Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess named Mimi.
She lived in a castle with her best friend cow named Isabella.
They played play doh and cooked in the kitchen all day in the castle. They really loved each other. One day a terrible snow storm came which made the power go out (we didn’t lose power but many other people in Westchester did). The princess and cow were very scared .
But luckily Daddy came and rescued the princess and cow and everyone lived happily ever after. Thank you Daddy!
Then Princess Mimi went trick-or-treating with Raggedy Ann in Dobbs Ferry.
To keep their candy safe, they brought along Wolverine to protect them.
Princess Mimi had so much fun trick-or-treating with her friends.
This year Mimi is in pre-school for three full days and two half days. When she has a full day she eats her packed lunch at school with her classmates. My mom raised Mimi pretty much the first two years of her life because I worked full time. Mimi acts like my mom because they spent so much time together. For example, my mom doesn’t like cucumber seeds and would cut them out everytime they would eat them together. I think this is a silly habit and wanted to break it so one day I packed cucumbers with seeds in Mimi’s lunch so she could at least taste the seeds and realize they were fine to eat. Each day, the teachers send back the lunch box with everything the child doesn’t eat so the parents can see. This is how Mimi’s lunch box came back that day.
And this is how I have been packing the cucumbers ever since.
We love when Best Friend Avery and Auntie Anne come to visit. Here, Avery and Mimi are holding their babies. Can you tell which one is real?
Cruising the yard in the Mercedes. Their Daddy’s better watch out. They want a real one when they grow up.
Avery and Auntie Anne having so much fun on the jungle gym.
This should be the next Patagonia catalog cover. Mimi loves her Best Friend Avery.
This summer Mimi took her first swimming lesson at a local indoor pool. The lessons were twice a week for 5 weeks, 30 minutes, a total of 10 lessons. As a parent, what can you expect from a 3 year old after 10 swimming lessons? Will she be able to float? Maybe even actually swim? Well…neither, and after crying throughout her first five lessons, I was happy just to make it through a lesson tear-free.
Isabella was born with jaundice, a yellow discoloration of the skin and eyes. Very common in Asian babies, Olivia had it, so I was not worried. The hardest part was leaving without her from the hospital because she had to stay an extra day for observation. The jaundice is treated with a couple formula bottles during the day (breast milk slows down the liver getting rid of the bilirubin, yellow-colored pigment of red blood cells causing jaundice), ultraviolet light from the sun, and time. It usually takes a few weeks for the jaundice to go away.
A bilirubin blood test is taken to get the level of jaundice. Newborns get their blood taken from their heel. As a mom, this is painful to watch, especially when they would take blood every six hours in the hospital.
Isabella loved the sun. It just put her to sleep. And of course because she can’t wear sun block, she only sun tanned before 10am or after 4pm for no more then 15 minutes.
We had a small scare when Isabella was three weeks old. Her skin and eyes were getting more yellow and her bilibrubin count was increasing. At her age, if the count continued to increase, there most likely was something wrong with her liver. We doubled up on the formula bottles and increased the number of sun tanning sessions during the day. Thank God her bilirubin started to decrease. I’ve had many stressful days at school and work when there were big deadlines or presentations. But nothing compares to the stress and worry you have when there is a possibility of something wrong with your child.
Mimi adds a dollop of mud. She learned the word “dollop” from how-to YouTube baking videos and loves to say the word.
Mimi is carefully adding the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Look at that concentration.
A couple of teaspoons of pepper.
Now some commentary on serving the soup in this little bowl.
Finally finished…Grey (really more like grey-brown) soup. Yes, Grey Soup really is the name.
In most households in America egg dying is an activity done once a year around Easter. In our household egg dying and Easter egg hunts are done all year round. We dye eggs when it’s warm, when it’s cold, when we need something to do. This is the process we follow every time: (1) hard boil a dozen eggs (2) eat 1-2 eggs (3) dye the eggs (4) eat another 1-2 eggs (5) take turns hiding and finding the eggs that have not been eaten multiple times a day. If it’s warm out we’ll hide the eggs outside, if it’s cold, we’ll hide them inside. When they crack from excessive hiding and finding, we throw them away. We do not eat them because they have not been refrigerated. Then when they are all gone, we dye another dozen.
A little after Midnight on August 18 (6 days before my actual due date) I started to have contractions. At 4am I woke Jeff to tell him I was having contractions. I took a shower and waited in bed timing my contractions with my new iPhone app (gotta love technology). Contractions were manageable until my water broke at 8am and everything immediately got very painful. We got into the car and headed for the hospital…of course during morning rush hour traffic. Thank God traffic was not bad because the pain was unbearable. Jeff was in such a rush he drove into valet parking the wrong way but the attendant understood why after she took one look at me. They took me inside on a wheelchair because I could not stand let alone walk. I was 7cm dilated at the hospital (no wonder I was in so much pain). The epidural could not come fast enough. Everyone says your second child comes faster then the first and they are absolutely right. Four pushes and Baby Isabella was here.
Isabella completes our family. I wanted three kids, then I had Olivia, and realized I really only wanted (or could handle) two. Jeff would have liked to have a son, but the thought of having one more child and it being a girl would be way too many daughters for him. We are so blessed to have two healthy girls and so happy to be a family of four.
