Introducing...Isabella

No particular order

2008-11-22T06:35:00.001-08:00

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

The Salazar-Chu household has not been a healthy one lately. After Alex had a mumps scare, and Isabella had a mystery fever, this weekend all three of us had colds and fevers. Today we managed to go to church and tried to soak up some of the beautiful weather outside.

First Word - Kind of

2008-03-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

Isabella has been using da-da and ma-ma somewhat indiscriminately and she says nai-nai (Mandarin for milk) when she's hungry. And sometimes she says go-go (Mandarin for dog) when she sees Snoopy in her room. Over the weekend, though, she repeated a word that we used for the first time!

We were practicing walking back and forth, with her taking steps between Mommy and Daddy. Each time she came to one of us, we would clap and say BRAVO! After a few times of this, she decided to congratulate herself. She came over, clapped and said "BAVO!" Of course, this merited a gigantic family hug and some serious parental pride.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2008-03-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving/Merry Christmas/Happy New Year!

2008-01-10T21:29:00.000-08:00

OK, it's been a while since I last posted on here. One of the many New Year's resolutions is to post more often.

For Christmas, we travelled to Washington DC to see Wai-Gong and Poa-Poa. To prepare we collected many snowsuits, jackets, and mittens. Turns out DC was actually warmer than San Francisco and we didn't need outdoor clothes anyway because Isabella came down with the cold/flu and as a holiday present, gave it to Wai-Gong and Poa-Poa. She also regifted it to me as a New Year's present.

Despite the illness, Isabella loved being with her grandparents and she probably preferred being indoors because she got a lot more attention. She came back to California with a new prima donna attitude...she needed constant holding and eye contact at all times. After a week and a half of being with her not-so-attentive parents, she is finally returning to her old self. She can now go back to playing for a few minutes by herself without screaming her head off.

Here are a few pics from Isabella's first Chu side Christmas...(no, not all the presents around her are hers)

And one from today. She now has four (very sharp) front teeth.

Happy Anniversary!

2007-11-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

It's our 4 year wedding anniversary and we're venturing to take Isabella with us to a nice dinner(white tablecloths and all). Will let you know how it goes!

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

Falling into a routine

2007-10-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

Here's the news from the last month. Isabella is definitely getting to be more interactive and fun. The best part is seeing her smile at us when we walk in her room every morning. She may actually know who we are...well at least as the people who feed her and change her every day.

Oops, forgot to attach the photos from the 1/2 birthday. Here's one from the same evening. The pictures with the shortcake didn't turn out so well.

Soon after this, I felt around in Isabella's mouth and felt something scratchy. Could it be? Yup, those are her first two teeth in the front bottom.

The weekend after the tooth discovery we went to Seattle for Shin and Yumiko's wedding. Isabella took the time to celebrate Mexican Independence Day that weekend with her serape and headband. Here she is with Auntie Masae:

Then she learned to sit up! We're working on crawling, but she can either spin around in a circle on the floor or scoot backwards. It's funny to watch her on all fours rocking back and forth though.

Happy 1/2 B-day

2007-09-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

Happy 6 month birthday Isabella! We can't believe how time flies with you in the world. We watched some videos and it looks like your head was smaller Daddy's hand when you were born. Now you're rolling all over the place.

To celebrate, we bought a slice of strawberry shortcake for Isabella to pose with. Of course, we ate it for her. We'll post the pics tomorrow.

Big Milestone Week

2007-08-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

Big Milestone Week

We’re all feeling better now, and Isabella is back to her five-month self. To celebrate her recent five-month birthday, she had several milestones:

1) Solid food! - She’s eating watered down cereal once a day at dinner. We’re not sure how much she’s actually eating because feeding her is more like smearing her face with a spoon. She seems to enjoy it quite a bit, because she’s always anxious for her next spoonful and puts her lips to the bowl as if she wants to dump the cereal right into her mouth. I’m not sure how babies are able to eat multiple solid food meals if they only get one bath a day. Even though she has a big plastic bib, Isabella still needs a power wash after eating.

