Easter Egg Hunt- the real deal

Next morning, we dressed him up and took him for his first real egg hunt!

The egg hunts are separated by age group. He is in the under age 3 category. The parents are allowed to go in the square with their kids.

All done. Checking out his “profit”. He only got 3 eggs. John said the eggs were gone like within 3 seconds. It was that fast.

Trying to munch on his candies. No baby, not for you to eat yet. Happily hand the candies over to Daddy.

Daddy then ate all his candies. Poor Gaven, doesn’t know what’s going on yet. Maybe when he is older, it’s payback time!

Met with Cristian, my co worker’s son. He is 2 months younger than munchkin. Looks so small compare to Gaven. Gaven all pooped out after the event. Till next year Easter…

Easter Egg Hunt Practice Round

We took Gaven to Central Park (in Santa Clarita, not the New York kind… ) for his very first egg hunt. To ensure that he knows what he’s doing, we did a practice run at home. I ran to the 99 cents store and grabbed a bunch of eggs and a basket for him. That evening, John laid the eggs all over our backyard and did a practice run with munchkin. At first, he was confused. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the basket. He didn’t want to hold it. He would grab the eggs but refused to put them in the basket. See the first picture below? John was trying to take his egg and put it in his basket and he started crying. Then he finally got the idea of it, and slowly put the eggs in the basket, reluctantly.

Favorite Picture

This has to be my favorite picture to date…

It used to be this one here . It was a close one but I decided I love the recent Easter picture the best!

A Day in the Life

I always love reading other mom’s day in the life posts. I figured I’ll document my own version of A Day in the Life with a 14 month old.

This is a Monday, April 9th, 2012.

5:30 am: John gets up and gets ready for work.

5:55am: Munchkin let out a little cry. John picked him up from his crib and brought him over to our bed. He continues to sleep with me while John left for work.

6:45 am: My alarm clock went off. I turned it off and continue to drift back to sleep.

7:07 am: I dragged myself off the bed and take my shower leaving munchkin who is still fast asleep in our bed.

7:12 am: Munchkin woke up as I was finishing my shower. He managed to slide down the bed and joined me in the bathroom. I hurried to get changed and get ready while munchkin hangs out with me in the bathroom.

7:15- 7:35am: I change and feed him breakfast. John had his milk ready in a straw cup before he left for work, which makes things a little easier on my end. I hand munchkin his milk and sat him on his high chair with pieces of wheat bread. In the mean time, I prepared his oatmeal. Today’s breakfast menu: wheat bread, 1 oz oatmeal, 2 oz avocado (I usually prepare them days before and put them in 2 oz containers), some orange slices (which he hardly ate any this morning).

7:40 am: He headed to the bathroom so I sat him on the toilet, waited while encouraging him to poop.

7:45 am: Decided that it was a false alarm. Put diaper back on him, turned the crock pot on (lotus root soup in the making- ingredients prepared the night before), load up the car and leave the house. On the road by 7:50am

8:00 am: Dropped him at Penny’s.

8:07 am: Arrived work… 7 min late. I am usually 10- 15 min late, so it’s considered a good day.

4:47 pm: Left work.

4:55 pm: Home. Start preparing Gaven’s dinner. Porridge! I put some cut organic carrots (I prepared this ahead of time and put them in a container for convenience) and a couple florets of frozen organic broccoli. I also defrosted a couple cod fish fillets. Season my lotus root soup (in the crockpot that I made this morning) with some salt.

5:00 pm: John’s home with munchkin. As usual, John said he was crying when he picked him up from Penny. Really not sure what’s going on. He doesn’t like to come home with us. People are going to think we abuse him or something. Anyway, that is kind of the norm here. He refuses to leave Penny’s house. He probably thinks Penny is his mother or something. OK, back to timeline. We were starving so we made buttered cinnamon bread. Munchkin took a few bites. I peel some apples and steam them (preparing Gaven’s breakfast for the next few days). Below, shown a copy of his day report from Penny. She usually notes his poop schedule as well, but not on this one. She probably forgot. In case you are interested, it shows what he eats for morning snacks, lunch and afternoon snacks. Shows his nap time and how many ounces of milk he drinks.

5:15- 6:00 pm: Hanging out with munchkin in the backyard. John’s working on the yard doing landscaping and planting, and I am on baby watch while going in and out of the house to check on my porridge. I cut a small piece of the fish and drop it in the porridge when it’s almost done. Season the porridge with a tiny bit of sea salt and some garlic powder.

