the days of our lives

Well, after 13 weeks, I am finally feeling like I am getting some sense of order in our lives (knock on wood). At the risk of completely jinxing myself, here's where we're at:

1. Greg turned 36 - maybe I already posted that. For his birthday, we (sans the kids) went out to dinner, had dinner and cake with just our family, and then this past weekend, we had a picnic by the lake with some of our good friends and their kids. The weather was perfect, the kids got to run around, play, and get loaded up on candy from the pinata (Nicholas and Sophia's idea to have a pinata for Dad's birthday party), and we got to catch up with friends. Even though we see most of our friends often, sometimes it's hard to have adult conversations because we are usually distracted by our children. Would have had pictures to post, but I realized as I pulled the camera out to take pictures that I left the flash card in the computer at home. Nice. Other than aging oh so gracefully, Greg is working non-stop to get chapters written (yes, dissertations come in chapters) and get things in order to go on the job market this winter. (I added pictures--my friend Sarah was sweet to send me the pictures she and her husband took--thanks!)

2. Nicholas started a baseball camp and he LOVES it. He goes after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and he now says it's his favorite part of school, even though it's not really school.

3. Sophia wants to take ballet. She loves to pretend she's a ballerina and it made her day that she met Heather, a girl at church in the Singles Branch, who is a real-life ballerina.

4. Naomi still does not sleep much during the day, but she has become a relatively good night sleeper (knock on wood really hard). And for the past two days, she has taken a decent morning nap (knock again). But I know better to think that this is a pattern or that she's getting herself organized. I told my friend Katie the other day as we were comparing notes on sleep deprivation, that if we combined Naomi with her baby Sam, we'd have one baby that slept all day and night, since Sam sleeps well during the day but not so at night. But she smiles a lot and that makes up for a lot of things.

5. As for me, I really do love this time at home with the kids and Greg. It makes me dread going back to work in January, but at the same time, I know I will be ok when I do go back. There's much drama in my office I don't care much for, but I do miss my friends there and that sense of knowing what I am doing (well, most of the time). Anyway, my parents are coming tomorrow to celebrate Naomi's 100 days this weekend, so I'm super excited to see them.

the elevator

While sitting in church on Sunday:
Sophia: "Mommy, the poop is coming down the elevator."
Hyeyoung: "Sophia, you just went to the bathroom."
S: "But that was just pee."
H: "Are you sure you have to go? It's another few minutes and church will be over."
S: "But I can't wait. The poop is coming down the elevator."
H: "Ok, but you better not just be saying that."
S: "Ok."

While sitting on the toilet:
S: "Never mind. Nothing is coming out. The elevator was empty."

naomi's photo shoot

Last Thursday, we took Naomi to get pictures taken of her in her blessing dress. Considering how quickly she is growing, I wanted to get them taken before we couldn't squeeze her into the dress anymore. I took her there dressed in another outfit, hoping to get some pictures of her in regular clothes as well. Of course, the timing of these things never work out very well, so she was a little perturbed to have to pose and all, but we managed to get a few of our Gnomster.

I tried to tame her gravity-defying do, but it just made it stick out more and look even wonkier. Should have just left well enough alone.


This is her glamour pose, although perhaps not a flattering angle by skinny supermodel standards. You can see very clearly the jubba-jubba of her juicy cheeks and chin(s)--no big surprise that Sophia walks by her and says, "hello there, chubby cheeks."

she may not sleep, but she does smile

Naomi just turned 12 weeks yesterday and I decided that even if Naomi sucks at sleeping during the day, I should be grateful for the fact that she's not a cranky baby. She's got her moments of being fussy, when she's hungry or she's just unloaded some in her diaper, but for the most part, she's pretty content these days. She still prefers to be held--I suppose, what baby doesn't, right?--so I hang out with her and spend a lot of time just eating up her cheeks. I mean, who can resist? And once she figures out her sleep and daytime groove, I'm sure I'll have times when I'm frustrated that I can't get stuff done outside of the house because Naomi is taking a nap.

a non-binky girl in a binky world

For the past few weeks, I have been noticing a lot of babies with pacifiers in their mouths--mostly newborns and other infants. When Nicholas was born, I was adamant about not using a pacifier because I was worried that he would have problems nursing because I really wanted to make nursing work and there's a lot of stuff out there to scare a new mom to pieces about nipple confusion and all. And he never seemed very interested in it even when we offered it to him later on and so I never thought much more about it. When Sophia came along, I tried the pacifier but she never seemed very interested and around 3 months, while we were on vacation, she found her fingers and since then, those magic fingers have calmed her down in the worst of times. Well, that and her little bear.

