A Christmas Present from Grandma and Grandpa in Los Angeles!!!

Dear all,

I just wanted to share a few quick pictures. The postal truck is a Christmas present from Isaac's grandma and grandpa (Jong's parents) in Los Angeles. Inside the postal truck is a letter to Isaac from his grandparents!

Hope you are enjoying a blessed Christmas!

p.s. Don't ask me why there are all these pink bags right behind Isaac. ^_^ Actually Jong brought back all this loot from the US (from various people as well as our own purchases). We didn't have time to wrap them and I think my mom just threw them into gift bags without looking at the color of the bags!

Merry Christmas!!!

Isaiah 9:6-7

6 For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

7 Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David's throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.

John 1:1-5, 10-14

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. 14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 3:16

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Isaac, Jong and I would like to wish you all a very blessed Christmas filled with love and grace.

Blessings,

Sonia

For those with grieving hearts this Christmas

The Christmas and New Year season can be quite difficult for those who are grieving. I would like to share a radio broadcast with those of you who might be grieving, especially for this who might be grieving a pregnancy loss, late loss or infant loss. I learned about this broadcast from an HP sister who also lost a twin girl but got to keep a surviving twin boy. The guests on the broadcast are Nancy and David Guthrie. Nancy Guthrie is the author of a book called "Holding on to Hope" that was highly recommended to me and I have just recently ordered this book and am hoping to be able to read it soon. Nancy and David lost two of their babies to Zellweger Syndrome. Here is a description of the book - Holding on to Hope

I haven't finished listening to the series of broadcasts yet but really enjoyed what I have heard so far. I hope it can help some of you as well. Please click the following link to get to the broadcast - FamilyLife Today Broadcast with guests Nancy and David Guthrie

Praying for all of you with grieving and hurting hearts this Christmas,

Sonia

Isaac is a little under the weather

Hello everyone. Isaac reacted to his shots on Thursday with a bit of a fever. Fortunately, his fever broke later that evening, followed by a low grade fever on Friday but his fever was entirely gone by Saturday. I am glad he was able to get over it without getting much worse. However, he does have a bit of a cough and is wheezing a bit but his oxygen saturation levels are doing okay so at this point I am not too worried yet.

I am incredibly tired this weekend due to a crazy work week and then not sleeping on Thursday night because of Isaac's fever (not because of him - I was just too wired to go to sleep) and its already late on Sunday night. So I will just keep this short and post videos and pictures which can speak for themselves! (Okay, I will confess - part of the reason I am loading all these is for Jong since he is traveling ^_^).

Isaac looking sad with a fever and a cold towel on his head:
Isaac has some weird eating positions that he likes:
And here are some videos (check out the first and the last ones for his smiles ^_^):







Take care,

Sonia

Yoo Hoo. We are still here!

Sorry I haven't posted for so long! Basically work has gone completely insane for me. Everyone is trying to close deals before the end of the year. This time of the year has always been very busy but this year really seems a lot more crazy than usual.

In any case, another big reason why I haven't posted for so long is because I spent all weekend on 2 big projects. First big project was shopping for Isaac. He has outgrown his Newborn size clothes and Jong will be going back to the US for a trip shortly so I was trying to buy some 0-3 mo and 3-6 mo clothes for Isaac online to allow for enough shipping time for the purchases to arrive before Jong comes back to Tokyo.

My other big project was I actually put our Christmas Card together. I won't say what it looks like since I want those of you who will get it to be surprised. Now, please do know that they will not be sent out till next year as Jong will be bringing back the cards back from US to Tokyo right before Christmas and then I will need to label them on the days I have off over the New Year and then send them back out. In any case, I am very pleased with how it turned out (although I haven't seen a real print yet they look really great online). On the downside, each card was quite expensive so I didn't over order so I hope I have enough! Now I realized that its probably bad to tell everyone that I did do the Christmas Card because people might feel bad if they don't get it next year. Well, if you really want it, please send me your snail mail address. Because my biggest excuse will be I don't have people's current address!

We went back to Toho last Thursday for Isaac's eye check-up. Its funny how low-tech the eye check up was. They put some eye drops in 30 minutes before and then the check up consisted of the doctor shining a flash light into Isaac's eyes and the doc looking at Isaac's eyes through some kind of magnifying glass in a dim room. Even the doctor's notes were low-tech. They were hand written drawings in a plastic folder. We did stop by NICU and Isaac got to say hi to some of his nurses who were very excited to see him.

Poor little Isaac. He got his 3rd anti RS Virus shot last Wed and will be getting more immunization shots at the International Clinic tomorrow. So far he has done relatively okay with the shots but please pray that he will continue to do well after tomorrow.

