Dinosaur loot bags for the kids (you can also peep the cookie bags in the box for the adults, the “happy birthday” cake banner on the bottom as well as one of the clues, “fern”,  for the scavenger hunt which was ripped off by one of the kids)

Week 157 motherhood journey with 3-year-old and 9-month-old: 

• September 14, 2023:  I was able to get in my first facial since the pandemic began and giving birth (to the firstborn!).  I felt comfortable enough to attend a facial.  It was so relaxing and nice and also lovely to catch up with my previous beauty facialist again!  We chatted about kids more this time since she has 2 kids too.
• She said she’s been losing a lot of hair postpartum as well!  Why am I still losing hair at month 9 of postpartum? 😦
• She alerted to me how expensive extracurricular activities can get for kids now.  Her daughter attends piano and ballet classes as well as English and math classes after school!
• The baby is crawling around like a bug now.  So fast I basically barely saw her first crawls.  She likes to crawl underneath the play table to look for toys and dig them out from the boxes lol.
• Got the IKEA Mammut kids’ table and 4 chair set from marketplace for $45!  A steal (it would have been $159 in total before tax!).  Also got a $5 smaller table too.  ^_^
• The baby is sleeping well in the new bed with the bed rails.  She liked grabbing and picking at the plastic cover of the mattress.. even ripping part of it. 🤦🏻‍♀️
• The baby eats quite a lot.  She can finish half a bowl of congee with some egg in it.
• The toddler has a really good appetite these days.  She always say she’s hungry.  So we keep feeding her snacks and meals constantly.  Growth spurt.
• September 20:  The baby eats pretty quickly and can eat bigger spoonfuls of food now.  She actually prefers holding the food item herself to eat.  We were trying to feed her in the high chair but she was getting grouchy until DH passed her a piece of eggplant and she stayed happily in the chair holding it and eating it.  She sucked on and ate several pieces too!  Good girl.
• So grateful for food-saving apps like Flashfood!  We’ve been buying all of our cow milk from the app since June and saving tons of money on buying milk (half price for food that is nearing its expiry date but definitely still safe to consume).
• The baby has been inching and crawling so quickly and so fast.  I can leave her on the play mat to crawl around.  She goes from one side to the other really quickly.  We are afraid of how fast she will be to catch when she is a toddler and walking and running!  Haha.
• The baby also crawls “funny” for the time being because she is just starting to crawl.  She uses one arm more than the other so she is kind of lop-sided.
• This past week has been spent preparing for the toddler’s 3rd birthday party!  It was me and DH’s first time ever hosting a birthday party for more than just our immediate family members.  We had about 40 people RSVPed for the party.  Unfortunately, a good number of my core friends (with babies too) could not attend due to prior commitments (bad timing; 2 had weddings to attend, 1 had a baptism to attend, 1 had another birthday party to attend, and 2 were out of the country!)  Ah, alas.  And then a few days prior to the party, DH’s core friend with 2 kids could not attend too because they caught the rona.  So unfortunate.  On the upside, a friend who previously said she could not attend was able to attend.  But all in all, it would have been really nice to have more of my core friends attend because I’m not sure when will be the next time that we host such a large party.
• We rented the condo party room of my mom’s friend — the same one where I had my bridal shower.  There was a lot of logistical things to sort out and I’m so glad that DH’s brother was able to help us on the morning of to pick up food with DH and set things up.  After this experience, we have learned that leverage is the best tool to use when organizing a big party like this.  (You would think that I would know about “leveraging” since I was part of a MLM years ago lol.)  A lot of my friends were incredibly helpful on the day of; they helped me set up and also tear down and clean up after the party.  I wouldn’t have been able to do it all myself (my hands were full — either I was holding the baby or the toddler was clinging on to me).  I’m just so grateful for my friends that day for helping out.
• I would say the party was a great success.  With the exception of the food being late, I think everyone had a great time.  We had bought a kid’s play tent, a bean bag and ring toss game, aforementioned kids’ table and chairs (came in clutch for the party), and a dinosaur rug.  We borrowed five sets of toys from the library (as well as as a hot water tank for drinking water).  We brought the singing frog chair and bead maze from home.  We set up a colouring page station and toys for the kids to play with.  DH had drawn a “pin the tail on the dino” picture (but we didn’t get around to playing it — so unfortunate).
