Emilyn says

Here are some things about Emilyn since May (16 months) to now (2 years):

She is as playful (if not more than) Theo. She has a hammy/mischievous grin, and she also does this thing where she turns her head sideways while keeping her eyes on you.

At 16 months (on May 15, to be exact) she said "Nigh nigh and I love you" when I laid her down for bed.

She says "jammy jammy" for Sandra Boynton's Pajama Time.

"Be you!" for "bless you!"

She calls keys "gee"

She's been calling Kathy either "nunu" or "nono" and able to call David's parent "harby" and "harmy"

She says "my" for me/I (e.g., "my do it")

When I asked her if she had a good nap, she said yes, and then she pointed at me, to ask if I had a good nap. Then the same question regarding Theo, and Kathy.

Around 18 months she started calling Theo "Tho-dor" even though we always referred to him as either "Theo" or "oppa." Recently she has changed it to "Thee-dor." (Even Theo the other day said, "she used to call me Tho-dor. Now she calls me Thee-dor.")

She still loves food, especially meat and fruit. Unlike everyone else int he family, she doesn't finish carbs. She can eat spicy food like curry, Shin Ramyun, and even Sriracha without freaking out.

She's a full-on toddler who looks at me while disobeying.

She says "uh oh" for something that's broken or fallen.

She constantly asks "ay" which means "where...?" "Ay nunu go? Ay appa?"

She says "yah" for "yes" in a very definitive manner.

She says "ticka ticka" (tickle) and goes through each person, e.g., "Ticka ticka umma, ticka ticka nunu, ticka ticka tho-dor"

When our friend Jason offered to push her on the swing at camp (21 months) she said to him (and she likes this guy) "no no no no no" followed by "go go go go go."  Jason clarified, "you don't want me to push you?" and Emi said, "Yah!"

When you wake her up, she can tell if you've been eating something and she says "foo foo foo" or "ea ea ea" all while signing food/eat. (Update: now at 2yo 3mo she asks, "What Umma eating?")

She loves to ask about each person in the family, repeatedly.

"Aighee" is ice cream. "Geekgee" is cookie. "Geegoh" is thank you.

One day when we left a restaurant, David was going to give Emilyn the rest of her shaved ice drink in the car. I told him we should wait until we got home. Without missing a beat, Emilyn piped in with, "Bib. No mess." (Only, she pronounces "mess" like "mesh.")

She has a strong sense of where everyone should be sitting - at the dining table, or in the car.

David and Theo often say, "What the??" to feign surprise. Emilyn copies them, and says, "bah-dah?!"

She still pronounces I love you like "I la voo."

She often says "Emi do it."

One time when David was rubbing her back, she surprised him and said "no dutch" by which she meant, "no touch."

So then weeks later when David made dutch baby pancakes, it was easy to get her to say "dutch baby."

When she picked up something for her cousin Baby Amara and put it back on her booster tray, she told her, "say geekgoo unni" (unni is older sister in Korean).

She loves tea, especially drinking my chai.

Overall Emilyn is as her middle name, a pure joy. She loves playing with Theo, whether it be Legos, chase, or digging in the dirt. She loves food and music and making people laugh.

Fearless

I love how these boots make her look like a fishmonger.

It’s such a wild exercise to pay attention to everything my kids are doing as they grow and develop. I worry sometimes that “blog summaries” of them oversimplify their personhood into bulleted lists, but for now, this is still better than not writing anything.

Before I picked up blogging again with regularity, I was only remembering to capture things here and there, and it really felt like a chore. Now I’m a bit quicker to jot something down in my Notes app.

Knowing that my collections are headed somewhere (and that you all really seem to like these! Especially you, Molly, it’s your lucky week!) makes it feel even more worthwhile.

And I know that in 20 years (or even just next year) I’ll be really grateful I did that. (Ha, I just used the word grateful and it didn’t make me gag. Maybe it’s because I’m being grateful to myself, not to some vague Other.)

Oh, you didn't know that monkeys are marsupials?

