Status Update: Speech

One of the most amazing and hilarious aspects of watching Ruby grow up is listening to the things that come out of her mouth. Even though it's expected that kids Ruby's age can say a handful of words and understand basic commands, it never ceases to amaze me when she learns something new. Perhaps it's because I remember a time not long ago when she didn't even know she had feet, and nowadays she knows how to say shoe is two different languages, will go find her shoes when asked, and tries to put them on her own feet.

In the last few months, Ruby's vocabulary has grown significantly. She speaks an about equal mix of English and Mandarin and seems to understand both languages equally as well. Her favorite language appears to be the language of song, and she can often be found humming classics such as Frere Jacques, Old McDonald, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Ruby's current repertoire of words include:

1) Baby
2) Wa-wa (water)
3) Wa-wa (doll in Chinese)
4) Ball
5) Bowl
6) Chair
7) Shoe
8) Xie (shoe in Chinese)
9) Xiang (yummy in Chinese)
10) Na-na (grandma)
11) Na-na (banana)
12) Deng (light in Chinese)
13) Home
14) Bao-bao (bread in Chinese)
15) Bao-bao (pick me up in Chinese)
16) Gan-gan (cracker in Chinese)
17) Toe
18) Tou (head in Chinese)
19) Ya (teeth in Chinese)
20) Ah-she ah-she ah fa DONG (Ashes ashes we all fall down)

With this newfound expressiveness and increased understanding of the world, Ruby is seeming more and more like a little person. Just when I thought we had maxed out on cuteness during the baby days, I see her feeding herself dinner while exclaiming, "Xiang! Xiang!" or following me into the bathroom when I'm brushing my teeth and requesting, "Ya! Ya!" so she can brush her teeth next to me, standing on her tippy toes to see over the counter. Or we see this:



And we realize that she has simply taken the cuteness onto another level.

Full circle

For my birthday this year, Steve took me to dinner at Gary Danko, one of the best restaurants in the city (and ever). We realized that the last time we dined there, it was about 4.5 years ago, we sat at the same table, and I was wearing the same dress.

Moral of the story, I have no time to buy new clothes.

Layovers

Even though my mom was our only official guest over the Thanksgiving holidays, Ruby actually got to see each one of her grandparents in the last week. For that we have San Francisco International Airport to thank, for being such a popular layover destination.

Steve's parents laid over at SFO on their way to a cruise in Miami the day after Thankgiving. They were at the airport at the exact time that my mom's plane was departing back to Philadelphia, so we all met up in a waiting area in the international terminal so that Ruby could play with her grandparents.







A few days later, my dad stopped over in SFO on his way home from China. His layover was long enough for him to come to our house and play with Ruby for a couple of hours before heading back to the airport.





A few weeks ago, our good friend Shirley and her husband Rudy spent a day-long layover with us on their way to Singapore. They got to meet Ruby for the first time.



Going somewhere? Plan a layover at SFO!

You might get to see this one:

Gobble gobble

This was the best Thanksgiving I have ever had. Last year, Mommy didn't cook Thanksgiving dinner because we were going to Hawaii the next day, and besides, I couldn't eat food anyways. This year, Mommy cooked a BIG dinner. We had turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, asparagus, corn, corn bread, and pumpkin cheesecake pie! I tried a little of each.





I think the turkey was bigger than me.

One of the best parts of Thanksgiving was that my little buddy Zach came to have dinner with us!



The turkey was bigger than him too.

Zach was very excited to see me, and he asked if it would be ok to hold my hand.



I wasn't sure it was a good idea since I already have a boyfriend.



But in the end, I agreed to hold his hand for a minute, just as friends.



Zach and I were both eager to start eating, but we waited patiently while Mommy took our picture.



Finally, it was time to eat!



I asked Zach to please not tell my boyfriend Julien that we held hands because he might get jealous.



We all dug in and boy was it yummy!





