Category: Baby stuff

Everything about the baby

Clap Clapty Clap

Lazy Friday afternoon…. the whole family was in the livingroom… just hanging out. Suddenly Bryan curiously looked at his hands, then his fingers and then he finally realized that he has the will to control every aspect of them — he turned his wrists, bent his fingers one by one, made fists then extended the fingers. He thought, “WOW!”

As Grace and I watched in amazement, I showed Bryan what he could do with his palms — clapping! He was so excited with his new skills that he laughed, giggled and clapped for the next five minutes with Grace and I encouraging him and cheering him on the whole time.

Magic moments like what we experienced this afternoon made the hardship of parenthood worthwhile (a little more).

Drawn Blood

Bryan went in for a scheduled check up last week. As part of the routine, the doctor wrote him up to get a blood sample to run some tests.

Bryan's arm after blood was drawn

According to Grace, Bryan cried REALLY hard as the nurse was looking for his vain to poke a hole in for the blood sample. Nearby toddlers cried their lungs out as they got their blood drawn… I don’t know how I ever got through childhood having to visit the doctors so many times with so many damn shots… I wonder when painless shots will arrive given how medicine has gone through miracle phases in the past century…

Bryan cried so hard on the way home that he fell asleep. But then when he woke up, he picked up right where he left off and started crying as if someone turned his “crying mode” back to “ON” again… Poor baby… but it was a pretty damn funny scene.

Bump

Bryan fell earlier this week. He landed on a piece of area rug where it made a “grill” impression on his forehead.

Bryan's grill impression

Doctor said it will be permanent. So much for a cute-looking boy. Well, at least we have lots of pictures of him WITHOUT the mark. He looks like he was branded by some Medieval lord…
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Did I say the mark was going to be permanent? Just kidding…

He did cry pretty hard though… Broke our hearts. Good thing kids are resilient and built relatively tough (relatively tougher than my stupid spine which has been killing me).
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Bryan was finally able to steadily feed himself small pieces of cheerios today (cheerio goes into the mouth as opposed into the nose or the chin). It was really cool to see. Speaking of cool stuff, he signed “milk” earlier today which freaked me out. But then he wouldn’t do it again on command. So it’s not exactly a circus show piece yet… Maybe in another month… then we can put him on the streets of downtown San Jose to beg for money, especially now that he can sit up relatively well too… I bet we can double the income if we can train one of our cats to jump through fire…

Personality Creeping Out

Bryan’s been demonstrating some real personality traits in the past few weeks. Ever since birth, we have noticed nothing more than the fact that he smiles a lot (and cries when he sees Jason and “A” ). But now we are also noticing his strong personality traits when he likes or dislikes something. But then again, I am sure it happens to all 9-month-old babies.

Another interesting thing we noticed about Bryan is his newfound ability to associate a series of events based on prior experience. For example, when we change his cloths and puts him in his infant car seat, he now knows we are taking him out. So if Grace tricks him by taking him out of the car seat again, he complaints as if he’s saying, “I thought we are going out! I want to go… I want to go… I want to go…”

Bryan is also showing some of those “manipulative” sides of him when he wants attention. Sometimes I purposely don’t pay attention to him when he plays (we usually know he wants our attention when he plays as his big eyes look our way). He will then proceed to fall on his back and makes fussing sounds (he can’t sit up on his own yet) to get my attention — it’s really cute and funny… But I have a feeling this is going get really old really fast when he turns 3 or something… (or maybe it won’t).

Cool Parenting Sites

Blogging rocks.

I accidentally discovered two parenting sites…

Parenting Ideas
Parent Hacks

Brian’s mom is right about information being so readily accessible nowadays. There’s so much to read with so little time! One day I am going to get one of those bio-chips implanted and become 1000x smarter and 1000x more memory-efficient.

Growing Pains of Parenting

Being a parent definitely is almost all rewards almost all the time. It’s not always fun, but it’s always satisfying — almost.

Watching Bryan growing up on the daily basis is a strange experience. There are times when I held him in my arms, rocking him to sleep, that I wished time could pause and that he’d stay a tiny baby forever… (until my back started aching like a thousand needles piercing through the spine.) But the truth is, time seems to have tripled in speed now that Bryan has entered our lives. I almost think it’s unfair that other parents have to work 8+ hours a day away from their child(ren) when i get to stay home with my son almost 24×7.

When Laura was constantly interrupting my conversation with Brian, I thought that was just super cute. And I thought to myself, “Some day that’s what Bryan’d be doing to ME when I talk to Brian.” I secretly envied Brian and Birgit for a brief moment. But then I thought I’d sorely miss Bryan at this very stage as Brian has confessed to me at times that he missed when Laura was just a tiny baby at times.

Bryan is going to have a healthy and comfortable life ahead of him. But just for my selfish pleasures and inconsiderate egocentric fatherhood, I hope he doesn’t grow up too fast — just so that his dada and nana can savor these fleeting moments before he leaps into his own independence.

Babywise Hurts Babies

Talking to Brian always works up my brain cells. We had a good three-hour chat on Skype tonight. Technology is a good thing.

