Nai-nai has arrived.

I've been in Canada for over a week now and am still adjusting to the snow. Of course, that is secondary to meeting my little granddaughter.
I have spent many happy hours playing with her and watching all the little things she does. She is just fascinating and so clever! I particularly love it when she "talks" with all her little oohs and gahs. She also makes a sound that definitely sounds like "hi!" She does something new everyday. She's now using her hands a lot, trying to suck her thumb and reaching out to touch things. I've had my hair pulled a couple of times already! She's a very active baby, moving constantly and babbling- she reminds me of Scott!
When I'm not playing with Kaitlyn, I go for walks either by myself or with Elsa. Its sometimes tricky in the snow but I'm learning to do the snow-walk The trick is to not hurry too much because there are some really slippery spots. I'm dealing with the cold quite well as I bought a nice warm jacket and as there is no "Melbourne wind", the below 0 tmperatures can be endured. I am amazed at the piles of snow everywhere and its quite funny to see the parked cars that have not been moved since before Xmas. You can hardly see the car for all the snow.

Grandma's coming

So today is going to be a busy day. It's 8:30 in the morning and I'm sitting in the waiting room at Nissan waiting for my car to be serviced. Then it's off back home to prep the room for my mum's visit.

My mum arrives in from melb later tonight. It's going to be interesting for my mum. She's coming in from summer in Oz to -13 degrees (with windchill) and snow in Canada. there's a severe snow storm warning for tonight, 10 - 20cm of snow tonight. So it will be quite a shock for mum.

Mum is staying here for the a month or so and she's here to see Kaitlyn for the first time. Needless to say my mum is uber excited.

Kaitlyn is doing really well. She gets a tad grumpy in the evening, but she usually sleeps between midnight and 1am. But the upside is that she sleeps right through until morning. Her record is almost 8 hrs.

Kaitlyn is in general a happy baby. She smiles and gah's like crazy and loves to bop around to music. I think my mum is coming at the right time, its really starting to become fun now.

sicky sick-a-kins

Well the girls are sick. Not sure where they got it from, but other than a night of an uber stuffy nose, I've managed to escape unscathed. Which is odd, I usually catch anything that hitomi gets and she's the one who got the flu shot this year (I Don't think flu shots should be available to the general public, personally)

Anyhoo we really feel for Kaitlyn, she's suffering from a runny nose, coughs and sneezes. Generally she's quite happy, all things considering and we can usually still make her smile. But when she's lying on her back her nose sometimes gets really clogged. That abrubtly wakes her up which results in a somewhat desperate and confused cry.

Anyhoo hopefully both hitomi and kaitlyn will be better soon and with luck I'll skip this particular cold.

EDIT: whoah, hitomi posted about this already. (Yes I'm just as shocked as you all are!)

Kaitlyn's 1st Cold

I had no idea that babies could catch a cold at 2 months!
Well it started off with just a stuffed up nose and I thought maybe she was allergic to the dust in the air. Earlier this week though, she got more congested and started coughing as well : ( Poor girl. It's been heartbreaking seeing her coughing so much.
Good news is that I took her to the doctor yesterday and found out that she just has a stuffed up nose and no congestion in her chest. whew! The doctor advised keeping a humidifier on and spraying saline in her nose to clear it up. Scott went and bought us a humidifier right away and after one night, Kaitlyn is coughing and snorting less. I think the humidifier is going to be our best friend during the dry winter months.

What are you doing up so early?

So my routine these days is to get up early and take the Elsa for a walk. I get up early enough that I usually take my flashlight out with me. (to avoid stepping in poo that you are trying to pick up!)

Anyhoo this morning, as per usual, I quietly snuck back inside. However today as I rounded the corner to the living room I was met by a smiling kaitlyn. She was beaming at me, wide awake and perched on hitomi's lap.

I dunno it came as a pleasant surprise. Especially after a dark and cold walk outside. Just one of the many times she made smile.

Anyhoo we'll have a small video and photo update soon, so watch this space.

Statistical Update

So last week kaitlyn went to the Dr. She got her 2 month immunization shots. She got weighed and measured too. She is now 4.5kg (10lbs), but has only grown another 1.5cm, but her head is 2cm bigger.

It's still surprising to me that some kids (not many) are born heavier than she is now at almost 2 months.

She got a total of 4 immunization shots, 2 in each leg, which was not very comfortable for her and seems a tad excessive to me. The first day was a little sore for her, apparently she cried like she hasn't cried before. And I know that must of got to hitomi. I hurt Kaitlyn once (I was holding her and she flopped backwards and I caught her a tad roughly) and I know i spent the next 15 minutes apologizing to her. Seeing her eyes well up in pain and then cry a cry that is very different from her normal cry... well it really tugs at your heart strings.

