Baby Sofia Milestones, Entry No. 12: Swimming, Singing, Dancing, and yes, more Reading

We've had a bunch of Baby Lukas milestones posts as of late, stealing some of Big Sis' thunder. But while Didi (little brother) has been busy sitting, crawling, and eating cheese sammiches, Fifi has not been resting on her laurels either, not by a long shot!

Frequent readers will know that last winter, Fifi tried some swimming lessons. While she was unsuccessful in learning to swim over the course of about two months, she still retained the basic concepts of holding her breath and kicking in the water. Fast forward to the warm (scratch that - blisteringly hot) Florida summer and I took it upon myself to pick up where we left off. Before long (at 32 months), Fifi was swimming all by herself to and from the edge of the pool. She's almost able to make it all the way across (width-wise) our community pool, and is perfectly comfortable jumping into the pool. Of course, this is a bit of a double edged sword - now I have to pay special attention when she's near water!

Swimming from Aunt Sara to Aunt Melinda

Fifi's always had a great ear for music, and it's showing now more than ever. With her primary language being Chinese, she can sing a pretty wide range of Chinese children/folk songs, even some fairly complex ones. But what really surprised me is how she is able to identify songs from movies, such as The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Tarzan, or even strictly instrumental pieces from Bambi and Lady and the Tramp. She does a pretty good rendition of "Something There" from Beauty and the Beast, and was even able to hum the theme song from the Korean Drama "Queen Seon Deok" just from hearing me hum it, despite never actually having watched the show! It's a really lovely song, and a wonderful drama too, if a bit long:

Observing Fifi's enthusiasm for music, it was only natural to put her in dance classes. So we enrolled her in the Creative class at a nearby dance school. At first, she was a little tentative and wasn't sure what to do. But by the second lesson, she was fully invested, and even complained in the third lesson when Ms. Stephanie was not able to distribute animal crackers like she did in previous weeks! Fifi is nothing if not a stickler for routine!

Getting ready for the first class!

Breaking away from crowd...

Donuts

Animal crackers! In her last lesson, Ms. Stephanie ran out of crackers. Fifi made sure to remind her that it's part of policy to get crackers at the end of each class.

A lot of extracurricular activities for sure, but that doesn't mean Fifi neglects her studies. She's finished the first book my colleagues brought back for her from China (all 40 stories/poems) and is about 1/4 of the way through Book 2! At this stage, she knows enough characters that we don't even have to read it for her first - she's able to make a reasonably good first pass at a new story. I estimate that she probably knows around 500 characters at this point!

She's also making a good attempt at learning to write as well. She has already filled up all the pages of her notebook with practice Cs, Os, rectangles, triangles, As, Ws, and Ms!

While I'm really impressed at her progress, I'm most encouraged that our "experiment" seems to be paying dividends. Spending a lot of time encouraging her to learn and practice seems to have gotten her into the right mindset and enjoy learning. It's a lot of work for us, especially for my amazing wife, Cherry, who has spent countless hours teaching Fifi but clearly has done an equally amazing job! I definitely encourage fellow parents to invest the hours and effort!

Baby Lukas Milestones, Entry No. 4: Daddy 2 - Mommy 0

Just a few weeks from our last Baby Lukas milestones post, but as any parent knows, you can never plan for when your kid will reach another milestone! Or, in the case of this post, another three or four!

Milestone #1: Teeth and Solids

That's right - in our last Baby Lukas milestones post, I alluded to the two swollen nubbies on Lukas' bottom jaw. Since then, they have evolved into proper teeth, which he has promptly put to good use! Lukas is really excited about eating solids, and we have been a bit more liberal in letting him eat various things - much moreso than we were with Fifi. The list so far includes:

• Baby rice cereal
• Broccoli
• Beans
• Pork
• Lemon (for a good laugh, take a look at babies eating lemon on YouTube!)
• Ice cream
• Cheese sammich!

Omnomnomnom... I love cheese sammich!

Teef!

Milestone #2: Sitting Up!

We were just working in the kitchen, preparing dinner, and we laid Baby Lukas on his tummy just outside the kitchen. A little chopping here, a little sauteeing there, and the next thing we know, when we turned around to check on him, there he was, sitting up all by himself! He's gotten pretty good at grabbing the sides of his crib, or any other structure, to try to stand up, though he doesn't have the sense to not let go when he's fully vertical - so he's had a couple of hard falls as a result...

Milestone #3: Crawling!

Ahhh... yes, true mobility. Now we're in for some real trouble:

Milestone #4: Blabbing!

Last, but not least, Baby Lukas is saying something consistently! As with Baby Sofia, Baby Lukas' first repeating words are "Ba ba ba ba...", which roughly sounds like the word for "Dad" in Chinese (and just about every other language, for that matter...).

As much as I'd like to take credit for this little moral victory, the budding linguist in me knows that "hard" consonants like "b" are easier to say than nasal consonants like "m", so it's somewhat natural for "baba" to come before "mama", but I'll bask in the glory a little longer!

Baby Lukas Milestones, Entry No. 3: Personality and Mobility

It's been a few months since our last Baby Lukas Milestones! As with previous Baby Lukas milestone posts, what is probably more interesting is to note some of the similarities and differences between the experiences of raising Baby Lukas and Baby Sofia.

Uncle Chris and Aunt Carrie came to visit!

In our last episode, we noted that Baby Lukas moved out of our room quite a bit sooner than Baby Sofia did. He seemed to take to it quite well, and at the time, we noted that Lukas seemed to generally be more amenable to doing things by himself, such as sleeping, or riding in the car. Well, now that he's about six months old, that has since started to change. Not dramatically, but the changes are definitely there.

The most notable change in personality is how accustomed Lukas is to being in the presence of company. He especially likes playing with his big sister, but generally speaking demands near full attention from someone at all times. He is very in tune with "signs" that indicate we may be leaving him alone for a few minutes. For example, I'll be playing with him, crouched down in front of his swing, but the moment I start to get on my knees to get up, he'll start to scrunch up his little face and cry. It's cute about 10% of the time but kind of annoying the other 90% of the time, as it basically prevents us from doing work around the house. As a result, our house cleaning style has shifted from taking a few hours and doing it all at once to more of a guerrilla-style clean what you can at once in a few minutes style!

The next major update is Lukas' increased mobility. It only seems like yesterday that he regained the ability to flip over, but now he is able to roll around and squirm to where he wants to go. He can't crawl - the coordination isn't quite there yet - but he'll get his results. His arm and leg strength are also pretty good - he can kind of stand around supported. He's gotten pretty good at sitting un-assisted as well:

It won't be long before he's fully crawling. In the meantime, we've noticed a couple of teeth peeking out on his bottom gums! It looks like his development is pretty similar timing-wise as his big sister, who was also quite an early mover/teether! If only he would eat like Fifi did - at this age, Fifi was downing 40-45 ounces of milk a day, 8 ounces at a time - Lukas is lucky to finish 35 ounces in any given day and often struggles to finish 5 ounces in a sitting. He better get on that because we have a lot of breast milk to go through:

Breast Milk 1 : Freezer 0

Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be hurting his growth that much. He measured in at his 6-month checkup at 26 inches and 17.5 pounds, which are 24th and 50th percentile, respectively. He's always been a bit smaller, relatively, compared with Fifi, who was consistently above 70th percentile in her infant months. You can tell especially by comparing their arms at around this age - Fifi had those trademark baby "Michelin-Man" arms, whereas Lukas' arms look like shorter versions of regular adult arms:

Fifi's arms were chunkier at 6 months