happy horse

Man, I was hoping this post will have some fun pics. but seeing I'm at work right now, it's not gonna happen. Anyway...

Noelle is getting cuter and cuter each day!! And she's definitely more in the learning mode. She'll listen to what you are saying and copy or repeat the words. She still watches and loves her Baby Can Read dvds. And is now following what they are saying in the video and learning words. Noelle's current fav words are: happy, horse and baby. She'll even say "happy" on her own, just randomly with a big smile. We think she know what happy means.

She also learns to kiss with her little mouth now. Before when we tell her "kiss kiss", she'll put her forehead on you and said "mmmmmuah". It's so fun to get kisses from her. This one time I switched side with Dave, so I was closer to Noelle's bed. She woke up in the morning, saw it was her mama on the closer side to her. She smiled and gave me a kiss. It was sooooo sweet!

Miss Noelle also loves to clean and likes keeping things tidy. She'll take things to the trash can on her own or turn off the radio/light when we are leaving. What a good citizen, lol. She always wants a napkin while eating, so she can wipe the table, her hands or her mouth. However, she prefers using her little fingers over utensils for eating and absolutely refuses using bibs. So mealtime is still kinda messy.

She tells us when she poo, but sometimes chooses not to if she's watching her dvd or playing. At work she'll walk over to her diaper bag and "talks" to me and pointing to her diaper. That's how I know she poo. And she gets really excited to be changed. I guess it's kinda rewarding for her that her mama understands her.

Miss Noelle is going to turn 2 very soon, I'm hoping she'll not become one of those terrible 2s, but a terrific two.

Dinner schedule

When we first got married a little over 4 years ago, I was very excited to cook meals everyday. Before we got married, it was the husband (the boyfriend/fiance back then) who did the cooking. I'd come over after work and either him or his dad will make the dinner for us. So when we finally got married and had gotten all those wonderful kitchen-related wedding gifts. I started trying out different recipes, different cuisine. Heck, I had even gotten into baking and making breads!! But it all changed after Miss Noelle was born. At first it's cuz I was so tired from the lack of sleep. So I tried to whip up something simple and quick. But when she started eating solid food, I try to cook something she can also have. That way, I don't need to prepare 2 different dinner for the 3 of us. That means no spicy food or things that Miss Noelle can't have yet (i.e. shrimp, peanut butter, things that are tougher, etc.) I had also stopped making meals that require reading recipes. First of all, some recipes require different ingredients and I try to purchase similar things when we do our weekly grocery shopping. It's just easier to manage. Secondly, recipes may also means I need to spend a little more time in the kitchen. And that's just not happening nowadays. I try to prep the food during our lunch time and cook the dinner when Miss Noelle is watching her Sesame Street (which gives me less than one hour of time to cook, and that is if she absolutely doesn't need my attention). So this year, I decided to have a set dinner schedule for Monday and Wednesday. For us, Monday is spaghetti night and Wednesday is pizza night. And I've just added broccoli chicken over rice for Friday night about 2 weeks ago. It has been a win-win meal in our household. So 3 days out of the 5 (weekends are my off days), we have something planned already. It's sad that I can't be more spontaneous, however this is the plan I'm willing to stick to for a little while.

TV shows

What are the tv shows everyone's watching nowadays? I don't watch that much tv thanks to Miss Noelle, we now only watch tv when she goes to bed (8:30). But luckily most of our shows are on later at night anyway. This is the list of what I'm watching/obsessed with:

Grey's Anatomy - have been watching it since season 2 (already caught up with season 1)
Glee - this is new obsession, the music is GREAT and the characters are very interesting
Top Chef - this is probably the best season so far, I love Jennifer!! she for some reasons reminds me of Meredith from Grey's, lol. the 2 brothers are really talented too. but Robin needs to go!
Desperate Housewives - I didn't watch it consistently until 2 seasons ago? It's quite addicting

I wanted to watch Fringe again, but it's the same time as Glee. That's about it, not that many shows huh? We do flip the channels when our shows aren't on.

Talking girl, part 2

So Miss Noelle is definitely talking more and more!! Today, she says "ugg", which is really "bug". And she points it out and says "ugg" when she sees a fly. So I can kill it, haha. She also says "nooo", which is nose. We took a video of her at lunch time today, it was very entertaining. Miss Noelle decided to play peekaboo...

Noelle's first youtube

I'm going to see how youtube works with upkeeping videos, we shall see.

