feeding time -Fernando K.

I'm playing with russell.

feeding time-fernando k

im feeding russell :0

bathing time - fernando k

im bathing russell!

feeding time- fernando k

im feeding russell!

sleeping time - Fernando k.

russell is cryinng , so im feeding him.

Baby Cost!

List of things I will need for my new born baby:
· Car seat
· Crib
· Breast feeding equipment
· Medicines
· Bath items
· Changing equipment
· Miscellaneous

The first year is going to cost: from $14,536 to $16, 929
Total cost for raising a child from birth to adulthood: $476,190 (this is including EIS tuition.)

feeding time -Fernando k.

I'm feeding russell.

playing time- fernando k\

im playing with russell. :)

feeding time-fernando

im feeding russell

bathing time

bathing time for russell (Andrea's last one)

Feeding Time

feeding timeee

Feeding Time

Its 12 am and time to feed my baby.

Bathing Time

Its 8 o'clock at night and time to bathe Russell.

Feeding Time

Its 4 in the afternoon and time to feed Russell.

Bathing Time

Its 12 pm and time to bathe Russell

Feeding Time

Its 8 am and time to feed Russell.

14 years old!

Today my son asked for permission to go to Christian’s house for a party. Christian’s parents are not only permissive parents but they are also on vacation and left the house to Christian. I’m worried because I know there will be alcohol there and Russell hasn’t really been experiencing with it lately. I remember when I was a teenager and my parents would give me early curfews and didn’t let me drink because they were really strict and authoritarian. It was no to everything, but I still did it anyways and it gave me the desire to do what was forbidden. That’s why I chose to be an authoritative parent. Before Russell left the house I sat him down and explained to him how the party is probably going to be and how he should take care of himself and I also shared a couple of my teen year stories just so he could have a heads up. I try being a good father and giving him advice. I can see it paying off some times and it feels rewarding.

Baby Love

Russell is 13 and now a teenager. He is now starting to go through puberty and we are very excited that he is going through a new stage of his life. We try to be authoritative parents so that we can have open discussions with our son, but we know that once he reaches puberty he will change and probably not tell us things. It’s going to be very challenging because there are so many challenges that a teen parent might have. For instance, peer pressure can make good kids do bad things. Everything from doing drugs to stealing, but those things don’t really scare us because we know that Russell hangs out with good kids and we absolutely love his new girl friend Ellie. She is so sweet! Ever since he started to go out with her he uses less foul words and is very happy all of the time, we really hope this relationship lasts!

Moral Treasure

Russell is now 10 years old. He is always happy and active. Last month we went to Aruba for Fernando’s 36th birthday. While I was tanning and reading Nicholas Sparks’ latest book, I heard Russell call my name. I got up and saw that he was on the beach digging a hole. But as I blocked my eyes from the sun I saw that he had a box in his hands and he was running back to the pool area. He told me that he found it while he was digging. We opened the box and it was filled with about one million dollars. I called Fernando immediately so that he could come and take a look at it. We searched the box and saw that there was a phone number on a paper inside. As I was dialing the phone number on my cell phone Russell asked me why we couldn’t keep it “Finders keepers, losers weepers” he said to me. This proved to me that Kholberg was right about the morality stages. My son was at a preconventional stage where he is only worried about himself and what he is going to gain. He is centered on self interest. I explained to him how he should have more of a postconventional morality where you have to think of others and how important your own morality and ethics are.

5th Birthday...Where in the world is Teddy?!

Dear goodness! Russell is 5 years old and ever since he was 4 he was very attached to his stuffed animal Teddy. We were on our way to grandma’s house in California. Since we are from San Pedro we took a couple of flights to get there. I must have left Teddy somewhere in Huston Texas airport because we just landed in California and it is no were to be found! I’m so disappointed in myself because I let my son down and made him cry! I wish he wasn’t five years old because now he is in the sensorimotor stage and he has object permanence. I remember last time this happened he was a year old and I lost his teddy bear but he didn’t even seem to notice because to him when something was out of sight it was gone forever. Oh how I wish he was one again. I have to go find a new Teddy, so long!

Little 4 year old, Big tantrum....