It makes you want you to protect them from all harm. But both hitomi and I follow the philosophy that overprotection is bad thing in the long term. We are there to catch her if she falls, not to hide her away oblivious of all dangers. In the event we don't catch her, we are there to help her back up again. Of course there are exceptions to that rule, and the name of the game is drawing the line in a reasonable bit of the sand. But I won't bore / offend our readers with our slightly different take on parenting....

Oh and Kailtyn finally started sleeping longer at night. For the past week or so, hitomi has been enjoying 5 hour continuous blocks of sleep. I usually stay up with kaitlyn and try to get her to sleep before midnight, while hitomi goes to bed, with luck we both get some decent sleep. Which is awesome!

Interactive Baby

So it's been awhile since my last post, and much has changed. Kaitlyn is getting really filling out now and it quite cute and cuddly. The past few days she's been sleeping rather well. She now seems to sleep at night for 4 hour blocks. Which is really nice for hitomi. Who can now get her 8 hours a night in two chunks, which is a far cry from barely any sleep at all.

Kaitlyn has finally out grown her newborn sized diapers, and our wallets are very thankful. She also alot more animated and interactive. Her personality is really starting to show.

She likes to listen to music, she likes to sit up and listen to you talk, she likes to practise standing and lately she likes to take small steps. When she stands she looks so happy, especially when her legs go from floppy to standing stiff. It's kinda like she's happy to get it right. She can't really hold her own weight, but i estimate I'm supporting less than half her weight.

When you talk to her, she leans her head forward and looks at you, like she is listening intently, every now and then she'll goo or gaah in response. She is getting quite vocal now, the other day i caught her chatting to a pot plant, and hitomi can tell the noises she makes when she wants to be picked up.

It's remarkable the change that we've seen in the past couple of weeks. Part of me thinks this is going to be alot of fun :) though hitomi may disagree with me there.

Smiling Dancing Baby

So here's our current best smiling baby pic. That big stripy thing is Hitomi's shoulder and this was one of many photo's. Kaitlyn still has her night and day flipped but we are working to try and fix that. Hitomi is slowly becoming a Vampire as she takes the night shift while I sleep so I can work.

Kaitlyn is getting bigger by the day, at last measure (a week and a bit ago) she was 3.5 kgs (7.7 lb) almost a full kilo heavier than her birth wieght. She's still rather tiny though and is still wearing Newborn sized diapers. (Which are expensive as they don't sell them in bulk packs)

She's able to hold her head up to some degree, and likes to look around. She likes to sit up (with our support) and will often grizzle to let us know that she wants to sit up.

We've also found that she likes to dance. To mashups no less. At the moment our latest groove is 2 many DJ's and when it's on she stares intently at the stereo. Then as we bop to the music she relaxes and enjoys the groove. Kinda cool actually.

Also when music is on in the room she seems more at ease, but gets fussy when people are talking and there's no music. So much so that we are considering getting an iPod dock for her room. LOL she's not even 2 months old and she gets her own iPod dock.

Long time no hear

Hey all,

It's been a week since our last post and much has happened since then. I'm back at work after 4 weeks off work and we are slowly trying to get back into the groove of things.

So that I'm relatively alert at work, Hitomi now does the night shift and I try to sleep as much as I can before I rise at 6am to get ready for work.

I get up, try to relieve Hitomi for a bit, get ready and take Elsa and sometime Kaitlyn for a morning walk.... it's pitch black outside now at 6am, so I have to take a flashlight.... or two. LOL

Anyhoo Kaitlyn is doing well, though she's a tad more grizzly than normal. She's awake a lot more and unfortunately that includes the middle of the night.

I definitely look forward to coming home each night and holding her in my arms. She seems much more aware of her surroundings now and she's quite taken by this plush frog that we have dangling from her crib. Especially when we squeeze it and it plays Rock-a-bye baby and it's cheeks flash red.

A couple of times I swear she's reached up to try and touch things and last week I think I made her laugh.

She sometimes smiles as she falls asleep and she started to fall asleep during one of our play sessions, so I tickled her and she let out a chuckle. Definitely sounded and looked like a laugh, but I haven't seen or heard it since.

She's a fidgety as ever and her legs are quite strong. If we stand her up she can almost lift her own weight, and we often find her with all her blankets kicked off.