So, without further ado, a little update on Emilyn.

She started walking just shortly before our trip to Virginia, so I’d say that was right around the beginning of April, after she turned 15 months. (Is this so classic second child, that I don’t have the exact day written down?)

Theo was walking just after his first birthday, but nobody was worried about anything with Emilyn. Nonetheless, I am so happy that the days are here now that I can take her more easily to the playground and know that she’s not just going to shred up her pants from crawling.

I didn’t entirely wait for her to be fully walking before letting her play outside with Brother, though. For the last probably two months, I threw her out and let her get dirty in the mud and grass in the yard. (Though we’re still having to constantly tell her “don’t put nature in your mouth.”)

Speaking of playgrounds, she is FEARLESS. She discovered the slides, and she will climb up and go down, multiple times. Even if it knocks the wind out of her, she is almost always grinning from ear to ear and ready to do it again. She loves to try to climb up the slides backwards as well.

She still loves to tickle people’s feet, all while jibber-jabbering the phrase “ticke ticke ticke” which means “tickle tickle tickle” if you didn’t catch that.

In general, she talks like R2D2. It’s hilarious when she opens a book and “reads.”

Speaking of Star Wars, doesn't she looks like some SW princess wearing my puffy vest? (And May the Fourth be with you!)

The funniest thing she started doing this last month is squinting her eyes at us. Technically, she thinks she is blinking. She did this after seeing David’s dad putting in eye drops, and blinking to get the excess out. As soon as she saw him do it, she closed her eyes like a squint and got laughs out of all of us.

It almost looked as though she was trying to close her eyes while simultaneously watching to see if we were watching her. That’s what made it look like a squint.

And so obviously now that she knows it bowls us over with laughter, she keeps it in her back pocket to lighten the mood.

It looks a little like this.

She continues to have the utmost patience for Theo, but she can be more stubborn with me, David, or even Kathy.

One day I told her, “You’re so easy, until you’re not.”

Other names I call her besides Emily: Emi,  Emi-baby, Dolly / Dolly Pie (mostly when I wake her up), Sister, Sissy Missy, Miss E, Princess Emilyn.

We look at her and wonder, How can you be so smart for someone who has lived on this earth for little more than 1 year?

It’s this crazy mixture of her being a second-born and a girl that makes her incredibly quick and it constantly surprises me how much she knows and understands. I’m always like, “who taught you that?” Ohhhhh.

She often stays near people / conversation / food, whereas Theo may run off to bigger and better things. (Read: monster trucks.)

Both of them love to dance, but she dances like an old man: both feet flat on the ground, hand on tummy, and swaying to the music with her shoulders. If the song is faster, she may bend her knees to bounce. She gets a glimmer in her eyes when she is excited.

Says: mama, dada, hi, bye, ball, doggie (duck-ga), nuh-nuh (for nuna/Kathy); I think she calls Theo “da”; I’m really trying to get her to not just go “ehh ehh” while waving her hands towards anything she wants. Sigh.

Signs: please (by rubbing her protruding tummy, lol), milk, all done, sister, brother, banana, avocado (we googled and learned “sausage” this week which was funny; she did her best to repeat it)

Loves: singing, dancing, blowing kisses

Firsts: being put to bed by David while I went out to dinner with a friend (she kept saying “my mama, mama, me mama” and signing for nursing/milk, but she did eventually go down without a fuss)

Emilyn, lately {13 months}

Here's a little bit about Emilyn at 13-ish months, although this first set of photos is from 7-9 months.

Kathy calls her Jack-Jack because of this picture (upper-right) where she looks like the baby from The Incredibles. Bottom-right is Sharkfin-soup-Emibaby

She is generous with smiles and laughter. She has this goofy grin that is hard to capture on camera but is classic Emilyn. All teeth and no eyes.

Speaking of teeth, she has at least 9 teeth already and is cutting a million more (feels like 6 more but I don't dare stick my finger in there for too long to check!). 

