What are you doing New Year's Eve?

Well, it's the end of the year...one of the best years of my life. And what will we do to celebrate? Well, probably just sit in front of the TV and see who Ryan Seacrest is going to smooch this year. Peter, Lauren, and I are still recovering from colds so we're not up for partying. Besides, when you have one of these at home, who needs to go out and party?

Oh Christmas Tree

We traditionally take down our Christmas decorations on Jan. 6 the celebration of the Three Kings. Before we take it down, I wanted to capture some of it since it is not only Lauren's first Christmas tree, it's ours as well. We never put up a tree before because we usually opened presents at our parents' houses.

This year we bought a fake tree (pre-lit!) and I don't know what side of the fake tree vs. real tree controversy you're on, but having the lights already attached is pretty darn cool (sorry, real tree advocates).

I've been collecting ornaments for years, and for the first time I got to lovingly hang each one. We decided to have a Filipino themed tree since I had a set of ornaments that I bought during my last trip to the Philippines made of Capiz Shells (a type of shell from the Capiz region of the Philippines) fashioned in the shapes of stars, bells, parols, candles, and angels. I also decked it out with some gold and red sinamay ribbon(a woven fabric made of fibers from the abaca tree native to the Philippines) . Luckily I found a tree topper angel made of capiz shells from Target, of all places. The other ornaments don't have a Filipino theme, but each one has a special meaning or a memory attached to it, like the palm tree from our last trip to Hawaii, the plastic slot machine from our 2003 trip to Vegas, and of course, the obligatory "Baby's first Christmas" ornament.

Capiz ornaments with sinamay ribbon

Baby's First...and Mommy's too!


Of course....


A carved ornament from Bethlehem..the REAL Bethlehem. Cool!


Some ornaments were hung with love but had to stay in the back of the tree...sorry Johnny!

I hab a code

Lauren got her first cold! She woke up Friday morning after a very restless night (poor thing was all stuffed up) with a drippy nose and a slight fever. She's ok now, but her eyes fill with terror every time I whip out the big green nasal aspirator. Now that she's feeling better, Peter and I are sick, but we seem to have it worse! We've been down and out with runny noses, sore throats, and muscle aches for the last two days. Poor Peter had to work today and Lauren's at Grandma's. I'm supposed to be taking a nap but thought I'd catch up on some posts.

Luhuran

Ahh...the holidays, the shopping, the decorating, the cooking, the Luhuran...

the what?

The LUHURAN! One of the most anticipated events of the year in our family...an annual event filled with love, music, fellowship, food, and best of all...FAMILY!

A prayer before the feast

The word "Luhuran" comes from the Tagalog verb "Luhod" which means "to kneel." Our family gets together to kneel! Well, no it's a lot more than that. Back in the day, in the old country, my mom's side of the family, the Cometas, got together at Christmas time and after the food and merriment, the kids paid their respects to the elders of the family. I'm sure the first Luhuran's were a little different, but we've tried to keep most of the traditions going. This is how the modern Luhuran goes:

First the kids have to sing or perform. They usually sing Christmas carols or read passages from the Bible about the Christmas story. After the show, the Aunts, Uncles, Lolos and Lolas (Grandparents) sit in chairs or couches around the room and all the kids gather in the middle of the room on their knees. They turn to each elder and together they greet them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. They then form a line (still on their knees!) arranged from youngest to oldest in front of each elder and one by one each child pays their respects by taking the hand of the elder and touching it to their forehead. We call this the "Bless" or "Mano." The elder then gives the child an "aguinaldo" or gift in the form of money...usually between 1 to 5$. It doesn't always have to be money, sometimes the elders will give gifts of candy or kisses and hugs. It's a sort of rite of passage in our family when you go from the "kneeling" to the "giving." It usually happens once you get married or graduate from college and get a job. Until then, you're still allowed to be on the kneeling end and score some serious bucks depending on attendance. But more than the money, the Luhuran's are about family. As the family grows, it gets harder and harder to get everyone together and this is our chance to keep those family ties strong and keep traditions that started back in the Philippines when our own parents were kids.

Lauren gets her first "aguinaldo." That's her cousin Keilah holding her.


It's all about family. Here are some young cousins getting to know each other.

The Elders. In the center is Reuel, a member of our church family in the Philippines.

This year, attendance was low due to conflicting work schedules and illnesses, but it was still a fun and memorable experience. My mom hosted the party so it was especially hectic at her house but it was all worth it to get together with my cousins. We even had a bit of worship time when my some of the cousins picked up their guitars and we sang praises in the living room. I don't mean to brag, but my family is really talented. My nieces, nephews, cousins, and siblings are all awesome and they use their talents at church to serve the Lord which makes it even more special.

The Cometa/Reyes Family Players

So Lauren experienced her first Luhuran. It was crazy. It was fun. It's our family, kid...get used to it.

Merry Christmas!

Whew! What a whirlwind! Here's how it all went down:

Christmas Eve:

This year I learned that there is such a thing as finishing up my shopping TOO early. I proudly and annoyingly declared to whoever would listen that I was done, done, done with my shopping as early as the first week of December. BUT!!! Combined with my knack for bargain shopping, and an innate need to shop til the last minute, I continued to shop to the very end (the deals got better and better as Christmas approached, I couldn't help it!) which led to overspending. But luckily for my family, they got lots and lots of presents. The tree at my moms house (see right) was overflowing with presents...I guess I wasn't the only one guilty of shopping too much!

And no matter how well I plan my lists, there is always someone that I forgot about out so we headed out for some last minute shopping on Christmas Eve morning. Peter waited in the car while I ran into Old Navy and SCORE!! last minute deals that were even better than Black Friday. Yahoo!



I dressed Lauren up in one of her many holiday outfits,
this time a red velvet outfit with green and read plaid bow accents and plaid ruffles on her butt. We attended her first Candlelight Service in the evening and I could've kicked myself for forgetting my camera. The congregation sang "Silent Night" while Peter carried Lauren and her face was softly lit by candlelight...it was so sweet and beautiful. It reminded me of attending these services as a kid with my dad and holding his hand while lighting our candles, being careful to keep the wax from dripping onto my fingers. I found myself missing my dad more this Christmas because I couldn't share Lauren's first Christmas with him.

After church, we returned to my mom's house to prepare our Noche Buena, a Filipino tradition of having a big family feast usually following midnight mass and followed by opening of presents. This year, our feast was made up of leftovers from the previous day's Luhuran (more on that in the next post). Chris came to join the festivities and when midnight came, the madness began. I changed Lauren into yet another holiday outifit, this time her Santa suit. I vowed to get more than 1 use out of each outfit!

Of course, Lauren didn't know what was going on. The packages were passed out but the opening of presents was delayed for a few minutes for a quick diaper change, I guess Lauren was passing out presents of her own (nyuk nyuk). We unwrapped our presents and wrapping paper flew through the air..literally!!! Projectiles of balled-up wrapping paper with trailing ribbons flew threw the air in our annual wrapping paper fight (more colorful than a snowball fight!) and though they were amused, both mom and Lauren had had enough by 1 A.M. and they retreated to her room where they went to sleep while we played with our presents.

Presents? Yum!

Our favorite presents? Lauren got an Ocean Wonders Mobile with a projection light show from Grandma, some super cute outfits, and a sippy cup with her name on it. I got some great books, a shiatsu massager (YES!), a digital photo frame, and Duran Duran's newest release. Peter got his wish, the HD-DVD box set of Planet Earth. But Peter and I both agree that our best gift of all was a little wriggling, bouncing, drooling, squealing package that didn't need to be wrapped in shiny paper or colorful ribbons.

Our favorite present!

And that was just Christmas EVE!!!