2) Baby Einstein – Isabella got to watch her first Baby Einstein video to commemorate her five-month birthday. While Alex and I were bored to tears during the video, Isabella had never seen anything so exciting. Toys, other babies, strange puppets; they’re so much more fun than staring at Mom and Dad all the time. It was like caffeine for babies. She was excited for a good two hours after watching for just 10 minutes. Uh…maybe we’ll wait another few weeks before showing it to her again.

3) Raspberry on command – We’re not sure what this means, but Isabella seems to be able to say PBBBTTTTT at will. It’s usually followed by a plaintive squeal, so we think it means that she’s not happy, but then sometimes she’ll sit by herself and PBTTT repeatedly. Sometimes she does this after she eats her oatmeal…..which does not please us very much.

First Illness

2007-08-03T21:47:00.000-07:00

As much I didn't want to admit it, Isabella is sick for first time. We went to the doctor today and she was diagnosed with a type of viral bronchiolitis. While it's heart-wrenching to hear her wheeze and cough, it's apparently fairly common for infants in day care to come down with this. One study estimated that almost 100% of kids under 2 in day care will have bronchiolitis. So, she has to have a nebulizer which will give her medication to open her airways every 6 hours. Only upside is that the mask is in the form of a dragon and is pretty cute. I'll try to post pictures, but she doesn't like to have the mask anywhere close to her face.

Meanwhile, both of us are coming down with some sort of cold. Looks like it'll be an indoor weekend for all three of us.

What a Year It's Been

2007-07-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

Cousins Rita and Rebecca

A year ago, around the Fourth of July, we went on a trip to Marseille, France for Alex's sister, Erika's wedding. This was our itinerary for approximately 10 days:

Fly to Boston via Las Vegas

Take train from Boston to Newark
Fly from Newark to Copenhagen via Stockholm

Fly from Copenhagen to Marseille via Amsterdam

Fly back from Marseille to Copenhagen via Amsterdam

Fly from Copenhagen to JFK
It should have been then direct from JFK to SFO, but it turned out to be JFK-Atlanta-Indianapolis-SFO.

This year for the Fourth of July, we went to the lagoon in Foster City, which is roughly 5 minutes from home and across the street from my office building. We had a lot of fun hanging out with Nancy, Ted and their two girls and watching Isabella watch the fireworks. Even the loud booms didn't seem to bother her at all.

Such is the life of a suburanite, but we don't mind it too much.....

Back to Work

2007-06-23T22:20:00.000-07:00

No new entries lately, since I went back to work on June 14 (coincidentally, Alex's birthday). So, now we have even less free time. Basically our routine is to get Isabella ready for the day between 6:00 and 8:00 AM, drop Isabella off at day care. Get home with her by 6:30, get her bathed and ready for bed so that she's asleep by 9:00. Then we have between 9:00 and when we fall asleep for some free time. For this reason, among others, Isabella is switching day care starting in July. The new day care is about 10 minutes from our house, which is about 20 minutes closer each way in rush hour traffic. We figure this will allow us to have some more quality time.

I remember back when I was on maternity leave, and itching to go back to work, people kept saying to be "Just when Isabella gets fun and interactive, it'll be time to go to work." That has proven to be completely true. It seems that she has been growing like crazy lately. Every day she feels heavier and she learns new things all the time. She's learned to roll over, both from her tummy to her back and vice versa. Although we haven't seen her roll from her back to tummy, we know she can do it because we leave her in the crib facing up and then after a few minutes when we check on her, she's giving herself some "tummy time." Alex says she must feel like the hands of a clock, because she is constantly turning herself in the crib. First she's straight up and down, then at the 15 min position, then at the 30 min....until she finally settles down. It's pretty funny to watch. Today, I was showing her the difference between sitting down and standing up and she was cracking up. She couldn't stop laughing for five minutes. In turn, this of course made Alex and I laugh the entire time. By the time Alex got the video camera, Isabella looked over and refused to laugh, so we'll just have to remember the excitement of hearing her laugh out loud continuously.

Here are a few recent pics:

Bad Report Card

2007-05-23T07:58:00.001-07:00

Isabella started a trial day at day care yesterday and we've already gotten a bad report card! We were asked, "Do you hold her all the time?" Embarrassed, we responded that her grandparents were here over the last two months and they held her a lot. I guess, sadly for her, this will be changing very soon.

