All Messed Up

[Video updated in last post.  Go watch it]

For those of you who don’t know, we’re in Hawaii now.  Before we came on the trip, we decided that we’re not going to have Caleb on his set sleeping schedule, seeing how it’s 2 hours earlier here, and if we ever want to do anything at night, he has to break his sleep routine.  And I must say it has not been as bad as I expected.  Still it hasn’t been good.

The plane ride was good.  Caleb slept for a little over an hour during the 5+ hour flight.  He played most of the time.  We made sure to bring lots of toys.

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Caleb usually goes to sleep around 6-7pm and wakes up around 6am at home.  So here in Hawaii, that means he wants to sleep at 4-5 and wake up at 4am.  Not so good for him.  Not so good for us.  Since we’re changing his sleeping pattern anyways, we decided to keep him up the first night.  He went to sleep at 8:30pm local time the first night (that’s 10:30pm for him at home).  He was dead tired, and slept pretty well…  He only woke up once, but of course he woke up for good at 4:45am.  That’s a little tad early for us.  Again he slept at 8:30pm tonight. (He just woke up crying now at 10:52pm).  Hopefully he’ll have a good night the rest of the night.  Please God.  We like sleep.  We really do.

Even though Caleb still isn’t sleeping well, he’s trying.  He’s getting sleep wherever he can and without our help.  Much better than we thought he would do.  IMG_0478

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Even when he’s not getting enough sleep, Caleb has been good for much of the last 2 days.  He’s usually terribly grumpy.  But he can just sit in the stroller for long periods and not say much at all.  What a trooper.

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Of course, Caleb’s schedule isn’t the only one that is messed up.  Today we ate lunch at 3pm, not cause we weren’t hungry.  I wanted Hawaiian food.  But I couldn’t find any place that would be satisfactory for me.  What kept us from dying was eating sundaes and fruit and yogurt parfaits and McDs.  And of course our favorite, Peeps.

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We did drove a lot today.  I, of course, was navigating, so that never turns out well, hence the 3pm lunch.  We finally found some authentic Hawaiian food at Wolf Gang Pucks.  Well not so much authentic, but it was still good nonetheless. 

We spent much of the day in Waikiki.  I finally got my Hawaiian food for dinner at 9:30pm.  Yum.

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Other than that, we haven’t done too much.  Our condo is right next to the ocean.  We’re at the non-touristy side of the island.  The view is beautiful.

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Must sleep now.  So tired.  Yawn.

Pop Goes the Weasel

It was another rainy day here in LA.  So what does any normal family do on a rainy day?  Stay indoors and relax?

Nope.  Not this normal family.  Knowing we’d get a yelling by our parents in the future, we chose to go to Disneyland!  We bought a rain cover for the stroller for Caleb.  We got our new umbrella.  We had Caleb bundled up.  So we went prepared.

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We enrolled Caleb in this music class that we go to every Saturday.  So they gave us a CD that we can listen to; songs that they use in the class.  One of the songs is "Pop Goes the Weasel."  Now most of you, I would imagine, probably don’t remember the lyrics to this song.  In fact, you probably only know the "Pop goes the weasel" part like me and Yvonne.

So we started listening closely to the lyrics and honestly, they didn’t make any sense to us.  First we couldn’t really understand what they were saying since the lyrics didn’t quite make sense to us.  So we looked up the song on wikipedia (I know wikipedia is frowned upon in the academic community, but they have almost always provided thorough and accurate information).  Here are the lyrics on our CD:

All around the cobbler’s bench
The monkey chased the weasel;
The monkey thought ’twas all in fun,
Pop! goes the weasel.

A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle—
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Now after reading this…  we still don’t know what it means.  We know that fairy tales had all these meanings used for teaching.  Real fairy tales were used to teach the children about certain things.  So was there some hidden meaning we were suppose to get out of this children’s song?  Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Goes_the_Weasel to check out the meaning.

I got six new videos at http://youtube.com/linwong.  You can subscribe to my channel to get all the updates to the videos.  Here’s one of him jumping.

We shall be getting our new camera soon.  Should be much better pictures and much better video.

6 Month Pictures

We went to Kiddie Kandids this morning to take our baby’s 6 month photos.  We also got a nice family picture.  It’s awesome.

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And my favorite.  Don’t mind the person on the right, or my jeans in the picture.  Or even Caleb’s outfit sticking out a little.  Gotta love that tongue sticking out.

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Big Baby

Updated: 1/2/08
New pictures uploaded

Yvonne and I were marveling at how enormous our baby has become.  We were looking at his pictures from when he was just born, and he barely fit into his car seat.  Now he overflows from his car seat.  And that’s after we bought a new, bigger car seat cause he grew out of his infant seat.

From our measurements, Caleb now weighs about 20 pounds and he’s about 28 inches.  That’s about 85th percentile for weight and 90-95th percentile for height.  And remember, he was born 6 pounds 13 ounces, and was 18 inches long.  That’s 25th percentile in weight, and 10th percentile in height.  My how he’s grown.

