I Heart Tarjay

Yep staying home is a danger to my credit card. I ordered more stuff from Target cuz getting packages in the mail is so much fun. Baby boy's clothing are usually so tacky cutesy or with yucky bright colors. Don't get me started but thank goodness for Dwell Studio and Splendid Littles for Target! Cheap and spiffy :)

Much to my dismay, at almost 9lbs Moggie is still too small even the New Born sizes. Bah :( Guess we'll have to wait a little bit before we can play dress up!

Look what I got for Moggie!

This February Week

Wow how is it Friday already? We are spoiled on the west coast with such good weather ... at least for this week :) 60's and sunny!

Moggie bundled up for his afternoon walk:


First al fresco lunch date with daddy:

Trolls LoL

DH and I were chatting yesterday and the question of when babies start talking came up. No idea but no problem, I whip out my iPhone to google it. Here's what I found:

SO FUNNY because it's unexpected. Note the poster's name lol

Happy Friday!

Not really sure why it's happier than usual since I'm on maternity leave and everyday is Friday! Just some frivolous musings from the week.

My guilty pleasure this week was Pretty Little Liars on Hulu. I may be a little old for this but I can't wait for episode 16.

I'm always on the look out for shops with cute baby boy clothes (so hard to find!). Rediscovered Mini Boden. I love that the site has the same polka dot background!

You've probably seen this Volkswagen commercial already. So stinkin cute!



Lemming this cook book by Joanne Chang of Flour bakery. Flour was our favorite spot for morning coffee and baked goodies when we lived in Boston.

And this week I bought a baby weighing scale. I'm jealous of chubby babies and am on a mission to fatten Moggie.

My First Smile !

Moggie and I were hanging on the bed the other day and I was singing him silly songs. That's when he flashed a smile, and another, and another! Aww can't wait to see more ...

Happy 1 Month Moggie

Wow I can't believe it's been a month already. Moggie is now more than 7lbs. He's starting to smile more though mostly right before he dozes off. It's the cutest thing! He also stays awake for longer periods. Not surprisingly days and nights have been a blur. We're still learning to decipher his cries and how to soothe him (sometimes impossible haha). Essentially it's a guessing game that you repeat. Diapers? Hungry? Swaddle? Rock? Burp? Repeat. He's really quite high maintenance.

We haven't had time to plan a proper party but we made red eggs and sent cake to our friends and family. Grandma also made sticky rice, apparently a Chinese tradition, and we celebrated with some chestnut cake (I just polished up the left overs today) and wine.

Do you like the favor boxes? They are filled with red eggs :)


And more Moggie photos. Don't you love the little fingers?

First Pediatrician's Visit

I'm enjoying a nice peaceful afternoon :) DH and the grand parents are out so it's just me and Moggie. Thankfully he's sleeping for now and hopefully till the next feed at 4.30pm. Must catch up on some old posts and photos. Wow time really flies, I can't believe Moggie's almost a month old already!

Our first visit to Dr J was the Monday (12/27) following Moggie's discharge on Christmas when he was just a wee 6 day old newborn. Here we are waiting in the pediatrician's office and filling out paper work.



Overall a clean bill of health despite being in the NICU for 3 days. It's a long story starting with me having a fever during labor. That meant poor M needed to be on antibiotics for 2 days. While in the ICU, they discovered that M couldn't maintain his body temperature and that his heart beat was a tad irregular. These symptoms are actually pretty common in newborns though the doctors wanted to keep a close eye to be safe and charge the insurance company for a longer stay :p

M gained a couple ounces since leaving the hospital though he was not close to birth weight. That's OK, we had till 2 weeks. A goal I worked very hard on and achieved. Go team M&M :D



Scheduled a couple follow up visits with the pediatrician and cardiologist. The following visits were pretty uneventful. Definitely a good thing. M received a clean bill of health and is putting on weight. We'll find out how much further along he's progressing with weight gain at our 1 month visit on Friday. You can tell I'm a little obsessed with this weight thing since I'm worried about milk supply sigh.

I Survived! My Birth Story

To tell the long winded tale ...

I was feeling kinda apprehensive the night before. Was inducing the right decision? Anyhoo I tried to go to bed early and redid my toe nails :) Got up bright and early (6am) and confirmed the hospital had a room available. My mom made a us a light breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. Then DH and I jumped into the car and drove to the hospital at 7am on that Tuesday morning 12/21. Nervous but we're having the BABY!