This was a big day for everyone. Alex and I were thinking about how the time went by so quickly and the thought of her not being with us all the time was hard to bear. I started getting sentimental last weekend and spent most of the day yesterday wandering around doing retail therapy (buying stuff for her, of course). Isabella took the whole thing in stride and doesn't seem to mind being away from home at all. Alex and I were talking about how we spent a lot of the time during the pregnancy wondering when we were going to have free time to hang out in the house again. Then all of sudden, when I did have some free time, the house seemed way too empty without her.

Well, we finally finished our string of visitors. My parents left around noon on May 11 and in the evening, our friend Octavio was here for the weekend. (He's the reason why Alex and I met) Here are a couple of pics:

Oh and we went to the Maker Faire last weekend. We saw Jimmy Kimmel in the crowd, although at the time, I couldn't remember his name. We of course needed to commemorate with a picture:

We went to Bay to Breakers too, but we didn't do any walking/running, just people watching. Next year, we'll register and make sure to walk with some sort of family costume...

Oh what a month it's been

2007-05-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

I just realized how long it has been since my last post. I'm so behind. Abuelita left on April 9 and Wai Gong and Wai Po (my parents) came in on April 16. Everything seems to have been on fast forward since.

In between the visits, Isabella learned to sleep through most of the night. She now sleeps generally between midnight and 6AM, although one night she managed to make it to 8AM. Of course we are extremely happy with this new development, but for some reason, we've become more tired. Maybe our bodies are screaming for catch-up sleep, who knows?

Isabella started to smile in her sleep while Abuelita was here, but we kept waiting for her first real social smile. I was starting to fret because most of the babies from my March BabyCenter group had started to smile (It's amazing/ridiculous how preoccupied a person can get with developmental milestones for their baby). I kept thinking, "Is she not happy with us?" or "Maybe she'll be a serious baby," which would seem almost impossible since her father is such a prankster. Well, yesterday, just as I was about to post a worrisome message to my internet mother's group, she started to smile by herself. She even laughed once by herself while she was in the swing. The best part is Wai Gong got to make her smile too. Five times, he declared. It's funny how excited a 90+-year-old with his youngest granddaughter's every move.

Anyway, we're all doing very well. Isabella is going in for her two-month checkup today. Getting lots of shots. I'm getting the Tylenol ready and Alex is tanking up on sleep for a couple long nights of grumpiness. We'll see what happens....

Easter pics. We went to Gamble Garden in Palo Alto.

Here's the sleep smile.

We went to Filoli last week, which is where they filmed the outside shots for Dynasty. Yup, the 80's soap opera. We highly recommend the gardens for those in the Bay Area

Concession

2007-04-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

I have finally conceded in the Pink War. Back when we first found out that we were having a girl, we celebrated by going out and buying a few outfits for Isabella. I was determined that my little girl was not going to be dressing in pink clothes with little flowers all the time, which seemed to Daddy's clothes of choice. Even when Alex was painting the nursery, I insisted on not having pink walls. After much discussion, I gave in and allowed him to paint the window trim pink and we got some pink striped curtains.

Fast forward several months and Isabella became quite the fashionista, thanks to all the generous gifts that she received. More and more pink flowery outfits appeared in her closet. Well, I've now gone over to the Dark, I mean Pink, Side. Over the last three days, I bought two dresses for the baby, both of them pink and one of them is pink with little flowers all over it. So much for the girly-girl resistance front.

In other news, Isabella continues to grow and she seems harder to carry every day. On Monday she was 8 lbs. 6 oz. Her cheeks are drooping and she has a double chin, but that makes her so much fun to look at. Everyone says they see her resemblance to me in her cheeks..Hmm...

Last night, she celebrated her four weeks of life on the outside by sleeping for a 5.5-hour stretch. That's a record!!! Mom and Dad are appreciative of the sleep catch-up she gave us.

Overall, she's been very good and she's brought more meaning to the words "family" and "love"than either one of us have ever known.

More sleeping. Second Aunt and Uncle came to visit over the weekend. Isabella didn't even open her eyes the entire time. We'll have to teach her some manners!

She has begun to take a bottle a day. Dad gave her the first one.

See? They do make girls' clothes in colors other than pink! OK, she did get the striped shirt from Jake....

