12.30.2010 Evan's first tummy flip

At 7:24 am this morning, Evan did his first tummy flip.  He was a little surprised of his own action but seemed very pleased to be on his back after struggling on his tummy for a little bit.  Here's the moment caught on tape (30 sec):

Here's a longer video of Evan practicing the tummy flip yesterday (12.29).  It was the first time he didn't get overly frustrated being on his tummy and not able to move - after a while, he simply laid his head down (he didn't know he could do that before) and sucked on his fingers. 

12.26.2010 Evan day 97 - baby bjorn and bath

Many baby experts recommend 'wearing' your baby several hours a day, says that it promotes bonding and good behavior; and gives you back your arms and hands!  Evan doesn't get worn several times a day, but I do like to wear him every other day or so, so he can see what I do as I go around the house.  He seems to really enjoy seeing the different things in his view - whether is my having dinner or washing dishes or just moving about the house.  He seems calmer while being worn, too, which is always a plus.  Here I am taking a photo of Evan and me using the mirror.  I don't know if he recognizes himself yet in the mirror but he definitely recognizes me as we would stare at each other through the glass. 

No one will mistaken Evan for not having enough to eat, as evidenced by the pictures below.  One might be tempted to cut back to get rid of 'milk belly' (as opposed to 'beer belly' of grownups), but he'll lose his baby fat soon enough naturally.  He himself has actually already cut back how much he eats per meal.  During the beginning of the second month, he was eating (easily) 5 oz of milk each time (every 3 to 3.5 hrs).  But now he prefers a more moderate 4 oz of milk.

12.28.2010 Xbox Kinect rules

After a lifetime of not owning a video game console, I finally bought one over the weekend, it arrived today.  It is the Xbox 360 with Kinect.  If you haven't heard of Kinect yet, you will.  It is a new way of playing games - without any accessories- meaning completely hands-free.  There's a video/audio sensor (and a camera) that captures your body movements (head, hands, arms, legs, feet, body) in realtime and feeds that information into the game almost instantly.  You are a fulltime participant in the game, you're no longer passively moving something or someone via a joystick or the like; you are in fact that something/someone.  I was pretty sure I was going to be blown away by it when I ordered it, but that would be understating the fact, by a mile!  

Microsoft really put a lot of thought and testing into this product; it is easy to use and most importantly (since this is a game console), fun!  And not your 'regular' kind of fun... it's exhaustively fun.  I was almost out of breath after just a few minutes of this.  The reason is that you need to move your body to move the avatars on the screen; and we're not talking about small movements like raising arms or something.  But instead, you're jumping and kicking and swinging huge arcs in the air, just like in real life.  

The only thing I worry about this technology is that one will get literally too tired from it too quickly.  But then that really depends on the game, so it'll be exciting to see what'll come out this year.  Maybe there can be education games like 'exploring the tide pool' or climb Mt. Everest.  Wouldn't that be simply awesome?  There is no doubt in my mind that this new technology is going to take the world by storm.  It's truly exciting times that we live in.

Now to something a little less technology-oriented. In fact, it involves pen and paper, so I guess you can say this is ancient technology.  I'm talking about jotting down Evan's feeding times so we have an idea of how much he's eating and when.  I'm sure other parents did something similar at one point or another.  In fact, there are iphone apps that help you keep track of all sorts of baby activities - feeding, diaper change (wet vs you-know-what), milk pumping (left/right), sleep, etc.  I downloaded some of these apps, but seriously, who's gonna flip on the iphone to check the diary every once in a while.  It's nice to have the hand-written information taped up to the wall next to the clock.  Now... if we had an ipad, that might be a different story.  The increased screen real estate and convenience may make this kind of task easy to do digitally.  We'll see once we get an ipad (or some other sort of tablet machine).

12.26.2010 Where is parking more difficult than Valley Fair on black friday?

It was supposed to rain today, it didn't.