I had a very happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you did too!

Walk the walk

Today, at 17.5 months old, in the African Hall of the Cal Academy of Sciences, on a rainy Friday afternoon, Ruby decided to start walking! It was very much as if a switch had been turned on. One minute I was telling people that she did not quite walk on her own yet, and the next minute she is strolling around the museum, stopping, turning, holding a conversation.



And another stage begins.

One two step

Ruby took her first consecutive steps today! (Sorry, not captured on video) For a long time, we have been trying to get Ruby to walk towards one of us, like the way I've seen babies do on TV. However, today I was behind Ruby with my hands just behind her back. I think since she knew I was there to catch her, she got the confidence to take a few steps. I should have known that for Ruby, it would not be about the incentive to get to something she wants, but the security of having someone to catch her if she falls.

Happy Halloween!

This year, we got our first real taste of the children's Halloween scene. Last year, Ruby was not quite 5 months old, so still far too young to partake in Halloween activities or even to realize that it was out of the ordinary for she and her little friends to be dressed up like animals.



This year, Ruby was able to enjoy the full Halloween experience, starting with a trip to the pumpkin patch.









The Tuesday before Halloween, we hosted a Halloween party for Ruby's playgroup. In recent months attendance at our weekly playgroups have dwindled due to moms having moved out of the city and conflicting nap times. Therefore, we were very excited that almost ALL of the moms in the group were able to make it to the Halloween party. With 10 toddlers running around, it looked like our house had been hit by a tornado.

One of the best parts of the party was to see the difference between this year and our playgroup Halloween party last year. Whereas last year, taking the group picture entailed nothing more than propping the babies up next to each other on the couch and snapping the shots before they slid down too far, this year having that many toddlers sit long enough for a picture was an impossibility, so we included the moms in the shot.





This year was also Ruby's first time trick or treating (and the first time for Steve and I since we ourselves were children). We walked along the nearby Lake Street, which is renowned for its abundance of candy and trick or treaters. Ruby was too shy to take candy from strangers. At the first house, after much hesitation, she chose a Smarties from the candy bowl, only to turn around and put it back a few moments later. Finally, she did accept one piece of candy, which she held onto tightly the rest of the evening.

Status Update: Mobility

Unfortunately the area in Ruby's life that has seen the least improvement in the last couple of months has been her mobility. Since starting to crawl 2 months ago, she gets around quite well on her hands and knees. However, she does not crawl up things likes steps or the slide. Ruby also likes to walk holding onto someone's hand, but she has yet to walk on her own. For some time now, she has been able to stand on her own and has taken up to two consecutive steps (not captured on video). However, progress has stagnated during the last month.

Ruby's step, taken one month ago:



Since then we've been on high walking alert, thinking it could happen at any time. Our pediatrician did imply at our 15 month checkup that if she is still not walking at 18 months, that that is sort of a problem. However, as with many things, Ruby is just in no rush.

Status Update: Sleep

The area of Ruby's life that has seen by far the most improvement over the last few months is her sleep. Although Ruby started out a champion sleeper and continued to sleep better than the average baby for the first 6 months, her sleep over the second half of her first year devolved to the point where I daresay she was worst sleeper out of all her baby friends. At 12 months old, we had reached the measure of last resort and were about to hire a sleep consultant (basically someone who for $140/hr teaches you how to get your baby to sleep). However, just then, Ruby transitioned from 2 naps to 1 nap, we moved into the new house, maybe Venus went into retrograde, and she started sleeping through the night!

