can you believe that baby sister was not supposed to be born until today?  she mostly just sleeps, eats, and gets her diaper changed, but it’s hard to imagine what the last 11 days would have been like without her.  she has already done so much since she has been born!

for one thing, she already had her first portrait session.  mama took her birth announcement photo when she was one week old.  i got in on the photo shoot too.  here’s a sneak peek.  (i already ordered the birth announcements and i will mail them out when we get them back from the print shop.)

and can you believe that she is already stealing my aunties, uncles, and friends?!  i can understand that when people come to visit me, they want to meet baby sister.  and i figured that when we got older, my buddies might want to hang out with her.  but yesterday, sierra and her family came to visit her when i wasn’t even home 🙁

it’s okay, though.  i love baby sister and i’m glad that she’s here.

things i like:

• taking care of baby sister.  i pull down mama’s shirt so she can eat and i cover her with a blanket so she doesn’t get cold.
• playing with baby sister.  i give her gentle high fives and fist bumps, and i launch my favorite iphone apps and then put it in her hand to play with.
• my step stool.  now i can reach the bathroom sink myself to get ready for bedtime 🙂
• funny noises.  baby sister’s hiccups, the crunch of ice cream cones, the squirting of the last bits of lotion from the bottle.
• turning off the stereo when i wake up.  mama leaves music on for me while i’m sleeping.  i think she wants me to like old skool R&B when i grow up, so she keeps the stereo tuned to 98.1 — KISS: “the bay’s old school”.  and now that i get out of bed by myself, i make sure to turn off the stereo before leaving my room and going to wake up mama and dada.
• when mama makes my face look funny.  she squeezes and stretches my cheeks while applying lotion to my face, and it’s hilarious!
• taking care of my stuffed animals.  in addition to feeding bear, i clean scout’s paws and wipe his nose with tissue.
• pretend-driving cars, like the ambulance and fire engine at CDM.
• the slides at pump-it-up.  i still don’t like getting tossed around in the jumpy “earthquake” houses, but the slides are so much fun!

things i don’t like:

• when mama and dada hit baby sister on the back.  they say that they are just helping her burp, but it looks like they are hurting her!
• when mama pumps milk out of her.
• using the potty.  when mama and dada ask me if i have to go potty, i say no.  then i go in my diaper.  if they bring me to the potty, i run away screaming.
• headbands.  they squeeze my brains out.
• scabs.  they don’t belong on me, so i always want to pick them off when i have them.

ever since baby sister came along, mama hasn’t been able to spend as much time with me as usual.  it seems like she is feeding baby sister all the time.  but that’s okay — it has given me and dada a chance to do some male-bonding.  like, if mama is busy when it’s time for lunch/dinner, dada makes my meals and helps me eat.  and if mama isn’t available to do my bedtime routine, dada helps me wash up and puts me to bed.  and if i get up in the middle of the night, dada comes to tuck me back into bed and stays with me until i fall back asleep.

dada says that baby sister is still too young to go out in public (and you thought i was going to be the overprotective one!).  and since mama has to stay home to feed her, dada and i have been going out by ourselves a lot more, lately.  dada takes me to gym class, he swims with me during swim class, and we go out to do other fun things, too.  the other day, we went to the park with grandma and auntie barbara to have a picnic and play in the playground.  fun!

tonight, we went to pump-it-up for clare’s birthday.  it was a pajama party.  how cool!  it was my first time getting to go out and play in my pajamas.  since i have never liked jumpy “earthquake” houses, mama and dada thought i was going to hate it there.  well, i’m still not a fan of the earthquakes, but i had a blast playing on the slides!  both dada and i got a good workout.  plus, i made a new friend and got some awesome toys to take home in my goodie bag 🙂  happy birthday clare!

i’ve been having a great time hanging out with dada — he’s my new BFF.  but i hope baby sister can come out with us soon.  i can’t wait to introduce her to all my friends and show her all my local hotspots!

baby sister had her one-week checkup today.  when i had my first checkup, i was 4 ounces lighter and 0.75″ shorter than i was when i was born.  so i sort of expected the same thing for baby sister.  and because the high bilirubin levels made her so sleepy (sometimes too sleepy to eat), i thought she would have lost even more weight.  but here are her one week stats:

• 6 pounds 11 ounces (17 %ile)
• 19 inches long  (22 %ile)

she is only down 3 ounces from her birth weight.  i guess she packed on some ounces in the hospital because she was getting a supplemental bottle-feeding after every time mama fed her.  and she didn’t shrink at all.  doc said that since she was born so fast, she didn’t have time to get a cone-head — she was born with a perfectly round normal-shaped head.  lucky girl!

the blue lights in the hospital must have done the trick because doc said that baby sister looked good as new.  she didn’t even have to get her heel pricked again.  yay!

while mama and dada were in the hospital with baby sister, koda stayed with his sister at uncle henry’s house.  he came home earlier this week.  i sure missed him!  mama said that he probably loved his kid-free vacation — nobody to step on him, nobody to run into him with ride-on cars, nobody to use him as a body pillow…

baby sister was sleeping when koda came home, and since she went back to the hospital later that same day, they never really got the chance to get to know each other.  but she finished her baby tanning session today, and now she’s finally home to stay.  yay!  we were all happy to welcome her home.  and koda was finally able to give her a proper greeting.  it reminded me of the first time that i met my furry brother.

mama says that poor koda will soon have two crazy kids torturing him.  but if you ask me, i think he’s lucky to have a brother and a sister who will take care of him.

wait a minute…  i just realized that i am now a middle child, aren’t i?