She mimics behaviors such as rubbing her hands together if she sees you washing hands, or if she is near a bottle of lotion or hand sanitizer.

When Kathy washes her hands with our family-splurge Williams-Sonoma Meyer Lemon soap, Emilyn will sniff her own hands, even if she's clear across the kitchen, and she loves when Kathy comes over to let her smell her hands. You can audibly hear Emilyn make the sniffing sound out of her nose.

She is great at picking up her toys after independent play in the crib. She will squat down, grab a toy, and throw it over the crib rail into the basket I hold for her. She can understand directions to grab a specific toy.

She opens her mouth like a bird when you bring food to her mouth.

She can sign: please, milk, water, book, banana (she points with her index finger at the bananas on the shelf, which is half of the sign; the other half is to "peel" your finger with your other hand), avocado, all done, help. She loves to learn new signs and has copied when I've taught her "doll" and "sister"/nuna.

She can wave and say, "hi!" David has heard her say "ball." 

She says "mama" and "dada" but it's not clear she's necessarily using it to call for us; she says "da!" for Theo, and she can say "nunu" for Kathy. She jibber-jabbers a lot and it's super cute. (Update: since drafting this earlier this week, she did say "Appa" for David at the library yesterday and it was clear she was calling him.)

She just started blowing kisses, but she does the release very slowly, like a generous royal person. For regular kisses, she opens her mouth super big and comes at you like she is going to eat you.

Theo has a wooden motorcycle rocker (like a rocking horse but a motorcycle) and when you put Emilyn on it, she makes engine revving noises. 

She knows she's being cute when she all of a sudden she lays her head down on a soft surface (e.g., bed, sofa, rug) because we all go, "aww...." She thinks it's a thing, "going aww." We call it "flump-da" when she does it, especially if the rest of her body is on the ground too, in froggy position. Sometimes she will just get in that position, wait for you to notice her, and then give a mischievous smile.

It's hard to describe her personality. In some ways, she seems like she has a vast serenity about her, that it takes a lot for her to be disturbed. But lately, she can absolutely get upset, most often when you are eating something in front of her that you are not willing to share. (No idea where she got that from.)

I used to joke when I would take her out of the high chair and put her on the ground that she could clean up after the mess she made because she eats everything (food and otherwise) off the ground. Once we found her in the kitchen happily chewing on a piece of red onion. The robotic vacuum that Kathy got us from Christmas is Emilyn's frenemy.

We weren't as consistent with reading Emilyn bedtime stories as we were with Theo (#secondkidproblems) but since last week she has gotten obsessed with Llama Llama Hoppity-Hop. She asks for it (there's a jibber-jabber she uses to say "llama llama" and I think I'm the only person in the world who could decipher it, ha), brings it to me, or (newly) signs "book."

We are still going strong with nursing and I'm sure that helps with the bond I feel with her.

She has a short morning nap and a slightly longer afternoon nap but we may be entering into the transition phase for dropping to one nap.

Oh and she's not quite walking yet, although she has taken a couple steps in a row without support, including some pivots.

She is a pure delight to me and I'm so thankful I get to be her mama.

Emilyn's 1st birthday

With all of the holiday busyness (yes, yes, I am writing this a month late), I had wanted Emilyn's first birthday to be a small family affair, but since both sets of grandparents flew in for it, it ended up anything other than simple.

Although my mom, mother-in-law, and I all love cooking and entertaining, I think we are accepting this season of life where we recognize that we don't have to overexert ourselves with home-cooked food to show our love.

So I encouraged us to cater and do take out where it made sense. I set the tone by ordering 40 fried chicken wings and some vegetable fried rice from our favorite King Noodle.

My mom made Chinese stir-fried noodles (symbolizing long life on a birthday) and red-dyed eggs. She picked up roast pork and roast duck from Ranch 99.

My mother-in-law made savory Korean mung bean pancakes from scratch (soaking and grinding the beans from dried), shopped for boxes of fruit, and ordered jjap chae (sauteed glass noodles - the best!), kimbap (Korean sushi), kimchi, and dduk (rice cake).