Pictures

2007-03-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

(Sorry for the bad formatting of captions and pics, I don't have this whole blogger thing figured out yet)

Priorities, priorities. Isabella spends much of her day sleeping or yawning. She's in her car seat, which she HATES and she doesn't hesitate to let us know. Thankfully, once we hit 55 mph on the highway, she's asleep.

Daddy finally got to push a stroller down Burlingame Avenue. Not that you can tell that there's a baby in there.

But really, she's in there!

Hanging out with Dad...

And Abuelita...

Isabella's first train set from the Martinez family!

Wow, almost three weeks

2007-03-25T13:23:00.001-07:00

Where does the time go? Since Isabella was born, we seemed to have lived one very very long day. We barely know what day it is, and our concept of time has completely changed.

Isabella continues to grow at a rapid pace, and she weighed 7 lbs. 4 oz. at her last doctor's appointment on Friday. Everything seems to be going well, so she won't have to go back until May, when she'll get four (ouch!) shots. I scheduled a Friday appointment so at least we can comfort her over the weekend.

On Friday 3/16, I was looking at her umbilical cord and thinking that I should take a picture of it, since it was the last remnant of our physical connection. Well, no sooner had I thought of that and I went to sleep, noting it as a good thing to do in the morning. Well, at her 2AM diaper change, Alex discovered that the cord stump had already fallen off. So much for the picture!

We have more pictures, but I'll post those later.

It's been one week!

2007-03-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, time sure flies when you have a baby. On the one hand, we can't believe that it's only been one week and we've learned so much from her - her signals on when she wants to eat, what she likes, what she doesn't like. And she's learned so much too, to breathe, to wear the clothes that her parents seem so inept to put on, to sleep in her own crib (that was a challenge until Alex's mom told us to put one of our shirts in with her so she can smell us). On the other, we've passed the last week in a daze, barely knowing what day of the week it is. Isabella is still figuring out that one is supposed to sleep more at night than during the day, although it doesn't help that your darn parents keep waking you up every few hours to eat.

We went to the first doctor visit on Saturday and she lost some weight, which is normal, but by Monday she gained 7 oz. back already! If only Karen had gained weight this fast during pregnancy....

Alex went back to work for half a day today. It was hard for Dad to leave his little girl behind at home. Karen and Isabella are having a great time at home though...Tomorrow Abuelita (Grandma Salazar) comes! All three of us are very excited!

Isabella's cousins came by this weekend.

Isabella's oldest cousin, Steve

And Wendy

Isabella also seems to like her rocker which has some yellow fish hanging on it.

We're home!

2007-03-09T18:30:00.000-08:00

Hello from all THREE of us! After a fairly quick delivery (we'll save you details unless you ask) and two restless nights at the hospital, we came home yesterday. It never felt so good to be back home. Isabella is doing great, which means that we're constantly feeding, changing, and burping her. It's all worth it for those couple of minutes a day that she's alert and opens her eyes though....

Picture time!

Our last picture as just the two of us (yes, I enjoyed my epidural, OK?)

And then there were three!

1) All bundled up 2)At 24 Hrs. we're both tired 3) Yay! Eyes open wide

Thank you all for your messages and good thoughts. We're a little slow in communicating back, but we're thinking about you!

Shouldn't be long now....

2007-03-03T08:46:00.000-08:00

We went to the doctor yesterday. He says that Isabella should be here by Wednesday.....so exciting! Of course this put us into panic mode to get everything ready. The crib is now in our room and we're trying to wash all of her clothes. The girl is quite the fashionista!

First post

2007-02-27T14:48:00.000-08:00

The wait goes on...Isabella isn't here yet, although we are very anxious to meet her. This is my first blog post, so I'm trying to figure out how much is appropriate to write. A few things:

This is the lovely blanket that my knitting group made for me:

I was incredibly lucky to find some very amazing gals to knit and chat with through craigslist. Even though they're in the East Bay (mostly, we do have have one person who shuttles between NY and SF) , it's well worth the trek to hang out, chat, eat, and occasionally knit with them.

And here's a picture of me from yesterday, my belly has DEFINITELY grown lately.

That's enough for my first post. Watch this space...