Recent milestones

I've been quite horrible at updating the blog. While I love synthesizing and writing my thoughts and memories out, sleep (or time-wasting) often trumps blogging and I haven't felt up to it lately. There are a few recent milestones that I want to make note of: Jad finally has more than eight teeth. His molars popped out first in the back, and right now he has a gap between his front teeth and said molars. I see the start of more teeth coming in to fill in the gaps so yay more teeth. But in consequence, less sleep for me. He's been waking up up to two times in the middle of the night, and I've been nursing his back to sleep.

I deliberately decided not to wean Jad before our Hawaii trip; post-Hawaii, I think that was a prudent decision. I was planning to wean Jad once he started daycare. He started at Bright Star in the beginning of March. I was feeling a bit of mom guilt when he started, so I kept on nursing him and within two weeks of starting daycare, he had a protracted stomach illness. Poor little guy was vomiting and had diarrhea for nearly a week. By the end of the illness, my skinny little boy was even skinnier. He's doing great now and now he has an appetite unlike I've ever seen with him before, so my little guy is starting to bulk up again. But now with all the teeth coming up, I'm not sure when I'll be able to wean him completely. I'm only nursing him at bedtime and when he wakes up in the middle of the night.

Successful pick up after his first day of daycare..

.. but got sick after less than two weeks. Even though he's a cuddlebug, he never sleeps in our arms

Also, Jad is officially speaking: his first word is probably "Mama", he babbles a lot so we took a long time to give him credit for having a first word since it didn't seem like the sounds he was making were directed at anything specific. But I can say with certainty now, that he says "Mama", "Baba", and "ball". Undoubtedly, he will soon try to say "Kai-Kai" and "Sora" since they're his favorite people in the world. :)

Kai started soccer last week so I am now officially a soccer mom. He had his first game this past weekend. In Kai's division, they play 5-on-5 on a smaller field, there are no set positions and they don't keep score, but even with these relaxed rules, playing a game is different from practice scrimmages, so Kai's team was steamrolled this past Saturday. As the other team scored goal after goal, you could see Kai's enthusiasm for the game waning: his shoulders were slumped and his heart just wasn't in it. When I asked him how he felt about the game, he replied that he felt "in between bad and okay."

Juggling extracurriculars has been a challenge, especially since jiu jitsu and soccer practices are back-to-back on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but Kai has been taking it in stride and on those days, we have him take a nap in the afternoon after school and it seems to carry him through until the evening. He's very good knowing that he should sleep when he's tired.. unlike some of my other children...

Kai's first jiu jitsu tournament was a few weeks ago. He had a rough match, where his face was pressed into the mat by his opponent and they had to stop. Kai ended up in tears and his coaches consoled him on the sidelines, but I was so proud of him when he kept going. He went on to win his next two matches and Nik and I were surprised that all the kids in his division ended up placing--three kids placed second, including Kai! It was good positive affirmation for continuing BJJ and Kai is looking forward to the next tournament

Looking sporty at his first soccer practice

We've officially enrolled Sora in TK for next fall. It's hard to believe that our bright and precocious little girl will have to wait another year until she starts kindergarten, but she is physically tiny, so perhaps it's not altogether a bad thing? And after years of wanting to grow out her hair to be "like Rapunzel," she finally said that she wanted to trim her hair a few inches. We went to the Kid's Salon a few weeks ago and they cut off about three inches; it literally took five minutes, but since it was her very first haircut, I wanted it to be special. :P

And just yesterday, Sora started riding a bike! She had been doing really well with the balance bike, but when we tried to get her to ride a regular bike, the pedals threw her off and she freaked out. So we back pedaled (pun intended.. hehe) and had her try out a bike with training wheels to get used to the pedaling motion. Yesterday, she was using the bike with training wheels and asked to use the balance bike, and I decided to ask if she wanted to try out the regular bike instead. She was initially freaked out, but then Kristy suggested using the driveway slope to help get her started. It was pretty amazing, after an initial positive experience, you could literally see her confidence building and building. By the afternoon, she was biking all the way down the street on her own!