Ruby's sleep issues stemmed mainly from her inability to fall asleep on her own. When she turned 6 months old, we went through a period where she needed to be attached to the boob in order to sleep. Even if I waited until she was dead asleep to try and put her down in her crib, she would start screaming and not stop until she was back on the boob. This prompted our first attempts at sleep training. Even though the sleep training did improve the situation significantly, I admit now that we broke many of the major rules. Technically speaking, we were supposed to put Ruby down and let her fall asleep on her own without any "sleep crutches," such as singing, patting, hand holding, etc. (Our sleep book actually allowed parents to pat the baby, but cautioned against rhythmic patting, as the baby could become dependent upon this to fall asleep.) After two nights of sleep training by the book, I was too distraught to function. There was no way I could make it through another night of Ruby crying for hours while I sat sobbing next to her crib. So the third night, we still did her bedtime routine and laid her down in her crib, but then I held her hand, patted rhythmically, and sang until she fell asleep!

Maybe our trouble started because we failed to sleep train by the book, but for a while we didn't worry about it too much. Ruby was going to sleep without needing to be nursed, which was HUGE. She was waking a couple times a night, but could be soothed back to sleep very quickly by Steve putting her pacifier back in her mouth and turning on her sound machine. However, over time, her night wakings became more frequent and longer in duration. Steve took the brunt of this as he is a much lighter sleeper than I, so most of the time, I would not be awoken unless Ruby was crying very loudly for a very long time. Also, Ruby could sense if it was I who went into her room, which oftentimes made the crying worse, because she wanted me to pick her up. So for many months, Steve would be going into Ruby's room multiple times a night and holding her hand for up to an hour before she would go back to sleep. Sometimes, even after an hour of holding her hand, she would start crying again as soon as he left. About once every week or two, we would give up and bring her into bed with us, which I sort of liked, but Steve frowned upon.

When Ruby was around 10 months old, we tried sleep training again. This time, we tried to have her fall asleep without one of us holding her hand and did not go in to hold her hand when she woke up in the middle of the night. Those were some of the darkest days of my life. Ruby would cry for up to 2+ hours (!!) and there was no sign of letting up. We were all getting less sleep than ever, and I'm pretty sure she was even keeping up the old lady who lived upstairs. (I could hear her talk on the phone from our bathroom, and although I don't understand Cantonese, I heard her say "WAH WAH WAH.") We gave up the sleep training mainly because it seemed to be aggravating her eczema, which would cause her to itch, further preventing her from being able to fall asleep. So Ruby continued with her frequent and long night wakings through her first birthday.

Just after her 12 month check up, which we left with a referral for a sleep consultant, Ruby transitioned to 1 nap a day, and this significantly improved her nighttime sleep. She was waking up much less frequently, sometimes even sleeping through the night! She still required someone to hold her hand in order to fall asleep. However, when we moved into the new house, we had no furniture in Ruby's room aside from her crib and dresser, and Steve found it very uncomfortable to sit on floor while holding her hand, so after a couple of nights, he decided to stop doing it. The first night, Ruby cried for about 15-20 minutes, and the next night, only 2. Since then, we have been able to put her down in her crib, say "Night-night," and walk out the door with NO FUSSING for naps AND bedtime!!! Truly, we have reached the holy grail of sleep.

These days, Ruby sleeps from around 8pm to 8am with not so much as a peep in between. She takes one 1.5-hour long nap in the middle of the day. I often wonder if any of the sleep training actually did any good, or if she was simply not ready until now to fall asleep on her own. For now, we are just savoring the uninterrupted sleep and the happy, well-rested baby.

Status Update: Food Edition

Since I last spoke of Ruby's adventures in gastronomy nearly seven months ago, her palate and food repertoire have developed immensely. No longer is her diet comprised entirely of bland foods cooked in water. Starting around 3 months ago, Ruby finally began to take an interest in what Steve and I eat.

Even at her 12 month check-up, I expressed concern to our pediatrician that Ruby had no interest in "real" food. She preferred plain tofu, beans straight out of the can, plain bread, and plain steamed vegetables to anything with the slightest hint of seasoning, even rejecting things that had been cooked in oil. However, as with everything else, Ruby eventually came around, but just took her sweet time about it.

