- started smiling…and it’s seriously one of the coolest feelings ever when you can make your kid smile for the first time!
- recognizes me!! for the longest time I felt like she didn’t really know who I was but one day I was gone for 8+ hrs and when I came back she was super happy to see me. it was like she missed me! I literally melted that day.
- neck control is getting better. I notice when I hold her upright she can hold her head up longer and longer. I can’t wait for her to be able to sit.
- is able to move/slide on her back. one day i left her on the playmat on the floor and the next minute she had pushed herself off of the playmat using just her feet!!
- baby acne is gone…cradle cap is almost gone! for a few weeks there she had the WORST baby acne ever!! I felt so bad for her but it went away pretty quickly on it’s own. for the cradle cap we ended up buying some Mustela shampoo and so far it’s been helping a lot. Her hair has been growing like crazy…I think we need to figure out how we’re going to style her ‘do soon!
- chunking up! At her 2 month appointment she weighed 9 lbs and 13 oz and was 21 inches long. Even though she is considered small for her age, she has gained the normal amount for her birth weight (5 lbs 13 oz)…she almost doubled her weight! So to me she seems so big already hehe! My arms and wrists get sore from carrying her a lot.
- sleep. for the most part her sleeping is very good. we did have a few nights where she woke up constantly but usually she sleeps in 3-5 hour chunks. i finally learned the art of putting her down half awake/sleepy so it’s easier at bedtime.
- she is so much more awake, smiley, and just happy during the day. she is a total morning girl and i love playing with her when she first wakes up!
- right now she is not into any toys but we just got her a bouncer that she loves and she loves looking at mirrors
- she likes to chew on her hands a lot and I just introduced sophie the giraffe to her. she seems to like to chew the giraffe but because she can’t hold it herself we haven’t used it much
- after a few weeks of not giving her the bottle she totally forgot so we have been spending the last week retraining her. it was torturous!!!
- she had a few bad hours after getting her vaccinations. we had to give her tylenol but after that she pretty much just slept and was normal after that.

and now for some pictures!!!

So the story starts at 4:30AM. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I had to go to the bathroom which is weird (I’m one of the rare pregnant women that was able to sleep through the night without needing to empty her bladder at least in this trimester…I think it was because the baby was so high and not pressing on my bladder). So I get up to go when I felt myself leaking a little. This sometimes happens when I sneeze or cough so I didn’t think too much of it. I went to the bathroom and after I was done…I kept going. I was like..that’s WEIRD. I went back to bed and when I laid down I felt a lot of movement in my stomach! And then I leaked again. Oh no. I wake up boyrobot and told him “I think my water broke”. He called the Dr while I went back to the bathroom to continue my slow trickling. No…there was no huge gush like in the movies…it was more like a small trickle now and then.

The whole time in the bathroom I was like “no no no….this cannot be happening….it is way too early!!!”. I was only on my 2nd day of my maternity leave and had a huge long list of things I wanted to do before the baby came. The Dr tells us to go to the hospital and the whole time I was still in denial about what was happening. We started to pack the hospital bag and got in the car. I wanted to eat something before we went to the hospital since I knew once I was checked in they would not let me eat anything so I ended up getting some McDonald’s…one of the few places open at that time!

By the time I get to the hospital, I have completely soaked through my pants, despite having put on a pad. It was so gross and uncomfortable. We get put in a room where a nurse checked me and verified that my water indeed had broken. She declared that I was 2cm dilated. By the way, getting checked to see how much you’ve dilated is one of the most uncomfortable things ever. It was more painful to me than most of the contractions I felt that day! After this, they checked me into my own labor and delivery room with a nice ocean view. We delivered at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. I had heard about how nice the staff was here and how nice the hospital itself was and it did not disappoint. I absolutely loved giving birth here and was made to feel as comfortable as I could given the circumstances. I also loved how the hospital is “baby-friendly” (this just means they meet some standards like letting the baby room with you after birth, guaranteeing skin to skin time after birth, helping with bfing, etc). Every nurse we worked with was SO nice which is amazing considering what they do. Honestly, I think after mothers…nurses may have the hardest job!!

