Everything about the baby
I guess it’s official… Brian and Birgit are having another baby!
Love’s been in the air… Brian and Birgit joins Deon/Su-fei and Widodo/Hanny to have their babies being born in August of this year… Looks like August is going be a busy month for birthday parties.
Congrats!
Bryan received his first Valentine’s present, ever! It was from the mother of a baby girl from Bryan’s infant sign language class.
Bryan got four more immunity shots last week. He was supposed to get all cranky with fever and all that good stuff that comes with having side affects from those shots… but nada… He slept through the night without any problems…
As he gets older, he seems to understand more about the idea of “getting shots”. Grace said he cried a hell lot more this time around. But the trieds were quickly replaced with laughters from mommy’s warm comfort.
We went to Baby’s-R-Us yesterday. Bad idea. There were so many damn people that it made me want to smack every insensitive idiot in the aisles for wanting plow his/her oversized shopping cart through all the baby-carrying parents. Idiots. I think shopping over the weekend anywhere is just a bad idea in general, especially in the malls. Just being in the vicinity of a mall makes me nervous because of all the traffic. I like people watching and everything (because people do amusing things), but the hassle of having to look for a parking spot among 50,000 shoppers is not particularly a fun experience.
Why are Americans so obssessed with battery-powered “things”? While looking for a plastic bib for Bryan, we saw this mixer for blending formula evenly with water… Um, so… what’s wrong with moving the wrists a little? What do they even want to consider buying a power mixer for baby formula!?! Mixer/blender for juice, yes. For baby formula, why? And then of course, just about every other item sold at Baby’s-R-Us requires some form of battery or electrical outlet.
From NPR:
All Things Considered, February 8, 2006 · The Bush administration has canceled funding for the most ambitious study of children’s health ever designed — prompting outrage among scientists and public health officials. The study was to investigate the causes of widespread obesity and asthma, among other childrens’ health problems.
Hmm.. So, tax cuts for his friend was a go. Invading Iraq costing American people billions was a go. But Jesus Christ, what does America need healthy children for!?
The full audio clip is available at NPR.
Amazing article/audio from NPR once again.
Morning Edition, February 8, 2006 · Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That’s because a baby’s cells linger in its mom’s body for decades and — like stem cells — may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It’s such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true.
via [Slashdot]
Teething must be an annoying process. Bryan wakes up several times every night; we think it’s because of the discomfort from teething. Using our pinkies gently rubbing against his gum lines seems to make him feel better. But it really hurts when he bites down hard with his only two teeth…
Every now and then, I look at Bryan and all I can do is appreciate the wonders of evolution and “nature”. Everything has a purpose and was evovled (or some may argue that it was “designed” ) for a specific purpose. For instance, all ten human fingers were grown just the right sizes for everything a human has to do; the index finger fits perfect in the nasal cavity and you can’t poke deep enough to hurt yourself with it. The same thing with the pinky and the ear. And the thumbs are just the right sizes to work with the other four fingers on each hand. Even with the technologies we have today, engineers and scientists are still struggling to duplicate the most basic mechanisms of life (i.e. walking, running… etc). And let’s not forget we are nowhere near duplicating the capabilities of one-cell organisms given how much we know about them. All the brilliance that’s built into nature!
My latest facination is the growth of Bryan’s teeth — they slowly emerge above the gum and yet somehow they shed no blood in the process. Furthermore, somehow human genes figured out the appropriate age for our first set of teeth to fall off and grow new ones to replace them with… Only if genetists can figure out how to manipulate that growth in adults when our teeth go bad. Then we simply get rid of the bad teeth and grow new ones! Overnight, the dynamics of the dentistry business would be transformed.
Speaking of dentistry… My last visit to the dentist made me realize just how much waste each patient’s visit generates: at least two to four sets of disposable gloves, masks, bibs, unused fillings, sanitation pouches… etc. No wonder it’s such a huge business to be in.
Bryan’s second tooth just emerged, barely above the surface of the gum, right next to his first tooth.
Baby tooth are so cute. His first tooth is not even fully grown out yet.
Speaking of tooth, I went to the dentist again today. But I had to go to a different one because the first guy I went to is not covered under my individual dental plan… What a hassle (but I like my new dentist better than the last guy anyway; she was a lot more thorough and took the time to answer my questions). So I had to go through the X-ray, full cavity check up and the whole deal again. But the good thing was that I did all of that plus tooth cleaning, and the visit only cost me $25. That in itself paid for the insurance premium I paid for the entire year. (I encouraged Grace to make an appointment as well.)
The verdict… similar to the last visit…
Today’s Visit
Copay per visit: w/o insurance: $85; w/ insurance: $5
Complete check up: w/o insurance: $90; w/ insurance: $0
Full-mouth X-Ray: w/o insurance: $176; w/ insurance: $0
Mouth cleaning: w/o insurance: $118; w/ insurance: $20Total paid: $25 (or $469 w/o insurance)
(Insurance paid for the whole year covering both me and Grace: $170 )—-
Recommended Treatments
Tooth #2 (cavity) — w/o insurance: $230; w/ insurance: $102
Tooth #6 (cavity) — w/o insurance: $242; w/ insurance: $75
Tooth #8 (chipped) — not covered: $307; discount: $199.55
Tooth #9 (old chipped) — not covered: $307; discount: $199.55
Tooth #20 (cavity) — w/o insurance: $390; w/ insurance: $205
Tooth #29 (cavity) — w/o insurance: $304; w/ insurance: $145Total w/o insurance: $1.780 (compared to $1,680 from the other clinic)
Total w/ insurance: $926.10 (Yay… 48% savings… )
Having a dental insurance is a good thing.
The Malaysian gang had a gathering last night for hot pot to celebrate Chinese New Year. For the first 5 minutes of the food fest, I was still in the meat-eating mode since hot pot gatherings are rarely vegetarian. So I accidentally ate a piece of meat… [chiils]… After that, I started becoming more conscious about picking what to eat from the pots (there were two pots going… In fact, there were so many people at Michelle’s house that Widodo had to bring his table over to make room!).
At the hot pot gathering, Hanny also announced her pregnancy… Her baby is due in August. Just a couple of weeks back, Su-fei also announced her pregnancy at Jai’s birthday gathering. And interestingly, her baby is also due in August! I guess October/November must be a good baby-making season. Hah!
Bryan was being unusually fussy at Michelle’s house. I think it was because we changed his daily routine by skipping his bath because we were at Michelle’s place when Bryan usually would be taking his bath. We also noticed that Bryan has started to recognize people. He refused to let anyone else but Grace and I to hold him. Days are going to get longer as Bryan grows older…
After coming home, I called my grandma in Taiwan to wish her happy new year. But I got an earful about how my brother and I should go back to Taiwan and stop avoiding the compulsory military service… blah blah… She thinks we are doing the “immigration jail time” by trying desperately staying out of Taiwan. Maybe she’s got a point. This whole immigration thing sucks.
After having some issues with burning DVDs using Apple’s iDVD dvd authoring software on Grace’s slower Mac, I decided to encode the project file on my laptop and see what happens. And it turns out that CPU speed DID matter in the case of dvd video encoding, at least in this one instance. Another cool thing I found out is that Apple’s iDVD can pull source files (raw video footage) over the network! All I had was the iDVD project file on my laptop, the rest of the source files (videos and music) were all on Grace’s Mac. It was way faster to encode the DVD on my Mac pulling source materials from Grace’s Mac over the network than encoding locally on her Mac!! WOW!
So the blue flickering is gone now. Copies will be made to anyone who wants one (namely, our moms and maybe friends of Grace).
After completing my last programming gig, I took a collection of Bryan’s video clips and made a DVD for our moms. I guess Grace’s Mac is way too old (and mine is seriously running out of space), it takes forever to compress the damn thing into the MPEG-2 format that consumer DVD players recognize. It took a whole day for the poor 400Mhz G4 with 700MB+ RAM to compress two dozen 1-2 minute clips (plus the menu… etc)!! But the result is wonderful. The images I used in the background of the main menu are all moving movie clips. Each of them loops as the image panes rotate through 8 different movie clips, complete with background music. And of course, the mirror reflections below them move as well!!
Thanks for Apple’s iLife suite, putting the clips and the dvd menu together took only less than an hour (it’s the rendering and compression that really killed the process).
Unfortunately, something went wrong with the menu looping sequence. The first loop of the menu would flicker with a blue tint. And this only happens to the first loop of menu selection screens (including scene selections). My cousin’s boyfriend thinks it’s either that my DVD player is picky about the DVD-R I used or that Apple’s iDVD simply dislikes the DVD player… Both Googling and Apple’s iDVD support/discussion sites also didn’t provide any clues. I am compressing the DVD into disk image now. I will try burning again using a different burning software to see if that changes anything.
Just to make the record complete (for anyone else who’s having similar issues and for trouble shooting’s sake), similar issue happened when I used iDVD 5 with the same burner in Panther (as well as Tiger). So it’s probably not the problem with the OS, iDVD apps or their preference files. It might have to do with how iDVD writes to the DVD on that first pass which the DVD burner is not happy about… Live and learn.
Bryan had the first class of his life on Wednesday! It was a baby sign language class where infants and young toddlers learn to use American Sign Language to express their [relatively] exact needs. Learning ASL has been on my “to-do” list since Freshman year at SCAD (having made friends with some hearing-disabled students). It looked like Bryan was going to accomplish something I never did until… until I heard stories of his first day in class…
Grace said Bryan basically slept through the first half of the class being that the class was held during his typical nap time. It was funny to hear that from Grace. I just hope this isn’t foreshadowing of what’s to come for the rest of his student life… 🙁
Hopefully Bryan will at least get to socialize a little more and even make some friends. But from what Grace told me, he had a lot of fun being around with other babies — Good, now I know he’ll be a geek who can socialize… ha!
Just when I lost part of my teeth, Bryan is growing new ones!
Bryan’s two bottom front teeth have been growing right under our noses (figuratively and literally speaking). Margaret was the one who spotted the new teeth looking from an angle Grace and I don’t normally look at Bryan. It sure is amazing to see the tiny teeth barely pushing out of the gum. I am surprised Bryan hasn’t been as fussy as other terrible stories we have heard about!
Knock on wood…