FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed

Monday, May 28, 2007

Wow. May flew by!

Wow it seems impossible that May is already almost over. I was on the phone with my mom tonight and she said my sister checks my blog every morning and every night and it was yet another morning (for them) without an update. Hint. Hint. So I got my act together and am actually posting!

Okay so let's try to do this by sequence of events.

First of all, here is a long overdue video of Isaac's first play date on May 12th. Its of him and Disa, his NICU friend and its before things turned "ugly" for Isaac. ; )



Here is a picture of daddy taking Isaac on the slide for the first time.
On May 13th, we dedicated Isaac at church. Here is a video of the tail end of the dedication including Pastor Dennis' prayer.



The following week, our friends who used to live in Tokyo and former neighbors at our old apartment building Chris, Sabina and their little girl Alyssa stayed with us for a week. It turns out that Baby Isaac (as Alyssa calls him) likes older women. ^_^ I think Alyssa and Isaac had a very good time with each other. Isaac was always trying to follow Alyssa when he could (by crawling) and when he couldn't follow her physically, his eyes will track where she goes.

Here are some cute pictures of Alyssa and Isaac together:
Alyssa went to Tokyo Disneyland and picked up that all these Japanese would put up the V sign with their fingers when they take pictures. Well, apparently, Alyssa is born cool so she did a much cooler version of the V sign. ^_^
Sabina also took some nice pictures of Isaac so here are a couple:
We also celebrated Jong's birthday on May 23th. Here are pictures of Isaac's wishes for his daddy's birthday.
And a picture of Jong and our friends Chris and Sabina eating his birthday cake late that night.
Here is a really, really cute video of Isaac crawling and standing from tonight. He can crawl very fast now and I just love how his cute little butt wiggles left, right, left, right when he crawls fast. He can stand up pretty well now just putting his hands on a flat surface. We are waiting for him to start cruising a bit more and after that, we may finally have to throw all of Jong's junk away (for those of you who don't know Jong is one of the biggest pack rat I have ever met) and pad our whole apartment up because who knows what things will be like when Isaac starts walking and then running!



I do have a few prayer requests. Will you please pray for Isaac's speech. He is still not making a lot of sounds and is generally very quiet unless he is unhappy about something and wants to whine or complain. But even then, he is usually just going eh, eh, eh still. When he is really, really unhappy, once in a blue moon, he will utter two syllable sounds with a soft consonant. So far, I have only heard the following once or twice each: uuuuugaa or uuuuuuma.

This is kind of a prayer request and a praise at the same time. A lot of people have been coughing in my office including a colleague I work closely with. I caught the cough virus last week and Isaac start coughing within half a day of me. He got pretty phlegmy and his O2 sat levels started dropping on Thursday so that we actually had to start putting the nasal cannular back on him even during the day. We took him to Dr. Che on Saturday but he seemed generally well apart from the coughing so we decided to take a wait and see approach. By Sunday afternoon, he started getting back more energy and his sat levels improved a bit. We still need to put his nasal cannular on when he sleeps and when he naps but he is doing better even though his sats are hovering more around 95 and 96 rather than high 90s. He was supposed to have his pseudo sleep study done this week where the nurse from St. Luke's was going to bring over a special O2 saturation level monitor that records his sat levels overnight and we were going to record his sat levels one night with the nasal cannular and one night without. However, since he still needs his supplemental O2, we are going to postpone that for now. Please pray for Isaac to completely recover soon so we can see if he can go off of O2 completely soon. We have been hoping to be able to travel back to the US in August but it will be contingent upon him being completely off of O2. The good news is that for this little bug so far (assuming his condition doesn't get worse again) he has been able to recover on his own without meds.

What else is new? Oh yes. He is finally cutting teeth and they all seem to be coming out at the same time, his bottom front teeth, his top front teeth and may be even one more tooth on his top left hand side. They just emerged out of his gums about a week ago.

Oh and here is a strange thing that I cannot figure out. Some of you may know of a series of Christian baby videos similar to the Baby Einstein videos called "God Made Me" "God Made Animals" and "God Made Music". Isaac usually loves the DVDs even though we don't show them that often. However, because he wasn't breathing well over the weekend and I needed to keep him more still so he could breathe better (he will sit very still and be completely absorbed in the videos when I show him the DVDs but otherwise, he is almost always moving). Anyway, I started the God Made Me video and very shortly after the video started, he started crying quite hard. Now please remember that our baby does not cry that often. Even when he gets injections, he only cries for a little while and he stops. I wasn't playing full attention but did notice about when he started crying. I showed the same video again on Sunday with him on my lap and he started crying at about the same point of the video. Its this scene where there is a black/dark background with a bunch of blurry white lights in the foreground when the narrator is explaining that God made light. For some reason, this really, really scares Isaac. After this, I recall that the same thing had happened before with the same video and I had just forgotten about it. I wonder if that scene reminded Isaac of something scary when he was in NICU. I don't know what his 2-3 hour laser eye surgery was like. I imagine it was very scary. He also still has nightmares quite regularly. I am starting to think that at least for now, he still does remember his NICU days. Poor little guy!