Around 3 months ago, Ruby started to ask to taste anything Steve and I were eating by earnestly saying "Eh? Eeeh?" or making the sign for "more." I realized that she would eat steamed vegetables with a little bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper. She also liked stir-fried string beans, which interestingly enough was also MY favorite food as a child! Since then, things have really taken off to the point that Ruby will eat almost anything that we eat.







I'm pleased to report that she still prefers vegetables, although she can definitely put away a lot of carbs.



As for meats, she likes the dark meat on chicken and the pork tenderloin that I use for stir-fries. I would say her favorite foods are fruits, and I keep the house stocked with at least 3 varieties of fruits at all times for her snacks and desserts.

As Ruby still does not drink milk (other than breastmilk) on its own, I started to make fruit smoothies for her, which have been a hit.



Of course, the amount of food that is actually consumed is still quite variable, and many days it seems like Ruby is much more interesting in playing with her food and rubbing it into her hair than actually eating it. For a while, this kind of behavior would fill me with worry that she would go hungry, so I would offer option after option until she ate enough bites to put my own mind at ease. I've realized though that that is not exactly conducive to good eating behavior, so now I try to offer only the dishes we are eating that evening and maybe one additional "appetizer." As counter-intuitive as it is, I realize that my job ends at providing healthy food options. To eat or not to eat is her business.

Football

Steve and Ruby circa February 2010:

Steve and Ruby, October 2010:

City Mouse

Ruby and I ventured into the suburbs twice in the last two days! I've realized that after 5 years of living in San Francisco, I am now fully and completely a City Mouse. To be fair I have probably always been a City Mouse, as I was born in a city, lived the first 5 years of my life in a city, spent the next 12 years plotting my escape from the suburbs, and returned to the city for college. However, I remember when I first moved to San Francisco, driving through the narrow downtown streets would nearly give me a heart attack. Nowadays, I am perfectly at ease weaving through traffic on city streets, but getting on the freeway on the way to Marin on Friday, I was white-knuckled and doing about 40 on a 65. I realized I had completely forgotten non-city driving etiquette. When I crossed back over the Golden Gate Bridge and reentered city limits, I felt an actual wave of relief.

Ruby and I were in Marin County on Friday because one of the members of our playgroup recently moved there. She is one of four moms in our original mommy's group who in the last year moved out of city and into the suburbs. The playgroup on Friday was actually a goodbye party for another one of the moms who is moving all the way to Texas! There is definite trend for new parents to flee the city in search of more affordable housing, less competitive preschools, higher quality public school systems, and of course, backyards!

On Saturday, we headed south to Palo Alto where we took advantage of the Indian summer weather at the Rincanada Pool. It was actually the first time Ruby had gone swimming since her swimming lessons last year. She was a bit hesitant at first, but then thoroughly enjoyed herself wading in the tot pool.





Unfortunately, there are no such outdoor pools in the city as temperatures rarely reach levels appropriate for outdoor swimming. Despite these apparent shortcomings, my love affair with San Francisco, which started the minute I laid eyes on the city, is still going strong. With our recent home purchase in a neighborhood with decent public elementary schools, I feel like we can safely remain in the city for at least 10 years, at which time Ruby will be entering middle school. Hopefully by then either the city's public middle schools will have significantly improved or we will have come into a large enough forutne to send our child(ren) to private school. For the time being, it looks like Ruby will also be a little City Mouse.

Free standing

The Move

Steve, Ruby, and I moved into the new house about three weeks ago on August 16th. One of the main reasons we put off moving out of our old apartment for as long as we did was because the thought of packing all of our crap, er belongings, made me want to knock myself unconscious. Although Steve and I tried to not be hoarders and to make periodic donations to Goodwill, we still accumulated a massive amount of belongings since our wedding (mostly in the form of china, glassware, kitchen gadgets and appliances) and an even more massive amount since the birth of Ruby (in the form of furniture, baby gear, and TOYS).

