Baby Wong (Caleb Wong & Caris Wong & Chloe Wong)
The adventures of Caleb, Caris, Chloe & Family
Caris had her first solids on Monday. Rice cereal… yum, yum.
Here’s a video of this fun feeding adventure. Yes, that’s Caleb in the background eating his breakfast. Caleb’s a little jealous that his baby sister is getting so much feeding attention.
Oh, and Caris had her first sippy cup on Thursday. Like Caleb, she has skipped the use of bottles almost completely. That’s our friend Camille in the first picture.
Our baby girl is 6 months old today! We’ve been so busy that we haven’t even started her on solids. We pulled out the feeding table about 5 minutes ago. Our goal is to start her on her first rice cereal tomorrow morning!
I’ve also realized that I’ve neglected to blog on Caris’ milestones. It’s really much harder to keep up with all this stuff with your second child.
I started to worry a little about Caris around when she was 3.5 months old since she was only just turning from side to side (versus full rolling like Caleb did at 3.5 months). A month later she was rolling. Rarely does she stay on her back for long now. Even when she sleeps, she likes to roll onto her belly (even though she’s still swaddled!)
Caris has been doing this interesting (but effective) back scoot since she was about 3 months old. That was her first method of getting to the toys behind her on the changing pad.
She sits really well too…. except when distracted by a toy.
Now, she’s actually starting to crawl!!! (not real crawling on hands and knees, but she can get what she wants several inches in front of her with the propelling force of her knees and feet). I certainly don’t have to worry about Caris being too laidback to move anywhere. She’s got spunk, and she does try to get what she wants.
Some cute pics:
So, I thought Caris was going to get her first teeth a while back when she started drooling at 3 months. She decided to take her time. But, they’re here now! Her first 2 bottom teeth pushed their way into mouth world on Thursday. You still can’t really see them well… Honestly, I’m going to miss her big toothless grin. I feel like Caris is growing up so fast. Caleb’s first year didn’t feel like it went by this fast. Caris will soon be 6 months. Oh my.
I took some pictures to commemorate our daughter’s beautiful toothless smile.
I’ve got to include some of these other pictures. Caris is so cute.
Unlike her brother, Caris has liked being swaddled. So, we swaddled her. About a week ago, she started breaking through the swaddle… first with just her left arm, then with both arms. Sometimes, she could only get a hand out (versus her whole arm). I noticed she was starting to get angry when her arm-freeing attempts failed. So, the smart mom I am figured it must be time to unswaddle Caris. That’s what I did 2 nights ago. One sleepless night later along with the multiple early night awakenings tonight prompted my much smarter hubby to look online for ideas to help newly unswaddled babies sleep. He learned that cold turkey unswaddling is not a good idea. Way to go, Mommy…. Take away your daughter’s sleep association.
Caris just woke up again. This time, I went in and swaddled her back up with just her left arm out. She settled immediately. I put her in the crib. She started to fight for about 2 seconds, and then she sighed… not a sigh of frustration due to loss of freedom, but of relief… finally. She was asleep before I could step away from the crib.
I guess that means we need to take the 2+ weeks people recommend for getting our daughter used to being unswaddled. And I thought we could do it overnight.
Yay, Caris… You’re 5 months old. You need to tell big brother Caleb that his crib is not scary… nor are bugs/bees, dogs, bees, fans/air conditioners, fake gravel, mud, etc, etc. Once Caleb stops screaming every hour or so, I think you’ll start napping/sleeping better again. I hope so at least. This mommy loves her sleep. Sleep lots, little 5-month old!
Caris had her 4 month doctors appointment this morning. She got heaps of shots and the oral rotavirus vaccine. Hope she doesn’t get a high fever like Caleb did at his 4 month vaccines.
Length – 26 inches (95-97th percentile)
Weight – 15 pounds, 14.5oz (90th percentile)
Head Circumference – 40.5 inches (45th percentile)
So, when we weighed Caris, I was all disappointed… thinking my daughter doesn’t weigh very much. Her brother was 17 pounds, 7 oz at his 4 month appointment. Then the doctor tells me that she’s 90th percentile in weight for girls. So, I guess I don’t have to worry about Caris being too small.
No teeth yet for Caris. And she’s almost there with rolling. She’s only done it once so far… I think it was a total accident that she flung her leg all the way over. She has yet to make that mistake again. Caris is really good at the back scoot, though. She can get pretty far on her back, just by using her legs to propel her while in a supine position. She’s great at grabbing things now. Really likes using her hands.
(I love my spit cloths. And yes, I can breathe.)
(Daddy’s getting me dressed.)
(I still have a double chin!)
(I’m a chub-meister… and proud of it!)
We’re out in Louisville, KY! This was Caris’ first plane flight ever. She was great on the flight here. She fed at take off. And she fell asleep. And she slept. And slept and slept some more. She finally woke up when we landed almost 4 hours later.