Sorry I don't have time to post pictures tonight. I just wanted to drop a quite note to let everyone know how we are doing. I better run as I have a very early start tomorrow to get Isaac to the clinic on time and then a very long day/night at work after that!

By the way, Isaac weighed 4.54 kgs last night.

Blessings,

Sonia

Can't believe its December already!!!

Somehow I received 2 emails from 2 different friends today who both "encouraged" me to keep updating my blog. So I got the hint and here I am! ^_^ Actually, I have really wanted to update here all weekend but time just gets away from me. Last week was a particularly busy week as I was away at offsite meetings from Monday through Wednesday afternoon. And the weekends are so busy too!

We have had a couple of nurse home visits now and the nurse stressed how important it is to keep Isaac's oxygen saturation levels at 95% or above. The tiny NG tube we were using in lieu of the regular nasal cannular was just not working well for us as we had to put too much tape on Isaac's face to keep it on and he still was able to get it off all the time so we decided to go back to the regular nasal cannular and he is doing better with that. We are also turning the O2 up from 0.25 l/hour to 0.50 l/hour when he sleeps at night. I think the theory is to have him use up less calories breathing so that he can grow faster. And the bigger he grows (especially the longer he grows), the faster his lungs will outgrow the damaged parts of his lungs so the sooner he will get off of the O2.

Isaac is interacting with us a lot more now. He started grabbing at toys probably more than a month ago. He loves playing peek-a-boo with us - here is Isaac's version of peek-a-boo. We put a light handkerchief over his eyes and then pulls down the handkerchief and we call out "Isaac!" and he will smile a lot with that game. I have also tried leaving the handkerchief there and he would try to get it off himself too. He is able to do so majority of the time but if it takes too long, he will get frustrated.

He also started cooing to us more this weekend. So far, as I have mentioned before, he really didn't make that much noise except for when he is crying. He mostly grunted, whined and squealed. Well, this weekend, when we "talked" to him, he will actually making "oooh" and "eeeh" sounds back so we were definitely very excited!

I have been dreaming about Rachel a lot these days. I usually would dream about Isaac and Rachel separately but a few days ago, I dreamed that I was holding both Isaac and Rachel and it was the greatest feeling (that was until something/someone tried to take Rachel away from me). I don't usually see Rachel's face in my dreams but one night I did see her and she looked like a very sweet and cute female version of Isaac (if you can imagine someone cuter and sweeter than Isaac - okay I am biased ^_^).

In any case, I realized tonight that I never posted some old videos that I intended to post so I am posting a whole bunch of videos tonight.

Here are a series of videos from November 10 that I forgot to post before:







This video is from November 15. Even though Jong said Isaac was grabbing at the toys for the first time in the video, Isaac had already been doing that for a week or more. It was the first time we got it on video though.



This video is from November 26. Some of you may remember that Isaac's first toy in NICU was this Japanese hero Anpanman (the Red Bean Cake Man who offers his head, which is filled with Red Bean Paste, to sick or weak children and old people to eat to make them stronger (I am not kidding!)). Anpanman is actually a very popular character here and Isaac's primary nurse from NICU brought this toy for Isaac on Thanksgiving. This is Isaac playing with it.



Isaac now likes to hold his hands together and it makes him look like he is doing a "kung fu" greeting likes so:
Jong gets quite excited about Isaac's kung fu moves:



Here are some pictures from yesterday before his bath and after we took his cannular off. We finally got a bit of a smile from Isaac on photo.
And finally, I actually attempted to take some pictures for may be a Christmas card yesterday morning. I changed Isaac into a little cute overall outfit again supplied by my sister and put him under the Christmas tree in his bumbo chair. The only problem is I did this all by myself and he kept moving around. These 4 pictures are the only pictures out of the 25 I took that are not fuzzy. So if I used these pictures for Christmas cards and if you were to take a vote, which one would you pick (1, 2, 3 or 4)? Please let me know!
Also, not that I am promising I will actually get my act together to send out Christmas cards and even if I did I am pretty sure they will arrive after the New Year. However, if I were to send out Christmas cards and you are interested in receiving one, please email me your snail mail and email addresses at rachelandisaac@gmail.com (email is for if I end up just being able to email out Christmas cards).

By the way, Isaac weighed 4.23 kgs (9.3 lbs) today!

Before I go, can I please ask all of you to pray harder for Emily, the surviving triplet of Jennifer and Tony? It doesn't look like she can get home before Christmas as her lungs are still not doing well enough. I know this must be very hard for Jennifer and Tony. Please pray for miraculous healing for Emily so that she can go home soon to be with her parents. Please read more about her prospects for going home and her lungs under the entries on December 1, 2006 in Emily's blog here - EMILY's BLOG.

God bless,

Sonia