First Birthday (by Jonathan)`

Wow--so Akemi turned one yesterday! It has been an incredible year to say the least. Parenthood definitely wacked me over the head and made me see stars. Karen keeps saying how fast the year went. But for me, I felt like it went neither slow or fast. It just sort of happened. It seems like I can only remember events as far back as a month. Her first three months are a fuzzy memory in my head. But that's probably because I was half awake for most of the time. The 4th to 6th months were some of the toughest with Karen going back to work and us having to deal with daycare. I think those memories got archived somewhere in a lost folder. The 7th to 9th months were marked with some great milestones, like Akemi transitioning to solid food and make her first attempts to speak. I feel like these last three months is when I really began to see Akemi grow as an indepedent little being. Most remarkable was watching her to walk in just these past few weeks! It was just two weeks ago we saw Akemi take her first few steps. Now she walks everywhere!!

On a side note, we finally got Akemi to sleep through the night. For the last 3 or 4 months, Akemi has been waking up at least twice a night. Most of the time she wakes screaming bloody murder and we end up feeding her or holding her to make her go back to sleep. She also has not been going to bed on her own, requiring us to rock her or lie with her until she fell alseep. It has been a frustrating pattern that really took a toll on Karen and I. So finally Thursday night (yes..on her Birthday), we decided to let her "cry it out". We had tried once before and she ended throwing up, which resulted in us going back to the nurse or rock her back to sleep. She went to bed around 9pm and around 1 am woke up crying. We did first try to rock her back to sleep, but she wouldn't go down and would continue crying. So we just put her back in her crib and let her cry. What seemed like an eternity (but was actually only 7 minutes), Akemi's cries turned into snoring. She went back to asleep on her own! The following night we did the same thing. We put in her crib around 9pm and of course she started crying. But we turned off the lights, closed the door, and went downstairs. Amazingly. within 5 minutes, she stopped crying and fell asleep.

I don't know if this going to last. I certainly hope so. But I have never been so grateful for a good nights sleep:)

I never thought...

I never thought...

- that I'll walk out of the house with two different pairs of brown high heels to work. As I was walking to my car, I thought I was walking funny and figured that one of my heels were worn. Thankfully I realized in my garage, that I was wearing the wrong pair of brown high heels!!!

-that I'll drive all the way to work to only find myself without my laptop. I begged Jonathan to swing by and drop it off at work.

-that I'll be one of 'those' moms, that is perfectly fine leaving the house with spit up all over my shirt and perfectlly content. At least I'm out of the house on my own right?

-that although Akemi can drive me bonkers, it only takes one SMILE to make me forget all the craziness.

I love being a mom. It is truly the most rewarding experience ever!

Akemi's first steps

Every night, Akemi, Dior, and I play fetch with the ball. I would throw the ball and watch both Akemi & Dior go after it. Usually Dior makes it to the ball first, but lately, Akemi has been crawling pretty fast.

Well tonight, I threw the ball and Akemi was leaning against a wall and started to walk towards the ball. She took a few wobbly steps towards the ball,squatted down,and grabbed it. Hopefully I'll have a chance to record it on video next time.

Akemi is slowly starting to build her confidence in walking and before you know it, she'll be walking around the room. I just hope Dior can keep up.

Kudos to Working Moms

I'm sure I have written this before but I have much more appreciation for working moms. It's HARD. It's been almost 8 months since I've been back to work and I'm still not use to it.

1. Lack of sleep does not help
2. It's really hard to focus at work due to reason#1
3. You really have to be efficient with your time. I scheduled three 30 min blocked time through out the day to pump, which doesn't seem like too much time out of the day. But it's challenging scheduling meetings and work around those time. At times, I find myself writing emails or reading meeting notes during my pump session. Thank god I haven't spilled my milk on my work documents yet..
4. Kicking butt at work is harder than before. My brain has been mush lately.

Here is my new day schedule at work:

5am: Wake up--Walk the dog

5:15am : Hurry back and shower

6:00am: Scarf breakfast down

6:15am: Nurse Akemi and leave for work

6:45am: In the building's parking garage

7:00am: Check email

7:30am: My first meeting! Can you believe it!!!?? It's east coast call. 'sigh'

4:30pm: Beg Jonathan to pick up Akemi from daycare. If not, I'm rushing out the door to get her.

Lately I've been leaving work at 6pm.

6:30pm: Dinner

7:00pm : Bath time/ bed time

8:30/9pm: My bed time...

I need to play the lotto, stay home, and eat Skinny Cow Ice cream sandwiches...

Akemi is finally sleeping!!

Whoo hoo! We had one night of 9 hours of sleep! Akemi went down at 8pm and woke up at 5am.
At 1am, I would hear her moan and whine, but we ignored it and she went back to sleep.

We found out that the few weeks where she wasn't sleep was due to her teeth coming in. After her teeth peaked through, she started to sleep longer. I'm glad I didn't let her cry it out cause she was really in pain and needed comfort. I'm glad we decided to go with our instincts.