So we’ve all been sick with a gastroenteritis including my mom. Because she’s had no appetite, she’s had very little to eat and drink over the last few days. Today she started feeling lightheaded and dizzy, feeling like she was drunk and then she also started vomiting again. I figured she’s pretty dehydrated so I snatched some IV supplies and gave her some IV fluids. She only got one liter tonight and I know she could use more but since it’s so late, we decided to stop for the night and continue tomorrow. Hopefully she’ll start to feel better soon.

So much for hoping that Dan doesn’t get sick. Seems like he’s joined the rest of the sick crowd. Sara is supposed to fly down to LA tomorrow for a visit with Kevin and Disneyland with his family. I hope she can still go.

However, despite everyone being sick, I still feel very lucky to have my family, my friends, my job, my house, and of course, my iPad. I could want for more but it wouldn’t make me any happier than what I have right now.

So maybe if I do short blog entries, it will be easier for me to keep blogging.

Everyone is sick, well, nearly everyone. I got a gastroenteritis last week and while the vomiting only lasted less than a day, the diarrhea was bountiful. Next to fall sick was Isaac, the puke-prone kid. Then Jadis, who as far as I can remember has never actually vomited before until last night, puked five times within several hours. Then it was my mom and then overnight, Sara decided she wanted to join the party. So far, Dan is the only one who hasn’t fall ill but that doesn’t mean he can’t join in the fun. Hopefully it won’t be too bad for anyone.

It’s the twins birthday today and they turn a whole one year old! This time last year, my little babies were born and I thought, what! Why are they so small? Well, they’ve grown up quite a bit and while they are little still, they’ve more than tripled their birth weight. Yeah babies!

I’ve been playing with Sara’s iPad and boy oh boy, is it nice! Now I totally want one! In fact, I am using it right now to type this post. All I have to do is convince Dan that he needs one too!

June 9, 2010

So I’m sitting at the Denver airport with my mom, on our way to Philly for Sara’s graduation. Since I don’t have a lot to do and I have lots of time (we have a 2 ½ hour layover), I figured, why not do my once a month blog entry?

I can’t believe how fast the twins are growing. I know every parent says that but it’s true. My sister made the comment the other day about how they look like little kids now and not like babies anymore. And I definitely see that they’ve “grown” into their faces. Both are crawling all over the place, Isaac especially crawls very fast. JJ can crawl fast if she wants to but she’s not usually in a rush to get anywhere while Isaac is always going from place to place. And they’ve started to interact with each other although not always in a good way. Isaac tends to follow JJ around and steal her toys. He grabs her hair and her clothes. At first JJ would just cry or give up the toy and get another one. But over the last few days, she’s started biting him. I counted six bite marks on Isaac’s arms the other day. Great, not a year old yet and already they’re fighting.

I’m planning their first birthday party. I know it’s definitely more for the adults than for the kids but it never occurred to me to NOT have one. Since it’s the first time I’ve ever planned a party for kids, I had to get some suggestions from other moms but it seems like it won’t be too hard.

Dan has been sick on and off for the last few weeks. It seems like he’ll come down with something mild, get better for a week, and then come down with something else. This time, it was ass-burning diarrhea. Poor baby. Whenever he gets sick, I always think about whether the Wegner’s is playing a part. He’s done so well since he was initially treated but I guess he could always flare up although I think the fact that he responded so well to therapy is a good sign. Well, I hope the month of on-again off-again illness is soon over for him.

In other news, Sara was accepted to the DrPh program at UCLA which she is quite happy about. I think it’s kind of fun to return to your undergraduate college, especially if you had a good time and some good memories. It would have been fun to return to Davis for a spell. Anyways, she is moving back to LA soon but will be spending most of her summer with us. Yeah! I always like having her around and maybe Kevin will come up too.

My cousin Alex (who is Candy’s husband) just moved to Berkeley from Hong Kong. He accepted a post-doc program there and will probably be there for two years. I was all prepared to take time off to help him get settled but he seems quite a capable young man and has managed very well, renting a room, opening up a bank account, doing grocery shopping, finding a church and going to work. He drove up last weekend and I had a nice time talking to him. I like him a lot and hope to be able to spend more time and get to know him better in the future. And of course, I am hoping to see Candy sometime soon although we have chatted a few times on Skype.

In pregnant news, Alicia and Bouakham are pregnant and I can’t wait for their babies to be born! It’s fun how all of your friends tend to get married and have kids around the same time as you.

I’m not sure if I ever wrote about it but Henrik and Andrea had their baby girl in February. Her name is Naomi Michelina Lemos and she is adorable. She’s growing fast too. It would have been cool to have the twins and her grow up together but alas, the Lemoses (is that the correct plural spelling) are likely moving to Rochester this year. Henrik was accepted into their PhD program in philosophy. Fancy that, a REAL PhD! Hopefully they will plan on returning to California at some point.

Which brings me kind of the idea of traveling with the twins. I had initially planned on bringing the twins on this trip but decided against it. We weren’t staying for very long and most of the trip will be spent helping Sara pack and that would be really hard to do with two one year olds crawling around, getting into everything. Plus, the idea of flying with them is a little intimidating. I realized now just how easily portable they were when they were younger. They were smaller, easily entertained, very few needs, and slept a lot. Now, the idea of having to keep them entertained, on my lap, for hours at a time is a little scary. But I also want to be able to travel and see people so I think one of these days, I’m just gonna bite the bullet and remind myself that it’s a rite of passage to having screaming kids on the plane.

