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.

Theo(logic)

We have been busy trying to soak up what I experienced as a short-lived summer.

(Yes, Kayla and Linnea, I suppose that exposes my non-nativeness to feel this way about the summer we had!)

At least, that is my excuse for why I haven't blogged in a while about anything, and it's certainly been ages since I've shared what Theo and Emilyn are saying lately.

As usual, I've tried to jot down things in my Notes app, so here is a collection since the last time I wrote about him in February. It's in chronological order so you can keep in mind the context of growing from 3yr1mo to 3yr9mo and through the seasons of winter, spring, summer and now fall. He started preschool last week!

Lol, I suppose I could have cropped this, and then captioned, "Is Theo wearing pants?"

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After I muttered to myself, "When will it stop raining?" Theo said, "It will stop raining when you go to your nap, in your dreams."

To David, regarding some privilege: "Will you talk it over with Umma?"

"Don't cry Emi, we're almost home."

"Don't laugh; it's not a laughing game."

"Breathe in and out" to himself.

Earlier this year, he asked if he could use sidewalk chalk. Since it was raining a lot, I said, "when it's Spring, we can bring out the sidewalk chalk." One day probably in March, he noticed the pink camilias blooming on the side of the house, and so he said to me, "The camilias are blooming; can we have sidewalk chalk?"

To me, "You don't need shoes on; just your feet." He knows I'm a Berkeley girl.

"I took a picture with my eyes."

When he wasn't ready for me to kiss him goodnight, he told me "Go control your computer" because he knows I usual check my email between putting Emilyn to bed and then saying goodnight to him.

"Nuna is quite the baker."

One day when David was mowing the lawn, David asked him what he wanted to do, since he dislikes the loud noise of the mower. Theo asked, "Can I stay inside and dance?" Kathy, Emilyn, and I were out at that time, so when we came home, we just saw Theo dancing by himself in the living room, and we found out the rest of the story from David.

"Can I come to your house?" He started saying this a couple of months ago, to grandparents whenever we FaceTimed them. Of course they loved this.

Back in April when it was David's birthday, I asked Theo what we should get for his birthday. Without any hesitance, he offered, "Moss killer."

And first thing in the morning on that birthday, he said, "Can we have cake today because it's your birthday?"

Again, earlier in the summer, to one of my friends: "I'm ready for preschool. I go to preschool three times a week for an hour. I start in the fall." (Actually he goes twice a week for two hours.)

Referring to packaged seaweed, "No, don't throw away the silica gel, or else it won't be crispy!"

He started buckling himself into the carseat in April, at 3 years and 3 months. So nice that he can climb in and get buckled himself.

Sometimes before bed, David has all of Theo's monkeys warm up their singing voices for bedtime songs. When they say "mi mi mi mi mi", Theo sometimes says "me me me me mini mini me."

I love watching Emilyn copy Theo's dance moves.

Because Kathy calls Theo her "Chicken Heart" or "Chicken Thigh" etc., Theo started saying "chop chop chop" while he pretends to chop his arm into bite-sized pieces for her to eat.

"Appa, statch me." By which he meant, can you pray that prayer where you ask God to let me grow in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and man?

"I'm going to preach school."

Without prompting, he began a letter to Emilyn, which read, "I love you, I like to climb, I love playing with you."

There's a Vietnamese sticky rice coconut dessert which Theo calls squishy dessert, but the way he says it, it sounds like "kwishy dirt."

"I'm not a baby, I'm a Theo. Don't talk about babies; let's talk about big boys."

One day, I said, "I'm looking for the one who loves Jack Jack (Emilyn)" when I was trying to get Kathy's attention. Theo intervened saying "I love Jack Jack!"

One day he said "The storms of Jesus Christ" maybe because we told him that God controls nature?

"Don't cry Emilyn, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere."

"I want to trick Umma."

"Wake up so I can bother you!"

On a drive, "If I see a tractor, I will tell you."

"We can go on a date? What the??? Tractor??!!"

When I mentioned I needed to go to the pharmacy, he asked if there would be any tractors. At the Farm-acy, duh.

"I don't want cat cookies, there's sugar bugs."

"I'm organizing over there." He has started to "organize" things. Am I really happy about this? YAS.

"I'm sitting on this rice sock so that I don't cough or bless you."

"We have an appleseed tree and two maple trees."

He often mashes together two thoughts into one sentence: "I don't know how to do this?"

"I'm thirsty for salt. Savory."

When I started loosely and slowly weaning Emilyn I had to tell her once, "I'm not going to nurse you right now." Theo overheard and he asked, "Is it because you're growing, and you're a big umma?"