6:00 pm: Feed munchkin dinner. Dinner menu: Porridge with fish, carrots and broccoli and a small bowl of lotus root soup. He devoured the whole thing.

6:30 pm: Finishes his dinner and I cleaned him up.

 

6:35 pm: Continues to play outside and I helped with some planting.

7:10 pm: Munchkin and I came back inside. Feed him some apples that I just made. Gave him his bottle of milk.

7:20- 7:45 pm: Give munchkin his bath. Lubed him up with lotion, changed him into his pj. Turned on the ipod with some soft music. Play with him in his bedroom, he finishes his bottle and we read together. I take him to the sliding door so John can kiss him good night (he’s still working on the yard). I say my good nights and put him in his crib.

7:45- 8:15 pm: I prepare dinner. I baked my cod fish fillets in the oven and boil some baby bok choy. Our dinner menu: lotus root soup, baby bok choy and fish fillets. John came in at around 8 pm and take his shower. At 8pm, I checked Gaven on the baby monitor, he is out.

8:15- 8:45 pm: We eat our dinner and talk about our days and etc.

8:45 pm: Cleaning up and pack the leftover for lunch. I didn’t eat the fish, so I have the fish and some leftover vege for tomorrow’s lunch. John has nothing. I usually make a lot of food enough for tomorrow’s lunch as well but since we had a busy weekend, I didn’t have a chance to plan our menu.

8:55 pm: John left to go to his parents house to drop stuff off. I go through my mail and do some light cleaning. Putting some things away.

9:05pm: I take my shower and do a load of laundry.

9:15 pm: I am on the computer reading other people’s blogs and start drafting this post.

9:30 pm: I texted John to stop by Rite Aid on his way home to get ice cream and foot paddle for my callused feet.

9:50 pm: He’s home and we’re both on the computer.

10:45 pm: Getting ready for bed.

11:30 pm: In bed.

*** Of course our day’s schedule changes depending on situation. This just happens to be a day that I picked to document my version of a day in the life. When John is not working on the yard, we would be taking our evening walk in our neighborhood with Gaven in the stroller and Gaven’s bedtime routine would include John and I hanging out in his room, reading and playing with him. When Gaven goes down for the night, most of my nights are spend watching tv instead of blogging. We would also be doing some cleaning up around the house after dinner but because John was working in the yard till 8 pm, we forgo the house cleaning. I am planning on doing another version of this but on a weekend. So, stay tuned. ***

Mistake We Made

A couple weeks ago, we had the scariest experience that could happen to any parents. We thought Gaven had eaten one of my birth control pills! Gulp… yes! I usually have the pills on the night stand and Gaven likes fiddling with everything on the night stand. Tv remotes, Ipod, fan remote including the pills that were on there. We’ve seen him playing with it a few times but thought nothing of it since the pills are safely packed. One day, we noticed that a pill almost got out but not exactly. Almost seems like he tried to push the pill through but didn’t quite get it. You can tell, he was trying to bite it because the pill broke into little pieces. Still that incident didn’t make us take any precautionary actions.

Then one night before going to bed, I noticed a pill was missing and started panicking. I alerted John and we started looking everywhere on the floor frantically. Since we’ve seen him playing with it before and even tried to put the pack in his mouth, we came to the conclusion that he might have accidentally eaten it (he likes putting everything in his mouth!). I was so worried and guilty. We did some internet research and most of them said there is no harm to it. They will most likely get nausea and stomach pain. He was his normal usual self all day (Penny said he was good all day). I was still very worried despite what I read on the internet. I wasn’t sure if we needed to bring Gaven to the ER, it was midnight and he was fast asleep since 7:30pm. John called the Poison Control hotline and they re-confirmed our findings from the internet. When they took our name over the phone, I thought they were going to call the cops on us for trying to poison our child.

I couldn’t sleep all night thinking that Gaven could have died from it. I mean it could have been a painkiller, Advil or Tylenol, something more dangerous than a birth control. The next morning, I found the little pill on the floor next to my bed! Why we didn’t see it the night before, I don’t know. Go figure! I was so relieved, he didn’t eat it after all!

After this scary experience, I now have the pills safely tucked inside the drawer where he can’t get to. We also learned from this experience that never, ever leave any medicine out. Ever again!

Little munchkin trying to eat my clothes pin. I’m not kidding when I said he likes to put everything in his mouth including dirt.