Toddle Along Tuesdays

Today's TAT is Letters. I wrote a letter to Wilson over 2 years ago.

Come take a read here.

Happy Father's Day

To the father of my children, thank you.

Callie's 6 months

Callie is now 6 months and getting her first teeth in.
Her bottom right has broke through, and the left is still working it's way out.

We started her on squash and she is loving to eat. She eats the whole jar and looks around for more, even after she is done.

We have been trying to transition her to the crib, but we are having a rough time with it. With her teething, and I just got a bout of mastitis yesterday, she was pretty much in bed with me these past couple nights.

Her stats from the doctor is:
Head: 43.8 cm (80%)
Height: 26.7 inches (73%)
Weight 15 lbs. 9 oz. (34%)

My squeaks needs to eat more and gain more weight!

She is very long and slender. She is fitting all her 6 months clothing just fine and can fit some other things in 9 month. (Depends on the brand)

She LOVES watching her big brother run around. Gets mad when she can't see him, if he's not in her eye range. Is VERY interested in the TV. Which is weird. We would have the tv on all the time when Wilson was an infant and he NEVER watched it.

She rolls back and forth, tummy to back or back to tummy, but only when she wants to. She's not yet doing it all the time so I think she is still figuring it out.

Trying to work on her sitting up on her own but she is still not having it.
She is still really gassy, farts literally ALL the time!

I find that funny because I had been told by some of my breastfeeding friends "Oh you won't need to burp her." Uhhh.. I have to burp her constantly and we still don't even get rid of half the gas!

She LOVES her mommy. I think she and I are going to be best friends someday! =)

Toddle Along Tuesday

I am actually linking up an old blog post that I wrote here: expectations vs. reality

I wrote this as a first time mom almost a month after having Wilson.
There were a lot of things that I had expected I would do: have a natural childbirth and breastfeeding, that I ended up NOT doing.

I'm fully okay with the natural childbirth now, but I still experience some mommy guilt for the breast feeding, especially since I have been able to breastfeed Callie for over 6 months now. (I am starting to supplement more though, she gets about 1 or 2 bottles a day)

Anyhoo enjoy my old post!

I have set myself up.

No really I have, instead of working on trying to get Callie to sleep in her crib, I instead opt to do whatever is laziest/easiest.

When my husband was working Mids shift, this was so easy! Callie and I would get the bed all to ourselves.

I'd nurse her until she fell asleep and then roll over to Andy's side of the bed and sleep there.

Now, Andy's back on Days, and we have to share the bed again, and I CANNOT co-sleep with her that close to me. Heck, I'm trying to get used to having the share the bed again in general, let alone share it with my husband AND my baby.

We had been using the Fisher Price Rock N Play Sleeper, which I loved! But now at 6 months, my little one has a bit more movement and ends up looking uncomfortable as she sleeps.

I am at a dilemma though. I'm thinking she and I are going to have to move into her room and I'm going to have to start working on getting her to sleep in her crib somehow. I'm thinking, I nurse her until she falls asleep and then put her in her crib.

We have a guest bed in there so I can sleep there. Last night was a rough night, I made it to her room but didn't put her in her crib.

This is so different than with Wilson. Thanks to SwaddleMe we were sleeping through the night like 3 months ago. We figured out his routine easily. Just swaddle him,  rock him for about 5 minutes and then lay him in bed. I didn't start actually laying him in bed awake until closer to 1 year old.

Callie already though sleeps less than Wilson does. She takes after her dad for sure, who was not a good sleeper, and still isn't really. Wilson takes after me, and gets cranky if he doesn't get his sleep, or nap.

Oh man, I hope I can fix this somehow...

So last night...

Actually I should back this up a bit. We had a pretty good day. Life is getting easier, the adjustment from 1 to 2 is now no longer an adjustment, and just how life is. Callie is sleeping a good 6 hours in the night, followed by a nursing session, followed by another 4-5 hours of sleep.
Callie is now 6 months old! Wilson is already 2!

Look at these adorable faces!

and last night I tried to convince Andy for one more baby! HAHAHA

I am by no means trying to shoot for 3 under 3. I'm still traumatized from 2 under 2.
But with that said. I love being pregnant. I love my babies. The thought that I am actually DONE, makes me sad. I don't want to be done! I mean I don't want like 18 kids and counting like the Duggars or anything, but to think that this is it. It's very hard to accept.

Plus, I think I happen to make super adorable babies.

If we do actually have another, it is going to be a couple years longer. I have the implanon birth control which lasts up to 3 years.

Right now I say I want another. Tomorrow I'm sure, I'll be like "Nevermind!"

But seriously, look at those faces! How could I NOT want another baby!

Toddle Along Tuesday: My mom

What a great topic to talk about. Growing up Geeky and Army Wife Style, two of my favorite blogs to read, do a topic every Tuesday. I've done a couple already, this one is about mothers. Specifically my mom. Oh so many stories about my mom.

My mom and I. Korea 2003

Wilson was 6 weeks old here. I'm still huge! UGH.

Mainly though, my mom is Korean. I grew up living a totally different lifestyle compared to all my friends with American mothers.

I'm not kidding when I say rice was almost at every meal, even if I didn't want it. I remember as a kid getting so mad that my mom would mix rice in with my Chef Boyardee. I remember sometimes getting a korean breakfast instead of cereal or pancakes.

No syrup for this pancake!

Or better yet a korean pancake.
Yum.











As a child, I had a lot of frustration with having a Korean mother. My mother didn't get very far in school. I think she has said she quit school at a 5th grade level. I can't even imagine it, and yet my mother did not have the education most American mothers have had. I would get so mad, that she would ask me to read her things in English, because she couldn't learn. I couldn't ask for help with school work, because she didn't know how to do most of it herself.

She came from a poor, hard working family. She knows all about how to live frugal, and boy can she haggle!

Being Korean also meant that she doesn't really care to celebrate the major American holidays. My father always made a big deal of it, but my mom would've preferred probably to not even celebrate it. She also didn't really care to celebrate Korean holidays either though.

At 13, my parents got divorced, and we stayed with our Dad, it was a hard time for all of us.
 My mom was all around the place, had gotten remarried, and the phone calls were so awkward for us. 

I accept our relationship for what it is. No, I may not have a close relationship with my mom, where we talk everyday, but I love my mother, for being my mother.

We have plans to visit her in August and I hope that works out. Right now my mother is battling stage 4 of Chronic Kidney Disease.

It's a very scary thing to think that my young mother, (she's 47) has on average 6-7 years left unless she finds a kidney donation. Which even then will only extend her life to 15 years, if she is lucky.

I didn't mean to end this on such a down note. I feel like this is just the nature of our relationship, a bittersweet thing between us. Now that I am an adult, I want to be closer to my mother, to have my children know her and call her "Halmunee" and yet there is a scary possibility that is not to be.

Hopefully we have many more years, and hopefully visits to see my mother. I hope my children are able to know her and have memories of her. I hope they will be able to comprehend, that their grandmother, came from another country at the young age of 18, all by herself, with only my dad, to a new country, completely different from where she had been.

I hope they are proud to be  1/4th Korean, like I am proud to be 1/2 Korean.