Before getting married, Steve and I had really quite little in terms of wordly possessions and never needed to hire professional movers to move. The last time we moved (from Steve's apartment in Mountain View to our apartment in the city), we rented a small U-Haul and enlisted the help of two friends. Almost everything we moved belonged to Steve, as I had brought with me only two checked bags from the East Coast a few months earlier. The time before that, when Steve and I moved from an apartment we shared in Sunnyvale during the summer I interned at Roche Palo Alto to a house in the Berkeley hills, we rented a minivan and did the entire move ourselves. And the time before THAT, when we moved from Steve's apartment at Stanford to the apartment in Sunnyvale, we used only Steve's personal sedan. Of course those were the days when Steve possessed exactly 1 bowl, 1 spoon, and a pair of chopsticks.

We packed our first box about a week before Moving Day. We only had the few hours between when Ruby went to bed and when exhaustion overcame us to work. We tried to tackle first the most tedious aspects of packing: the china, glassware, and frames. Even though the wrapping of each individual item in packaging paper was the most time-consuming part of the process, most of the items we were packing had been stored inside cabinets and had not seen the light of day since they were first unpackaged during receival, so our packing progress was not apparent to the outside observer. After several days of packing, I realized that we had yet to pack a single thing we actually ever USE.

We planned the move for a Monday, so that Ruby could be watched by the nanny at our share care partner's house. Even though we had packed diligently every evening the previous week and through the weekend, we were still up until 3am the morning of Moving Day, throwing things into boxes.

Midnight on Moving Day, a sad state of affairs:

Our movers arrived around 9:30 in the morning. They were highly efficient and finished the job in just 4.5 hrs. Although there are many moving companies in the San Francisco area, this one seemed like it was meant to be.

In addition to hired help, we also enlisted the help of all grandparents in the packing/moving/unpacking process. My mom flew in the Friday before Moving Day to help pack and to look after Ruby so that we could pack. She stayed until two days after the move to assist with the most critical elements of the unpacking: setting up the nursery and rendering the kitchen functional. Her departure was immediately followed by the arrival of Steve's parents. Steve and his dad were tasked with putting together the many pieces of new furniture that required assembly, while Steve's mom cooked and stocked our freezer. After a week of frantic unpacking/organization, the house looked quite in order for just 1 week post-move.

The main reason for the furious pace of the unpacking was our desire to minimize the disruption to Ruby's day-to-day life. Ruby is definitely a creature of habit, and she does not adapt easily to new situations/environments. For the first week after the move, our share care partners hosted the nanny share for the first time in their home. Even though Ruby had been to their home before and she was familiar with all the people there with her, she experienced a lot of anxiety about being in a less familiar place. For most of the time she was there, she needed to be held by the nanny the entire time or else she would get scared and cry. After the first day, Steve started dropping her off in the morning because it was too upsetting for both of us when I had to leave. Even though by the time Ruby got home the first day, we had set up her bed and unpacked all of her regular toys, she could tell something wasn't right, and she regarded everything in the house with a great deal of caution. Oftentimes when Ruby feels insecure or scared, she becomes even more attached to me than she usually is. Anytime I was in her eyesight, she would protest loudly until I picked her up and then bury her face in my shoulder and cling to my neck for dear life.

It took Ruby a week or two to fully adjust, but I can tell she is now comfortable with our new home. She is once again able to play on her own, and she is less cautious and more eager to explore. It is a little sad to think that Ruby will soon forget our former home, which is where she was brought back to from the hospital, where I spent 36 hours in labor, where we learned I was pregnant, where Steve and I came home to after getting married. Of course I'm sure we will make even greater memories here, ones that Ruby won't forget.

Crawling at 14.5 months

I'm sure it's been so long that most of our regular readership have given up hope, and I am now just talking to myself, but so much has happened in the last 4 weeks!