And now with Naomi, I feel like sometimes, she needs a little help calming down, especially at times when it's not really convenient to nurse her or when she's just not even hungry but wants to be comforted. We've been trying to give her a pacifier, but she's not buying it. She either gets really mad or she just flicks it out with her tongue. We have been swaddling her for sleep and also when she gets upset because it helps soothe her. But the downside to this is that she can't get to her hands and we have also noticed that when she starts to get upset, she keeps trying to suck her fingers (although she hasn't quite figured out how).

So here's my question - for those whose kids have taken a pacifier, is that something they learn eventually, or are some kids just more inclined to take them while other don't? Do you have to do binky time like you do tummy time? I mean, I see brand-spanking newborns with them and I find myself wondering, how do they do that?

still here

A few recent pictures of the kids:

Bath time - Sophia has her swim goggles on, except the rubber thing around the eye pieces fell off and she put them on anyway. So she looks like she's either got buggy eyes or she's got some serious athletic glasses on...all the while blowing her water clarinet.

This is what Naomi looks like before she smiles or cries. Never really know what you'll get until it happens.

Often when she smiles, Naomi does this funny side-cocked smile. It's like she knows something we don't and is laughing about it to herself. Or she's just laughing at us because she's got us pegged for the suckers that we are.

Working on head control. She's holding her head up pretty well these days, except occasionally, her cheeks weigh her head down and it falls forward.

Nicholas and Sophia were supposed to be cleaning their rooms but I told them I would help them if they kept Naomi occupied, so they all laid down and watched me clean. Nice.

first day of school

After a summer that seemed way too short in retrospect, Nicholas started first grade at Ray School this fall. He thoroughly loved kindergarten last year where he began learning to read and write. I was amazed at everything he learned, considering I always thought kindergarten was all fluff and fun. He was pretty excited about starting first grade and even woke up the night before worried about what to do when he "didn't know the right answers" and fretted about now knowing how to spell everything. Greg, in a very lucid moment (amazing considering how we were all getting over jetlag and just being sleep-deprived altogether thanks to a newborn in our midst) told Nicholas, "it's not about knowing all the answers, but about learning them." Yea, Greg! That seemed to calm Nicholas and in the morning, he didn't seem to remember it. So far so good. His teacher, Ms. Hall, as far as we can tell, is great and Nicholas likes her a lot. He has several of his good friends from preschool and kindergarten in his class so that has made transition back to school much easier.

Sophia also started her second year of preschool at Akiba Schechter. She is in the Upstairs Green Room with Angela and Mary as her teachers. Although she was a little disappointed that she wasn't going to be in the Purple Room, she was thrilled to have Angela and Mary as her teachers. She was in the Purple Room for summer camp, so she was ok with moving on. Although she was a little bit shy and quiet at visitation day, she has once again proven to be a preschool superstar, being dubbed "the happiest kid in the whole world." If only Angela and Mary.

And as for Naomi, our "gnomie" or "gnomster" as we often like to call her, well, she hangs out at home with me during the day. She's finally achieved the signature cheeks that our kids all seem to get and has hair that defies gravity at all times. At her two month appointment before we went to Hawaii, she was almost 12 pounds, so she's no longer the petite babe she once pretended to be. She has started to smile and babble and the kids love to engage her when she does that. But she sucks at sleeping. She does ok during the night, sleeping for anywhere between 3 to 5 hour stretches, but during the day, she only does short power naps. I suppose with two siblings and the whole world, she's got too much to do besides sleep. But every morning when I wake up, I am hopeful that this will be the day that Naomi takes a nap during the day while not being held. A mother can hope, right?

heard at the thompson's dinner table

Hyeyoung: "Sophia, eat your food."
Sophia: "But I don't eat that much."
H: "That's why I didn't give you that much."
S: "Because I don't eat that much?"
H: "Yes. Now eat your pasta."
S: "I'm going to eat this much (holding up one finger)."
H: "Ok. Have a bite."
S: (Taking a bite of her pasta) "No more. I'm just going to eat my broccoli and watermelon. Ok?"
H: "Fine."

(Sophia starts singing...)
Nicholas: Sophia, eat.
H: "Nicholas, you just worry about Nicholas and don't worry about Sophia."
N: "Ok."

(A few minutes later...)
H: "Sophia (who just finished running around the living room)--eat the rest of your broccoli and watermelon and finish your dinner."
S: (popping a big piece of broccoli in her mouth) "You just worry about yourself, and I'll worry about myself."

aloha!

It seems like much has happened in the past several weeks, although these days, the days seem to be flying by. I am already dreading returning to work in January. Blech.

