Today was the third time Logan went to see the dentist.  He was all excited about our adventure until he was told to sit in the dental chair.  He refused to sit by himself and refused to have his teeth cleaned by the hygienist.  He had Teddy with him, so the hygienist tried to show him what she would do to his teeth by first doing that to Teddy.  But once it came to Logan’s turn, he refused again.  We finally had to force our way to keep Logan down and barely got his teeth cleaned.  He cried through the entire cleaning with lots of tears.  I did not want to torture Logan further, so we did not get fluoride on his teeth.  After he calmed down for awhile, then it was time for the dentist check up.  Fortunately, it was just a quick look, so Logan managed to handle that.  At the end of the visit, we were given some film strips to take home, so we can get Logan used to biting on them to prepare for x-ray at next visit.

     Logan is very attached to a tiny teddy bear these days.  He would sleep and go everywhere with it.  The only place he will not take Teddy to is school.  Logan would hand Teddy to me to put it in a safe place in the car, and I have heard him said “see you later” to Teddy on his own.  The past few days, he found Teddy a family.  Now Teddy has a Daddy Bear and Mommy Bear.  Logan has been taking the entire family to bed at night and bringing all of them to the family room in the morning.  Every night when Logan says the rollcall of his goodnights to each of us before he lays down, the bear family is now also being mentioned individually.

     Since the weather has been nicer lately, Logan is more interested to play outdoors.  His favorite outdoor toys this week have been the water gun and Stuart’s remote controlled car.  Logan is getting better controlling the car now; he can drive it forward and make turns.  He still however runs up to turn the car around manually rather than using the control to back it up . 

     As a side note, Logan’s counting skills are getting a bit better as he understands the concept of it now.  When we were at the zoo, he was counting the number of animals he saw.  But he still has trouble with the number 5 where he often replaces it with 8.  Like today when we were driving home, he made a comment that there were many cars on the road.  So I asked him to count them, and he was counting them aloud, “one, two, three, four, eight”.  After I corrected him gently, he continued on starting with “five” all the way to “twelve” correctly.  He also uses his fingers to help counting too.  When we have animal crackers for desserts sometimes, he often asked for five of them.  Stuart would mess with him by giving him less than 5, then he would use his fingers to count how many he got and how many more he should get.

It was Stuart’s birthday today.  Unfortunately, he still had to work, but he managed to play tennis with me during his lunch time.  We had fun playing and got a good workout.  We actually played 3 sets of games.  At the end, Stuart def. Bonnie 6-0, 3-6, 3-0.  I was just happy that I got one set which rarely happens.  We had Stuart’s favorite fish and chips for dinner and ice cream cake for dessert.  He also received many birthday wishes and nice gifts.  This was the simple birthday celebration Stuart was wishing for.

We just had a 3 day weekend.  The boys were off from school on Friday for spring break, so both Stuart and I took a day off from work as well.  We decided to go to SF Zoo with the Kaos on Friday.  This was the second time visiting that zoo for Logan and first for Connor.  Logan was his usual self, not too excited to see the animals.  He had his snack while looking through all the cages.  The highlight for him was the steam engine train.  He was so excited that he would run to see it and was looking forward to riding it. The ride was fast and we all enjoyed it a lot, including Connor.  For almost the entire trip, Connor was very content looking around in his stroller.  He also took an hour of comfortable nap there.  Mckayla and Marcus seemed to have a great time too; they both had their share of walking and riding in the stroller.  After 4 hours of visiting, we all were tired and the two boys took their naps on the way home.

On Saturday, we just did some errands and stayed home most of the day.  Stuart was able to use the time to clean up our backyard for our Sunday event.  We also played with our neighbors in the front yard since the weather was very nice.  Logan and Caleb had a good time practicing hiding and hunting for eggs for Easter.

We invited some of our friends and kids over on Easter Sunday for an egg hunt.   Between the few families, we had hidden over 100 eggs in our backyard.  All the kids came prepared with their baskets, and everyone was excited looking for eggs.  Logan initially was not as interested, compared to the practice run he had with Caleb.  But later on, Stuart was able to get him into the game again by using his favorite toy of the week, a water gun, to aim for eggs.  Connor was just happy sitting on a blanket holding a couple of eggs.  At the end, Brandon, Peyton, Mckayla, Marcus, Ashlyn, Tyler and Tyson were happy opening up all the eggs to see their prizes.  We then had the Hawaiian BBQ lunch we picked up, and moved on to free play time in the house and in the backyard afterward.  We also had a little early celebration for Stuart’s birthday.  Three hours of fun time had passed and it was time for all the kids to go home and take their naps.  It was a good weekend.

I took Connor to see the doctor for his 9th month visit today.  The ear that Connor had the infection was still slightly red, but that was not unusual according to the doctor.  Connor had finished the 10 days of amoxicillin a week ago.  Other than that, everything checked out well, including his lungs which sounded clear.

His new stats as below:

Wt: 24lb 12oz (95%, down from 97%)

Ht: 31.1” (99% consistently)

Head: 19”

For comparison, Logan was 20lb 12oz (51%), 30” tall and with head size 19”.

We learned from today’s visit that the boys’ doctor is leaving Kaiser in 1 month.  Dr. Chiu has been helpful and caring to our boys.  So we are sad that we have to find another doctor for them soon.

After the first night of sleep training, Connor slept through the entire night.  He must have been tired from the crying.  On day 2, he cried for 5 minutes after I put him down.  He woke up twice that night but uneventful.  Last evening, day 3, there was only 3 minutes of crying at bedtime.  However, Connor woke up many times afterward.  First time was at 10:30.  I fed him, and he started crying when I returned him to the crib.  I figured I had to continue the training, so I left after saying goodnight.  He was angry and cried for a total of 16 minutes before he stopped, but for some reason, he woke up crying again 30 minutes later.  At that point, I felt bad and went to see him.  I decided to feed him again.  He was very cute, kept looking up to stare at me, like checking to make sure I was staying with him.  He finally went back to sleep in the crib without any fuss.  However, he awoke again at 1:30, 2:30 and 4:30.  The good thing was that he was able to put himself back to sleep in just a few minutes two of those times.  Tonight, he cried probably just 10 seconds.  He had stopped even before I got hold of the monitor.  Will see how tonight goes.

Just FYI, Logan’s sleep training record was 1st night: 27mins, 2nd night: 17mins, 3rd night: NO cry at all and 7mins before falling asleep