This month Russell turned four and we decided that it’s time to take him to Disney and that he has the age to appreciate it. So as a birthday gift we decided to take him. I was walking towards gate 14 on my way to Orlando where we would meet Fernando. As I was walking Russell saw a toy store and was agitated already because of the last 5 hours we had spent on an airplane from New York. So he saw the store and asked if we could go in, but we were running late so I said no. He threw himself on the floor and started to cry begging me to take him in there. I was so embarrassed because everyone was staring at me. So I squatted down to his eye level and firmly said that I was not going to reward bad behavior and as punishment I was not going to allow him to play with his toys during the flight. He then understood and pulled himself together. I was not going to let him in the store because then he would get used to getting what he wants by crying and throwing a tantrum. I try being an authoritative parent because I dont want my kid to hate me but I also don't want to be disrespected. I really try hard to make Russell have a good self-concept but I know that today he is feeling sad because of what just happened.

3 years old!

Russell is 3 years old now and he is starting to attend nursery school. Today I got a call from Ms. Darlene saying that Russell was fighting with Alex over water bottles. After reading Piaget’s book on how children’s minds work I knew the answer to what was happening. My son is currently 3 years old which places him in the preoperational stage. In this stage kids tend to be egocentric and don’t have the ability to take on another’s point of view. I will try to explain to Russell that the other water bottle doesn’t belong to him, and that it belongs to Alex. I hope this works but I’m not so sure because his brain just doesn’t work like that yet.
Apart from that he has been a very happy and loving 3 year old. His current obcesion is Thomas the Train. We remodeled his room and filled it with Thomas furniture and toys. He seems to love it which makes me happy.

Also lately Fernando and I have been very busy with our jobs so we are dropping him off at the local day care center every time our schedules crash. I was a bit worried about it but I did some research and found out that daycares have shown no detrimental effects on children over the age of three.

Potty Training Time!

Ew. Ew. Ew. Ok, so I guess I may be acting like a silly teenager, but I just got sprayed in the face by my son, and it wasn’t a water gun. I have GOT to start potty training him because he is already two years old. I went online and searched tips and ways to potty train, I chose to buy him a potty training chair and asked my husband to be in charge of potty training him because Russell looks up to him and wants to be like him, he has a great attachment to his father. So I figured that if Russell sees Fernando doing it, then he might have a little more motivation to learning. By the way, Fernando is doing an amazing job at being a father, like I said; Russell has a big attachment towards him. I think it has to do with the fact that Fernando is always playing with him and takes him out on their weekly play dates together. It’s so cute, they go fishing, or to the soccer field, or to the park. I love seeing them together; it’s just a reflection of so much love. I remember learning about attachment and Harlow’s experiment in the 10th grade and I guess it’s true, Russell responds better to people who share body contact with him like his grandparents and us. His imprinting is definitely with Fernando and I. He follows us everywhere and feels secure with us, he gets stranger anxiety whenever we aren’t near. One of my favorite things to do with him right now is play peek-a-boo because he doesn’t have object permanence so he actually believes that when I cover my face I disappear, although he is starting to realize that I’m not going anywhere, I guess that now that he’s 2 years old he’s moving on to the preoperational stage! Oh well, I really hope my potty training plan works!

PS: Heres a song I'm teaching Russell so that potty training can be fun:

Tinkle, Tinkle, little pee, in the potty you will be.

Poopy, Poopy stinky-O, in the Potty you will go.

2 years old..

Russell is two years old! Life just gets more and more exciting for our family every day! Last week we went for our daily stroll in the park and Russell was walking around on the grass and he ate a bug! Since he is still in his sensorimotor stage he puts everything in his mouth! Anything that he has on his hands he puts in his mouth. I quickly took the bug out of his mouth and taught him that bugs are not for eating. I try and keep as much out of his mouth but thats the way he learns. And by the way he is learning so much lately, especially with symbols. The doctor explained that he is at his Preoperational stage where he learns to represent things with symbols. Yesterday he gave me a paper with scribbles on it and said that it was a picture of "mama and dada."

He is just the ray of sunshine through my dark storms, I love him!

1 year old!

Russell is now 1 year old. He is a very healthy baby and he is so intelligent! He is just now blabing out words like "mama" "dada" and believe it or not, "Bob." He loves to watch Bob the builder, its his latest obcesion and its quite strange but thats ok because its teaching him new things every day. I love to just watch him laugh as he is hypnotized by the TV watching Bob the builder, but sometimes I get worried because of his eye sight. I try and keep him away from the TV as much as possible. The other day we took him by the pool and we had so much fun as a family! We are so blessed!

His cognition is very impressive! Everything from thinking, to knowing and remembering he is great at. The doctor says that he has a very high IQ, but I dont seem to know how they can tell if he's smart or not when a kid is a year old. I hope its true!