Okay, this is about the longest posting I’ve done in a while. Gotta save some thoughts for later.

Well, I am just getting over a gastroenteritis. Plenty of vomiting and nasty diarrhea and some fevers but looks like I’m over the hump and well enough to back to work tomorrow after calling in sick today. I really really really hope I didn’t give it anyone else, especially the babies. Keeping my fingers crossed.

My mom has been home for a few days. She’ll be there for two weeks before returning back here. The tentative plan is that she’ll be returning back home permanently in the summer time which means it’s time for me to seriously look for some child care. I’ve been really dreading it but it’s a task that needs to be done. I really wish I could take care of them myself. I feel some guilt in having to hire someone to take care of them. I didn’t feel quite so guilty with my mom since she’s family. But the idea of having to hire someone else makes me really question, should I be working so much that I can’t take care of my own kids? I hope I get over it soon because I need to get started to look for a nanny or two.

I’ve embarked on a project to scan all of the photos I have laying around. It’s an effort to 1) archive all the physical photos into digital format and 2) reduce the amount of clutter we have in terms of photo albums and photo boxes. I also want to create one photo book for our wedding photos and one of the kids’ first year.

Okay, I think I’m gonna get ready for bed since I’m working tomorrow and if I get ready now, I might be asleep in a hour… night night.

How is it already May, almost a whole month after my last post? And what happened to my “gonna post more”? I suck. Okay, I’m over it.

My mom is going home for a two weeks. While I know I’m gonna miss her, it’ll be a chance for me to see how it’ll be without her. Never mind that I will have my mother-in-law with me. So the tentative plan is that my mom will move back home in the summer time which leaves me and Dan in need of child care. I am a little nervous about all of this and am dreading to have to go through the nanny searching process so I’ve been kind of avoiding it but I know I have to do it sooner or later.

I bought a treadmill. I have been walking on it a few times a week and hopefully I can ramp it up and walk on it most days of the week (and maybe perhaps even run!). I need to get back into some kind of shape.

The babies are growing fast. They crawl very well and now are cruising. That also means the child proofing has begun in earnest and the babies fall several times a day. Nothing too bad though. The worst thing so far is Isaac falling off the cuddle lounger (a whole foot off the ground) and JJ falling and hitting her lip against a table so she’s got a bruise and abrasion on her upper lip. But so far, no major causalities.

It seems like Jadis, over the last week or so, has decided that she doesn’t want to be left behind. All of a sudden, she’s doing things, all at once. For example, Isaac has, for the last two months or so, been able to put the pacifier in his mouth by himself and over the last few weeks or so, has learned to find the pacifier in his crib during the night. Jadis, up until about several days ago, never showed any interest in learning how to put the pacifier in her mouth correctly. Then one day, about two days ago, while I was waiting for her to settle down for her nap, she started whining so I got up and reached in to the crib to get her pacifier when lo and behold! She grabbed it and put it in herself! I was so stunned and so happy!

She also finally learned to roll over from her tummy to her back. She learned to roll from her back to her stomach very quickly but it took her another month to figure it out the other way. She continued to not like being on her tummy as much but would tolerate it better now that she could always just roll over if she wanted. She started to inch backwards as she started to learn that she could move while on her tummy and for several days, that’s all she did. Then, over the two days, all of a sudden, she’s learned how to get in a sitting position from laying on her stomach and she’s started getting on her knees and crawling. I saw her crawl on her knees towards me for the first time today. She also now pulls up to stand and will pivot around. And today, she stood ON HER OWN for a few seconds!

Also, over the last two weeks or so, she’s started to get much more verbal, making a lot of sounds, like Isaac. While the variety of sounds she makes isn’t as large as Isaac, it still seems impressive because she basically went from a very quiet baby (the only sound she would make is a whine if she wasn’t getting what she wanted, an occasional laugh, and crying) to babbling up a storm.

Isaac has been doing all of this with him reaching his milestones at a more regular pace. Jadis just seemed to lag behind until now and now she can do pretty much anything he does.

It’s cliched but I have to say it, how fast kids grow!!

Gretchen Rubin is an author of “The Happiness Project”. She also maintains a blog with the same name. Her deal was to spend a year trying become a happier person and document the process. In honor of that, here’s is an update of my “Happiness Project.”

On March 12th, I wrote about some things that I could that would free up some time I waste and using it towards more happy things. One of my goals was to decrease the amount of time I waste on Facebook. My goal was to check Facebook twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. Well, it hasn’t gone quite that smoothly. I find that while I don’t check it quite as often as before, I still do check more than twice a day and oftentimes, check updates on my Droid. The idea of actually just deactivating my Facebook account has occurred to me but I am reluctant to do it. I think Facebook has made my life happier in a lot of ways. I’ve connected with people that I have not seen or talked to in many years. I’ve gotten to know a lot of my colleagues a lot better. And I stay in touch with some people a lot better through Facebook. But having said all that, I think I can still cut down on my Facebook time but still have all the benefits of staying in touch. So, in the spirit of that, I will do a few things.

1) I will continue to check Facebook twice a day, once in the morning when I get up and once in the evening before I go to bed.
2) I will try not to check Facebook during the day. I will however, answer messages that are sent to me through Facebook.
3) I will try not to check Facebook on my Droid.

Other goals I am trying to work on involve watching less TV, reading more books, exercising. I will write about these later.