  • After eating, I gave the older kids the scavenger hunt page so they could go around the room to find all the dinosaur-related items.  The kids really enjoyed it; I could tell.  I was so proud; I thought of this game just a few days before the party and spent a few hours making it and finding clipart online to make it.  (It’s so unfortunate that DH’s colour printer at home didn’t work and we had to rush out to print it at the last minute — Staples wasn’t open until 12 p.m. on a Sunday, so the last resort was printing at the local library which took a long time because their computers were slow.  Printing also wasn’t cheap!  He spent $18 on the colour pages….).  I was inspired to make this game after the toddler and I had played it during the summer this year at the library.  It was a fire safety themed game, so I made ours a dinosaur theme.  (Her birthday party was dinosaur-themed!)
• I also found a dinosaur PJs set on Facebook marketplace just in time!  It doesn’t look like PJs despite it being labelled as such.  The toddler was so happy to wear it (brand new pink dinosaur shirt and dinosaur-covered pants) that day.  Yay!  The baby also wore the “taco-saurus” green onesie.  DH wore a “it’s arm day” T-shirt which has a dinosaur on it (but he had a sweater on top so nobody actually saw it lol).  I would have worn my “mama-saurus” T-shirt that DH got for me for my birthday after the firstborn was born, but it is not nursing friendly so I did not wear it.
• We had plenty of food.  I’m really proud of the menu we thought of and I’ll share it here for memory’s sake so we can look back on what was served (and in case we want to host future parties):  cheese party pizza from Pizza Nova, one whole suckling pig from the First Markham Place BBQ shop, fried rice and e-fu noodles and spring rolls from Yan Can Cook, butter and flaky egg tarts from Markham Cafe & Bakery, mini croissant sandwiches from Longo’s, homemade greens salad with French dressing, Ziggy’s potato and egg salad, homemade BBQ chicken drumsticks, sliced tomatoes, pineapple and cantaloupe and honeydew (care of TGTG), chips and popcorn (that I should have opened sooner for people to snack on), chocolate chip and banana chocolate cupcakes, hot water (for Chinese tea), cranberry juice, apple juice, honey yuzu lemonade, canned beverages, beer.  And a plain chocolate sheet cake from Costco which we decorated with DH’s homemade birthday banner and some dinosaur decor from Temu.  We also bought the “happy birthday” dinosaur banner, tablecloth, and dinosaur cupcake decor from Temu.  We had Costco cookies for the adult loot bags.  For the kids, they had some fruit bars and Goldfish crackers.  For the kids with a peanut allergy, they got some Bearpaw nut-free cookies.  Oh, and the kids’ loot bags were purchased from Dollarama.  DH saw the cute dinosaur loot bags and we decided to get them.  Originally, we were just planning to give the kids’ loot bag in a simple paper bag.  The dino loot bags were too cute and on theme to pass up though.
• We were also inspired by the two kids’ birthday parties we attended recently.  We knew we had to step up our game after attending them lol.  One had rented a bouncy castle and had a big spread of BBQ meats, homemade pasta and salads, large dessert and fruit trays and ice cream cake while the other was at an indoor playground with tons of homemade Filipino food and sandwiches and homemade cakes and snacks.  Both parties gave out loot bags with the kids’ names on them, so that’s what we did too.  We didn’t know that was a thing until we attended the parties lol.
• I had prepared a photo slideshow too of highlight memories and photos of the toddler from the past three years.  There were a total of 380 photos.  It reminded me of how I prepared our photo slideshows for our wedding the night before too lol.  This was easier though because everything was on my phone and computer already (no photos to scan; it was only three years worth, and most photos were already favourited on my phone).
• The toddler, despite it being her birthday celebration, was at the peak of her uncomfortableness.  She did not like people coming up to her to say hi her to greet her “happy birthday” lol.  She did not like being in the centre of attention at all and shied away from most friends and family.  Fortunately, she was fine when everyone gathered to sing happy birthday to her in front of the cake.