(Unfortunately labor lasted so long, she ended up being born the day after…on the 9th!)

Anyways, after they put me in my new room, they hooked me up to a baby heart beat monitor and another monitor to track my contractions. I also had an IV hooked up to me where I was getting pumped with pitocin to help speed along labor. I had always heard horrible things about pitocin but it didn’t seem to make a difference to me because I literally spent the rest of the day with barely any progress…imagine if I had not had the pitocin!

Most of the day was spent playing on our iphones and sucking on popsicles (the only thing I was allowed to eat). I joked about how I had scored my highest Bejeweled score ever during a contraction. For most of the day, the contractions did not bother me…they started feeling like cramps and as the day progressed they slowly got worse. But the pain would just last for 30 seconds to a minute and go away and you would feel completely fine so it was easy to deal with.

The parts I did not like the whole day was that I kept leaking and being hooked up to everything. They had me change into a hospital gown and gave me these mesh panties with 2 super huge pads. I had to keep going to the bathroom to change them because they kept getting soaked through. At one point I asked the nurse when I was going to be done with the leaking and she told me not until I give birth because my body keeps producing more fluid. Oh…I had no idea. Anyways, going to the bathroom was such an ordeal because I had to unhook myself from all of the monitors and drag the whole IV contraption with me to the bathroom. And imagine sitting in basically a wet diaper all day. SO UNCOMFORTABLE! This was one of the worst parts of labor to me.

I don’t remember when they checked me next but it was probably around the afternoon. The nurse tells me I’m only 3cm. O M G. You can’t deliver a baby until 10 so I was like wow…this is going to take forever. But she tells me that I’m now 90% effaced (vs barely effaced when I first came in) so she said it should speed up at this point. So we trudged along as the contractions got stronger. At around 8 they asked me if I wanted to try some drugs to take the edge off of the pain so I said yes. Let me tell you, the drugs do nothing for the pain. They do make you feel loopy though. I just remember I kept saying how I felt soooo weird. ha ha.

After that wore off, the nurse came back and asked if I wanted the epidural. At this point I had been in labor for over 16 hrs with no end in sight and I could see that the contractions were getting worse so I decided yes, I would get the epidural. Unfortunately, the epidural man was in a c-section so I had to wait another hour for him to come. When he finally arrived, the contractions were pretty bad. My fear of the epidural was trumped by the pain and I couldn’t wait for the sweet relief I was promised. Honestly, the epidural wasn’t scary at all. I didn’t look so I had no idea what he was doing but he talked me through the whole process so I felt very comfortable. It was over pretty quickly and before I knew it I felt no pain! The rest of the labor was seriously a breeze until the pushing part which I will get to later. A great part about getting the epidural was getting hooked up to a catheter so I didn’t have to keep going to the bathroom anymore! Also, when they checked how dilated I was I didn’t feel a thing! Before I dreaded every time they checked me. I could still feel the contractions but they were definitely at a more manageable level. I was actually very comfortable at this point!

Around midnight the nurse came back and said I was ready to push. She told me this could take 15 minutes or 2 hours. The nurse and boyrobot would help hold my legs up and the nurse instructed me to push for 10 seconds, 3 times during every contraction. This is kind of hard when you’re sort of numb from the waist below. But I kept pushing…for 2 hours! Surprisingly I wasn’t that tired especially considering I hadn’t eaten all day. It was discouraging having the nurse keep telling me I wasn’t pushing correctly but I tried the best I could. At around 2am, the nurse says she’s going to call the DR and that I have to have the baby out when she gets here. Talk about pressure! Suddenly I started feeling super nauseous….it was so weird. Minh got a pan to hold my vomit and I started vomiting uncontrollably. As I am vomiting I see the DR walk in and suddenly I feel a weird sensation down there and next thing you know, they are placing a baby on my chest!! Everyone laughed that I puked my baby out. The nurse tells me that was the push I needed! We were all happy the DR had made it just in time to catch the baby.