We just returned from a 9-day trip to Kauai. Greg and I went to Kauai 8 years ago, after I graduated from law school, just before I started studying for the bar--read, no kids. It was a much different trip this time, with our brood of three in-tow. The day started out in a bit of a lurch--after staying up until about 2 a.m. packing, Greg and I went to bed with our alarm set to 5:10 a.m. Darryl was coming to pick us up at 6:30 a.m. for our 9:15 a.m. flight out of O'Hare. Well, the alarm either didn't go off or we didn't hear it, since we woke up at 6:00 a.m. when Naomi started to fidget in bed. The irony is that all summer, the kids, especially Nicholas, had been waking up before 6:00 a.m. and this time, they were both sound asleep when I ran to wake them up. We managed to make it out the door just before 7:00 a.m. and made it to O'Hare in plenty of time, despite a little bit of rush hour traffic.

The kids did fabulously on the 9-hour flight to Honolulu--Naomi slept pretty much the entire flight, minus a couple of poopy diapers; Sophia watched her shows and took a decent nap; and Nicholas watched the in-flight shows and went to the bathroom about 20 times. For whatever reason, that kid loves airplane bathrooms. After that, it was just a mere half-hour flight to Lihue. We met Greg's dad there and despite the fact that it was almost midnight in Chicago by the time we got there, we headed off to Costco to pick up a few snacks and things for our stay. In Kauai, there is a Costco and a Walmart--although things are bit more expensive, it beats having to shop for random things you need at a gift shop (like Benadryl and bug spray--I'll explain later).

We stayed at Poipu Beach, which is on the south end of the island, where we stayed the last time we were there. We had a 2-bedroom condo from which we could see the ocean and walk to the beach. Our stay was pretty low-key: we went to the beach, went to the pool, snorkeled, boogie-boarded, built sand castles, chased away chickens on the beach
(there are a lot of wild chickens and roosters roaming around Kauai...they come right up to you and really, they are everywhere), took naps, ate lots of really good ice cream from Lapperts (and for $96 plus the cost of ice cream, you can have it shipped straight from Hawaii to your home!)--all in all, mostly just some kick-back island living. Naomi did get her feet into the ocean and sand...she didn't cry or anything, but it's hard to tell if she liked it or not.

We went to Spouting Horn, where the tide comes in under a lava shelf and shoots water up into the air in a big spray. There are some vendors that sell stuff by there and Sophia got a little shell necklace that she wore everyday.

We also had brunch on Sunday at Kilohana Plantation--a real plantation that grows its own fruits and veggies (and pigs) and serves 'em up in their restaurant. The kids went on a horse & carriage ride with the grandparents and then we went on a train ride around the plantation where the kids got to feed the pigs (who live on leftovers from the plantation restaurant--that's some expensive feed!).

One downside to the trip was that Nicholas and I battled mosquitos the whole time. For whatever reason, I have always been a walking buffet for mosquitos. When I get bitten, the bite swells up into a big hive and itch like crazy. The mosquitos in Kauai were hardcore--they came at you over and over. A couple times, I was sitting on the bed with Naomi and I'd see a mosquito flying straight at me. Really. And one night, as I was half-asleep, I heard one buzzing around my head. Seriously. I was worried that the kids, especially Naomi, would get bitten and swell up like me, but for the most part, they were ok. One day, Nicholas woke up with 13 mosquito bites on his legs and one on his armpit--and he had pajamas on. Sophia, on the other hand, who was sleeping in the bed next to him in nothing but her underwear, had no bites. I think on average, I got about 4 or 5 bites a day. While I do remember mosquitos from our trips to Hawaii, I think it was worse this time because it rained almost everyday that we were there, so there was lots of standing water puddles for mosquitos to breed. Blech.

The other not-so-fun part of the trip was that Naomi absolutely hated being in the car. From the minute we got in the car at the airport to the minute we got out of the car to fly back home, Naomi screamed her head off in the car. So much so that we all decided that the poor thing was lying on a bed of nails. I guess that after driving on the potholes in Chicago, she had no appreciation for the smooth, newly-paved roads between Poipu Beach and Lihue.

The flight home was a little bit shorter, but it kind of hit us hard when we got home. There is a 5-hour time difference between Chicago and Hawaii and we left there at 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday and arrived in Chicago at 5:50 a.m. on Thursday. We were all a little messed up on Thursday and it took us a couple of days to get ourselves back on track.

All in all, it was a nice trip to a very beautiful place. The kids had a great time and Nicholas said he wanted to stay in Hawaii forever. One of the nicest things about the trip was that the kids got to spend a lot of time with Great-Grandma. Poor Great-Grandma had to sit next to screaming Naomi most of the time that we were in the car, but she was sweet and just talked to her and held her little hand the whole time. I don't think the kids had ever gotten the chance to spend so much time with her and we were grateful for the opportunity.