• The baby was also uncharacteristically fussy at the beginning of the party too.  She was hungry but could not nurse because she was so distracted by everyone and everything around her.  I had to pull up a chair in the kitchen to nurse her.  And then she was really overstimulated and tired, so grandma put her in the car seat, turned on the lullaby music, and rocked her to sleep.  After she woke up, she was back to her happy social self and let others hold her.  Yay.
• The toddler was back to her regular talkative self too when everyone left lol.  Ah, what are we going to do with you…
• It was really great to see my friends at the party and for them to meet my kids.  I haven’t seen some of these friends since my wedding in 2019…
• Oh, and we had an ice cream making station at the party too!  After that creative chefs class with the toddler a few weeks ago where we made ice cream, when DH heard about it, he said we should do it at the party with the kids.  It was a great idea!  When we got around to it at the party though, it was after the cake cutting and some people had to leave already.  Too bad a few kids weren’t able to try making the ice cream as I’m sure they would have had fun.  (The kids at the party ranged from 2 months old to 8 years old.  The 2 to 8 year olds were at the perfect age to try this activity.)
• And because people were leaving around this time, we said good-bye to them and took photos before they left, so I wasn’t able to man the station or make the ice cream with the toddler.  I don’t think grandma saw much of the ice cream making either (since she wasn’t there at the creative chefs class when we did it).  Two of the kids made a giant cup of vanilla ice cream!  It looked great and they enjoyed it.  We have 3 containers of half & half cream left over from the party so we’ll be making that at home in the foreseeable future.
• It was a fun party and I’m so grateful for everyone who made it.  We can’t foresee ourselves hosting a party like this every year and especially because the toddler will grow up to have her own friends.  Future birthday parties might not involve the friends of mine or DH’s.  But we will see.  Now that we did it once, we can do it again and will be more efficient because we know to ask for people to help us next time.  Instead of DH and his brother navigating the busy streets of Hwy 7 to pick up pizza and cake and sandwiches and Chinese food from 4 different vendors, we will ask friends next time to help out too.  The dino theme was fun too.
• The baby turned 9 months old this week too!  The baby still seems so “baby” to us.  Maybe because we don’t spend as much time as we did honing in on her skills — we have to split our attention with the toddler; it’s just a fact of life that the firstborn will get more attention because they had our full attention with no other siblings the first time around.
• The baby likes to grab things.  She’s been doing it for a few weeks — loving to grab my hair to play with it.
• The toddler still doesn’t like the baby touching her or touching her toys or being too close to her.  Sometimes the toddler doesn’t even want the baby looking at her. 🤦‍♀️  We can’t control others like that, my dear….
• I finally was able to get a spot to the EarlyON special event — trip to the fire station!  Last time in the summer, both dates were full and I didn’t know I had to jump immediately on to pre-register for them.  Like I said before, Markham and Richmond Hill parents are intense and book spots immediately when the calendar is opened.
• The kids played around on the field with balls and bubbles and rackets before we walked over to the fire station together as a group.  The firefighters were ready for us and let us know that they were a real live working station and that they could be called to an emergency at any time.  They did a test drill with a ringing tone where if there was a real emergency, the fire truck and the firefighters would have leave and we would all have to walk to the left side of the wall to make space for them.
• The firefighters opened various compartments of the fire truck to show us and explain what the tools were.  I mean the kids in the EarlyON group were between 2 and 6 years old so some of the language they used to describe their equipment wasn’t very easy to understand for them, but it’s still cool for them to see a real fire truck and firefighters.  It’s interesting because I think in the group of 12 kids, only my 2 daughters were girls.  The rest were boys…  Why?  Why is it that only boys attended?  Or why is it that the parents didn’t bring their daughters to attend?!  Fire trucks and firefighting is not a masculine-only activity or topic!  This stuff makes me so mad because society should be improving and we shouldn’t be limiting certain topics to males or females.  Females can work in the fire industry too!  They should be interested in it and they can only be interested in it if parents choose to have their daughters involved from an early age.  One of the boys had brought his toy fire trucks there too; he must be a big fan of them.
