Week 20 & 21- Season of Thanks

Things have been quite busy in the Ginn household these past couple weeks and thus the week hiatus. We were both sick with the flu, recovered, visited friends, cheered on our Bruins and celebrated holidays! Whew! With Christmas just around the corner I have a feeling things are only going to get busier from here, but it's nice to take a moment to capture memories and give thanks for all the blessings God has poured out on us. 


Week 20:


Sippy Cup- Since Karis has never taken a bottle despite much effort and pains, I looked in my stash of baby supplies and unearthed a transition sippy cup that is good for 4+months. Thinking I had nothing to lose, I tried it out with some apple juice (spiked with some medicine to help her go) and lo and behold she actually tried to drink from it. YAY! It was amazing to see her open her mouth to drink and even try to hold it herself. She gets most of the apple juice down her front, but it's a start. The most entertaining part of it all is that she has a love-hate relationship with the apple juice. She really wants to drink it and gets mad when Greg stops feeding her, but every time she takes a sip she kind of shudders her head either at the taste or the cold. It reminds me of my response to alcohol, haha.  
 

Baby Bruin- Saturday, November 17 was a momentous day in history. Our Bruins beat our rivals U$C in a wonderfully thrilling game. Karis dressed up for the occasion and we celebrated and watched over some tasty wings. UCLA, fight, fight, fight!






Screech!- Karis is definitely over her wonder week and is back to her chatty self again. This time she has added new octaves to her repitoire! She has now started to scream/screech just for fun. At first I thought she was in pain or something, but looking over she's just happily practicing out her new sound.


Archer- We are starting to see the beginnings of a stubborn streak and Karis is now beginning to show us her dislikes in other ways than just crying. She is now starting to fuss and arch her back when we place her in her carseat such that I need to distract her while I strap her in. Seems like she just doesn't like to be constrained anymore.

12 Hour Nights- Praise God Karis now sleeps a solid 12 hours straight, from 7pm-7am! Although we started to drop the dreamfeed at17 weeks, Karis wouldn't sleep until 8 or 8:30 and even then would have a rough time between 8:30-10pm crying and needing an extra feed here and there. Well, just at 20 weeks, with the time change last week Karis pretty solidly will sleep all 12 hours with maybe just a peep or squeak here and there.


Fly Away!-Karis has become a little thrill seeker. She loves it when I pretend to drop her, dip her or swing her up-side-down. She also love doing the superman with daddy and always smiles and laughs.



Week 21:
 

Swaddle Drop Success!- We finally dropped the swaddle after about a month of trial and error. I was leaving both arms by her face, elbows tucked into her swaddle and she would eventually get both arms out. I ended up not going in to re-swaddle and she surprised me by sleeping just fine! Finally, we just stopped swaddling for naps and night and put her in the sleep sack instead. She did great! It's fun to watch her suck her thumb or reach for the sides of the crib now. The only downside is that her tiny hands are freezing in the mornings!


Nap Tweaking- After much stress, headache and heartache, we finally have a plan that works (for now...I hope...)! This week instead of fighting the 45 minute nap battle, we moved to just 3 naps total (we were at 4 and sometimes even 5 naps per day!). What happened was that Karis would refuse to take a second nap before 12 noon despite how early she would wake up from her first nap. After 2-3 days of unsuccessfully putting her down after only 1-1.5 hours of waketime, I finally just kept her up for 2 hours after her first nap. Amazingly she went down AND made it past her 45 minute intruder to nap for 1.5 hours! So we decided to just keep her up past 12 and then put her down between 12-1 regardless of the amount of wake time. Then her last nap of the day will be between 3:30-4:30 for a quick 45 minutes and then bed between 7-7:30. It seems to be going well and I am glad not to have to fight over naps. Now she will generally fall asleep within 10 minutes and sleep for a minimum of 45 minutes, but often times longer. It is good to be reminded that although I had a textbook delivery, Karis doesn't have a user's manual and I need to just keep being flexible and combine helpful advice and research and wisdom with Karis' own cues and personality.  


Solid Sucker- Although our pediatrician has recommended we don't start solids until 6 months, we have been developing Karis' palette by letting her suck on hard fruit. She loves to mouth peaches and pears but is fickle when it comes to apples. We just have to be careful because if it is too ripe she'll take a bite out of the pear and I'll have to rescue it from her mouth!


Giving Thanks- It seems like just last month that I was anticipating Karis' first Thanksgiving and now it has come upon us already! Of course I had a little outfit prepared for her and enjoyed a mini photo shoot while she was still happy and not overstimulated by all the hubub.







We hosted our annual "California Asian Thanksgiving" inviting our Louisville friends to join us by bringing one Asian dish and one traditional American dish. We had mashed potatoes, sushi bake, yams, sticky rice, green beans, scallion pancakes and an Indian Masala turkey.

 

 

Greg took care of the bird.




And I tried my hand at a Pumpkin Caramel Cream Pie with Meringue.


We had a wonderful time!


Until next time!