Caleb was good on the plane as well. He didn’t sleep the 4 hours like Caris did. But he was good nonetheless. He only got his 25 minute nap, but he tried to push on. He had good company with him though to keep him entertained.
He had is pacifier
He had Leakless
He had Chick Hicks
And he had his media player with Cars on it.
We got our rental car. A Ford Edge. Not a bad car. Caris seems to like it as well. At least in the front seat.
We originally booked a suite from the Galt House since they had special convention rates while we were here. After traveling with Caleb, we found that staying in a suite is so much better than staying in the same room. So the suite would have been nice, except we didn’t get one. We got an apartment instead. You read that correctly. An apartment. So initially when Yvonne told me they upgraded us for free to an apartment, I was thinking maybe we get an extra room or something. Something just a little bigger. Oh gosh. Check out this video.
The place has 2 furnished bedrooms, and plus another unfurnished room and “work†room. That’s 4 rooms we have available to us. We stuck Caleb in one room with no windows. It looks like a closet. And could very well be used for a closet. But it works well nonetheless. He sleeps well in there.
Caris on the other hand isn’t so lucky. We could have stuffed her in the other room, but we only brought one monitor with us. We were planning on staying in the same room with her so we didn’t think we’d need a monitor for her. So no separate room for Caris. Yup. It’s not Caleb who gets stuck in the closet, but Caris. It is a big closet by the way.
We have beautiful view of the waterfront. Caleb likes the boats. He greatly enjoys looking out there even when his diapers are barely hanging on.
General Council (C&MA convention) has been going well. It just started officially tonight. We’re all still on LA time zone so that means waking up at 10/11 AM and going to sleep at 11PM. It works out fine until we’re looking for places open for dinner at 10PM. Or when I have my 7AM Friday morning breakfast. Or even tomorrow’s 9AM session. Not going to be easy getting up in the morning.
But it might be easy since Caris’ hasn’t been sleeping that well since we got here. She’s constantly waking up in the middle of the night and taking short naps during the day. She must know something isn’t right. And the crib we got is so dang low it’s hard to put her down in. Every time we lean over to put her down she’s up wide awake! So we did the only thing we thought we could do. Go to Walmart and buy her a bassinet and sleep nest. It seems to work better, but she’s still not sleeping well. I think tonight has been her best night of sleeping so far, but it’s only been 2 hours. Keep sleeping, girl!
We did some vacation stuff. We went to the zoo today. Caleb liked it a lot. It definitely seems more entertaining and kid friendly than the LA zoo. It’s got a water park where Caleb ran around and I got soaked.
It’s got monkeys (or gorillas if you want to call them that) who pose at you.
And it’s got none of the exotic animals kids don’t care about. It’s perfect.
We got Caleb a backpack before the trip so he can help carry stuff. It’s cute. He walked funny without it before. It just gets even more funny.
So, we’re better today. I was a bit worried about Caris last night. She was hungry, but cried every time she tried to latch on to nurse. Her mouth was hurting from all her sores. She kept crying throughout the night, but Chris did a great job calming her down. When morning came, Caris finally had a pretty good feeding… then a wet diaper. Yay! She fed again 2 hours later before she saw the doctor. She has at least 10 sores on her throat and heaps of them on her tongue. Poor Caris.
(Chris finally getting a chance to sleep.)
I saw the doctor today too. It’s my first time seeing a doctor for “sick†reasons in years. I’ve never met my doctor on this insurance, and I need updated lab work done anyways. She looked in my mouth and was amazed at how many sores I had. She noted that I must have at least 50-60 lesions in my mouth and throat. This definitely hurts. So far, cheese and almond milk are friends of this lesion-ridden mouth. Hee-hee, I have lesions elsewhere too…. palms of my hands, the soles of my feet, etc.
(OK, so we couldn’t really get a good picture of these strange sores. Oh well. This is really not a very flattering picture. Another oh well.)
Caleb’s doing better. Still has mouth/throat sores, but able to eat & drink. But, big brother is jealous of baby sister Caris getting so much attention now. He does not like watching mommy try to nurse her so frequently…. or daddy holding her so much trying to soothe her. *sigh*
So far, Chris is doing well. Praise God. Pray for him to figure out how to get all his work done in a timely manner. He had to stay home to help me today. We leave for General Council in 5 days. Chris has deadlines at work he has to complete before we go. Hard for him to keep up with work when he has to take care of the 3 of us.
Thanks for praying for us!
We really need to take more pictures of Caris. She doesn’t do as much as Caleb yet, so it’s easy to overlook the picture-taking thing… especially when you have a son like Caleb who demands all your attention.
And, yes, our daughter is drooling heaps. Not quite as bad as her brother yet. It started about a month ago. At a little over 3 months, Caleb already had his 1st 2 bottom teeth. It looks like Caris isn’t too far behind.
OK, so we’re still not doing a great job of taking enough pictures of Caris, but here are some. Most of them happen to be when she’s sleeping.
Here are a few awake pics:
