Post dinner time. I'm with our baby Kyren. Since he started eating, we are to start
being creative with the food that we made for him. We've only given him avocado.
So today we're gonna try sweet potato.
We also do not have grandma and grandpa in the house right now to help with us. So this is life.
Rachel is making the food. Zae Zae is being Zae Zae. This is what Rachel is doing right now.
Is the sweet potato in there? No, not yet. I'm just boiling the water. Oh, okay.
Once I clean this sweet potato, I'm gonna peel it and then cut it into slices. We are gonna steam it and mash it all up.
Have you already put it in? Uhm hmm. See that. It's all nicely laid out.
Actually, this is not the right way to steam it. Oh, really? Yes.
Okay, this is a little mommy fail right here. I forgot.
It's okay. This is the Asian way. We gotta put a little plate in there and then you can put it in.
Okay, I won't be able to steam all of it but that's okay. He's not gonna be able to eat all of it.
I mean you can just put it on top of one another. It's fine. It's okay if I stack it? That's totally fine. It's hot.
Sorry, I was not thinking about that at all. We haven't made baby food like this since Zaden was little.
So, very much out of practice.
Hey Zae Zae. Do you like sweet potato? Uhm hmm. What is uhm hmm? Do you like it? Uhm hmm. Okay.
He gets a little camera shy these days. Zaden is growing so big now.
Zae Zae, do you get camera shy? Yes. Yes? Why are you so shy?
Wanna see? Is it ready? It's ready. Cool
Oh, hi handsome.
Someone's happy because Mimi and grandpa is back.
We don't need to make a whole lot. Look at that. It's like falling apart. I'll save that for another meal.
Mash up some of these and I'm adding a little bit of milk, so that it has a familiar taste inside of it too.
That's breast milk, right? Yeah, it's breast milk. I think it's ready.
He's hungry. Do you like it, buddy? Is it hot still? Not hot.
He's just deciding whether he likes it or not. Do you like it? First time eating sweet potato.
I want potato some more. You want more? You can have more. You can have the last two.
You're a growing child. This boy ate a whole full meal earlier and still wants potato now.
Here you go. This is the last two. It's a little bit hot, okay. So blow first.
Someone did really good with eating today. He loves it. He still has a little bit left but he ate a lot.
Look at this guy. This messy guy is ready for a shower right now. He is. And by shower I mean a bath.
What you're saying, Zae Zae? I want bring these two toys. For what? What's that for?
Baby Kyren. Oh, for baby Kyren? Yes. Okay, that's fine. You're putting it there for him? Hmm.
You're such a good brother. And this is for baby Kyren
Baby's here ready to go. Hi mickey baby. Hi baby.
He's like sitting like chilling like a villain. I'm testing the water. Why water so hot?
Water so hot. Look at that rolls, yo. So many rolls. So many rolls, babeh. This kid is well fed.
Baby Kyren's already showered. Look at this. What's this? Is it a cow? No, it's a little giraffe.
A little giraffe.
I put the heater on, so it's nice and toasty in here. Yeah. In America, we gotta have heater
running the whole night, so that the boys can sleep well.
What are you doing? I'm giving him a nice little massage. Can I have that kind of massage? You wish.
All right, so here's the deal. In an interracial relationship, we faced so many differences.
When I got married to Rachel, you know, we worked through a lot of different things and
we come to a conclusion or we come to a middle ground where we accept a lot of things
and then we became parents. Then there's a whole set of new things that we'd faced that are different
because we are brought up in two very very different households, right?
And this is the one thing that I feel like I personally think is the most challenging
being in an interracial relationship, being an interracial parent and it's in the realm of our kids sleeping.
So for Asian parenting, it's pretty straight forward. The kids co-sleep with the parents and
what that means is when you're a baby, as soon as you're born, you're sleeping very close to the parents.
Usually, it's like the side of the crib or something and then you transitioned into sleeping in the bed with the parents, right?
That's co-sleeping and that's what we've always done. In...
I'm gonna go give him to his grandparents, so we can actually chat.
Be right back.
Alright, so Rachel handed the baby off to grandparents. We're so blessed that they are around.
But as I was saying, that's how we do Asian parenting. They sleep with us until a certain age,
we transition them off into their own room. In American households though, they torture the baby.
We do not torture our children. However, in American households, typically this is how I was raised
and how I was telling Logesh wants to bring our sons is that the kids sleep
after they're a few months old, they stay in our room until then and then you transition them to their own room
and you sleep train them to be able to sleep by themselves in their crib alone.
And one thing that was really hard coming from a different culture was that
part of that process is letting the child cry, so they learn how to put themselves to sleep.
And there's some different methods of how you sleep train but the overall concept is you have to let the child
figure out how to fall asleep by themselves without being fed to sleep, rock to sleep, sung to sleep.
They have to learn how to put themselves to sleep, so that they can stay asleep the whole night.
And that was actually really big issue for us with Zaden when Zaden was a baby because
we're first time parents. We'd no clue what we're doing. Logesh was used to the Asian way of raising
which is to keep the baby with you all the time. I was used to the American way of raising which is
once the baby is a little bit older, put them in their own room and they learn how to sleep through the night.