I think both Hitomi and I are enjoying the experience, it's just the lack of sleep that makes it difficult.

Arms a Flailing

So when Kaitlyn gets upset, she gets upset! To avoid injury and for best dramatic presentation it is usually best to hold her at arms length to enable maximum limb rotation.

The baby whisperer

Introducing the Miya, the Baby Whisperer. She has the amazing ability to turn Kaitlyn from a scream ball of frustration into a soothing bundle of joy.

We've been taking quite alot of refuge at Hitomi's parents place lately. They provide us with dinner and give us both a 3+ hrs break to take much needed rest. This is when the baby whisperer comes in handy. She keeps Kaitlyn entertained while Hitomi and I sleep.

Combine this with Hitomi's mum's most excellent meals and what you have is a much needed break for hitomi and I. A service that we very very much appreciate.

You got what where?

Don't ask me how I did it, but I did. We were leaving for Hitomi's parents place when I noticed that I couldn't click in my seat belt. A closer inspection showed that some how a dime (10 cent coin about the same size as the an Aussie 5 cent coin) had somehow fallen into the seat belt clicky thing.

So stupidly I pressed the release button. (not sure what i was thinking, perhaps it would eject the coin? yeah right) To my horror, the coin moved from its vertical position to a horizontal position so that it was half in the slot and half under the release button. Crap!

Luckily I had my handy dandy flashlight (Fenix L2D if anyone cares) and my ever useful Swiss Army Knife Cybertool. After much jigging and a bent pen/poker bit later, the coin was free and we were on our way. Which was good, cause I thought that I'd have to dismantle the seat belt to get it out.

Anyhoo beware of small coins and seat belt clicky things.

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving (Canadian version)
This rather handsome bird was crafted by our Master Chef Sanae.

The dinner was amazing. Beautiful tender, juicy turkey with your choice of gravy or cranberry sauce. Sided with BBQ roasted corn, sweet potatoes and mushrooms. Our veggies included traditional Brussel sprouts, glazed carrots and a tossed salad.

And it wouldn't be a Japanese Canadian Thanksgiving without Freshly picked Matsutake (pine mushrooms) rice.... oh and of course no cutlery was harmed during this production, it was a chopstick only afair ;)

For more details of this scrumptious dinner please visit our picasa web album. or click on one of the thumbnails below. (sorry I didn't take anymore photo's of the food or people, we ate it too quickly and by that time I was too full on turkey and promptly fell asleep.)

I've been hit! I've been hit!!!!!

During a critical diaper changing operation, our operative Scott was sadly hit by some fart flung poo. When pressed for a comment Scott did not look happy and asked that this incident go unspoken.

This is the poo face

Yes this is one of those posts that will come back and haunt Kaitlyn later in life. This is her poo face. We have seen this face enough to connect it to the nasty diapers that come soon after.

Sleep at last!

So after I wrote about our little vampire yesterday evening, Kaitlyn decided that she was going to sleep most the night! Last night she let us sleep two 3-hour blocks with one feeding between the two. Wow, did that make a difference for us! We were way more awake today. I definitely felt more human today. I actually had the energy to put in my contacts for the first time since she was born! She has been spending more time during the day being awake, so maybe that's helping. We hope this sleep pattern is here to stay. We are keeping our fingers crossed as sleeping time approaches...

Our Little Vampire

As mentioned briefly in the last blog, we rarely see Kaitlyn awake during the day. The best time to catch her eyes wide open is between midnight and early morning. It would be nice to see her more awake during the day, but I guess that will gradually happen in good time. Unfortunately for us, it means that at least one of us will have to sacrifice sleeping at night. Something we took for granted all of a sudden has become such luxury. Usually though, I'm given the privilege to sleep thanks to my caring husband. (Thanks honey...)

Incredible Moving Pictures

Hi all here's a small video of Kaitlyn at her most active, which just happens to be at around 3 am in the morning these days. Enjoy






Also added some new images to Kaitlyn's Picasa Web gallery.

Huggies Vs Pampers

During our constant battle with pee and poo we've learnt somethings, amongst those things are that not all diapers are built the same. There are some definite duds in our opinion.

The hospital gives out pampers newborn diapers. At home we bought pampers sensitive newborn diapers. They were serving us quite well and the rather neat indicator strip which turned blue when the diaper was wet was handy.

But we deviated and decided to try huggies premies Gentle Care. Mainly because costco sold the bulk boxes. Well I'm afraid to report that during our trial o 30 diapers we experienced two leaks. One was on hitomi while she breast fed and the other was while kaitlyn slept. On that occasion it leaked out the back of the diaper, onto her clothes into the fitted sheet of her bed and into the mattress cover, which thankfully stopped it before it hit the matteres. (kinda reminds me of the acid from aliens...)