While we were having some casual talk about religion and childraring practices, he brought up a practice by some parents from a book called Babywise. It literally broke my heart when he told me that someone he knows is following the teachings of that book, a book that instructs parents to treat babies as if they are mind-manipulating bastards, a book that goes against EVERYTHING modern science and research has told us NOT to do to a baby. It broke my heart not because the book exists, but rahter, that I kept on having an image in my head of a baby being treated the way the book instructs parents to treat him/her — how can any parent have the heart to do those things to an newborn infant!? It’s so distrubing on so many levels. And I wish there was something I can do for those poor babies.

People are blind when it comes to inaccurate information published in books — if it’s in print, it must be true. Or, is it?

Quick Date

For the first time in over seven months, Grace and I finally got a chance to eat out by ourselves while her mom stayed and home to babysit Bryan (well, he was already sleeping by then anyway). It was a refreshing experience I know we will get very few of.

One unrelated note: On the way to the restaurant, we saw a mother driving a luxury SUV with her child in the backseat watching a LCD monitor playing cartoon. I wonder if most parents are spending too much time and effort trying to keep their children pre-occupied with “stuff” instead of trying to get to know them, REALLY get to know them or bond with them with parent-child activities. Not too long ago, NPR had a guest from Sesame Workshop introducing their latest product, Sesame Beginnings, a DVD set for infans 6+ months to watch WITH the presence of parents. The rationale behind the production of the series, according to Sesame Workshop, is that their research showed that parents have been showing Sesame Street to young children even though the program was not produced with young children in mind. So they figured they might as well produce something more age appropriate for that age group. Makes sense, I guess.

The issue is, of course, how young is too young to get a child “hooked” on TV? This raised some serious concerns from some early childhood experts and educators. There simply weren’t enough studies to support or disprove either side’s arguements. To me, I see TV monitor and DVD players as another education medium. You shouldn’t abuse it. When used appropriately with careful measure, it can be as effective as a read-along electronic book (and there are TONS of those in the market today — more batteries down the drain).

Bryan the Imitator

We knew that Bryan knew how to imitate some simple stuff a few weeks ago. But to see him being able to imitate more complicated stuff was just a blast!

Today Bryan was smacking the desk with his palm as usual. So I played a game with him using that: I first gently patted the desk twice and then on the back of his hand, also on the desk with the palm facing down, twice. And then I took his hand to pat the table twice and THEN on MY hand twice. I repeated this cycle two times. Then on the third time, I stopped at taking his hand to pat on mine. But Bryan made the connection of what that pattern was supposed to be and patted the back of my hand twice!

WOW! That’s pretty damn cool!

At first I thought that was a coincidence. So I asked Grace to come by to witness it and showed Bryan what to do again. And he did it again, twice, without me showing him what to do the second time. Grace and I were both ecstatic! Too awesome…

Babies are fun…

Another observation we made of Bryan is that he’s getting pretty damn good at balancing himself in our arms. Just a couple of weeks ago, if we held him in our arms facing us without support on his back, he’d have flapped backwards like a broken bamboo. Today I observed that he’s now fully capable of balancing and counter-balancing to adjust the degree of angle to which I hold him with his head, legs and torso. It’s a very unique opportunity to be able to observe those developments so closely as Bryan grows.

Bryan has also just learned how to turn over… But it’s only a one-way street so far — he can turn from facing up to facing down, but not always the other way around. This can only mean one thing — crawling is not too far behind… Time to childproof the damn apartment…

Steady Growth

I know I will probably get angry messages from parents against sleeping with babies, but I don’t care.

Bryan has been sleeping with us since birth. But it’s gotten to a point now where he is basically taking over the bed. Or… more accurately, MY side of the bed.

You see, ever since he was a tiny little slob of meat baby, Grace had him sleep in a certain position that soothed him best. Now at almost 8 months, he continues to look for “the zone” when he sleeps. And “the zone” usually is turning his head (now his whole body) towards me and hold on to my pillow. But as of yesterday, his arms are no longer the only “intruders” to my own “zone”… He has now crossed both of his legs over! So my 1/3 of this dinky Queen size bed has effectively been reduced to 1/4.

I think it’s about time to move him to his own stinking bed…. He can have all the space he wants THERE.

In other news, Bryan also just started to take baby cereal (I know… new pictures will soon follow). It’s very funny to look at his face when he tries new food in his mouth. We never know what to expect from his expressions. Babies are most fun to observe when they start to externalize their experiences as they begin their physical exploration of the world.

Another not-so-recent news, Bryan graduated his first class — baby sign language. I am sure he didn’t learn much (I only see Grace doing all the studying), but a “team achievement” is one of the same. I will be proud of him later when he signs “milk” (or, “stop shaking me” ).

Bryan's first graduation
Bryan looks “stoned” like a deer caught in the headlight. He has no idea why someone’s taking a picture of him with a piece of paper which he tried but failed to eat. And no, he’s not a pot-head (yet).

Object Permanence Takes Root

The first clear sign that Bryan has fully developed the idea of object permanence was when he looked for Grace and I when something blocked his plain view of us. It’s so cute to see him tilt his head just a little to get a full view of us despite the object blocking the view. It’s just so rediculously cute to see his two little eyes peeping over the object! Hah!

Another new development is his accurate and firm grip on “things”. Anything. And he’s fast too (as I am sure this applies to all babies). If he sees something and wants it, the speed in which he goes at it is way faster than my reaction speed to catch him. It’s crazy. And this is all before he can crawl!

I fear for the day when he begins crawling at full speed.

On a similar note, Bryan can now easily take the pacifier out of his mouth, look at it, smile and put it right back. Facinating.