Twenty one weeks old!

Little Xinyi is not so little anymore!  She's in diaper size 2 now (and we probably should have switched her sooner!) and her 3-6 month clothes are getting snug!  She loves to play peekaboo and chats to us and her toys.  She gives us the biggest smiles and we love her so!

Last week, mommy and baby went to Descanso Gardens for a walk.  It was very pretty!

We saw a mommy duck and her ducklings!

We also started to transition baby out of her swaddled for naps since she is too good at rolling.  Here she is looking like a mermaid in a zippy from Julie.  Thanks Julie!!

Daddy and baby are so cute together.

And baby sat in a baby sized chair at home goods!

Shane's newest thing with Xinyi is singing and miming "I'm a little teapot" with her.  These are stills from a video, but you can see her giant smiles!

Finally, here are the out takes from today's picture.  She always starts confused and then gets really excited :).  She loves kicking her little feeties!

Yay!

Twenty weeks old!

And what a week it was!

It looks like she's petting the owl :).

Daddy's little sports fan continues to love baseball :).

She also was given new toys from auntie Sharon!

Nose to nose with her new dinosaur!

But she's not sure what she thinks about life... Nah, she loves it!

We took a trip to San Diego for my second cousin's wedding and had a blast!

Clara was born in the same month as cousin Bruce!  Actually, Bruce was due after Clara, but born before her!  Here are Clara and Bruce with their grandmas!  They are both half Asian half white babies too! :)

Here is Xinyi with her Nai Nai!

And with cousin Archie at Grammy and Grampy's house!  They are holding hands!

We also visited great grandparents Peaches and Chuck.

She had a great time and she even showed off her new skill of almost sitting!

Then she drove home... :).  Just kidding!

We will be traveling back to San Diego in two weeks so hopefully Xinyi will learn to like long car rides more!  Because currently she spends a good amount of time squealing and protesting loudly... She is still not afraid to let us know what she likes and doesn't like! That's our girl!

Nineteen weeks old!

Baby Girl is nineteen weeks old!

It's been a full week of fun!  Last Wednesday, Nai Nai visited and helped mommy rest up from Xinyi's sleep regression.  Xinyi had tons of fun showing off her rolling skills, rolling to her belly almost immediately after being put down on her back.  For a few days, we couldn't leave her anywhere because she'd immediately roll and then get upset that she couldn't keep rolling, since she has definitely forgotten how to roll from belly to back... Silly girl!

Then on Saturday, Grammy and Grampy visited and we went to Descanso Gardens for a lovely walk.  We had so much fun!  She loves to smile at herself in the mirror and smiles at her lovey, too!  It's the first toy she's ever smiled at!

Xinyi also has started to grab her little toesies when she's on her back... it's so cute!  And finally her newest skill is her pout, demonstrated below.  She also likes to suck on her bottom lip :).

Sunday was mommy's first Mother's Day and daddy did a great job making mommy feel special.  We even took baby out with us for dinner, where she wore a giant bow and looked like Effie from the Hunger Games.

Look at that bow!

She's sleeping a little bit better, longer stretches and longer naps, so mommy is happy :).

And daddy is silly, he loves to hang out with his little girl -- whether it's watching baseball together or rooting for the Chargers, they are two peas in a pod!

Xinyi also tried avocado this week!  She seems like it quite a bit, but also likes to blow bubbles, which makes for an interesting meal time... green spit bubbles!  Too much fun :).

Sleep deprivation

Everyone tells you to sleep before the baby comes... and to be honest, I did!   I love sleeping and since I had two months of preg-cation, as Shane called it, I took full advantage of my opportunity to sleep as much as humanly possible.  I knew I was in trouble when I was celebrating four hour stretches of sleep during Xinyi's first few months of life.  Four hours!  Then five, six, seven, once she even gave me eleven :X.  I now feel comfortable divulging that shameful secret (that I was too afraid to tell other new parents for fear of them silently hating me) because it's gone.  My sleeping angel has returned to my non sleeping angel.

I read an article that said new parents should celebrate the four month sleep regression because it demonstrates your baby is maturing and developing on track. Basically at four months, babies mature from infant sleep patterns into adult like sleep patterns.  This means babies who were sleeping through the night begin waking three, four, five times a night because they don't know what to do with these new sleep patterns.  They wake up and don't know how to fall back asleep unless you teach them how to.  And thus you become a human sleep inducer.  That is where I am now.

Last night I was up with Xinyi from 2am to 6am.  Every time I laid her down to sleep, she'd open her pretty eyes and coo at me.  Cute at 9am, awful at 2-6am.  She'd sleep for 30 min and wake up or wake up as soon as she touched the crib.  I tried almost every trick in my limited new parent trick book.  Eventually she went down and stayed down but oh man, what a struggle.  This hasn't happened since she was 2 months old.  When she was two months old, it was taking me an average of three hours to get Xinyi to sleep.  One night she hadn't slept and was refusing to sleep so I strapped her to me in the baby k'tan and walked her to sleep.  I sat upright in a chair for several hours so she could sleep because she was so tired.  That was my last trick in the bag, and I'm so glad I didn't have to use it.

Sleeping babies are adorable. Some babies are great sleepers, others are taught by their parents to be great sleepers. I'm in the process of preparing to sleep train Xinyi and how I wish I could turn back time and start when she was just a babe.  Hindsight :)

I don't know if any of this makes sense... I'm not sure of much right now, but that's okay.   As much as I love sleep, I love my baby girl more.  Someday I'll be trying to drag her buttt out of bed and these days will be a blur.  Or so I try to tell myself at six in the morning when running on 2.5 hours of sleep.

Right now, my little sweetie is passed out in my arms.  And I love it.   I know, I know, I need to and will sleep train her.  But today, she is my baby who needs to catch up on some sleep and so her mommy will hold her.

What I wished she looked like yesterday. ..

Eighteen weeks old!

Beautiful Xinyi is eighteen weeks old!  

There is a deplorable (fun word huh!) lack of pictures due to her four month growth spurt and sleep regression.  Basically since last Friday Xinyi has regressed to fighting bedtime and waking up 4-8 times a night, often after only a very short amount of time has passed.  Gone is our beautiful sleeper who I was afraid to brag about because I knew something like this was just around the corner.  

On the bright side, she learned how to roll from back to tummy and spends all her time trying to flip over!  Sometimes I put her down on her back and return to find her on her tummy!  She has also decided she does not Ike rolling tummy to back and fights every single attempt at trying to teach her to do that again.  So strong willed!

She also laughs and giggles up a storm, enjoys her baby oatmeal, and loves her daddy so so much!

On Saturday Grammy came and spoiled Xinyi with love and cuddles and took the only pictures from this week.

Happy baby says Zai Jian!  See you later!