It’s a little over 7 weeks now and Mackenzie has been a wonderful addition to our family.  She has learned the difference between day and night and is starting to sleep longer hours during the night.  Of the three kids, I think she is the quickest one to adapt to a night time schedule.  She will go to sleep around 9 or 10 PM and will sleep for 4 to 5 hours.  Of course, this is great for me because I can actually sleep for more than 2 hours each time.  After that, she gets up to be fed and then will normally sleep for another 3 hours or so.  During the day, she will take a long nap for about 3 hours and the rest of the time will take short naps here and there. 

Many people are amazed with her alertness at her young age.  She looks around a lot and can recognize voices.  She’ll turn towards the voice/noise and stares the person straight in the eye, especially if it is Mommy that’s talking.  She has this little radar for me whenever I’m anywhere near her.  She also has very strong neck muscles.  She can support herself up very well.  On her rocker, we normally have her in a sitting position and ironically, she gets upset if she’s not in the sitting position.  I really don’t remember Nicholas or Zachary being that strong at the same age.  Michael thinks that she will walk even sooner than Nicholas did. (Nicholas was walking around 9 ½ months.)

Overall, we believe that Mackenzie is developing very well.  I took her in for a check up about 2 weeks ago because she had a cold and she was already 10 lbs. 6 oz.  That’s a little over 3 lbs. over her birth weight.  We’re guessing she weight about 11 lbs. right now.  She has her two month check up next Thursday so we’ll know more than. 

How is Nicholas and Zachary adapting to Mackenzie?  Both of them are doing fine with Mackenzie.  Zachary loves his little sister.  Every chance he gets, he would go up to her and rub his face against hers.  There are times when I have to ask him to stop because she’s sleeping and he tends to wake her up when he does that.  There are other times when he will actually sit there and talk to her.  Yesterday, both Nicholas and Zachary were trying to talk to her using the universal baby language.  It was a very cute and adorable sight to see.

Nicholas does not hang out with Mackenzie as much as Zachary, but is doing his share as a big brother.  He helps with many things like carrying the baby bag when we are out or throwing away the diaper when she gets changes.  The newest trick he's learned is how to put the pacifier into her mouth iwhen she’s crying in the car.  I remember the first time I asked Nicholas to do so, he didn’t know that he could let go after she started sucking on it.  He held it in her mouth the whole way home from my parents’ house.  That’s about a 25 minute drive. 

Zachary will do his share of helping also especially when Nicholas is in school, but Zachary gives up a lot more easily than Nicholas.

Other events during the last month?  Well, there was Chinese New Years.  Since I did not have to work this year during the festivities, it was a lot more enjoyable.  We really didn’t do anything different from last year, but because I had a new born, I didn’t have to do as much work as I normally would.  We had our normally celebration at my mother’s house on the second day of New Year.  Of course, like normally, there were plenty of food and laughter.  For the kids, they got their usually amounts of red envelops and met many people that they probably will not remember until next year.  This year, Chinese New Years was a bit more fun for the kids because my brother built an arcade machine at my parents’ house.  Also, many, if not all, of my nieces and nephews have a Gameboy console so they were able to connect to each other and play two player games.  As you can see from the pictures I took, there were very into the Gameboy and the arcade machine.

The weekend after Chinese New Year (2/23 - 2/25), the boys went to South Lake Tahoe.  Mackenzie and I stayed home.  From what I heard, the boys had a lot of fun playing in the snow and they loved the kid games at Heavenly.  The trip was planned a few months ago.   We bowl with my sister and a couple of friends on Wednesday nights and they all decided to take a trip to the snow.   Since the boys have never been to the snow, we thought it would be a good experience for them.  They drove up to the cabin that they rented on Friday and stayed there until Sunday.  As you can tell from the pictures, the boys had lots of fun playing in the snow, building snowman, and sliding down the hill.  The cabin that they were staying in also had a hot tub outside and the kids enjoyed that too. 

They did have some problems trying to get back down to Sactown.  That weekend happen to be the weekend where it rained a lot down here in Sactown so it was snowing up in the high countries.  On the day they went up, the roads were clear so they had no problem getting to Lake Tahoe.  On Saturday, it was nice and sunny so they enjoyed their day at Heavenly.  However on Sunday, the day that they were suppose to come back down, it was snowing and windy.  I guess it snowed overnight and you can see from some of the pictures that their cars were all snowed in.  The roads were very bad so they decided not to come back down in the morning.  I was constantly calling them to see what the latest conditions were.  Eventually, they were able to leave that evening and got back into town around 1 AM on Monday morning.  Good thing we don’t do this often or else I would have a lot of white hair from worrying.

The weekend after the snow trip (3/3/07), we had a Red Egg and Ginger party for Mackenzie.  It’s pretty much a dinner party to celebrate the one month birthday of a newborn.  For dinners like this, you can either have it at your home or in a restaurant and since I was not going to be cooking for 50 – 60 people, it took place at a restaurant.  Traditionally, you would serve eggs that were dyed red and ginger that was marinated in vinegar.  Don’t ask me why eggs and ginger.  I only know that ginger is supposed to be good for women who just had a baby because it helps “heal” your body.  Well, I did serve the red eggs, but not the ginger because my mother knows that I can’t take ginger so she never prepared that dish while I was pregnant.  You see, the marinated ginger requires much work that starts probably around the 8^th month of a woman’s pregnancy.  After the birth of the baby is when the ginger is actually cooked with pork and served.  It is also tradition that if someone comes and visits you at your home during the first month of your child’s birth, you should serve them some of this ginger.  Of course, I use the excuse that I married an American, therefore I do not need to follow all the rules so if you came to see me during the first month of Mackenzie’s birth, that is why you were not served ginger and pork.

How am I doing so far?  I’m doing fine.  Since Mackenzie doesn’t sleep through the night, I wake up whenever she wakes up.  You can imagine that with all the interrupted sleep during the night, I never feel like I get enough sleep so I don’t normally get up until 9 in the morning.  Life at home with Zachary and Mackenzie has been fun thus far.  I have always been the ambiguous type and thought that I would go crazy if I spent too much time sitting at home.  Thus far, these seven weeks have been enjoyable and I’ve gotten use to staying at home.  I always thought that I would get bored and not want to stay home anymore, but on the contrary, there is so much that can be done at home that I run out of daylight each day.  My only problem is that Mackenzie is still very young therefore I cannot devote an entire day to working around the house.  I spent whatever time I have free working on things while she’s sleeping or on the swing.  Some of the free time, I spend watching TV and relaxing.  And when I do get bored, I go out to my parents and stay there for a while.  So to conclude myself, life at home isn’t that bad. 

Finally, I have great news. My sister-in-law gave birth to twin boys on Tuesday morning.  I don’t have all the details as to their weight and height, but we do plan on visiting them this coming weekend so we’ll have more details and plenty of pictures.  Congratulations to Richard and Carla!!!