"Not my problem"

This was overheard from a couple standing behind us in line at Sheng Kee Bakery at Daly City a couple months ago.

We were standing in line waiting to pay. DH was wearing our little girl in the Baby Bjorn. The woman behind us saw our little girl and then made a comment to her husband about how she would love to have a baby girl. Her husband responded with, "Not my problem." Now having a bit of understanding about how Chinese gets translated into English, I interpreted this to mean that he thought it was not up to him to determine a baby's gender.

This remark may seem strange to anyone educated in the United States. It is a well known fact that males produce X chromosome sperm and Y chromosome sperm which determine the baby's gender; females only produce the X chromosome and thus have no influence over the baby's gender. There's a quick summary here.

I have observed that many Asian people, particularly those who were not educated in the United States or those who have not studied Biology, still believe that a baby's gender is determined by the female.

I have been asked whether there is anything a doctor can do about getting a boy baby. The simple answer is no. However you can increase your chances of getting the gender you want from companies such as Microsort. They sort sperm to give you a better chance of getting a particular gender, but they do not guarantee that you will get that gender. Do you really want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on all these procedures when you may not get the gender you want?

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Pulling up

Our little girl surprised us on Sunday by sitting up herself and pulling herself up by the crib railing. Fearing she would manage to get over the railing, we promptly lowered the crib mattress and also removed the Pack n Play basinet so that the playpen is at the lowest setting. It's a little awkward to put her down in the crib now, especially without waking her up. And now that she is lower, she can better see us sneaking in or out of her room. Her hearing is quite sharp; she can easily hear the door opening (scraping against the carpet) and will whip her head around to look in that direction.

We can see a little more of her two lower incisors. :)

She is having a hard time sitting still these days. She will roll over while we try to change her clothes and while we try to change her diaper. And when we put her down on the floor, she is already crawling away. We need to babyproof the house ASAP!!!

We got one of these shopping cart seat covers for her. It's nice and cushy, and makes us feel like she isn't touching the dirty shopping cart. Have you seen some of those shopping carts out there? Absolutely filthy! Well, a little false sense of cleanliness is better than none. :) She's still warming up to the whole idea of sitting up in the shopping cart. She seemed OK in it as long as she had something to chew on. We gave her a paper cup to chew on; this kept her entertained for a while.

She is outgrowing her infant carrier/car seat. She has already exceeded the length limit (26"), but not the weight limit (20 lbs). We have ordered a Britax Marathon in Luau print, which will arrive in about 6 weeks. Hope she can still use her infant carrier til then. She is not a happy camper in the car these days. We hope she will enjoy the roominess of the convertible car seat.

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Köhlr Baby sleep sack

M is growing. We received a medium size Köhlr Baby sleep sack from Priscilla when M was a newborn. We thought it was so large when we held it up, and we thought it would be a LONG time before M would fit into it. Well, we put her in it much sooner that we expected, and it fit OK even though it was a smidgen long. It kept her warm and safe at night. We put her in the sleep sack after she outgrew the Miracle Blanket, or rather, when she decided that she no longer wanted to be tightly swaddled with her arms at her side. The Miracle Blanket was a great product for keeping her arms still; back then she had little control over her arms, they'd flail about, she'd end up bonking herself and then wake up!

We just bought a Köhlr Baby sleep sack in large. I love the design & quality. The fleece is thick and very soft. I've seen the ubiquitous other brand sleep sacks at Babies/Toys-R-Us which are made of much thinner material; I can't imagine M being warm in any of those. Warmth is important to us because we live in a cooler area, in a house that tends to get cold in the middle of the night, and winter is coming.

Those Canadians make great things. We got some Canadian made body suits that are made of the softest cotton, they're even softer than the Carters cotton body suits we have (and Carters makes good stuff too). The four body suits we got were all white. I never thought they were too plain until one day while at the inlaws. We were going to change M out of her cute outfit and into something cooler so I grabbed this white body suit and proceeded to show it to my MIL to tell her how soft the cotton fabric was. At the sight of the bodysuit, and without even feeling the fabric, her reaction and comment indicated to me that she didn't like how it was all white. That's when I put this white body suit back and dug out a more colorful Carters body suit for M to wear instead. Mental note: appearance is everything ... now I have to remember to only pack colorful outfits when visiting the inlaws. That's not too difficult though since most of M's wardrobe is colorful, mostly pink, but sometimes yellow, green, red, purple. She has a few blue items, but they're obvious "girly" clothes (viz. dresses).

M is fitting into size 12 month clothes already. We started dressing her in 12 month footed sleepers and jumpsuits a few weeks ago. The footed sleepers are a smidgen long on her and she tends to get her legs stuck because she gets on all fours and tucks her legs under. Then we have to readjust her legs. Not cool when it happens in the middle of the night. I much prefer footless outfits. I'd rather put socks on her if it's colder. I've discovered that boy socks fit much better than girl socks. The boy socks we have are snugger around her leg and don't fall off as easily. Her girly socks can fall off within minutes of putting them on! You can see the socks here, the pink pair on the left are the girly socks and the white one on the right are the boy socks. I have girl socks in white, pink, purple, & blue. The boy socks only come in white; they are made with tighter ribbing which helps them stay on. M excels at kicking off the girly socks...

As for ribbing, I really hate doing K1P1 ribbing when I knit. That's the only kind of ribbing I've ever knitted, but I have the feeling I will hate doing any kind of ribbing. It's just tedious! Well, continous knitting (or purling) is also boring too.



No shoes for this girl yet. I figure she won't actually need them until she is walking. She's nowhere near walking yet ... she's still working on sitting up and crawling. She wants so much to crawl around. That girl can't sit still in my arms. She's sitting up pretty well these days, she just needs to work on getting into the sitting position on her own. Someone told me she put on Robeez slippers on her baby boy's feet to help keep his feet warm as well as keep his socks on. They have a lot of cute designs! Another place that sells baby shoes is Buskins, which is similar but not as many styles.

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