Next I delivered my placenta which I don’t remember much of and the DR starts sewing me up. I’m not sure how many stitches I got down there but she told me the tears weren’t that bad. Another good thing about getting the epidural was that I didn’t feel any of the stitching!

After getting cleaned up, the baby gets placed back on me for skin to skin time. Emma was super calm and still on my chest. It was surreal to finally meet this little baby that has been growing inside of me. We notice that she has my nose but can’t really decide who she looks more like other than that. She has tons of hair!!

The nurses bring me a snack pack and a juice spritzer that I downed so fast. It was the best tasting drink I had ever had…the nurses were like it’s so good right?? YES YES IT WAS. I forgot what was in it now.

After an hour of skin to skin and attempting to breastfeed, they move us to our own room where we would spend the next 3 days. This is where reality hits you and you realize you’re in charge of a baby now and also where you realize how painful it is to give birth! This part was much more dreadful and surprising to me than labor actually was…so girls if you have anything to fear it’s this! The hospital has a rule that the first 2 times you go to the bathroom you are accompanied by a nurse. I was like whaaaat? That’s so weird and awkward! So I dreaded going to the bathroom but eventually they were like it’s time to go to the bathroom ha ha. So I went to the bathroom with a nurse who helped me with pretty much everything except for wiping myself. She showed me how to address all of my wounds (there’s a water bottle involved, tums pads, and even a numbing spray!) and suddenly I was super grateful she was there to help. I never thought I would want someone to go to the bathroom with me but they made it seem so natural! I guess at this point you have no more shame. About a million people have looked at you down there and they act like it’s NBD so you get over it.

But yeah….going to the bathroom is painful. Even walking to and from the bathroom was painful! Also you are bleeding. a LOT. They give you more of those mesh panties and those super pads. You may or may not also have hemorrhoids. When they offer you drugs, take them. In the beginning I didn’t because I don’t swallow pills but I found out after they will crush them for you and it made such a difference! With how tired and painful you are, it’s hard to take care of the baby. Luckily boyrobot was there the whole time to help me. We were so clueless the whole time and had to learn everything together. I remember in the beginning the nurse changed Emma’s diaper and we were like…are we supposed to be doing this? And they were like yeah….haha. OH. We changed our first ever diaper together.

The 3 days in the hospital were kind of a blur now but by the time I got to go home I was feeling much better. Still a little painful but every day was getting better. Next, it was time to tackle taking care of a baby on our own! It was so nice having the nurses there to help with everything and answer all of our questions. Another hard part was the whole breastfeeding thing. Lots of people told me it would be the hardest part and it was! They put so much pressure on you to breastfeed but in the beginning it takes awhile for the milk to come in so your baby starts losing weight. Since Emma was a little jaundiced we decided to supplement her with formula in the meantime. I am doing a combo of bfing and formula right now.

Anyways, that’s pretty much my birth story. Pretty boring right? I’m thankful that it went as smoothly as it did. I’m so thankful to have Emma here safe and sound. Creating another human being is quite an adventure and we’ve only just begun! I can’t wait to watch Emma grow up. I know I am supposed to enjoy this time with her but I honestly can’t wait for the day she reacts to the things we do and say. Her first true smile is going to kill me! Sometimes it’s so stressful having her but she already makes us laugh and smile every day!

I have a 7 yr old son who LOVES this game and is too happy to play it for hours. The questions are challenging (at times) for an adult, but a clever child could do very well, also. My son gets many answers I don’t even think of!