7/1/07: Notice his feet and his head in the cushions

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7/29/07: Legs are a little longer, and his head fills the cushion a little more

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9/8/07: Can’t see his feet, but now we’re down to a single layer of head cushion

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10/18/07

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11/19/07: Caleb has outgrown the car seat.  Head no longer fits in cushion.  Legs hang off the end of the car seat

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11/25/07: New car seat.

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1/1/08

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Baby’s First

The past few days, Caleb has been going through a lot of first’.  Here are some of them.

First Christmas

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First Time at Disneyland

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First Ride (Finding Nemo)

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First Solid Food (Yumm)

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First Time in High Chair

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Halloween, Vaccines and More

We try to keep up with posting pictures, but it takes time. You can view the latest at http://pictures.chriswong.org. If anybody has a better picture of us at the baby dedication, can you please send it our way. Thank you!

Gotham’s Crime Fighter
Batman!

Ouchies
Vaccine Shots

Is a Reading Rainbow still on PBS?
Reading

Baby Dedication
Dedication

Sleeping, New Tooth and New Home

If you haven’t heard, Caleb hasn’t been sleeping well. It’s not that he doesn’t sleep. It’s just that he doesn’t like to sleep. Yvonne’s got his sleep cycle down, but knowing his sleep cycle doesn’t mean he actually stays asleep. For daytime naps, Caleb’s schedule goes like this:

0 min – Falls asleep
25 min – Stirs awake.

It’s at this point where intervention is almost always needed. First off you need to be holding him. Secondly, adult intervention is required usually in the form of bouncing up and down, sticking a finger in his mouth, or a combination of the two. If all doesn’t go well, he’s awake after his 25 minute nap. If all does go well, Caleb passes this moment back into slumber land. This process continues:

45 min – Stirs awake.
1 hour 45 min – Stirs awake.

According to babycenter.com, babies at four months of age need 12-15 hours of sleep a day. Now if Caleb only goes down for 25 minute naps at a time, he doesn’t get enough sleep. And when he doesn’t get enough sleep, he gets grumpy until he finally crashes before his normal bedtime.

It’s not easy getting him asleep and keeping him asleep. But Caleb is getting enough sleep now (most days), but it’s hard work. We’ve even had to trick him into thinking we’re still holding. That’s what it’s come down to.

Caleb + Pillows

Nighttime sleeping is a different matter though. This whole sleep cycle is different for some reason. He can actually stay asleep pass that 25 minute barrier. Problem is he’s developing too fast. He talks, he rolls, he’s teething. All this complicates his sleep, which complicates our sleep.

Caleb popped his first tooth a few weeks ago, and this morning we can see his second tooth about to pop out. No wonder he keeps waking so often during the night. I wish I could get a good picture of it.

You probably didn’t notice, but baby.chriswong.org has a new home. It’s on a new server that is. Hopefully it’s much more reliable and much faster. Cause all know the real reason why you’re here. It’s not to read stories. It’s to see pictures of Caleb.

Sitting Caleb Playing Caleb + Tommy Headphones Bumbo Naked Funny suit

Caleb’s 3 month pictures

http://picasaweb.google.com/chriswong/KiddieKandid15Weeks

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Caleb’s rolling from his tummy to his back now… and every once in a while from his back to his tummy. He’s got 2 adorable laughs… one sounds kind of like a giggle… the other like “huh-huh” but with a huge toothless drooly grin.

Caleb went to his first concert last night – David Crowder Band – one of his daddy’s favorite Christian bands. He donned these hilarious infant hearing protection earmuffs. Wish I had a picture to show you, but they didn’t allow cameras into the House of Blues. We’ll take one at the National Youth Workers Convention this coming weekend.

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all these things i’ve been thinking of writing, but haven’t…

1. Chris told me breastfeeding moms are excused from jury duty. Just an FYI for all those people out there who wanted to know. Of course, I haven’t been called to jury duty. Hey would they let me bring Caleb with me if I was called and wanted to do jury duty?

2. I’m still on medical maternity leave. I saw my OBGYN this past Wednesday. I haven’t been medically released since my perineum still hasn’t fully healed. But it’s sooo much better than it was a month ago. I feel like I could go hiking if it wasn’t so hot! Maybe it’ll cool down more and I’ll take Caleb for a short little jaunt up at Monrovia Canyon. Shh, don’t tell my doctor.

3. So, Chris tells me the other day that my ankles and calves look skinny. It’s amazing how pregnancy makes your hubby forget what you used to look like.

4. We took some church youth camping 2 weekends ago. I wouldn’t recommend it for any new moms out there. What used to be outdoor fun is now a “keeping your newborn clean and warm” nightmare. And, it’s nearly impossible to put up a tent when you’ve got a baby in your arms.

5. At the camping trip on Saturday, Chris points out that my eye is bleeding. Sure enough I developed a subconjunctival hemorrhage. It’s impossible to find an available optometrist or open clinic in Wrightwood on the weekends. My eye’s fine, but I’ve had to wear glasses for the past 2 weeks. I’ll be in glasses for a bit longer now since I lost my contacts by accident. I’ve gotta find an optometrist since mine (my sister Sandra) moved to Panama.

What a cutie!
Just Hatched

Just Hatched Again