• After the firefighters showed us all the compartments of the fire truck (we saw the ladders in the back, the “jaws of life” tool [the sound of it scared the toddler a bit], different types of long and heavy hoses, all the levers), we were invited to get into the fire truck.  We were the second to climb up and I’m glad that my mom brought the baby up too.  (It’s so funny because the baby was sleeping in the car seat stroller but once we arrived to the fire station, she woke up.  She doesn’t like missing any of the action haha.)  I asked one of the firefighters to take a photo for us (which turned out to be a nice one) before we climbed back down.  After I took a photo of grandma and the kids in front of the fire truck, we were going to switch so that she could take one for me too.  But then, we heard the tone go off.  There was a real fire emergency!  Everyone jumped off and walked to the left side of the fire station as we did before for the drill.  The firefighters all jumped in the fire truck and the garage door open and the fire truck left.  Wow.  We were so lucky to be able to get on to the fire truck for a photo and tour before it left.  And then I heard the boy with the toy fire trucks cry.  He was so sad because he missed the opportunity to get on to the fire truck!  There were 12 kids and only 4 of us got to go on.  Bad luck for the other folks unfortunately…
• The EarlyON event finished early since there was nothing else to see and the firefighters all left.  We walked to the nearby park for some fun before leaving to the medical clinic.  The toddler enjoyed brushing sand off of the merry-go-around…   I nursed the toddler in the open park and sunlight.
• Both kids had their medical checkups at the same time for the first time ever!  The toddler was there for her 3-year-old wellness check and the baby was there for her 9-month-old checkup.  Yay for being able to coordinate them both to the same timeslot to save time.
• The toddler previously said she didn’t want to go to the doctor’s when we told her about the visit ahead of time.  Luckily, she did fine.  She didn’t cry.  She listened when the nurse asked her to stand on the scale to measure her weight and height.  And in fact, it was the baby who cried bloody murder when the nurse took her weight and height.  The baby knows “stranger danger” now and cries when the person in front of her is unknown to her (usually).
• Both kids had normal growth records — about the 50 percentile.  The pediatrician asked if the toddler:  started to speak in full sentences yet?  Yes.  Can go up the stairs?  Yes.  Can flip the pages of a book?  Yes.
• For the baby, he asked:  Can she make sounds like “da da, ma ma”?  Yes, she can make sounds but not particularly voicing it to us.  Can she sit up independently?  Yes.  Can she pull herself up?  Um, kind of, but she doesn’t always have the opportunity to do that…  Can she look for objects that are under a blanket?  Or look for objects that she knows are behind her?  Yes.  We haven’t really tried to put a toy underneath a blanket for her to find though.
• It’s interesting to note that we answered affirmatively and without hesitation to all of the questions about the toddler’s milestones.  And in fact, the toddler has achieved all of those things months ago.  She has been talking in full sentences and walking up the stairs and flipping pages of a book for a long time now, even since January of this year (so she would have achieved them by 2.5 years old already).  Meanwhile, the baby’s milestones aren’t as obvious to us.  It was an eye-opening appointment for DH and I to realize that we really need to spend more time with the baby.  We have just kind of left her to flounder because the toddler takes up so much attention and calls for our time all the time.  The baby can do those things the pediatrician asks of her.  We just need to pay more attention.
• The pediatrician checked their eyes and breathing and everything was fine.  He told us the next appointment for the toddler is next year when she’s 4 and involves two immunization shots.  The baby comes back at 1 year old in December for her shots as well.
• I love how our appointments with the pediatrician are always so efficient and fast.  We never have to wait more than 10 minutes in the waiting room or in the doctor’s room.  And the appointment itself is always less than 10 minutes too. ^_^
• The baby at 9 months weighs almost exactly what the older sister weighed when she was 9 months old too!  This is shocking because the secondborn is chubbier and weighed more than the firstborn did at birth.
• We asked the doctor about when the baby can start on dairy.  I remember for the firstborn last time, he said to start dairy at 1 years old.  But I’ve read online how some parents are able to give dairy to their kids much earlier than 1 year old.  The pediatrician answered that we could give dairy starting now now that she’s 9 months — byproducts like cheese, yogurt, etc. but to wait a bit more (1 year old?) to start on cow’s milk to give her digestive tract more time to be able to digest them.  Yay!  This means we can broaden the baby’s palate and she can eat more of the things that we eat on the table.