June, Evan, and I had an early lunch with June's friend in Cupertino village.  We were supposed to meet at Chef Woo at Bollinger/Wolfe, but they were closed, a new restaurant was to open soon.  June's friend brought his wife, sister-in-law, and a 14 months toddler.  Evan behaved quite well at the table, it was his first time in a restaurant.  He was munching away on his fingers the entire time and didn't pay too much attention to us.

Seeing that the weather was holding up, and in fact - sunny, we decided to go to Rancho San Antonio for an easy hike.  When we got there, all of the parking lots were completely full.  We drove around several times but no luck.  Wherever a car was leaving, there were several cars waiting to take its place.  So we gave up and was going to head to the Stanford Dish (3-mile loop) when we made a stop at Gates of Heaven Cemetery to visit a friend who passed away a year and a half ago.  After that, we drove to the street-side parking area of Stanford Dish and all of the 'closer' spaces were occupied.  It was a rare day of dry/even-sunny weather in late December, and with the holidays, it wasn't unusual to see everyone out enjoying the fresh air.  So we didn't get to hike at the Dish either.

Instead, we drove to Stanford campus itself, starting from Palm Drive through the main entrance.  Lots of tourists were there today (again, quite expected).  I'll try to post some videos of the main courtyard later.  The campus is enormous and well-groomed; the buildings easily some of the best in academic architecture of the west coast.  We walked around (with Evan in the bumbleride stroller) for about 45 minutes and then headed home in time for Evan's feeding. 

We gave Evan a bath tonight, he again relieved himself while in the bath so we had to hold him off of the water so he wouldn't be dipped in soiled waters.  We helped Evan practice sitting up and lying on his stomach afterwards.  He can't sit up by himself yet but has learned in the last two days to support himself with his two arms/hands while leaning forward, for about 5 to 10 seconds.  On his tummy, he can easily lift and keep his head up, but he starts getting quite frustrated after a few seconds as he's unable to move.  Instead of drawing in his knees so he can push off on his toes, he leans down on his tummy and his legs go up in the air like he is surfing.  That position, of course, is not conducive to crawling.  We'll try again some other day.  In the meantime, here's a video of Evan practicing:

I spent the rest of night copying files from my (really) old desktop to my (newer) laptop.  I've copied over about 150 GB's of data so far - mostly photos and web pages (for signite.com and others), and there's still a lot to go.  I'll need some additional storage for sure.

12.25.2010 Evan's Christmas moves

How does a baby move when he can only lie on his back?  He uses the back as a pivot point from which to swing his arms, legs, and head:

12.25.2010 Daddy, I would like woo-aaah-coo for Christmas

Little Evan often has something to say but not sure quite how to say it, so he goes oo-oo and ah-ah and coo-coo.  One day someone will invent the baby translator; until then, it sounds really cute!

He's been practicing sitting upright lately.  Although he can't do it for long yet, he can stabilize himself for just a few seconds before tipping over.

 

12.24.2010 Evan's first visit of the majestic redwoods

Christmas Eve was partly cloudy, but dry, so I wanted to take Evan and his grandparents to see the redwood trees, it would be their first time.  We left home around 1:10pm and headed north on 280.  I was initially going to go Big Basin redwood state park but that would've been over an hour of winding roads and with 5 people in the car, wouldn't have been very comfortable.  So we went to Portola redwood park instead, which although still a long ride, would be less curvy.  Unfortunately, when we got to Portola park's front entrance, there was a sign that the park was closed.  It didn't explain whether it was closed for the season (winter) or permanently due to the State budget cuts, but it was closed.  So now what?  I decided to keep going on Alpine Rd all the way to Rt 1/ocean, and then head back via Half Moon Bay/92/280.  It would be much farther but not as much winding roads.  Another reason was that I remembered that we would pass by a fairly nice grove of redwoods right along the road itself (Memorial County Park).

