Week 11

During my run this past Saturday, I thought about how relatively stress free my life has become. Unlike my school days, I no longer have the stress of completing homework or studying for tests looming over my head. Nor do I have any of the teacher stresses such as thinking about students' problems or pesky administrative tasks to deal with. And no more grading! Yeah!  Has planning what to eat for lunch become the most stressful part of my day?

So recently, I've realized that I often wake up with my hands numb, sore, or asleep. It turns out that I have been clenching my fists as I sleep. My google-crazy self looked this symptom up and many have suggested that it is due to stress. At first I was like, no way. I have never been this stress free in my life! But then I thought about it some more and I realized that perhaps I am stressed, just in a different way. In the past, I have really only dealt with mostly external stressors. Family, school, and work issues were things that I faced, but really had little control over. The stress that I now face is more of an internal one, one that I've imposed upon myself; to raise the perfect child, and to do so, I must be the perfect mom.

I know that kids are really resilient, but a part of me thinks, why not create the most optimal environment? I feel like I'm doing a fairly good job, but I find myself always second guessing myself and I turn to the internet or parenting books to see what others suggest. Then, when I find that other moms have done it different ways (and their critical opinions on how others do it), I suddenly become a bit overwhelmed as I evaluate my own execution of the method.

For example, recently, I have Nathan on a pretty good sleep routine. One that I am happy with. I check out Dr. Karp's baby sleep book and I start to read it. Suddenly phrases like never have your child sleep on their backs and have your child sleep with white noise in the background the whole time or you can rock your child to sleep, just make sure you wake them a bit before they fall asleep are going across my mind. So last night when I put Nathan to bed, I held him until his eyes were closed. I put him down on his back and woke him up a bit and then turned on the white noise app on my phone (in airplane mode). This happened at around 9:45. Nathan did not fall asleep until 11:15, after Steve turned him on his stomach.

A part of me really just wants to say screw the expert. I'm going to follow my instincts.  But then another part of me thinks, well, he is the expert and I pretty much have no experience, so I should trust him. 

I guess that I just need to be more confident and trust my instincts. If we mess up, there's always number 2 right?

As far as Nathan goes, things are pretty steady. Nothing much has changed since last week, although I have discovered that speaking english in a country/western accent makes him laugh. It doesn't work with chinese, which was a bit weird for me to try in the first place. But almost without fail, if I speak to him like a country hick, he gets this huge smile on his face. It's really adorable.
This past weekend we took our Christmas and fall pictures. (Isn't it weird that we can take them during the same weekend?) It was pretty difficult to get both baby and dog looking at the camera at the same time. But we succeeded.


Enough leaves have fallen from the trees in the front 5yard for us to take a fall picture. He was a bit squinty from the sunlight...or it could be the Asian in him.

 I've been taking advantage of the child care at the gym I belong to. It's nice to get back to working out. I'm lifting weights, doing yoga, working on my core and of course, continuing with zumba! I really enjoy the exercise and it's also nice to have an hour just to myself. The ladies in the nursery are pretty awesome. They have been at the same gym for 11 years. They tell me that compared to many of the babies that they see, I have a really good boy. I'm so proud of him :)