First there was the business of PACKING, and then the craziness of MOVING, followed by the labor of UNPACKING (as well as the assembling of furniture and the running of errands in conjunction with the caring of a toddler). Also the more that happens, the harder it is decide what to start talking about.

In addition to the changes in our lives due to our relocation into our first home, there have also been some major changes in Ruby! The most exciting of this past week is that Ruby, at the tender age of 14.5 months, began to crawl!

The Long-Awaited First Crawl:



At first, Ruby's crawling constituted of maybe 1-2 feet of forward motion. However, over the past couple of days, she has really taken off! Now Ruby FOLLOWS me around the house! While this may be 7-month-old news to most of my fellow mommies with 14-month-old babies, it is a completely novel concept to me and quite a sight to see Ruby in a crawling position. Although for most parents there is a sense of dread when their babies become mobile enough to get into everything in the house, we have been waiting for Ruby to crawl for so long that we are practically encouraging her to get into things! We'll see what happens when the novelty wears off.

Updates to come on the move and new house!

Socks

Tonight Ruby spent about 20 min. trying to put her socks on her little feet.

Toddler Ruby

This week "baby" Ruby turns 14 months old.



At this point, Ruby is going through a transitory phase where arguments could be made that she is still a baby and arguments could also be made that she is now a toddler.

Ways in which Ruby is still a baby:

1) She STILL does not crawl. The closest she comes is getting into an awkward crawling position before collapsing onto her tummy. However, we have learned that this crawling deficiency was inherited from her father, who also did not crawl, although everyone chalked it up to him being too fat.

It is encouraging to know that Steve does know how to crawl NOW, so this deficiency can be overcome.

2) Ruby will only take milk like baby, either from nursing or from a bottle. After 1 year, babies can be transitioned onto cow's milk and are encouraged to drink from a sippy cup. However, this arrangement was not to Ruby's liking. Although she drinks water from a sippy cup like a champ, she refuses milk when it's in a sippy.

Although I had no plans to stop nursing, I hoped to begin to introduce cow's milk so that Ruby could warm up to it at her own pace and so that I could stop pumping at work. Unfortunately, it seems that Ruby has some sort of reaction to cow's milk that causes any skin the milk has touched to turn red. Although the reaction is fairly mild and goes away on its own within an hour, we decided it's probably best to not transition her onto cow's milk for fear that it may exacerbate her eczema. The pediatrician suggested several alternative milks including goat's milk, coconut milk, and almond milk, which I have yet to try. In the meantime, I am still the sole milk supplier and Ruby's preferred method of milk delivery.

3) Still squishy.



Ways in which Ruby is a toddler:

1) Ruby is actually toddling (with assistance). She now walks quite well with her lion walker and along furniture. Although she is by no means a speed demon, she has definitely improved to faster than a snail's pace. This means she finally has some autonomy over where she is going, at least until the lion bumps into a wall.



2) Ruby becomes more and more communicative every day. The list of Words Ruby Can Say has expanded to include:

Na-na
Ye-ye (Grandpa in Chinese)
A-yo! (Chinese expression of surprise)



When she wants milk, Ruby will now call out, "Ma-ma! Ma-ma!" as she vigorously makes the sign for milk.

Just last night, on one of her dinner dates with her little boyfriend Julien, Ruby engaged in a brand new form of communication: inter-baby communications!

In the middle of eating their dinners, Ruby and Julien suddenly looked each other in the eye, chatted back and forth, and waved to one another! Although Ruby and Julien have played on many other occasions ever since they were 3.5 months old, this was the first true communication between them and the first time I had ever witnessed Ruby make a connection to a fellow baby/toddler in the same way that she connects to an adult.

3) Earlier this month, Ruby transitioned to one nap a day, which is definitely a big kid move. She also has 4 more teeth coming in on top, which would bring the total to 6. Overall, she is more mature. However, she is hardly ready to venture out on her own, and I am hardly ready to let her.