Theo wanted more Milo (an Asian chocolate malted drink), so I told him I would pick up more of it when I went to Evergreen. A week after I had told him that, I mentioned to David that I needed to go to Evergreen. Immediately, Theo said in a robotic voice, "Can-you-pick-up-my-Milo."

One time when David was merging on to the freeway and a car sped up at the last minute to overtake him, Theo yelled out, "Share the road!" (We honestly have never said that out loud so it was really funny.)

David likes to use the speaker/amplifier in the mini-van to imitate airplane pilot monologues (e.g., ":::ssssshhhhhhhhhh::: This is your captain speaking...") so Theo has started doing it as well, only he says, "This is your speaking captain..."

"If I can watch a show with front loaders and a backhoe, then I'll get my hair cut!" Talk about sentence construction.

"Mama, did you make grits for me? I'm hungry for grits."

"My tummy loves warm."

"Look at what happened to my waffle." (It's gone.)

One day when Emilyn was crying in the back of the van, Theo told me, "She wants everything. She wants a nap, she wants to go to the park, she wants her friends." I love how he asked himself a question in his head and then answered it for all of us.

"I know her full name. Ro Ro Ro Ro Emilyn Ro."

He took care of Emilyn's stuffed bunny and treated it like a baby.

When we got in the car one day, he asked for the "joy joy podcast", by which he meant the song "Down In My Heart."

In the middle of summer, "Don't wake me up to preschool!"

When I mentioned that I might pull him out of school to go to Richmond for a few weeks in late winter, he said, "I need my daddy and my nunu. That will be too much. Or I will go with just Emilyn." When I asked, "Then what will Mama do?", he said, "Mama will get a date."

One day Theo was arranging logs on the deck and he called it Silver Lake. I did not comprehend what he was saying until later that week we went to Silver Lake and the parking lake had logs arranged to mark off the parking spaces.

He uses the word "cantilever" and pronounces it "cant-a-leave-er." It's too much.

One morning when David was home during breakfast (it means either the weekend or a weekday he's working late), Theo could tell Emilyn was starting to feel anxious that I'd be leaving to take a walk. All of this was unspoken, until Theo asked me, "You can just walk laps around the kitchen, right?" He knew that she didn't want me to leave.

As soon as Theo gets home from school, he pulls his pants off and yells, "Free!"

And then just yesterday, when I pulled out grapes for dessert during dinner, he said "I want g-r-..." and proceeded to spell a couple of other (wrong) letters. "I want icecream for dessert. G-r-..." because we always spell out the good things.

We met one of Kathy's new floormates this year and her name is Erica. Theo later commented that her name is like "the America flag." Indeed, "Erica" is in America.

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Alright, now I'm up to speed with Theo. Up next, Emilyn!

P.S. For my own record (since I'm no longer logging everything obsessively in an Excel file, ha! Although, Elizabeth, aren't you glad that I had? ;p), it appears that Theo is dropping his nap. I can't be totally sure, and I think he may still need it on school days, but I'm 90% sure this is happening right now. :'(

P.P.S. Marla, I am totally channeling the "and because it's due, this is what I will write."

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)

Simultaneously fast and slow

These two little people fill my days with laughs and aggravation. My friend Christine said it best when she said that motherhood sometimes makes her feel like a crumpled piece of paper.

One of the consistently best moments of every day is waking them up from their naps. I love entering their warm and dark rooms, hearing their soft breathing, and inhaling their fermented honey / yeasted bread smell.

Both of them always worked themselves into the corner and slept like froggies.

However, and related to that, one of the things that is about to drive me crazy is the nap transitions we are currently in. Emilyn is in the transition to drop to one nap, and I think we're smack in the middle of the time where having a nap makes it hard for Theo to fall asleep at night, but no nap is no bueno (probably more for me than for him, insert sweating emoji).

Gah, I can't get enough of this.

Every day, I am just in awe of how simultaneously fast and slow time moves.

Both of them have grown so much - physically and mentally - in the past couple weeks and it shocks me when I look at them. Theo's thighs and legs suddenly got super chunky, and Emilyn is solidly heavy to hold. I definitely think Theo shot up an inch or two overnight, because one day he was tripping all over himself, when he is normally very careful. Emilyn's pants got short on her one day as well. Crazy.

Here are a couple notes on them at their current stages.