HOWEVER….one of the questions we ran across last night was, “Name an age children stop believing in the tooth fairy” Oh my gosh, my heart sank :-( He took it in stride and never said a thing after, but now I’m worried there’s a Santa question too!! This is rated “E”, but perhaps the creators don’t yet have children?? I don’t know but it was a HUGE disappointment for me…. The game is great but I just didn’t see that coming.

Can you imagine finding out about the non-existence of the Tooth Fairy/Santa Claus through a video game?!?!?! SAD.

About Window Farms:

Window Farms are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials.

As an apartment dweller for almost the past 10 years of my life, I really appreciate the idea of being able to grow a garden when you are limited in space. One of the aims of the project is to give people who live in low income and dense areas like NYC the ability to grow their own fresh food! With all of the news about fast foods targeting low income areas and how expensive it is to eat healthy (have you checked the prices on those organic stuff??)…this is such a great way to give people options again who can’t afford to eat the way we all should be eating!

Here are some instructions on their easiest windowfarm if you want to give it a try. They also have a great community that will help answer any questions you have and offer invaluable advice to help you get started.

If you like the idea, be sure to support them by voting for Window Farms at the Pepsi Refresh Project. The top 10 ideas get funding and they are #85 right now. I looked at the top 10 and some of them I can’t believe are ranked so high. This definitely deserves to be in the top 10! It only takes a second to vote, especially if you have facebook – you can sign in through that.

Click to read more on Days With My Father

I haven’t received mine yet so I can’t confirm the quality or anything but you really can’t beat free right? I ended up using my picture from Peru with me and boyrobot in front of machu picchu. Can’t wait to stick them on my luggage!

The following are all free and at the end of the list I’ll actually mention the ones I’ve paid for and I think are worth it.

My daily apps – These are the ones I use almost on a daily basis and I think are so useful and a must-have

eBuddy: This is the app I use for Aim which is my main chatting service. You can also use it to connect to all of the major ones like Yahoo or ICQ etc. And it’s miles better than the official Aim app which is painfully slow and laggy. I remember when I used to use the Aim app and I’d literally want to throw my phone because I hated it so much. This makes me happy to chat on my phone again.

facebook: I admit it…I am a facebook junkie. Love the service and if I ever have a few spare minutes I go on there to read what’s going on with everybody. The facebook iphone app is really well done and the latest update is stellar. Update it if you haven’t already!

Yelp: If I ever need to find a good place to eat this is where I go. It has a “nearby” feature that works great in finding highly rated restaurants or businesses near you and the search and bookmarking future is so helpful. I have all of my favorites saved and with a few clicks I can get the hours and directions of pretty much any place!

Flixster: Boyrobot and I are big movie buffs. We love watching movies and this has been the best app I’ve found so far for looking up nearby movie theaters and showtimes. They also show what ratings each movie gets from Rottentomatoes and flixster users.

Pandora: If you love music this is a must have. Just input a song or artist you enjoy and Pandora creates a “station” for you that will play similar music. It’s a great way to find out about new artists you might like or just to have for some enjoyable background music.

myWireless: This is an app from ATT and it allows me to pay my bill from my phone. I LOVE THIS APP.

Wattpad: The most amazing free e-book reader ever. I’ve been telling everybody about this one. I never thought I would enjoy reading books on my iPhone but I’ve already read 3 books now. Right now I’m reading The Time Traveler’s Wife. They have an amazing selection of books. But it’s random when the books can be found. I’ve found a book and then went back a few days later to see that it’s gone. But as soon as you find a book, just download it and it’s saved on your phone. I’ve found many popular and current books as well as NY Times Bestsellers. And this app has the feature that I wish the iPhone has…a lock button that will lock the screen view if you turn the phone. It annoys me to no end when I’m reading something on my iPhone while I’m lying down and when I turn the screen it auto flips the other way! This app has a lock button! And did I mention it autoscrolls for you?

Ok so those are my absolute favorites. Pretty general. Here are some great ones too that I find myself using pretty often but are more specialized.

