"You've Gotta Fight...For Your Right...To PARTY!!!!"

Oy vey. Somehow Stella must have known that if she'd have taken her afternoon nap per usual, we would have been late to Summer's (she's in the tutu in the first photo) birthday party. She went down at 1:30pm (nap time) and talked to her Duckie blanket until 2pm...that's normal lately but the sleep lady said it's ok. I think she's sleeping too long in the morning, as she sleeps 2 hours and we have to actually go in and wake her up. Anyway, she was wide awake when she went down for her afternoon nap. Then, at 2pm, she started screaming her head off, which she hasn't done since we left CA in Jan. She's been an excellent nap-taker. So, I went in to see if she had a dirty diaper or had climbed out of her crib...she hasn't done the latter yet but it's coming any day now, I'm sure. Nothing. She just straight up didn't want to sleep and by this time was totally hysterical in that way that I even couldn't soothe her. So, I put on her favorite American Idol video (see previous post about Renaldo Lapuz) and that finally calmed her down--instantaneously, I might add. It was 2:30pm by then and since Summer's party started at 3pm, I just said ok, well, we'll just get ready and go.

Note to self--no-nap Stella is very unpleasant. She loves her friends and was very happy for the first hour. Though she's got this habit now of wanting to climb up on anything. She'll use me as a stepstool to get up on to the couch or bed. She does what Dan calls "climbing the alps" by throwing herself head first from the sofa into our adjacent club chair and then back again, and again. It's a really terrible game for parents as it's super boring and labor-intensive. Though today, Dan and I watched her make her own stepstool by pushing a box right underneath the club chair. She then climbed on top of the box and made it on to the seat of the chair. It was very calculated and she was clearly very proud of herself. She giggled like crazy. Anyway, she tried to use her friends as stepstools to get on to this coffee table you see above. One time, her friend Natalie (who is almost 2 months younger), was crawling next to the table and Stella stuck her foot on Natalie's back to try to propel herself on to the table to get the tube of Puffs. It was totally exhausting. Then she started "doing the fussy" because she was so, so tired. Lily (Summer's mom) baked a special cake that the babies could eat. Stella loved it and ate a whole piece. But, she was a handful and by the time we got home I was wiped. I rarely get this tired but I told Dan that I just needed 5 minutes of personal time, which is his standard line.

She also has become very attached to her "babies" in the last week. Her babies are her "Teddy" which is a Four Seasons Hotel bear that the staff gave us when she was born, a Shanghai Tang doll, and another doll that was a gift called "Stella" (really, that was the name on the box). It's a crack up because we'll say, "Where are your babies?" She'll chirp and round them up. She was fussy getting into her stroller the other day and I handed her Teddy to hold. All of a sudden eveything was fine and she was all smiles. She'll play by herself for extended periods of time if she has her babies near by.

Stella Br0ke the C0mputer

S0 we can read emails but n0t send any. I can still upl0ad ph0t0s but it's just a matter 0f time bef0re the entire thing crashes, I think. The bl0g will be 0n hiatus f0r a while until we s0rt it 0ut!!! Am busy backing up all 0f her vide0s, etc.

First Lasagne and Walking

As you can see, Stella likes lasagne. Except, I used spinach no boil noodles that had some trouble being cooked on a stovetop. We have no oven, so this was a toddler stovetop chicken lasagne recipe. I thought they were fine but Dan kicked up a fuss and then Stella "voiced" her opinion by tossing some noodles on to the curtains. But anyway, she gobbled up the filling and there aren't really any leftovers. She is not a neat eater so our laundry machine is constantly running. As I type this, I am laying in a mess of toaster waffle that she rubbed into our bedsheets. It's Easter Monday, so we're on our second day of no housekeeping which has been horrible!!!!

This week, Stella has started walking. A few steps here and there only, but she's getting much more confident. I apologize that we aren't able to rotate videos so you have to watch it sideways on picasaweb. I tried to upload it here but it wouldn't take.

First Easter and Pizza

Dan and I debated about how to present Stella with her Easter basket. I ultimately insisted that it be placed outside the front door as that's how my parents did it when I was little. So, Dan put it out in the hall and we opened the door and let her crawl to it. Dan is primarily responsible for the Easter baskets. He's put together one for me every year. We have a Japanese discount store called Jusco where everything in the store is $10 HKD ($1.25 USD). That's where we bought most of the contents which is why they are sort of random. Mine always has candy in it but Stella's had:

1. Plastic grapes...kind of a choking hazard but he thought she'd love them, and she does.
2. Big crayons
3. Origami paper
4. Hello Kitty tupperware
5. Hello Kitty cell phone (from Toys R Us)
6. Hello Kitty tea canister
7. Gerber biters teething biscuits (her favorite)
8. Hello Kitty frisbee

The cell phone and grapes are the big hits. We then went to the LRC for lunch. Stella is eating tomatoes now which has opened up a new world of food. Messy food, that is. I ordered her a chicken pizza and she loved it. She's tried pizza once before but didn't like it, I think now because it was thin crust. This was thicker crust...she got that from me as Dan only likes thin crust and I don't. The Easter Bunny was there but I think she thought he was very strange. She didn't cry, but was not all that interested in him--confused really. However, she was VERY interested in all of the little birds that were feasting on the pile of crumbs she dropped. We started off in the family clubhouse area and then went up to the playground so she could see all of the little kids running around. She loves that.

