Everything about the baby
I tried to give Bryan a lemon candy when Bryan refused and insisted on a Tic-tac. So I told him, “You can’t have a Tic-tac now. But you can have a lemon drop instead.”
He paused for a brief moment and replied: “[Then] two of this.” (pointing to the lemon drop)
I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty though to get him to conform to anything by the time he reaches five!
Aw, man…
Why, yes. And I have to say that I much prefer it than the traditional meat-ful dinner.
AJ and Jason tested their newfound vegan Thanksgiving recipes on us today in preparation for Jason’s peeps… It was actually pretty filling and pretty damn good! I can probably have that kind of leftovers for a few days without hating it unlike the stupid turkey meat (which nobody even likes eating unless it’s Thanksgiving anyway).
Also Bryan tried tirelessly to tear down their apartment by slamming the glass door on his game cabinet, drawing on AJ’s drum, murdering Jason’s plant, purposely tipping over cats’ water bowl, misplacing Totoro magnet, littering crayons all over the living room, and pulling an electrifying stun (literally; but didn’t quite pull it off) — They’ve got the symptoms of the Terrible Two’s written all over them.
Since we’ve already told our parents, we figured it might as well be a good time to announce to the rest of our friends… And no, we don’t know the gender yet — we are still a couple of months away from knowing. But we saw the heart beating, its little hands, head and body.
Let the good times roll.
Afternoon Musing 1
Bryan refused to take a nap. So he hopped and hopped on the bed and around the house. So I made a deal with him that he’d get a tic-tac candy only after he woke up from his nap.
So the little mind started tinkering…..
He laid his head down on my laps, made some snoring noise, and two seconds later he picked up his head and exclaimed, “I woke up! I want candy.”
We all laughed pretty hard after that…
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Afternoon Musing 2
So after some “intense” negotiation, we decided that Bryan could have one tic-tac before he napped. And I made him promise (like that’d ever hold) he’d go to bed once he had his tic-tac; and he agreed. But once he had the tic-tac in hand, he put it in his mouth and declared he didn’t need to go to bed anymore!
So these are the stories of how I was tricked by a two-year-old, TWICE, in a day.
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It turned out that Costco had some free samplings of eggnogs, and Bryan had one too many. Considering how sweet most American eggnog products are, that was probably enough fuel to take another Apollo Mission to the moon and back for a two-year-old…
Oh~~ the hard lessons of parenthood…
We introduced My Neighbor Totoro DVD to Bryan for the first time today. He was all excited about the characters especially the famous catbus scenes. There’s so much imagination in Miyazaki‘s stories that every single time I watch them I am at awe, not to mention all the subtle life lessons about nature, courage and appreciation to the simplicity of everyday things. As far as stories are concerned, American productions (even Pixar) are probably still decades behind some of the most advanced Japanese Animes to date.
Grace wants a catbus.
I subscribe to Dilbert and get a fresh strip delivered to my inbox daily. Today’s strip is particularly funny on so many levels…
I’ve been doing some pretty intense reading and research in children’s portrait and photography in general for the past few weeks. And I came to the realization that the industry (at as far as U.S. is concerned) is almost exclusively dominated by woman (I have yet to come across a GOOD male children’s photographer portfolio site)! I guess no one should be surprised since women, generally and stereotypically speaking, are thought to have closer and more nurturing ties to children. On top of that, since most family photo decisions are made by the females in a family (and I am just assuming here), it’s natural that one would prefer to choose a photographer whom she deems would understand her and her child(ren) on a deeper level. Plus I also think children may warm up to women more quickly (well, until they find out what fun rides grown up males can be!).
I am not sure if this means I won’t get as many calls and referrals because I am a “guy”. This is the first time I feel that my being a “man” could actually hinder my survival in doing this specific type of photography and that it could be viewed as a disadvantage… (and I am saying this cynically and sarcastically with my own style of humor here).
In trying to come up with a name for a portfolio site, Grace and I brainstormed for a few days but failed to agree on a “gender neutral” name that would be catchy, memorable and be attractive to decision-making moms and, at the same time, showing the “gentler” side of me… Brian jokingly suggested “photosterone.com” to counter that, which made me giggle pretty hard.
In any case, I hope my style of photography and my creativity will be able to convince enough moms that I am actually not half bad! 😉 And maybe that’d put some of the men in families at ease when they find out the photographer is a guy! Hah!!
It’s so much more fun capturing expressions of children…
First of all, my apologies for the graphic nature of this shot… But Grace wants the world to see how effective this thing is…
We’ve tried, for the longest time, to use a bulb syringe to help clear Bryan’s congested nasal of mucus. But he hated it because the syringe is rather intrusive in nature. But this nasal aspirator works pretty effectively and got a lot of the mucus out in a few minutes what it’d take me 10 minutes or longer to do with a bulb syringe.
PBS’s Curious George has been our favorite pass time both as storybooks and half-hour TV shows. Grace found the clip below on Youtube. And I think it’s possibly one of the best commercially animated clips that is fun for both the parents and young kids in terms of entertainment value and education!
That George is just so nicely drawn and animated… Stuff like that makes me miss doing animation… (but not modeling, lighting, texture mapping skeleton setups, character rigs or any of that technical stuff)
The character design was done by the moderately famed Shane Prigmore and Shannon Tindle. And I feel that the fine 2D lead animator Jeff Johnson also deserves credit… We are gonna have to watch the movie.
We went to a birthday party last weekend and snapped some good shots. It seems like the only things we ever do nowadays are centered around the kids (as the way we like it). But some of our childless friends are having a “kid picture overdose”… I think the sheer idea of having children makes their heads spin. And then there are those who plan their activities purely around the adults and try to fit the kids in as inconveniences they try to solve (poor kids).
We went to a pumpkin patch with Bryan’s usual play dates over the weekend. It was unusually warm considering how crazy the weather had been in the days prior to that. The kids had fun, except Bryan still felt pretty sick and didn’t feel like jumping in for the fun.
The biggest lesson I got out of these past two photo sessions has been figuring out a comfortable work flow I can live with for dealing with 300+ images from each session. The colors are also becoming more consistent after monitor calibration, finalized output work flow using Apple’s Aperture, Photoshop and a decent conversion setting from Adobe RGB to sRGB color spaces. I’ve been getting some very constructive and positive feedbacks on the shots. Have a visit to my Flickr page and tell me what you like, dislike or any other thoughts on your mind!