Once we arrived at the park, we parked roadside and Evan's grandparents went to look at the redwoods while we fed Evan milk.  After he ate, we bundled him in a big white winter coat and took him to see the redwood trees, too.  Although one might believe that babies this small (3 months) won't know anything he's shown, I believe it will have made an impression on him and he may grow to love the redwoods without knowing exactly why.  When we showed him a small grove of trees by tilting him on his back so he could see up into the tree canopy, his eyes widened and seemed to be in awe of the forest.  Love at first sight perhaps :)

 After admiring the redwoods, we continued on Alpine Rd and then connected to 84 W until we arrived at Rt 1 along the coast.  We then drove north and stopped by the Half Moon Bay Ritz.  We walked around the hotel grounds which had a beautiful view of the ocean and nicely decorated for the holidays.  When we were able to leave, we heard songs from a bagpipe player, apparently hired by the hotel to help entertain their guests.  He played some Celtic tunes but then switched to familiar Christmas jingles, here's a little clip:

12.24.2010 Evan's first Christmas

A few weeks ago, I stopped by Target to find a well-fitting one-piece daywear for Evan as the pieces he was wearing were getting too tight/small and the rest were too big (labeled for 6 and 9 months or more).  I ended up getting a green shirt that had a Christmas theme, with snowmen and Santa, and a stitched phrase "my first Christmas".  He's been wearing it every since, as it's 'rated' for up to 24", which I guess Evan is nearing or already is.  He didn't wear this shirt on Christmas eve, but this is what he would've looked like.

For Christmas Eve dinner, on June's suggestion, we got some dishes from the Cheesecake factory at the Valley Fair mall in San Jose.  We got 1) shrimp scampi, 2) luau salad, and 3) lemon herb chicken, and a slice of fresh strawberry cheesecake.  We phoned in the order and then did a 'curb-side' pickup.  That is - there are about 4 or 5 parking spaces directly outside of the restaurant, with signs that they're for the restaurant's curb-side pickup on, and gave the phone number to call.  I called the number and the dishes were brought out a few minutes later, quite convenient.  Interestingly, I asked how many people they were going to server tonight, since I figure they weren't going to talk about dollar amounts.  The lady volunteered the information though: ~1100 people for dinner alone, with expected revenue of some $23,000.  If they are able to maintain such numbers for the entire year, this single restaurant would rake in some $10,000,000.  But alas, it's not likely that they get anywhere close to that.  But even if they do $5 million a year, that's still mighty good!  Here's a photo of our Christmas Eve dinner:

12.19.2010 The big 9-O

Evan turned the big 9-O today. Yes, he's 90 days old today!  Born on 9/20, plus 31 days in October, gives 12/19 his 90th day.  Today while looking through his wardrobe, I found that there were many outfits he never got a chance to wear, including some that auntie T gave him from Baby Gap, because he grew so fast through the first few months.  Another outfit that we hadn't had a chance to try on him yet is a thick white winter overall, that makes him look like an Eskimo or snow bunny.  He was so cute in the outfit, and we all adored him with hearty laughs, but I'm pretty sure he didn't understand all the commotion, and certainly didn't like the fact that he couldn't suck on his fingers anymore.  So we took off the outfit after just a few minutes.  For more photos, see here.

12.18.2010 Christmas lights

I wanted to take Evan to see Christmas light decorations around town.  Instead of driving around to find individual nicely decorated houses, I thought it might be fun to check out the light show at Vasona County Park, at the annual Fantasy Of Lights.  Unfortunately, when we got there, the line of cars was so long (at least 45 min, perhaps more) that we decided not to wait.  I only budgeted about an hour and a half as Evan needed to be fed again soon.  So, instead of the Fantasy of Lights, using the iphone, I found some houses to visit recommended by the site http://www.lightsofthevalley.com/. We saw 3 houses nicely decorated, the last of which had a homemade train & tracks.  Take a look here:

12.16.2010 Evan day 87 laughing

Evan started smiling at maybe a week old but didn't start to laugh until perhaps 1.5 months old.  Since then, he would laugh when played with, and laugh hard when conditions are just right.  What 'conditions are just right' means, we don't really know, but here's a clip of when he laughed hysterically as I chatted with him.  A baby's laugh is utterly and completely contagious.  I'm really glad we were able to capture this on video, we'll treasure this for a long time to come.