently Rhys is riding on my back as I type this out. This is the only way I can let myself have some lunch and go on the computer (computer is on my mantle so I can be on it while I stand). But I don't care, these very few short moments during the day are like little bits of heaven for me. I can be me again! My plans for this week are to go to Macy's to return an item and possibly do some shopping if the baby permits me.

I ordered a baby carrier from HOSAUSA yesterday. It is called a Chunei. It is basically the same as what I am wearing right now, but I got one in a Dark Jean look. This one works fine, but is pretty ugly and don't really wanna wear this out in public. I am also planning on making a trip to LA to be with my family on Dec 8th. I will be home for about a week so my mom will be very happy. She tells me that whenever she misses him, she closes her eyes and pictures his cute little face. I will be grateful for the help that my mom will be for me...plus I can do some needed bonding with my family.

It's about time for Rhys to wake up so I will end this blog here...Til next time!!!