The other highlight of the day was that Stella picked the "o" key off the laptop. Therefore, this has taken a long time to type! I hope the computer guy in Dan's office can fix it. We tried, but no luck.

Inside Out

According to my books, Stella is not getting enough fat. Does she look like it in the photo above? Granted, she'd just eating piles of meatloaf, sushi and veggies and has settled in to watch this week's American Idol (her favorite show). 50% of her daily calorie intake is supposed to be from fat. She needs it for her brain growth, mainly. It's not anywhere that high, believe it or not. She eats sprouted wheat bagels, plain fruit and veg, etc. Chicken or lean beef meatloaf (she's getting sick of meatloaf) and avocado are the exceptions along with small amounts of full fat Yo Baby and cheese. She used to love almond butter, but she's sick of it, I think. Dan is still reeling from the fact that one jar in HK is $20 USD so her ambivalence toward it at the moment is not "convenient" for her mother. So today for lunch, I made her an organic black bean and free range/organic chicken quesadilla with lots of organic jack cheese on an organic sprouted wheat tortilla. I swear it was really good because, per usual, I wind up eating her scraps as I can only manage cooking once. Sprouted wheat or corn tortillas are the only ones here in HK that aren't loaded with lard and/or preservatives. She was very excited as I was making it. I even fried it in butter (unsalted). She LOVES cheese, especially orange cheddar cheese but we ran out of that.

Anyway, she figured out quickly that she could split the tortillas apart, turn them completely inside out and then scrape all the cheese off with her teeth, thereby leaving the sprouted wheat tortilla shreds all over her placemat and the floor. Fortunately, she loves black beans so after she split the tortillas apart, she first picked all the black beans off one by one before scraping the chicken and cheese off...

Magic Box Update

Last week, because of the flu scare, it was just us and another mom and baby at Gymboree. They are very, very careful about disinfecting the entire gym and all of the toys after each class. Also, if a baby chews on something during the class, it's immediately put in the "toy wash" bucket for sterilization. For hygienic reasons, I assume, the Magic Box only had easily-cleanable board books in it this time. Stella was very disappointed and her facial expression made that really obvious. The instructor excitedly took all the books out and put the box with it's lid to the side. Stella crawled over the box and opened the lid to make sure that there wasn't anything else fun in it. She then started putting the books back in the Magic Box as if to say, "Alright, this is boring...let's move on." The instructor kept telling her that it wasn't time to put the books away. They only get about 5 minutes to play with the Magic Box toys anyway!!!

Daddy vs Stella

Written by Dan:

We've begun casually encouraging Stella to start to play by herself a little, rather than needing to be constantly held or otherwise attended to. And she is starting to do so. But it comes with a catch. When playing by herself, she almost exclusively prefers to play with "adult" things, rather than her own toys. (Her own toys, like her books or her plastic balls, tend to be "played with" by handing them to us, and then staring, expectantly and indeed presumptuously.)

Her play with "adult" things, can, unfortunately, be summarized in one word from high school science class: entropy. Stella has become a destroyer of order, a devotee of chaos for its own sake. She has only limited interest in these "adult" objects individually, be they empty plastic bottles of spring water, or old newspapers thrown in the trash. But what she loves, for example, is to pull them out of the trash, carefully, and with purpose. And spreading them out around her. Only then, when an almost perfectly distributed mess has been created around her, will she crawl off, a job well done.

Her current fascination in this regard, illustrated above, is with the lower shelf in our pantry. The pantry is small and now, with Stella's food too, is always crowded. This drives me (Dan) crazy and I am forever re-arranging the contents to make them neater and less jumbled. But whenever the pantry is left open a crack, Stella will crawl over rapidly and begin pulling everything out: cans of black beans, bags of tea, organic rice, vitamins and what have you. She will pull everything off the shelf, dump it on the floor and then seek to remove the contents of any package that is open. All of this she will do with extreme concentration, silently and with purpose. Sometimes this will go on for 10-20 minutes at a time, during which she will be oblivious to anything around her. Yet she appears almost entirely disinterested in any of the objects: be they of irregular shape or with packaging that has unusual colors or drawings. All she wants to do is to create disorder out of order, to spread everything on the floor, as fully as possible. Above you see that she has gone so far as to remove even the individual cheerios from a foil bag that was previously inside a cereal box. Once all the items were as fully pulled apart and dispersed on the kitchen floor as far as possible, she crawled away and back into my arms...

Written by Katie:

I must note that Dan had just come home from the gym when these photos were taken. Also, it's Dan's fault entirely that she likes to toss things off the pantry shelves as he's been the one who has encouraged her to do it, not knowing this would evolve into one of her favorite things in the world. The can of organic raisins lives on the bottom shelf of the pantry. Stella hates raisins. That can cost about $10 so I was a little bit disappointed about that. But now that it's contraband on the pantry shelf, she'll pull it out, bite the lid and pop it off. Next, she'll spill them all over the floor while trying to choke (not literally) a mouthful down. She's very good with food so we're not worried about her choking, but it's funny because you can tell by her facial expression that she's conflicted. She hates the taste of the raisins but she can't not put them in her mouth after popping the lid off. It's as if she's trying desperately hard to like them.