Bouncy Bouncer

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Day 93

We bought Simon the Fisher Price Hoppy Days Bouncer since we thought he might need some more stimulation.  We interact with him as much as we can but sometimes we run out of ideas.  With the bouncer, he is able to bounce himself by wiggling, he isn’t lying flat on his back, and he has some toys to bat at and can grab to play music.  The bouncer fabric is very comfortable, soft and a bit slippery so he does kind of need to be belted in so that he won’t slip out.  The toys could be improved though, the soft toys are just that, soft toys, no rattles or anything.  The froggy toy in the middle has a ring to pull so that it will play music so that is kind of cool except that it is also kind of loud.  Simon was afraid of the bouncer at first and didn’t really like the toys so close to him.  Although now he is getting to used to it and seems to enjoy batting at the soft toys when we added his wrist rattles around them so that they will rattle when he bats them.  I think he also likes being able to look at us at an incline.

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Ron is trying to get Simon to work out his arms more so he found having Simon lie on top of his leg and holding onto his forearms, makes Simon push up with his arms.  Simon is content in this picture because he is watching TV and I think he is in the middle of yawning.  This is sort of modified tummy time with emphasis on his arms.

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So an amazing thing happened last night, Simon slept almost 7.5 hours continuously.  He must have been extremely exhausted if he was able to sleep so long.  We put him to bed around 10pm and he fell asleep at 10:20pm and slept until 5:40am!  Even I didn’t get that much continuous sleep last night as I have been getting up at least every 4-5 hours to pump.  I’m sure this is a one time occurrence but at least we know sleeping this long of a duration IS possible… one day.

Happy 3-month old birthday!

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Day 92

Simon had poor sleep this morning and as a result, so did we.  He woke up at 2am, 4:30am, 5:30am, then 6am.  Reminds me of his newborn days… I hope this doesn’t become a habit.  He was doing so well with sleeping 4-5 hour durations… we will try to get him back on track tonight.  He didn’t have a bath last night nor the night before so maybe he is a bit confused on his bedtime routine.

Oh well, even with lack of sleep, we had lots of plans today, well relatively “lots” since almost everywhere we go takes more time to get ready than it used to.

For lunch, we headed out to lunch in Oakland to meet up with our apartment-mate Justine from Singapore.  Simon had not napped much in the morning so fell asleep in the car ride on the way there but soon woke up when we sat down at our table.  He had only napped about 25 minutes.  We took him out to have Justine hold him and take a photo… we had lunch at Sam Won BBQ House.

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Does he look kind of upset?  Well, he kind of was… soon after this photo, Simon started to wail really loudly.  He wanted to go back to sleep.  Ron took him outside to calm him down and took about 15-20 minutes to rock him back to sleep.  After that, he slept for a good 2.5 hours.  So while he slept, we had a nice long lunch.  The restaurant serves lunch specials Monday through Friday which are a pretty good deal for Korean food, only about $10 and it comes with rice and plenty of side dishes.  Also, they do all the cooking in the kitchen so you don’t leave the restaurant smelling like BBQ smoke.  The portion size of the meat for the lunch specials are just enough for one person but my favorite thing for lunch is the bibimbap.

My parents are recently back from vacation and hadn’t seen Simon in a few weeks so we went to visit them in San Ramon.  It was a beautiful day there so Ron took Simon out to their backyard to play for a bit.  At times, Simon is starting to put his feet flat onto the ground (although you can kind of see that his toes are still curled up a bit).

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A cute photo of daddy and baby.

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Simon with Grandma and Grandpa Tam.

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So tonight we are trying to get him back on track with his sleeping so we gave him a bath as soon as we got home, put on bedtime clothes, fed him, and put him to sleep.  It’s a later than normal, about 10pm so we’ll see how he does tonight.

Feed me, I’m hungry

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Day 91

So Simon has become quite the drool-er so now he has to start wearing bibs.  His drool is surprisingly quite viscous, not as watery as I would have thought.  When a large amount of drool escapes his lips, it can stretch more than 12 inches before actually separating from his lips.  Kind of gross sometimes.  But now he has more things to accessorize his outfits with… hee hee…

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We had a relatively quiet day other than going for our walk in the late afternoon.  I took him out in the car seat/stroller today since I don’t think my back could have handled carrying him today.  The Baby Bjorn that we purchased does have good lumbar support so that my lower back does not have pain but I feel tightness in my shoulder and neck instead… so I thought I’d give myself a break and use the stroller.  He fell asleep around 6:45pm and stayed sleeping even when I moved him from the car seat into his crib.  He was really out, usually when we try to move him out of the car seat, he will wake up and sometimes start screaming.