just when i thought baby sister was home to stay, she went away.  and she took mama with her.  i didn’t know where they went, but when i woke up from my nap yesterday, they were gone.  all evening i asked dada, “mama?  baby?  mama”  baby?”  so dada and i went to the hospital (again) to see them.  they sure seem to like hanging out at that place.

baby sister was sleeping in a fish tank.  it looks like the fish tank that uncle henry has, with florescent lights and everything.  it didn’t seem right to me that she was trapped in there — she’s not a fish!  i kept tapping on the glass to let her know that i was there to save her, but she didn’t wake up.  i guess she wouldn’t have seen me anyway because she was wearing some really dark purple sunglasses.

auntie barbara called it triple-bank phototherapy.  mama said baby was just a pacifier away from being at a baby rave.  dada told me that the lights are like the sun, and they will help make baby all better so she can come home.  like the sun??? i sure hope that baby finishes tanning today so that she and mama can sleep at home tonight.  (and i hear that when she comes home, she won’t glow like an alien anymore!)  sheesh, girls sure are high-maintenance.

if you watched the video from when i first met baby sister, you know it didn’t seem like love at first sight. that’s only because we met in the hospital, and i wasn’t sure if she was going to come home with us or not. and even if she did, i didn’t know if she was mine to keep. lots of babies come to visit, and once in awhile, they even spend the night (like baby logan did). but now that baby sister is home with us and i know that she is here to stay, i am 100% in love. everyone thought that i was going to be jealous of baby, but i’m not. not even one tiny bit.

i like to take care of baby sister. i help feed her. i cover her with a blanket when she’s cold. i (try to) put her hat back on her head when it falls off. i bring wipes when she needs to be changed, and i throw away the dirty diapers when she’s all done.

when i wake up in the morning, instead of calling for mama or dada like i used to, i call “baby? baby?” and i stumble into mama and dada’s room to look for baby.

even though baby sister doesn’t say or do much, i just like to look at her. sometimes, i just lie down next to her and watch her sleep. i like being able to see her so i know that she’s okay. like when mama hides baby under her nursing cover, i pull it open so that i can keep an eye on her. (mama was a little concerned that i might want to nurse when i saw baby sister nursing, but no way. drinking from my cool new sippy cup or regular adult cups is way better.)

i don’t know what everyone was so worried about. i am so happy to be a big brother and i love baby sister sooo much.

everyone says that baby sister looks just like me when i was a baby. she does seem to have my triple chin, but other than that, i don’t think we have much in common at all.

• i think she might be an alien. she glows blue and she has a tube coming out of her that looks like a vacuum cleaner hose. i think it’s weird, but nobody else seems to be concerned about it. mama and dada said that the blue light is helping lower her bilirubin levels. i dunno what that means, but i am definitely not an alien.
• she has a black stick growing out of her belly button. i keep pointing to hers, then lifting my shirt to show mama and dada what a normal belly button should look like. but again, they don’t seem to be concerned.
• she was born with more hair than i have now.
• she has freakishly long fingernails, fingers, and toes. mine are normal-sized.
• she sleeps a lot. and i mean a LOT. when i was her age, i was alert and active all night long.
• when she cries, she is LOUD. mama and dada said that newborns are supposed to have “cute” cries, like i did. she didn’t get that memo. how come i have to use my inside voice, but nobody tells her that she has to?

<– here’s a current photo of baby sister.

here’s a photo of me when i was about the same age –>

so whaddya think? does she look like me?

since so many people have asked, here are the details about my baby sister.

• name:  sienna q. tanaka. that’s right, sienna.  like the actress sienna miller.  or like the crayola color burnt sienna.  or like the toyota minivan.  i pronounce it “e-nano”.
• birthdate:  july 21, 2011 @ 3:57pm. that means that the winners of my baby pool are auntie ting and auntie jessica.  they both guessed that the baby would be a boy, but they’ll get prizes for partial credit.  congrats, aunties!
• stats:  6 lbs, 14 oz.  19 inches. she’s tiny!  mama is very grateful that sienna was smaller than me because she came out so fast that mama didn’t have time to get an epidural or even a lidocaine injection.  owie.

when i woke up yesterday and didn’t see mama, i figured she must have gone to texas again.  but i thought it was weird that dada wasn’t home, either.  instead, grandma greeted me as i wandered down the hallway in the morning.  i hung out with grandma all morning until miss denise came at her usual time, and we went about our usual day.  i kept telling her to check her phone because i was waiting for mama to call, just like she always does when she goes to texas.  but mama never called.  i guess she was busy 🙁  dada came home for dinner, we hung out in the evening, and then he put me to bed.

then as soon as i woke up this morning, dada, grandma, and i piled into the car.  dada said that we were going to go see mama.  i thought that was weird.  why wouldn’t mama just come home?

when we finally saw mama, she was lying in a bed at the hospital.  i was so happy to see her that i climbed into bed and sat with her.  and guess what.  there was a tiny little baby there, too.  mama told me that it was my baby sister.  wait… I HAVE A BABY SISTER!

i was very curious about baby sister.  i didn’t say a whole lot, but then again, neither did she.  i waited for her to wave, or give me a high five, or something, but she didn’t do much of anything.  i even tried to feed a graham cracker to her, but she didn’t want it.  she just slept the whole time that i was there.  how boring.

i didn’t know if baby sister was going to come home with us, but i thought for sure that mama would.  she didn’t.  both of them stayed in bed.  i guess they were tired.  so i gave baby a hug and a kiss and we said goodbye.  i hope they come home soon.