• We had dim sum with the kids’ uncle and great-grandma again.  I feel like I haven’t had dim sum in a while and craved it.  My uncle was trying to banter with the toddler but she wasn’t interested and looked away.  The toddler ate an entire shrimp sui mai and shrimp dumpling.  She enjoyed the inside of a sesame dessert and half of a mini chicken tart too.
• The toddler continues to enjoy the lemon-infused water that grandma brings her when we go out.  So fancy that the toddler asks for and drinks lemon water lol.
• When we left the restaurant, an older man at another table noticed the toddler and probably thought she was cute and tried to wave and talk to her.  The toddler looked away and in fact used her hand to cover her face because she didn’t want to engage with the man.  I found it not-so-funny that the man then copied her and covered his face with his hand too, kind of like mocking her?  We don’t even know him.  I didn’t smile at him afterwards because I didn’t appreciate that he was trying to copy the toddler like that.  Just leave a child alone if you see that she doesn’t want to engage with you.  Geez.
• I brought the baby to the “Musical Babies” EarlyON class again.  This time , I had told my friend who has a 2-month-old baby and she was able to come too!  It was really nice to attend the EarlyON class with a friend.
• This week, there were less babies than last week.  The facilitators also did a round-the-circle activity by asking us to introduce ourselves and answer the question “what would you choose if you had a super power?”.  “Teleportation” is always my go-to answer for this question because I don’t like commuting and the time it takes to get to places.  It’d be amazing to be somewhere in a snap!  Other answers included “being able to sleep for one hour and feel refreshed so that I can get more work done”, “to be able to understand my baby/have my baby talk faster”, “have money grow on trees”, “be able to stop and freeze time and start it whenever I want”, “to be able to read people’s minds”.  Lol.  Some of these, I’m thinking, “Um, I don’t want to have my baby talk faster and I wouldn’t want to be able to read people’s minds” lol.  This was a fun activity and it was nice because everyone was very chill and we laughed about the answers.
• We did some new songs that we didn’t do last time.  Some were old like the elevator song.  The baby laughed and cried for it.  She must have felt the moving down quickly movement was fun but was also getting fussy.
• After the class (which didn’t end as early as last week), I joined the toddler and grandma in the library where they were reading and playing with toys.
• After our party this week, DH and I actually skimmed through the toddler’s birthday presents before giving them to her to open.  There were a few from the wishlist which were to be used as toys for the upcoming airplane trip and had to be “new”.  If the toddler saw them, she would play with them right away and they wouldn’t be brand new enough to keep her attention on the plane.  We let her open all of the birthday cards though (such pretty and cute cards).
• We used the grape cutter gift the next day and she loved eating the grapes that way.  She ate a lot more quartered grapes than she would have if they were just manually cut.  It must be the novelty of it.
• She wanted to read the book gifts right away.  There was an “airplane prep” book which we have read several times already now.  I hope this book will help her mentally get ready for the airport process and airplane trip.
• Reading the Peppa Pig book to her, wherein the first story was about losing a first tooth, the toddler is learning that eventually her baby teeth will fall out.
• We got several of the Yoplait yogurt drinks this week when we were doing our grocery run via Flashfood and they were only 50 cents each.  The toddler really enjoyed the vanilla-flavoured yogurt drinks.
• When the baby is crawling across the play mat and sees the magnetic tile creations that her sister has assembled, she loves to go and destroy it. 🤦‍♀️   Lol.  Typical secondborn behaviour to want to destroy the sibling’s creations.
• The baby can not only clap now but wave!  I usually wave hi to her and she’s picked it up now!  She clearly can bring one hand up and open to wave to us.  It is the CUTEST thing ever!  She responds to us waving.  She’s not quick but she will eventually do it.
• It was really funny actually at the party because my friends were trying to get the baby to clap.  And then after a while when the baby finally clapped, my friends were ready to walk away and I was like, “She’s clapping now and you guys are all walking away” lol.  Hahaha.