Today was so funny. Russell has always been taught that dogs bark and when he sees a dog he mutters “woof woof.” But today Andrea bought Russell a stuffed animal that was a bunny and when Russell saw it he barked and everyone who was looking started to laugh. I was quite funny to see how Russell had assimilated the bunny into the same schema as a dog. We ended up teaching him that bunnies are a different animal and that they don’t bark. He’s a smart kid so we are confident that he will be able to accommodate everything into its own schema!

Decorating Time!

Today is a very exciting day for me. Ever since Russell was born, he has been sleeping in our room in a crib. I’m not sure if I’m ready to have him sleep in his own room yet, I want to make sure he is safe 24/7, but my husband thinks it’s time to start working on his room. So today I’m going shopping for Russell’s toys and his furniture. Before I hit the road, I searched for the best types of toys and furniture that is fit for a new born. I found out that babies love complex patterns, so I made sure to buy tons of crazy patterns. His room is going to be designed like the house from the Pixar movie Up, so the walls are going to be painted with bright colors. I bought him a walker so that it can help him learn to walk faster, because the babies’ critical period for learning to walk is from 9-15 months of age.

I have been observing Russell lately and I’m starting to notice his temperament and personality characteristics. He is such a cheerful baby; he is always smiling and excited. I noticed that he has a happy mood. He is very energetic for a 2 month old baby, he doesn’t fall asleep very easily and is always crawling everywhere! Since he is in his Sensorimotor stage he is touching and smelling and licking everything he can get his hands on, but that’s the way he learns so ill buy him rattles and noise making toys too! Oh well, I have to go! Shopping calls!

Its a Boy!

Today was the best day of my life; I gave birth to my first son Russell. I have to admit that I was feeling scared, terrified actually, of the idea of natural birth. I was so tired after seven painful hours of labor, but the moment the doctor handed my child over to me and I looked into his eyes I forgot all about the pain I had gone through. I felt like the most precious thing in the world was in my hands and it weighed 7 pounds and 8 ounces and had a height of 17 inches. It was just the most amazing moment I have ever lived!Our son’s whole name is Russell Gabriel Kattan Chahin. It took us, my husband and me, about a week to figure out what the perfect name for him would be. His name is very meaningful to Fernando and me because our second names are Gabriel and Gabrielle so we thought it would be perfect to name our son after both of us.

Today Fernando gave me a scrapbook with all of the ultrasounds pictures in it. That gift was very special to me, I couldn’t have asked for more! I can almost recall as if it were yesterday when I found out that I was pregnant. It’s actually a funny story. I was helping out my friend Victoria with pregnancy tests because she and her husband were trying to have a baby. After she peed on the stick, she wasn’t sure if the answer was clear so she asked me to pee on a test to see what the negative answer looked like. So I did, and it was positive! I couldn’t believe it; both Vicky and I were pregnant! I started to scream and jump with excitement!

I rushed to the nearest Hallmark store and bought baby magazines which I then had wrapped in a nice box. I placed it on the table in front of the door to the house so that when my husband came home from work he would see it. I was watching a rerun of friends on TV when I heard a loud scream coming from the main entrance of our home and sure enough when my husband saw me he hugged me and was very happy.

The next day we went to the Dr. Carl Fredrickson’s office. He explained to me how I had to be very careful with what I ate because I couldn’t let my baby be exposed to any teratogens. I also couldn’t drink any alcohol because we didn’t want our son to be born with fetal alcohol syndrome. The first day that I visited Dr. Carl I got an ultrasound. We did the same for the next 9 months and each time we would go we would take a picture of the baby and how it was developing. On the first page of the scrapbook was a picture of Russell as a zygote, a tiny ten day old organism yet so cute in my eyes! But it wasn’t a zygote for long because two weeks later it was an embryo, which is the second picture in the scrapbook. He was bigger than before, but still tiny! Now his size was like a peanut! So cute!!! The doctor explained to me that his heart had just started beating and that his organs were forming.
At six months pregnant I took the next picture, which was one of my favorites! It’s a picture of Russell as a Fetus. His stomach and other organisms were formed and he could already hear and recognize sounds. He could also respond to light!
Going though that scrapbook made me think on how fast these 40 weeks of pregnancy went by so fast! It’s amazing how time flies!

Dr. Carl just came in a while ago to test Russell’s reflexes and thank God they were all just right! Our little Russell is a healthy baby. The reflex tests that Dr. Carl preformed scared me a little because of how he was doing them. He would startle my baby and even made him hold on to a stick! My tiny baby could have fallen! I was so scared, but after all Dr. Carl is a professional.

Well, my family members just came to visit so I have to go. Im excited that I can finally eat junk food now that im not pregnant anymore!! What a blessing today was, I am so grateful.