So we switched back to pampers, which are also easier to put on and we've had no leaks at all.

Anyhoo just our $0.02 CAD

Sorry were not here right now...

Hi all,

First of all we should apologize for not returning emails or phone calls. The last week has been so overwhelming and sleep deprived that we've fallen way behind in our individual correspondence 

Also if we've failed to pass on our good news to someone, we apologize, it was not on purpose to exlude you, we are just scatter brained at the moment.

So thank-you for all of the kind words they mean a lot to us.

All that being said, we'll be trying to update this blog as often as possible and I'll be posting more pics soon.. I promise!

Pee Ambush!

So I've discovered a new term... well technically two terms. Pee ambush and Poop ambush.

Kaitlyn is a master at both of these deceptive behaviors. As you can expect a Pee/Poop ambush is when you are caught off guard by pee or poop. Both of these ambush's can occur at any stage during a diaper changing operation. 

Which of the two is worse? Well a pee ambush definitely has a further range than the poop ambush but the poop ambush is far more potent and the cleaning consequences are quite diarrhoea... I mean dire.

Current intel has grouped the pee/poop ambush into 3 futher categories, which are described below.

• The ultimate ambush occurs when switching out an old diaper for a new and you are caught without a diaper. You have literally been caught with their pants down.
• The rush attack, is a less effective form of ambush, but still should not be underestimated. A rush attack or suprise attack isinitiated the instant a diaper is breached or opened. The pee variant of a rush attack can result in facial impact, while the poop variety is just plain nasty.
• the diaper burner is  a delayed attack and is mostly harmless. Be wanred that the annoyance factor, of this ambush,  grows exponentially with each successive attack  Unlike the other forms of pee/poop ambush, which require precise timing, the diaper burner's  arsenal deployment is simply delayed until  a new diaper has been loaded. Be aware that this form of ambush can quickly burn through your reserves of diapers and could lead to an oncoming ultimate ambush. 

I have devised some preliminary defenses to defend against these attacks. The impact of an ultimate ambush can be lessened with speed and a good setup (fresh diaper locked and ready for loading, never go in unprepared), while the rush attack can be quickly counted with the quick peek manoeuvre and the diaper burner can be thwarted with plain old patience.

Be forewarned never let  your guard down. An unwary changer is a easy target.

Can't Sleep clown will eat me

Hey all, first of all sorry for hogging all of the posts and for not posting images yet. I'll try and get hitomi to post her thoughts soon.

So we've nearly had Kaitlyn for a week now and it has been tiring to say the least. We are operating on a 2 - 3 hr feeding schedule. That's from start of feed to the start of the next feed. So our typical 2 hr schedule looks like this

1. Wake her up (if she's not already awake)
2. Change her
3. Feed her  (could take up to 45 mins)
4. Burp her
5. if she's not already asleep get her to sleep
6. Go to be for about an hour or so
7. start at 1 again

So yeah we are pretty worn out. if we are feeling really tired we may push the cycle out to 3 hours however if we do this kaitlyn is usually so hungry that she gets frustrated at the breast which makes the whole affair rather stressfull.

So we usually keep to the 2 hr cycle, and stretch it out at most the 2.5 hrs. Yeah it's crazy. We get up and we can't walk straight. We are super clumsy (well I am anyway) I even managed to pour boiling water on myself when sterilizing bottles. Doh. Don't worry I'm not badly injured I got my t-shirt off in time...

Anyhoo lets just say cutting up food with a sharp knife now scares the crap out of me!

Pee and Poop

So today I got pee'd on for the first time. I had just picked her up without a diaper on, when hitomi started making frantic noises, and I noticed that my hand... arm and shirt were wet. Luckily (or not) my shirt and pants took the brunt of the assault and the carpet was left relatively unscathed.

Asami the peanut

So as most of you know Kaitlyn was a really small baby. Weighing in at 2.6kg (5.7lb)

At birth she was only 47cm (18.5") but had a head circumference of 34cm (13.75"). Ouch!

Our Dr has been rather concerned with her weight and we been told to "top up" her 2 hourly feeding with formula. We are loathe to do it, but Kaitlyn has lost almost 11% of her original birth weight in 3 days.