Registration was quick and we were shown to the room #8 (lucky?). Evil nurse on duty quickly hooked up to the IV by 8am and the pit was started. Getting the IV was one of the most painful parts of the day since evil nurse couldn't find my vein grrr.

Since the pit had to be administered, I couldn't move around during labor or sit on my bouncy birthing ball. I was hooked up to the IV which I'd to take with me to the bathroom, along with my friends the contraction monitor and the fetal monitor. FUN :P Guess those techniques they taught in birthing class weren't quite so realistic. Moving around was a b*** and the annoying hospital gown had a gaping hole in the back. I still had some sense of dignity early on ...

Forcing a smile ...



The contractions started out slowly with mild cramps. We occupied ourselves watching bad day time TV and mucking around on our phones. John Muir has great wifi! The Dr stopped by to "break my water" and do an internal exam at 9ish. Strangely no fluid came out ... in fact there was none during my entire birth. OMG so I was really out of amniotic fluid. Poor baby :(

At 10am, the anesthesiologist stopped by to introduce himself. He came pushing his little cart of equipment. DH and I were pretty amused ... like a dim sum trolley! How cute. Evil nurse stops by a bit later to convince me to get the epidural right away. Decided to wait till the pain got unbearable. I managed to hold out till around 2.30pm before desperately seeking the guy with the good drugs. The contractions had gotten regular and intense and I felt like something was trying to bust out of my rectal area (I know weird).

Thankfully getting the epidural was really quite painless! They had me sitting in this massage chair face down (yep like the ones at the mall haha) as the nice drug dude worked on my back. The whole process took barely 5 minutes. Then relief! But wait it was only on one side. What if I was that 1% of the population that epis don't work on??? PANIC We called for the nurse (nice due to shift change) and she suggested upping the dose to see if that helped before paging drug dude. Wait I could control the level of pain relief myself? Muahhah. Don't worry I exercised some restraint. Only pushed the button 2 out of the 3 possible levels. Finally pain free and I could still wiggle my toes and sort of move my legs! Nap time.

Things then progressed smoothly with the dilation. By 8pm I was 10cm and it was time to push. Of course I had no idea how to do that. While I could feel the contractions I wasn't sure if my pushing was working. Anyway we kept working on it for almost 2 hours. DH was an awesome coach and only left my side for 15 minutes the entire time! When the doctor came back, baby's head was station 2 but his body was slanted to the left in an awkward position! Doctor then suggested trying the vacuum and if that didn't work a C-section.

Ok so WTF. I didn't go through all that to get a c-section. What's with the impatience? DH asked if we could take a time out and see if we could get the baby to move. Dr was like, well you can try but it probably won't help (yes he was getting on my nerves now). Since baby usually moves quite a bit while I sleep at night, I lay on my right and rested for a bit. Miraculously I could feel him repositioned in the center now!

So I got to start pushing again. And by now I was really getting the hang of it. Nice nurse and DH could now see the hair on baby's head. YAY. Dr came back along with the rest of the crew, pediatrician and nurses in tow. It's show time. Dr then suggests using the vacuum again. WHAT? I mean we could already see the hair now? That made me mad and I pushed with all my might ... tadah baby makes his entrance naturally at 11.59pm and 50seconds!

A little pissed but healthy :D ... he then proceeds to pee on the pediatrician lol


All clean after a shampoo ... welcome Moggie :) we <3 you!

A Sushi Lunch

WOOT My first sushi fix in 9 months! So. Good. This was the one thing I missed most my entire pregnancy. Oh not forgetting slightly rare steak, runny eggs and soft cheeses.

Still staying away from caffeine and alcohol :(

Butterfly Smiles :D

Well kinda. Moggie has been practicing smiling as he falls asleep of late. Like a grouch who doesn't know how ... he lifts one side of his mouth lol!

Well today he finally broke his first full one though half asleep, awww. Can't wait to see him smile at us for real ! It'll make these sleepless nights worthwhile.

Ok end of annoying mommy gush.

Oh the Irony

So the hospital hands out these sheets that act as a simplified version of a birth plan. Mine clearly went according to plan (not) At least I avoided the dreaded C-section. It was close!

Induction - Check
Avoid Labor Augmentation with Pitocin (Right ... hahaha)
Telemetry Fetal Monitoring - (Sorry can't do that)