He only slept about 4 hours and woke up around 10:30pm because he was hungry.  Ron went to bottle feed him since I was taking a nap.  Ron tried to get my attention from the other room because…

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Simon had grabbed onto the bottle and was feeding himself!  Silly baby.  It was mostly by accident that he grabbed onto the bottle but he has been using his hands to push it away to tell us he is done or needs a moment to breathe.

Brentwood Cherry Picking

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Day 90

Ron and I used to always try to go cherry picking during Memorial Day weekend but haven’t had a chance to go since we’ve been back from Singapore.  We thought we’d take Simon for a little road trip and to start a tradition as a family.

We headed out to Brentwood and went to find lunch first.  I searched Yelp and settled on this place called Sticky Chicken and Ribs.  We ordered the 3-item combo of tri-tip, ribs, and 3 pc sticky chicken plus a side order of garlic fries.

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The meat of the ribs fell right off the bone and their BBQ sauce was pretty okay.  The tri-tip was thinly sliced but seemed a bit dry so needed some BBQ sauce.  They have other sauces there too, we tried the bourbon mustard sauce (did not like) and a spicy BBQ sauce (preferred the original).  The sticky chicken was interesting, it had a sweet batter with a sweet hot chili sugary sauce all over it.  I liked the crust on the chicken but wished it was a bit crispier (not sure if that would have been possible).  The sauce almost reminds me of the Vietnamese sweet chili sauce that we always used to marinate chicken wings which we baked.

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The garlic fries seemed a bit under cooked but the garlic was nice and spicy, likely because it was still very raw.

After lunch, we went to find ourselves a cherry farm to pick some cherries.  We couldn’t find the one we usually go to so stopped by Chavez U-Pick Cherries.  The cherries were $2.50 per pound.  This farm did not have a weight requirement which was good since we did pass by some farms which required at least a 2 or 5 lb purchase.  Of course the cherry trees near the parking lot were well picked through so we ended up having to walk inside and near the back to find the trees still full of fruit.

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We took advantage of some of the empty rows to take some photographs of Simon.  Only problem was that Simon can’t sit up by himself yet so we had to prop him up somehow.  Luckily, the aisles had lots of divots so that we could put him in to stabilize his butt.  We brought our picnic blanket so the grass and dirt wouldn’t bother his skin and used the bucket for our cherries to prop him against.  Unfortunately, it was hard to get him to look at the camera and every time he did, he would start to topple over.  Maybe he’s not really that photogenic… he’s got that concerned look like usual.

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So instead we tried a different approach, Ron held Simon over his left shoulder and I tried to take the picture cutting Ron’s body out of the shot.  Simon wasn’t loving the camera today but in this picture, his expression makes him resemble my brother.

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We ended the afternoon after Simon fell asleep in my arms.  It was probably really warm for him so made him sleepy.  I am looking forward to next year when Simon should be walking and he can walk among the rows of tree himself and pick cherries.  We picked about 8.5 lbs of cherries for $21.25.  Nothing beats the taste of freshly picked cherries and the experience is always one to remember.  It’s like a treasure hunt to find the biggest and juiciest cherries.

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Yum!  Looking forward to digging in.


Superbaby! and future CAL bear

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Day 89

Simon is getting more used to being on his tummy.  He actually seems to be enjoying it more as he will get kind of excited and laughs when we put him on his tummy.  He even enjoys being held on his tummy (it helps us to burp him too).

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Simon had two messy diapers this morning and I got tired of having to change and wash his onesies.  I figured it’s easier to just change and wash a pair of pants than to do the whole outfit, so he got to try on his new Oskie T-shirt.  Yes, we are brainwashing him already… but he can go to any college he wants to when the time comes.  Thank you Arial for the cute shirt!  Go Bears!

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We went for a quick walk in the evening and since it was so sunny, Simon had to wear his hat, and he wanted to look good for the chicks.

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He did really well, didn’t cry out once and surprised me by falling asleep in this position.  I wasn’t sure if I should try to turn him around but I think if I did that, it would have woken him up so I just kept on walking and supported his head.  The hat came in handy to pull down to cover his eyes and block out some of the light and wind.  I hope we can continue our evening walks when I get back to work, it’s good exercise and a way we can spend time together.