CHRISTMAS DAY:
We woke up Christmas Morning to open even more presents under the tree, this time at our house. We saved one gift for each of us...These will be our "Santa" presents when Lauren's old enough to get caught up in the hype. Peter woke up extra early to assemble Lauren's new bouncy chair...finally, a way for her to bounce bounce bounce without having to hold her up til our arms fall off! She LOVED IT !!! And what was in her stocking? Binkies, a teether, and hair clips.

We then headed out to Grandma P's house for Christmas lunch and even MORE presents!

Lunch was a crown roast of pork. Yummy!

What? More gifts?!

Whew, what a crazy couple of days. We went back to dinner at my mom's house and finally got some much needed rest and reflected on Baby's First Christmas. I can't wait for next year!!!

Four Months Old!

I can't believe how fast the time is flying by. My cheekaboo is growing way too fast. She's had a busy month with Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations. Here's her four month update:


Stats: her only updated stat is her weight and even that is unofficial, we won't visit her pediatrician until Jan. 3. Her unofficial weight (Peter carried her onto our scale at home) is 14.5 lbs. She's longer than her bassinet! She can't stretch out completely after a long sleep because she doesn't fit! It's time to transition into the crib.

Roll....BOUNCE! She's getting pretty adept at rolling onto her tummy and can sometimes remember how to roll back. She mostly rolls to her right, and still gets stuck sometimes. The best way to get her to roll is to tease her with her favorite rattle (a red Hippo). Her new favorite though is to BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE!! When you hold her up on your lap she'll just bounce away until your arms feel like they're about to fall off.

Durnit! Stuck again!

Bounce bounce bounce!!!

Mallrat. She took her first trip to the mall this month and took photos with Santa. She didn't cry on his lap but she started having a meltdown in the Food court.

"I know, I know...I don't like Panda Express either..."

Sleeping. I've been back at work for little over a month now and we've pretty much settled into a routine. Peter's taken over Bath Time and it's followed by nursing/bottle and she settles into a 5 to 6 hour stretch of sleep, followed by another stretch of 3 to 4 hours. She's usually awake while we get ready for work and we take turns entertaining her between our showers. A quick nurse before putting her in her carrier and she'll usually fall asleep in the car on the way to Grandma's house.

Daddy's an expert bather now.

This was taken this morning before heading out to Grandma's

Four Month Favorites:
Rhyme: Pen pen de sarapen (a Tagalog Children's song)
Song: Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Singing this NEVER fails to bring huge smiles and giggles.
Toy: She loves her Hippo rattle (Thanks Uncle Johnny!). Shaking it along to "Hungry Hungry Hippo" is even better.
Activity: Bouncing and sucking on fingers. Not just her own...ANYONE'S fingers! Knuckles are especially nummy.

Hungry hungry hippo....

Outgrown:
She's tired of the mobile over her crib. She's wise to the fact that the mobile means we're about to leave her alone. She starts whining and fussing as soon as we turn it on. Bu then sometimes she just turns away from it as if to say, "You no longer amuse me..."

I've put away her 0-3 month sized clothes, some of which she never even got to wear. Thinking about how fast she's growing and how precious these moments are got me a little teary-eyed, especially when I packed the little tshirts that she wore when she was in the hospital.

Wow...four months...and guess what's coming up soon. yup..BABY'S FIRST CHRISTMAS!!! YAY!

Bad Mommy!

This afternoon I was clipping Lauren's fingernails while she slept and and she let out a yelp. She opened her eyes and then went right back to sleep. She fully awoke a few minutes later and halfway though changing her diaper I noticed smears of blood on her sleeve. BLOOD! I must have clipped some skin off while doing her fingernails. There was a lot of blood for such a tiny little cut and she didn't even seem to be in pain or notice the droplets of blood dripping from her finger. I apologized about thirty times before I got the bleeding to stop and because they don't make band aids for tiny fingers we ended up wrapping her whole hand with gauze and tape and slipping a mitten over it. It didn't help ease my mommy guilt when Peter kept shaking his head in disbelief and repeating "Mommy cut you, baby!"

I graduated!