Anyway, its getting late so I better go for now.

Take care and God bless,

Sonia

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Isaac's Dark Side

Isaac had his first ever play date today - this is basically the first time he actually got to interact with other kiddos. Our friends Chas and Maria brought their 2 year old daughter Saga and Disa, Isaac's mate in NICU in Toho to Tokyo. Disa is a few months younger than Isaac. In any case, it was kind of a hilarious experience for Jong and I and not so happy experience for Isaac.

When we first dropped Disa into Isaac's play pen with him, Isaac looked really shocked. He didn't know what was going on. He didn't seem to understand why there was someone else his size in front of him. Disa, who is used to having a big sister and going on play dates just ignored Isaac and started playing with his toys. Isaac stayed surprised for a little while and started realizing that another baby is playing with HIS toys. He started looking unhappier and unhappier. When he is unhappy, he starts making noises. Well everyone was busy talking to each other and Mr. Isaac is used to being the center of attention so that probably made him even more unhappy. So basically, things spiraled down for him and he started crying. After his whimpering turned into real crying, I decided to pick him up and walk around for a bit. I then came back and put him back in the play pen with Disa. Well it seemed like he thought about things for a bit during a little walk around the apartment. When he saw that Disa was still in his play pen playing with HIS toys, he crawled up to her to try to push her away. When she wouldn't budge, his hand went straight for her hair!!! YIKES! I guess we have to start teaching Isaac about male chivalry!!!

Fortunately, Disa is pretty hardy from having an older sister and playing with other kids and we caught Isaac fast enough so no real injury was done. But it was sure hilarious to see Isaac's reaction to having his space invaded for the first time. The interesting thing is he didn't mind Saga playing with his toys. He just zeroed in on Disa. It almost seemed like he didn't like not being the smallest person in the crowd. I know he definitely didn't like not being the cutest person in the crowd. ^_^

So tonight, Isaac was crawling around in the living room playing with all his toys very happily. Almost as if he was thinking, yay, I have everything all back and this is all MINE!!!!!!

We better start scrambling and finding playdates for our boy! He has to start to learn to play with others and to SHARE!

I didn't take a lot of pictures but do have a short video and some pictures of our trip to the park. I will post that later.

Take care and Happy Mother's Day!

Sonia

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

PTL!!!!!! Isaac made it on the Japanese charts!

We had a regular follow up check-up at St. Luke's today and the BIG news is that Isaac made it on the Japanese weight/height charts based on his adjusted age of 9.3 months for the first time! YAY!!!!!!!!!!! Since Isaac is 100% Asian, we are pretty happy that he is finally on the Japanese charts! I checked on the US chart and he is actually on the chart for his height but not his weight yet.

His stats from today:
Weight - 7.435 kg / 16.39 lbs
Height - 68.5 cm / / 2 ft 3 inches
Head Circumference - 44.1 cm / 17.4 inches
Chest Circumference - 45.0 cm / 17.7 inches

And you can see where Isaac fares on the US chart based on both his adjusted age and actual age (please click on the chart to view a legible version). Oh in case you are wondering, you can generate a chart for your own baby on this website - MedCalc: Interactive Growth Charts


Thanks for all of your prayers for Isaac!

Sonia

Monday, May 07, 2007

Quick Recap of Golden Week and before

Wow, I can't believe Golden Week is already over. I was so sure I would be posting a lot over Golden Week but I ended up not posting anything! It was so fun playing with Isaac all week and just relaxing in general. (By the way, Golden Week is a week in May where there is a series of 4 national holidays in Japan. This year one of the national holidays fell on a weekend so we had 3 days off last week. I took an extra day off so I only worked one day last week and I really liked that kind of work schedule! ^_^) So here are some news/developments in point form:
  • -after Isaac started crawling on her knees, he pulled himself up in his crib within a week
  • -Isaac started wheezing badly right before Golden Week so he is now on medication for his wheezing which seems to be helping him
  • -I took Isaac to my office for the first time in the late afternoon Fri April 27 after his doctor's appointment for his wheezing
  • -Isaac has been to church twice now! We brought him to church for the first time on Sun April 29.
  • -The weather was beautiful all week except for yesterday (Sunday) and we took Isaac out to the nearby nearly renovated park almost every day.
  • -we learned by my office visit and first visit to church that Isaac gets scared and overwhelmed easily when there are too many people paying attention to him at the same time. So if you see us at church, please understand why we might try to stay away from the crowds (plus we still want to be careful not to get him sick as lots of people still seem to have colds and coughs in Tokyo).
  • -Isaac was going to have his first play date on Saturday with his NICU friend Disa but Disa's father had to work on that day and they have to come all the way from Yokosuka so we are really hoping that he will have his first play date this coming Saturday
  • -Isaac is going to be dedicated at church this coming Sunday May 13 (Mother's Day) at the 9 am service!
  • -Isaac still has no teeth!
Here are some pictures:
Also, Isaac is very cute when he crawls and when he walks (with our help). He lifts his hands really high up when he crawls and slaps them down. When he walks, he does the same thing with his legs and he lifts his knees really high up. So cute and here are some videos:





Take care,

Sonia