A loss in birth weight is expected over the first 3 days, as usually a mother is only starts to produce "real" milk, prior to that the mother only produces Colostrum, while very important to development, does not actually help the new born gain weight. During this 3 day period, the absolute maximum weight loss is 10%

So yeah, they are a tad worried about her. I'm not so convinced. She's sooo tiny, so loosing 10% of initial mass would be very easy. Anyhoo so we've topped up the last couple of meals and have started pumping (ant we aren't having much luck with that).

I can't see how people are attracted to bottle feeding, there is a crap load of prepping to be done, it's not a simple like whipping out a boob for a meal, there's sterilising, there mixing of formula, there's refigerating, and then warming it up again. For mine the boob rules :)

Oh and the sterilizing involves you boiling the crap out of something for at least 10 mins, and then drying and re-assembling it, without letting it touch other non-sterilised things (ie: everything else in your house, including yourself). And I have mixed reports that I'm meant to do that before I use any of the sterile items. Holy crap.

Anyhoo, Kaitlyn's just finished her meal and she's in bed, so when she sleeps, we sleep.

I'll try and get more pics up for the next post.

Introducing Kaitlyn Asami

From Kaitlyn's Photo Album

Kaitlyn Asami was born on the Monday the 29th of September @ 6:06 am.

Her initial wieght was 2.6 kg or 5.7lb.

After a couple of extra days at the hospital, due to her small size, we were able to come home.

Now we are all home together, along with The Elsa (who is a tad confused why such a tiny bundle garners so much attention) trying to adapt to the < 2hr sleep cycle between feeds as we attempt to get her wieght up.

Anyhoo Kaitlyn just finished feeding, so now it's my task to get her quietly back to the crib....

The Elsa

Introducing the Elsa. The Elsa entered our life around 3 years ago.

I guess we consider her our first daughter, even though she's an old girl by dog standards.

She's half beagle and half jack russell. Which results in a relatively relaxed yet remarkably intelligent canine.

When we first adopted her, she was very quiet and for the first couple of weeks didn't seem happy, her tail rarely wagged and she seemed to miss her old family.

However over time she warmed to us and now we can't think of life before her.

Our Patio Garden

This summer, rather than trying to grow a bunch of herbs and veggies, we stuck with just two plants.  A basil plant and a orange cherry tomato plant.  It was a good thing we didn't buy more than one tomato plant because it grew so much and ended up taking over our patio!  Despite the cooler summer this year, we did get some tomatoes and basil : )

Asami (麻未)

So Asami is to be Kaitlyn's middle name. The Kanji for Asami (麻未) come's in two parts. Asa (麻) and mi (未)

Asa
is either a type of Japanese linen or is the name for the japanese symbol/pattern for protection against evil/bad luck (asa no ha). The image in this post is an example of the asa no ha pattern.

Actually the two meanings are a little more related. Asa is actually japanese hemp... yep hemp. Asa as in linen, is typically made from Asa (as in hemp). The Asa no ha pattern is actually a representation of a hemp leaf. It should be probably be noted that hemp doesn't have the same stigma in japan as it does in western countries.

Mi
the kanji that hitomi's mum has chosen for mi means future. Though with a different kanji it can also mean beautiful (that's the kanji that hitomi has in her name)

So together Asami as we've chosen it, means protector of future evil. Well that's how I'm choosing to interpret it. Unlike chinese names the characters in japanese names are not always combined together to create a meaning and can be read seperately.

I'll have to thank hitomi's mum for Kaitlyn's middle name. It was totally her doing. She originally suggested it, and she was the one who came up with the unique kanji for it.

Very Late Spring Cleaning

So we've been spending the last couple of weekends cleaning out all of the excessive material parts of our lives. This is generally good practice to do every spring, however this year we've waited until the late summer, pressured by the oncoming Kaitlyn.

Through this rushed exodus of useless items we've come to realise a few things

• Most of the crap is mine and is either a computer related item or toy related
  
• It is absolutely amazing how long you can live without previously thought of as essential items
• Rooms echo when they have less stuff in them.
• Boxes, why do I keep them? Really do i need to keep that old box that our router came in?
• It feels good to streamline your stuff. Less clutter is an awesome thing
• You cannot donate old computer monitors... you can only send them off for recycling
• Computer stuff becomes obsolete so quickly. What am I meant to do with a 20 GB HDD when something 10 times the capacity now average?

So Kaitlyn's room is pretty much functional now. It's not real kiddy like yet, but we can now say we are ready for her. A good feeling. So come on Kaitlyn, I can't wait to meet you... and now we are ready.

Welcome to our Blog

Hi There and welcome to the Chantani family blog. Our family is small right now, just the two of us, but we have a surprise on the way :)