Which is challenging because for the first several weeks, depending on how fast the baby is sleep trained
you're listening.. as parents you're listening them scream and cry themselves to sleep
And that's the way that they apparently fall asleep.
We're gonna show it to you today, so bare with us. This might be hard. We don't know what's gonna happen.
You know it's an up and down. Sometimes he does great with it and sometimes he's like
he's having a rough night which he is training himself to sleep. So we gonna show you.
He's somewhat perfect. Most of the babies, you start sleep training them around six months old which is how old Kyren is.
He is still very much learning. This is the perfect time for us to show you, right?
This is the whole process of sleep training. It's up and down. Sometimes he does well but let see how he does today.
And a big part of things to. is that you wanna stay consistent. You wanna keep the routine consistent.
So we have our meal time, we have our bath time, we put on our pajamas. I'm gonna go nurse him.
Afterwards, I sing him a song and I put him down and I leave. I start to follow the same routine every single night for him.
Let's go do it.
So I'm gonna walk you guys through the process right now. It's time for him to nurse.
So he's gonna to drink some milk before the next part of bedtime.
All right. Give you some privacy. Bye bye daddy. Bye, baby.
Is he done nursing? He's done nursing. Lots of 'susu'. Are you done nursing, buddy?
He's so tired. Yeah, I can see that. Daddy gonna give you a kiss, okay. I love you.
So now what we gonna do is I turn on the white noise for the boys so that if one of them
whine or cry, they don't really hear the other one so well. It's not perfect but it helps.
There's one white noise machine here next to Zae Zae's bed. By white noise machine, she means our old handphone.
Yeah, old iPhone.
It's a little noisy right now because of the white noise. But now, I put him in inside his sleep sack which is like a little wearable blanket
It's not safe for babies to have a loose blanket, so there's this awesome little sleep sack that I zipped him into.
If you guys can see it, there's little camera here, so I can see him sleeping here.
And Zaden's got a camera there, so I can Zaden in his crib. So we can monitor the boys all the time.
And then what I do is I cuddle him and usually I turn off the light for this part.
We can turn off the lights. Okay, there's one more light to turn off.
And sing him his goodnight song.
Goodnight, my Kyren. Goodnight my love. Sweet dreams be yours dear. Sweet dreams to you.
I wish I may and I wish I might. So goodnight. My Kyren goodnight.
Goodnight, my love. I love you
Okay, now what do we do? So I take the monitor.
I adjust it so I can see where he is at. He flips over on his tummy because he likes sleeping on his tummy
See. You can see him moving around there. So now we're just going to monitor and look at the time.
So right now it is 7.50 pm. If he's not asleep by 8 o'clock, I'll go in, pat him on back
and say "It's okay, baby" and then just keep doing that until he falls asleep.
Yeah, this is the roughest part. This is the most difficult part because he's literally crying right now.
Last night he did pretty well. He just slept straight. Tonight I think he was a little bit more amped up
because we have the video camera, the light were on for more of the times so let's see but he's actually trying I guess.
You guys can see he's already laying his head down right now. He's not crying, so.. We'll see. We'll see how long.
He's actually doing okay. Not too bad.
Looks like he's asleep. Is he asleep? He's sleeping like a little angel. That's great.
It took him 8 minutes to fall asleep. Like we're saying he's still learning, so some nights it's really fast
some nights, it's a little bit longer. 8 is probably about average I would say. Yeah. Not too bad.
Yeah, there are days when you just put them down and they just sleep immediately.
But today took him a little bit longer, that's okay. He's still learning. But the really great thing now is that
he's asleep for the night and I will go in at about 10 to 11 and give him what we call dream feed.
We're gonna give him a little bit more milk just so he can sleep through the whole rest of the night.
But the wonderful part is that now we have our whole evening together completely free.
We can get to spend time with one another. We can get chores done. Video work done.
Shoot videos like this. Like this, exactly. Without any disturbance.
It's just nice to have our own room to ourselves, our own space and the boys can sleep by themselves
in their room. It's been really great for us with sleep training. Yeah and I'll be honest it was really rough for me initially.
When we had Zaden, first several weeks was rough. I struggled so much. I thought this was the worst
ever thing anyone could do to their child because it's like almost torture.
You are just hearing them cry and scream themselves to sleep, right?
and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart so much because I love the boys.
And then now, after watching the results that I'm a believer this works because there are so much benefits to it now.
Zaden sleeps so well. Kyren sleeps so well. When I say really well, I mean that they know how to put themselves to sleep.
And this is another lesson in an interracial marriage or relationship, right?
Like we bring so many different things to the table. You just figure out what's the best thing for you and your family.
And by no means we're saying that sleep training is the best. It's the best for us and our family.
May not be the best for you and maybe co-sleeping is the best for you or some other sleep training method and that's okay.
There's no right or wrong here. You just find what's best for you and your family.
Thats the best takeway is what works for you and your family and just figure it out
and work together with your spouse to come up with a good solution together.
Yup. I'm happy we chose this. It works out well for us.
Thank you for watching guys. I hope you got some value out of this video
Let us know what do you think about sleep training. Is it something that you would do or maybe you've done it.
Let us know down in the comment below. We want to hear from you.
And don't forget to like this video and subscribe to the channel
We hope to see you in the next one, guys. Bye. Bye.