Last month when I returned to work, I found a brochure for UC Davis' Center for the Mind and Brain Infant Cognition Lab discussing the studies that were conducting. As a scientist myself, I thought it would be cool to participate in the experiments on how babies learn. They looked harmless and very interesting so I called them up about participating in their experiments and she had her appointment this morning. Just like her mommy, she was comfortable in a laboratory setting, although this lab was a lot different from the one that I work in.

When we arrived, we were ushered into a waiting room that was filled with comfy couches and toys. There was one "subject" already in the room, a young girl who was trying unsuccessfully to find a toy that worked...apparently all the battery operated toys weren't working. A female student sat with us and explained the studies that Lauren was to participate in and handed me a clipboard of consent forms. One was a memory study and another was a cateogorization study. Before we began, I nursed Lauren and even though we were alone in the room, I had this eerie feeling that we were being watched. This was, after all, a behavioral observation "laboratory" and I couldn't help but feel that the room was somehow a study in itself. That the room had a purposeful design and that every move and reaction I had was being observed. Is that clock on the wall displaying the wrong time on purpose and is someone counting the number of times I look up check it? Did they remove all the batteries in the toys to see how the children are reacting? Is this couch green for a reason? Of course, I was being silly, and we were not being watched. If we were, then I'm sorry for leaking breastmilk onto the sofa. I couldn't help it, Lauren was distracted by all the toys and kept popping off my breast to look around.

When we were finally called in for the experiment, Lauren was in a good mood well behaved. She sat on my lap and stared at a video screen that flashed some colored lines and after 5 minutes it was over. This was the memory study. On the screen flashed a vertical yellow line and a blue horizontal line. The two lines appeared intermittently in different areas on the screen. Halfway through the experiment, they changed the orientation of the lines; the yellow line became horizontal and the blue line, vertical. Her reaction to this change was what the scientists were looking for. At her age, would she notice that there was something different? Would she remember that the yellow line was previously horizontal? The could tell this by how long she stared at the screen when they changed the orientation of the lines. If she looked at the lines for even a second longer than she had been or if her eyes opened wide or if her face showed some kind of reaction, it showed that she recognized the change.

For the second study on categorization, she wore a headband that had a sensor positioned on her right eyebrow. There was a camera on the table in front of us, pointed at the sensor at this allowed them to somehow track her eye movements so they could tell what she was looking at. It was pretty cool. Again, she sat on my lap and I had to hold her hands so that she wouldn't reach up to remove the headband and they flashed pictures of animals and faces on the screen. The experiment's purpose was to see what part of the picture she would focus on first; if they showed a picture of a dog, did she look at the head first or the tail? When they flashed a face, did she look at the eyes first or the mouth? During the testing, I had to wear dark glasses so that Lauren wouldn't see my eyes and I couldn't actually see what she was looking at during the test itself (They played the video back for me afterwards just so I could see what exactly they were showing her). I was a little creeped out by the looping snippets of Barney, Teletubbies, and Blues Clues and Vivaldi that they were playing in the background. Halfway through the testing I peeked by looking down through a crack in the glasses and noticed that Lauren was more interested in her purple socks than what was flashing on the screen. Oh well. She is after all, only 3.75 months old.

Afterwards, Peter called me to see how it went and he asked me, "So, is she a genius?" He was disappointed that it wasn't THAT kind of testing. It was a fun experience and I would probably bring her back to participate again. She can now proudly say that she contributed to science AND she got a cool tshirt out of it!

Graduate
University of California, Davis
Infant Cognition Lab

We've been elved!!!

We've been ELVED !!! You gotta check this out. I can't stop laughing especially 'cause that's how Peter REALLY dances! hahaha...

Click HERE or copy and paste this to your browser:
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1133090330

Lauren Meets Santa Claus

Peter met us for lunch for Lauren's first trip to the mall. I thought she would freak out when she met the big guy but she was surprisingly relaxed and happy. What a smile! Although no words were exchanged, I think Santa knows exactly what she wants for Christmas.

Back to work...