Twitterfon – twitter app if you’re into twitter
FML – have you heard of the fml website? it’s great for a quick laugh if you are waiting in line or something
Boombox – if you have wifi, this lets you stream pretty much any song you want to hear
What’s On – this is a tv guide listing which I especially used when I was on travel and wanted to know what was on tv in that city
OpenTable – Ever use opentable to book reservations? Now you can do it from your phone!
Inside Redbox – I’ve posted about redbox before. This app tells you nearby redboxes and helps you to find which box has the movie you want. You can also find codes!
Paypal – If you have a paypal account this is really useful if you need to borrow money from a friend. You can pay them back in a few clicks!
NPR News – self explanatory
NList – I use this as my to do list. It’s simple and has these cute little checkboxes!
Flickr – yay…flickr finally released an official app! Works pretty well with the limited time I’ve played with it.
RepairPal – this is a car app that tells you how much you should be paying for car repairs and includes reviews and links to car repair shops. I didn’t really use this until I had to get my wheel bearing replaced and it was SO helpful! I totally would have gotten cheated on the pricing if I didn’t use this app.

Games – Surprisingly I’ve spent a lot of time playing games on my phone. I’m more of a “puzzle” type game so these might not appeal to everyone. Anyways, some of these I don’t play anymore but at one time I was a d d i c t e d.

Flood-It! – Try to “flood” the board with one color in a certain number of steps
Moonlight lite – It’s the mah-jong matching tile game. Very easy and relaxing game. I went a few months where I played this ALL of the time!
Word Warp – One of the first games I ever played on the iPhone. If you like word games it’s great. You get a bunch of letters and a list. You make words out of the letters. To pass to the next level you have to be able to make a 6 letter word.
PapiJump – one of those games with no thinking required. Just try to get the ball to bounce to the next tier
TapDefense – There’s a bunch of versions of this popular strategy game. I had a lot of fun playing this in the beginning!
Scramboni – A word unscrambling game that you play with other people

Paid Apps – I’m pretty stingy about paying for apps. There’s already more than enough for me to play with without having to dish out money! But there are some exceptions… :)

CameraBag – Let’s you make cool effects on your iPhone photos
Gratitude! – It’s sort of like a daily journal in which you are supposed to write things you are happy/grateful for each day. You can also save a photo each day. I really should use this app more! It has cute graphics to boot.
Sally’s Spa – This was on sale for 99 cents and I just love these types of games. It’s like Diner Dash. Boyrobot doesn’t understand why but most girls I know love to play it too! It’s not very challenging but it’s fun! hehe. Try the free lite versions to see what I mean.
iFitness – this is a very highly rated fitness app which I thought if I paid for it would make me workout more. So far that hasn’t happened but it’s really my fault. This app is very cool and I can see why it’s rated so well. One of these days I am going to use it…
Fuzzle – Another one of the few games I loved so much I had to pay for. I was addicted to the Lite version which stopped after you reached a certain score which was sooo annoying I had to buy the full version!
FlightControl – It’s hard to explain this game but it’s pretty fun

Some other iPhone related links:
Promo Dispenser – get free codes for new iPhone apps
Google Sync – I use google for everything. Especially for the calendar. I was so happy when I was able to sync my calendar to my phone!
Create free ringtones for your iPhone – It’s really easy!!

Any iPhone tips or apps you guys know about?

This Christmas over 1 million geeks around the globe will sit lonely in their bedrooms, misunderstood and ignored by a cruel world outside. Without “real” friends, they languish unloved in basements, offices and box rooms, hoping without hope for a better life.

I do think it’s sad that some people have zero social skills and don’t really have any friends. Working in the engineering field, I actually see some of these people! The worst part is that most of them are really mean and bitter so it’s hard to be nice to them. I wonder if they have no friends because they are mean or bitter or because they are mean and bitter after years of loneliness?

Either way, I will make an extra effort to be friendly or nice to a geek this christmas.