lately, when i get tired or frustrated, i like to scream, kick, hit, spit, and/or throw things.  sometimes i slap the walls or other hard surfaces and it stings my hand.  mama and dada just laugh at me and say “maybe you shouldn’t hit the wall, huh?”.  everyone assumes that i’ve been acting up because of baby sister, but it’s not her fault.  i love baby sister — i always take care of her and treat her very gently.

so now, everyone figures that i’m going through my terrible 2’s and acting age-appropriately.  the other day, dada told me that he knows that i’m just going through a phase, but he asked me to be “a little less terrible”.  i’ve always been a little bit ahead of the curve with my physical development, so it makes sense that i would start my terrible 2’s early, right?  mama actually thinks that i entered that phase when i was 15 months old, but i’ve recently kicked it into high gear.

but why now?  so mama thought about all the changes in my life and thinks she might have figured it out.  before baby came along, mama used to take me and koda out somewhere fun (park, ponds, creek, etc.) every day after my nap.  but now that dada is back to work, mama hasn’t dared to try taking me, baby, and koda out by herself.  today, we finally did it.  we just went for a stroll around the neighborhood (i led the way), but mama made it seem like it was a huge accomplishment.  i don’t get what the big deal was.

we’ll see if getting my evening exercise helps make me any less terrible.  mama and dada sure hope so.

baby sister looks perfect.  that’s what doc said at her one-month checkup.  she weighed in at 9 pounds 4 ounces (50 %ile) and measured 21 inches long (44 %ile).  her head circumference is 35.5 cm (18 %ile).

umm… i know nobody is asking, but that doesn’t sound so perfect to me.  that sounds more like she’s overweight and has a pinhead.  but like i said, nobody asked me.

oh, and baby sister finally got poked with the big needle today.  she screamed really loudly for two seconds, but that was it.  let’s see how long it takes until she gets traumatized by the sight of the white crinkly paper (on the exam table) like i do…

p.s.  that photo looks familiar.  oh, that’s cuz mama took the same photo of me at my one month checkup!  she sure is good at making sure our private parts aren’t showing.  thanks mama! 🙂

happy 1 month birthday to baby sister! i guess she takes after me. she likes and dislikes a lot of the same things as i did when i was her age. (and just in time for this milestone, she had her first diaper blowout yesterday :))

things she likes:

• being held upright
• trying to hold up her head
• winking
• hiccuping and sneezing
• tracking movement with her eyes
• bathtime
• sleeping at nighttime. mama is going to get mad at me for jinxing her, but for the past few days, baby sister has been sleeping for almost four hours in between nighttime feedings!
• snacking. during the day, she eats practically every hour. mama can’t believe how often baby sister wants to eat. i guess she is a snacker, just like mama.
• screaming. she doesn’t cry much, but when she does, she is LOUD. even when she is downstairs in the living room, i can hear her screaming all the way from my room!

things she doesn’t like:

• being swaddled. she wiggles and kicks to unwrap herself.
• having a dirty diaper. she cries when she poops so that her diaper will get changed right away.

after baby sister was born, dada took three weeks of paternity leave.  i dunno what that means, but he got to stay home from work and hang out with us.  yay! paternity leave is awesome! dada didn’t let baby go out much, so she mostly stayed home (or in the hospital) with mama.  once in awhile, mama and i hung out while dada took care of baby.  but on most days, dada and i went out and did fun guy stuff together.

last thursday, dada went back to work.  so for the past week, dada hasn’t been home during the daytime.  that has made it pretty easy to help baby sister sneak out of the house.  she has been out to lunches and starbucks runs, and i’ve even shown her around at some of my regular local hotspots — like the little gym (where i go to gym class) and almaden valley athletic club (where i take swim lessons).

yesterday, baby sister and i went out on our first real outing — gilroy gardens!  the day started out great.  we all went on the train ride together.  after that, i wanted to drive the fire engines and race cars, and even ride on bulgy the flying goldfish, so we waited in all those lines.  i even got in and strapped on the seat belt, but once i realized that baby sister wasn’t allowed to ride with me, i changed my mind and got out before the ride started.  so then we decided to go on the rainbow gardens boat ride because we thought that we could all go on that ride together.  but when we got to the front of that line, the operator told mama that baby sister would have to sit in her own seat and wear a seat belt.  mama just looked at him like he was insane.

i felt bad that baby sister barely got to go on any rides.  but mama said that baby had fun strolling around the park, watching me play in the water attractions, and just hanging out with me all day long.  how nice.  my baby sister is pretty awesome.

i’ve been teaching baby sister my old tricks, and i hafta say, she is  a quick study!

she already learned to poop in the bathtub.  she did that on the first try, and she’s kept it up in all of her baths so far.  she even managed to keep some in the reserves to poop in her towel immediately after her bath!  that’s more of an advanced skill, but she’s already got it down pat 😛

baby sister has also mastered the hourly feedings and the hungry hippo look.  everyone thinks it’s a growth spurt that occurs at 2.5 – 3 weeks, but we are really just keeping our parents on their toes.  just as they are getting used to the feedings every 2-3 hours, we change it up to keep things interesting.

peeing on the doc is something that i didn’t do until i was 4-months old.  (it was revenge for all those shots!)  baby sister doesn’t have the “equipment” to aim and pee on him, but she flooded his scale today!  way to go, baby sister!

i am not the only one that she is learning from, though.  at her last check up, doc instructed her to “eat more and get chubby“.  well… she did!  in 11 days, she gained 28 ounces.  she now weighs 8 pounds 8 ounces (40 %ile, up from 11 %ile).  that’s craaazy!

baby sister takes direction well.  i can’t wait ’til she gets older so i can teach her some really fun things…  mwahahahaha!