Talking girl

Noelle is now 20 months old and she is starting to talk more and more. She has mastered saying "mama" (and it's for me! well, most of the time) and "no" (ever so very clearly). One new thing she enjoys doing is making us go thru the ipod songs, she'll shake head and say "no" if it's not the song she wants. She basically goes thru almost her entire song list, sheesh. Noelle sometimes actually says "what's dat?" or "ooooh, what's dis?" but not very clearly, or at least her words aren't clearly separated yet. More like "whatsdat?" and "oooooo, whatsdis?" But very close! Oh and she loves balls. This little girlie will spot a ball miles away and she'll start saying "a ball" or "ball" while walking toward the ball to get it. Sometimes I think she says "bowl bowl" for her snack bowl, and "ba-ba" for her bottle. She doesn't say it all the time, so it's not official yet.

I love having a talking kid!

She also knows some of her body parts, like eyes/ears/mouth/nose/head/arms/belly button. I may have to start teaching her those in Chinese, just so she can be a little bit bilingual. My parents are on my case to teach Noelle Chinese. But I don't like to use it when her daddy is around, so he doesn't feel left out. And they use only English at the daycare. So it's not much opportunity for me to use solely Chinese with her. But I guess I should try harder.

18-month check up

This is just a quick update. Miss Noelle had her 18-month check up last week (I know, almost a whole month later). And she's now almost 22lbs (our skinny chick) and is 31 inches tall. Her weight and height percentile is around 10-20th, not bad but wish she could be a little bigger. However, her head, OMG, is off the chart!! On the doc's monitor, her head measurement is over the percentile. We've got a big head baby :-P Now we just need to tell the rest of her body to catch up, lol. She also had two shots, but she did good. Well, the mommy was too chicken to be there, so the daddy took Miss Noelle for her appointment.

Picky eater

I'm getting lazy with updating my blog!! Well, I was really hoping I can have some pics on this post, but I guess not. So we have a little picky eater!! It's getting harder to figure out what we shall give Miss Noelle. Well, she's not THAT picky, but to the point we hope she could be a little better with her choices. She really likes pasta and rice, everything else is all up to her mood. She also is a miss independent. Miss Noelle wants to feed herself. It's good that she wants to work on using the utensils to eat, but it also gets pretty messy. She'll eat from my forks tho, so that works. I've been trying to give her more veggie and fruits, but she usually will just spit it out or eat very very little of those. And apparently she doesn't like L&L's BBQ chicken either :-P But we had jamba last week and she LOVED it. She was a smoothie nazi and took my jamba and won't give back. She likes Orange Dream Machine (my fav as well). We are thinking of making our own smoothie and maybe toss in some fruits and veggie and see if she'll drink them. We don't have a juicer tho, I want to make veggie juice for her. I don't think blender works as well, cuz you get the pulps and I bet Miss Noelle will shake her head at the pulps :-P

And yes, she loves to shake her head. She nods her head once in a blue moon, but shaking her head is her fav. Sometimes she'll shake her head too fast and regrets it right away, lol. Today the daycare called me up and they told me Miss Noelle had bit her tongue while playing. She bleed quite a bit but was all better. She apparently had lunch and was napping, so I guess it didn't bother her too much. My little brave girl!! She is now more active and loves to run around, that means chances of her getting hurt increase tremendously. We just gotta keep an eye on her. She also loves to "talk", still no actual words yet. But boy does she love to yap! There's this one time, we were just sitting by her big girl bed and talk. Miss Noelle held the whole conversation, she "talks" and "talks" and "talks" to the daddy (without much stopping in between). It was sooo cute! But if she doesn't start saying actual words soon, I think I may have to worry. Her 18-month check up is next week, so we'll see what the doc says.

We are also on the process of helping her to get rid of bottle. We now offer her milk in a Elmo sippy cup and give it to her at every meal. She still doesn't drink much milk from it, but hopefully this will help her to get used to the cup. We still can't get rid of the bottle completely, cuz otherwise she won't get much milk. She doesn't need as much milk now, but does need enough in her system each day. Miss Noelle decided not to like brushing her teeth as much now either. She used to love brushing her teeth with the little kiddie toothbrush. Now she'll shake her head and won't open her mouth. I had to use this little rubber thingy with the brush on the top and it fits on my index finger. I basically just stick my finger in her mouth and brush that way. She actually lets me do that, but she'll bite me every now and then. And have I told you she's a hard biter? It HURTS! Ah the joy of being a mama.