Emilyn {15 mos}:

• is juuust about walking. She can do a number of steps in a row. The last few days she's been "running" for a couple steps before she falls, as if she thinks she can get more steps in before the fall this way. 
• does squats and pliés when music is on.
• is starting to learn to go down the stairs backwards.
• loves putting on accessories, like headbands and especially purses. She doesn't even mind socks! (Though she will pull them off in the car, obviously.) She grabs clothes and signals to you that she wants you to help her put it on, and cooperates when you put clothes on. (Except for diapers, of course.) This is the complete opposite of Theo, whom I can barely get to wear pants most days.
• (Related: we had a stretched-out strap from an LED headlamp, which she would put over herself like a beauty pageant sash, so we called her Miss LED for a while.)
• is more clearly saying mama/umma, dada, and nuna (big sis). 
• says "tck-a tck-a tck-a" (tickle tickle tickle) while tickling your feet.
• still loves her food. One day I shared a smoothie with her and she drank more than half of it. I seriously thought to myself, oh, no I cannot share food with her when she grows up. We will both be like, "Who ate my hamburger? / Where did my hamburger go??" Basically, we'll be really mad at each other.

Theo {3yr 3mos}:

• says "Oh, hi, ____!" when people are around, as in "Oh, hi, Appa!" The "oh" adds this element of surprise in his tone, like's so delighted to see you, which he is.
• said, "Can someone watch the kids?" when he saw me going upstairs one day.
• found an evangelism tract one day and decided to call it "my college." When he dropped it from his carseat, he exclaimed, "Oh, no! My college!"
• loves shaved ice. We discovered a couple places we like and it's our way of embracing/getting through winter. One night after dinner, he stage whispered across the table to Kathy, "Should we go to shaved ice?"
• responded when I told him we were going to Ace, "Oh, for popcorn? Paint? Wood? A new house?"
• said, "I can't hear you downstairs when I'm going upstairs!"
• told me "put your phone in your pocket" when it fell on the steps when I was going to the car.
• told David, "finish your coffee, don't spill" when he was carrying his coffee to the car. (Totally different day.)
• sings "the shadow proves the sunshine" from Switchfoot.
• ended one walk with the song "Mama Knows Best" because, even though he wasn't too reluctant to go for the walk in the first place, he wanted me to feel appreciated for making a good suggestion that we go for a walk. I guess he really understands how much work it is to get clothes on both of them and get loaded up to go! Especially when it is so gloomy and/or raining.
• slipped a small cardboard sleeve over his elbow one day and proclaimed that he was a "doctor for babies!" Maybe he remembered how I would always get my blood pressure measured at the OB/GYN when I was pregnant with E?
• folds up hand towels and "warms" them up over of the heater registers and calls them burritos. (He did this before he turned 3 but I forgot to write about this earlier.)
• told me "it will stop raining, when you go to your nap, in your dreams" when I told him I was tired of all this precipitation.
• asked David if he would "talk it over with umma"; "it" being getting a John Deere monster truck/tractor.
• asked Emilyn, "why are you crying? We're almost home" on the drive home yesterday. And when we chuckled over his sweetness, he deadpanned,"don't laugh, it's not a laugh game."
• fake-breathed in and out very quickly when he started getting upset on a walk, because I had taught him just the day before to take a deep breath when you get upset.
• asked me to get new sidewalk chalk, and when I said, "maybe in a week or two when it's more spring-like," he responded by going to the camellias blooming around the corner of the house, and said, "look, it's spring! Can we go get sidewalk chalk now?"
• uses a baby bird voice to call me "Mama!" every night when we play hide-and-seek before bed, and when he wants me to feed him a snack.
• says "have fun, good luck!" whenever we put him to bed/nap because he used to always say that to Uncle Kenny when he was playing games before T's bedtime
• asked me "you wearin' shoes?" when he wanted me to climb into his bed, and when I said, "no," he clarified, "just your feet?"
• is staying dry at night on his own. We used elimination communication very casually (which I loved) so he was using the potty before 1 (mostly for #2), day trained somewhere in year 2 (#1 didn't come until after 2yo), and now starting to night train himself. A few times we did a "dream pee" and it was so sweet to see him sleepily sit on the baby potty, his long, lanky legs propped up on the floor.

The two of them together are a such a sweet pair. It surprises me how extremely and mutually tolerant they are of each other. Theo is so gracious about sharing toys, noticing when she doesn't have something and getting it for her (or grabbing her purse and putting her phone in it), offering her water to drink, etc. And Emilyn doesn't mind his wrestling or pommeling her. She worships her oppa and wants to do everything he is doing.

Okay, and lol, the main reason I had to write this post is to share this hilarious series of drawings by Theo.

A couple of days ago, Theo asked me if Emilyn could be in his tummy when he grew up. (I said no.) So then a day or two later, he drew this picture:

"That's Emilyn in my tummy, when I'm a grown-up."

And then a minute later he drew this:

"That's Emilyn in my tummy. She lookin' for food."

There are no words.

(Also, we think it's amazing that he knows how to draw smiley faces because in all the drawing we do together we never taught him explicitly how to draw smileys. Maybe he studied those Costco receipts?)

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