i went to celebrate my buddy matthew’s 2nd birthday today.  he had it at a place called swaray.  dada says that most people don’t know it, but that is the correct spelling of the french word.

swaray is a big indoor play gym for kids.  there’s a big room with two jumpy houses — one for the big kids and one for us under four.  dada knows i don’t like the jumpy houses, but he shoved me in there with my buddy edison, anyway.  as soon as i could, i slid down the mini-slide and made a break for it.  also in the big room is a disco ball.  i love disco balls.  they are so mesmerizing.  i was just staring at the disco ball in the middle of the room when all of a sudden some other kid ran right into me!  that was enough for me, so i got outta there and headed over to the small room.

the small room had a train set in it.  i had a blast playing with thomas (the tank engine) and his friends.  after a while, i got bored and found some musical instruments in the hallway.  i made a friend there in the hallway — we formed a band and played music together.  i call the band “kyden and this other kid”.

after all of the fun and games we ate this really healthy, super organic, makes-you-strong food.  well, that’s what dada called it, and that’s what he told mama it was.  i think dada is confused because it sure looked like pizza to me.  after lunch, matthew blew out his candles and we called it a day.  happy birthday matthew!

baby sister got slimed.  ewww, gross!  the doctor said that the slime would help make the pictures of her insides come out clearer.

baby sister told everyone that her doctor ordered an ultrasound to check out her kidneys, but i know better.  people only get ultrasounds to take pictures of babies inside them — like these pictures of me and baby sister.   but i guess baby sister didn’t want mama and dada to know that she’s pregnant, so she made up this complicated story:

• when baby sister was still inside mama, her 16-week anatomy scan showed that mama had placenta praevia.
• mama was scanned again at 32 weeks.  she no longer had placenta praevia, but the ultrasound showed that one of baby sister’s kidneys was bigger than it was supposed to be.  everyone said that it was a normal finding, and it would probably resolve itself, just like the placenta praevia did.
• when baby sister was one day old, she had an ultrasound in the hospital.  that scan showed small lesions (possibly cysts?) adjacent to her kidney, on/near her adrenal gland.  blood tests indicated that kidney function was normal.
• so today’s ultrasound was to follow up on the mystery lesions.  the doctor did a full abdominal scan and didn’t find any lesions.  but her kidneys are still slightly bigger than normal.
• baby sister will probably need additional follow-ups until she “grows into” her kidneys, but in the meantime, everyone thinks she’s just fine.

that’s her story, and she’s sticking to it.  please don’t tell her that i told you she’s pregnant.  she’ll get really mad at me for tattling.

baby sister had her first real bath last night.  she didn’t cry or even complain one little bit.  she even fell asleep while the giant crab swallowed her up after her bath!

some people think that baby sister is just a mellow little girl, but those people obviously haven’t heard her scream.  i just think that she enjoyed her bathtime because mama has gotten so good at giving baths.  i’ve trained her well over the years.

in keeping with tanaka family tradition, baby sister pooped in the tub — just like i did during my first bath.  high five to baby sister!

baby sister had her two-week checkup today.  when mama was getting her ready to go, i told her “no!  no!  no!”  i warned her about going to the poking place, but she didn’t listen.  baby sister was as content as could be, heading out to get poked.

apparently, our regular nurse wasn’t in today, so there was a stand-in nurse that we’d never seen before.  she didn’t seem to know what she was doing.  the first time she weighed baby sister, she was 5 pounds 14 ounces.  mama said that couldn’t be right (since she was 6-14 at birth), so she weighed her again.  same result.  mama started to panic.  baby sister was withering away!  after baby got all dressed, stand-in nurse wanted to weigh her again.  this time, she weighed 6-1.  better, but still 12% below her birth weight.

when the doc came in, he took one look at baby sister and knew that the nurse didn’t weigh her right.  he calibrated the scale and weighed her again. here are her real stats:

• weight: 6 pounds 12 ounces (11 %ile)
• length: 20.5 inches (59 %ile)
• head circumference: 34 cm (11 %ile)

whew!  that darned stand-in nurse almost gave everyone a heart attack!  baby sister is still not gaining as much as she should (babies should be back to their birth weight by 2 weeks), so the doc told her to eat more and get chubby.  she better listen — doctor’s orders!

when mama brought baby sister home, she was sleeping peacefully.  why weren’t her eyes red and tear-filled, like mine are when i get poked with big needles?  and then it dawned on me, the needles don’t come out until you’re one month old.  baby sister has no idea what’s in store for her.

don’t tell baby sister, but i’m pretty sure that mama and dada love me more.  when i was a baby, they took better care of me and worried about me more than they do about her.

i was born 100% healthy.  but still, for almost two weeks, mama and dada worried that i wasn’t eating enough.  they even took me to the hospital’s breastfeeding center to ask for advice and weigh me to see if i was gaining weight.  on the other hand, baby sister had a rough start.  when she was born, she wasn’t breathing, her glucose levels were low, and her bilirubin levels were through the roof.  but mama and dada don’t seem to worry about her at all.

for another thing, i didn’t get to go on my first stroller ride to explore the great outdoors until i was more than three weeks old.  dada was worried that i would get too cold, or too hot, or something…  i dunno.  but we took baby sister out for her first stroller ride yesterday.  can’t you believe it?  she was only 12 days old!  i checked on her often to make sure she was doing okay.  she was just fine, but i get the feeling that she doesn’t always appreciate my overprotectiveness and affection.

and guess what else.  i didn’t get to go to my first party until i was more than one month old (something about too many germs floating around), but baby sister is probably going to get to go to a party this weekend.  i guess mama and dada don’t care about baby sister getting germs.

see what i mean?  it sure seems like mama and dada love me more, doesn’t it?