Art exhibition for waipo

Maya's waipo(mormor/grandma) and waigong(morfar/grandad) are both extremely active and healthy. They have both gotten themselves more involved in the local community than either mom or dad has been for the last 10 years. Waigong is a retired professor and couldn't resist teaching a class in Chinese literature at the community center for the last few months.

A few weeks ago, waipo participated in a Chinese art exhibition with a few of her water color paintings. She has been painting for many years but took classes here to get to know people. The whole family was there to show support and check out the exhibition. It was a great mix of kids, adults and seniors showing off their artwork. Some of it was really very good.

Maya with waipo and waigong:

Uncooperative

Maya's increased mobility has made diaper changes and clothing changes difficult to say the least. The fact that she loves to play with her diapers just makes matters even worse.

I read in the Swedish newspaper that the average cost to raise a child to age 18 is one million kronor and I'm sure you can quadruple that number if you raise a child in the US due to college fees etc. Given that, I'm really happy to see that Maya prefers cheap toys like diapers, cardboard boxes, Tupperware etc.

Reviewing the medical paperwork

Maya is reviewing the paper work from her 9-month check-up. No respect at all for the paperwork from the doctors office.

Standing on my own two feet

Maya can now pull herself up and stand on her own. This marks the end of using the co-sleeper since she now can fall out of it. Maya will be sleeping in her big bed from now on.



As you can tell she is very excited and proud of her new skills.

Super cute!

Photo taken by mom

Mom's new book out in stores on July 7

Mommy's new book is printed and ready to hit the stores. Please buy the book and spread the word to all your friends. Book publishers have been hit hard in this economy and have cut publicity budgets to next to nothing, so we need help from you guys to spread the word.

Maya got to play with some of the copies that the publisher sent us before we go hand deliver it to book reviewers, friends and family.

9 months old

Update from the 9-month check-up with Dr Rosen:

• Doctor Rosen discovered that her first tooth had emerged. Tooth #2 is right there too.


• Weight, height and head size are all increasing nicely and following the normal curve for full term babies now. No more compensation for prematurity needed on the growth scales.


• Back of her head on the left side is a bit flat so we got orders to put her on her right side.....good luck with that. Maya isn't exactly a stationary sleeper anymore. She rotates like a propeller, doing 360's all night long


• Her tone, flexibility, movement and general development is great and she is right on par with other nine month old babies.


• We are stopping iron supplements since it's making her constipated and her hemoglobin is above average now.

General update:

• Maya is making a lot of new sounds. Baba, dada, gaga etc and generally talking non-stop.


• Has learned to wave good bye to dad in the mornings when he leaves for work.


• She can now pull herself up to standing postion in the crib. Exciting and worrying at the same time.


• Can crawl backwards, much to Maya's own frustration. She gets really upset when she keeps moving away from the toy she is aiming for rather than closer.


• Rocks back and forth on all fours, which apparently is a sign of imminent forward crawling .


• Loves books but destroys every single one with sucking on it and tearing off pages. Dad's favorite baby book with machines is now falling apart

Picnic in the park

I'm a bit behind on the postings here but twoo weeks ago we got some friends together for a picnic in Vasona Lake Park. Really nice to see a lot of our friends and spend some time together in the beautiful sunshine.

Ben and Maya hanging out together:

Looks like Sophie la girafe and Maya are getting along a bit better now.
Edit: Or maybe not...just realized that it looks like she is trying to strangle poor Sophie!

Constipation x 3

Yesterday we finally managed to get the system going again after a few days of painful constipation for our dear little girl. She loves solid foods but we have to be careful to give her lots of fluids to keep it "going". This makes it the third time in about a month so we are now stocked up on prune juice, home-made prune puree, peach puree and Desitin (Zinc-Oxide paste). All great products to help fix the issue at hand.

I figured I'll skip any type of illustrative pictures for this posting....