I'm back at work today after a nice mini-break. It was tough getting back to work again after spending so much precious time with my cheekaboo. Her sleeping is all whacked out now since we disrupted her schedule with various Thanksgiving activities. Good news is she's sleeping in 7 hour stretches. Bad news is that she won't sleep until 11:30!!!

I am resisting the urge to shop online and explore Facebook. With much prodding from my in-laws (yes, you..Chris and Christine) I finally joined and will now probably waste time on Facebook that I should be spending with my child! Darn you Chris/tine!!

Turkey Week

Thanksgiving was a week-long event, not just one day. A lot of the time was spent cooking and shopping, but we were able to spend some quality time together and with both of our families. Lauren experienced the first of many Thanksgiving gorge fests to come. She had lunch at Grandma Linda's and dinner at Grandma Erlyn's. Yes, TWO turkeys and DOUBLE the pies. YUM!

Turkey #1 Turkey #2


Lauren and Uncle Chris


With cousin Tobey

I actually braved the malls on Black Friday and spent the morning finishing up my Christmas list. This time we did not go to Target at 5 am and Chris did not get run over by a shopping cart.

On Saturday, Lauren finally met her cousin Bennett, Auntie Mel and Uncle John.


Junior McPhee meets Bennett meets Lauren meets Auntie Mel

Piano Lesson

I sometimes strap on the Bjorn and let Lauren watch me play the piano. She just sits there and watches my fingers or stares at the sheet music. Sometimes she puts her tiny hands on top of mine as they move up and down the keyboard. I played the piano a lot while I was pregnant so I wonder if she recognizes the sound. She seems to like Mozart but gets fussy when I play Bach Inventions or my signature piece the Maple Leaf Rag (perhaps they are too complex or busy so they agitate her). Last time she "sang" along to a Billy Joel tune and to the soundtrack to Les Miz. Sometimes she gets this super serious look on her face as if she could actually read the music and follow along but then again, that's the same look on her face when she's about to poop.

The current piece that I'm learning is Mozart's variations on "Ah Vous Dirai-je, Maman" (or more commonly known as "Twinkle Twinkle little star" or the Alphabet song). I started learning it during my pregnancy but still haven't gotten far.

"Umm..you missed a note, mommy...."

Birthday Parties!

Lauren attended her first kids' birthday party on the 17th. My friend's daughter turned 4 and although she was too young to participate in the activities (like pin the tale on the donkey as pictured), I think she had a good time. Since she couldn't have any, I ate her share of birthday cake.

We also celebrated my mom's 71st bday. It was Lauren's first closeup view of birthday candles...I can't tell if she's excited or terrified.

Veterans Day Redux

It's a little late, but an important date nonetheless. Last weekend, we went to the Golden Gate National Cemetery to visit the grave of my dad for a belated Veteran's Day. Lauren's Grandpa was a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars in the US Air Force and passed away in 1999. It's been a family tradition for years to visit the site at GGNC in San Bruno as my grandparents and Uncle are buried there as well. We have pictures of our family dating back to 1960 standing next to these headstones. My mom and I got a little emotional as we stood next to my dad's grave. I was sad to think that Lauren would never know her Grandpa...she would have loved him. He was like a big teddy bear and he would have made her laugh and laugh. He will live on through us though and I'll be sure that she knows about her Grandpa Dave.

Daddy Time!

Today marks the first entry for me in Lauren's blog. At week 14 of her life, I get to watch over Lauren for the first time all day. So far so good! She woke up when Riza went to work, I fed her 3 ounces of milk, and we watched Troy, Director's Cut until she fell asleep. I used the carseat and pushing her around in her stroller to achieve this but the end result is she has been asleep for about 2 hours now.

Cheese!

So we took Lauren in for her first sitting in a studio to mark her 3 month birthday. I'm glad we were able to catch her crazy hair in all it's glory. Here are the results.


You want some cute? How about this...let me fold my hands up like this and it'll be even cuter

awww...comeon...watchoo talking 'bout Willis?

And the requisite nekkid baby pose...