When my mother-in-law went to pick up the cake at the bakery, the lady asked her how many candles she needed. She replied, "It's for a first birthday party." The lady was shocked because she somehow thought that such a big cake necessarily meant this was for something on the order of a 70th birthday celebration.

Emilyn v. cake for a 70-year-old

We had zero trouble finishing it. Asian cakes are so fluffy, so they are basically calorie-less, right?

My favorite moment of the day was seeing her get her first balloon from her Auntie Coleen.

We did the traditional Korean dol activity, where you lay out a bunch of objects and let the baby pick an item. Whatever she picks supposedly represents what she is going to be when she grows up (e.g., money = success, book = scholar, paintbrush = artist, etc.) My father-in-law forgot to bring his stethoscope so they had to go out and buy a toy set.

She ended up picking up the pen (my favorite black Pilot Precise V5!) probably because I never let her play with mine.

(Theo actually did the same at his first birthday; he grabbed a highlighter. Are they both going to be writers??)

Princess Emilyn thinks to herself, Whatever shall I choose?

I'm so not that mom who is into all the regular things, tradition, etc. Thankfully, my sister-in-law (are you reading this now? hehe) helped pick up the slack and provided so much support with the spread, the activities, and even wrapping up stuff my MIL would have bought for Emilyn anyway just to ensure that there would be plenty of gifts for Emi-baby. :) Thank you, Diana! As a fellow youngest sibling, I so appreciate everything you did to make Emilyn's party as fabulous as it was!

~

Previous Emilyn mentions on the blog:
first cameo | seventeen weeks | four months | twenty weeks | five months | ten months

Emilyn is 17 weeks

I have always felt a little self conscious posting about my kids (or really anything about my family) on the internet. I think some amount of paranoia about Big Brother is warranted, but I'm trying to chill out just a little bit and figure out a good balance here. I've always enjoyed reading about other people kid's (even complete strangers) so I figure maybe it's not that weird for me to do this.

Again, writing these updates will provide one more layer of structure to this blog. I don't know if it's too ambitious of me to post weekly on Emilyn but changes happen by the week at this age, so I'll give it a shot. Some of my inspiration for the format comes from Val and Kelsey.

Lots of potentially boring details so feel free to skip these posts... Or just skim them for the photos :)

16 weeks summary (She turned 17 weeks on Wednesday when I wrote this)

WAKETIME/PLAYTIME
The previous week Emilyn was exploring the sound of her voice. We'd find her exploring different inflections, or as we'd like to call it, "singing." I'm a bit nervous that we have another chatterbox on our hands.

She is grabbing at toys, especially ones swinging above her like on her activity mat. She is giving lots of sweet smiles; I especially love when she looks up at me when nursing.

She's still not rolling over but she sure is trying really hard! She loves her big brother and is always watching what he is doing.

EATING
Nursing is still going pretty well. She has sped up to about 4 minutes a side and eats 6 times a day. I just decided to stretch her from a 3hr schedule with 4 naps to a 3.5hr schedule with 3 naps but trying to figure out if she needs that 6th feed or not. I think she's been able to do 3.5hrs for a long time but we had (and still have?) witching hour that was making it hard to drop the late evening feeding so I hadn't wanted to drop a daytime feeding until we could get rid of that.

TEETHING?
She started to drool the day she turned 17 weeks. I'm afraid that teething is just around the corner. She also clamped down when nursing the other day. I'm trying to tell her "No!" but she just looks up at me and smiles. I've given her a teether toy to chew on instead. Hopefully she will figure that out. :)

SCHEDULE
Roughly 90 minute waketimes most of the day for a good nap.

7:30 feed, and short waketime
8:15-11 nap
11 feed
12:30-2:30 nap
2:30 feed
4-6 nap
6 feed, longer waketime
8 feed and put down for "bed"
9 "dreamfeed" which she wakes up for, then down for the night (hopefully we can do away with this soon)

Princess Emilyn, ruler of the blue recliner