In preparation for Reasor's 18-month doctor's appointment, Talyn & I decided to count how many words Reasor knows. We stopped counting after we hit 50. He's a smart little boy, and he seems to be progressing exponentially! One of his favorite words is "bug". Everything that is little is a bug to him. Specks of dirt floating in the water, a mark on the wall, a small piece of peach skin he pulled out of his mouth, etc. This time he did find a bug, but it was on the outside of the window:
Alena has been learning the alphabet and how they form words for the past couple years, and she read her first book just a couple months ago, just before her 4th birthday. As you can see, she loves the fact that she can read all by herself. She certainly loves to read books. (be forewarned, this is a long video, but it's worth it)
Even though Reasor can't eat dairy, eggs, or peanuts, he certainly eats his share of fruit. Some days, he'll eat several bowlfuls of strawberries, grapes, & blueberries, then have a couple bananas. If he had his way, he'd probably eat 2 or 3 oranges. So it's no wonder he loves mangoes, especially the pit. When I was younger, my dad & I usually took turns eating the pit, and now I can pass on that practice to my son. I can usually count on getting a good 10-15 min of quiet if I give him a mango pit to eat.
Also, Reasor's picking up more and more words, plus he often nods when you ask him a question:
Yes, it's already been an entire year since Reasor was born, and what a year it has been. Born in Utah, we moved to Georgia when he was just 5 week old and by the time he was 5 months, he had flown in a plane 5 times! Mobility-wise, he started army crawling at 6 months, normal crawling at 7 months, standing up unassisted and walking around furniture at 9 months, then taking steps while pushing a chair at 10 months. Then, just a few days before his 1st birthday, he took his very first steps:
He still prefers crawling, but he's getting the hang of it. Happy Birthday, Reasor!
You probably expected an uncensored video of a two year-old girl playing with rubber duckies and stacking toys. Who do you think we are? We don't give her rubber duckies and other "typical" bath toys!* Bathtime is a crucial time to train her to fend for herself in the real world. Who do you think she is? A regular toddler?
Alright, alright, we didn't ever teach her about cleaning the tub, faucet, or even her toys. Nor do we ever withhold any bath toys from her. Sometimes, she just wants a cloth, and she'll simply occupy her entire bathtime wiping everything down.
Her desire for cleanliness extends beyond the tub. She loves to clean the floor & walls, and wipes are one of her most favorite things. If we give her a wipe while at a stadium or in an airplane, she'll spend 10-15 minutes wiping down the seats & seatbacks. If we give her one at the grocery store while she sits in the "car" cart, she'll wipe every surface inside the car while periodically taking breaks to "drive" the car.
She obviously gets her cleaning tendencies from her mother, who especially prides herself in bathroom cleaning. Or possibly her Auntie Jojo or Mah Mah (aka. paternal grandma). A couple days ago, during bathtime, I asked her if she wanted to sing a song with me, and she simply responded, "No. I'm cleaning."
*okay fine, she does have normal bath toys, but she doesn't always play with them
It's usually really hard to capture Alena doing the things she does on video. Part of it is that it's hard to get the right moment, and part of it is that she just wants to see herself on the camera.
Well, we have found a new way to overcome these obstacles while talking to family at the same time! Our video camera can be hooked up to the computer and used as a webcam, and while we talk with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, &/or friends, we can simply record the video - thus capturing exactly what's happening! Observe:
The great thing is that she can interact with others and receive instant visual feedback by seeing her movements on the monitor in real-time. She loves it. We're going to do it more often.
Curious about how we can use our regular video camera as a webcam?
Good, because it was a great discovery. I had thought about getting a webcam off and on, but I was deterred for a couple reasons: most are sleek & compact, but the frame rate they captured is way too slow to produce video of a decent quality. If you stayed still, the picture was decent, but as soon as you moved around, it was really blurred. Moving my hand across frame would leave behind a trail like TV networks used to do to make hockey pucks more visible on televised games. I never really looked for a high quality webcam because I wasn't willing to spend more than $20 for a camera that you use a few times a year.
About four years ago, I bought a TV capture card for our computer for $14.80 (inflation-adjusted - it only cost me $13 back then). Basically, it allows you to connect your computer to your cable TV to watch & record TV shows, or hook up your VCR/DVD player to transfer video. (I've used it quite a bit for those two purposes) When we bought our camcorder a couple years ago, I discovered on some online forums that the capture card is recognized as a webcam and that I could connect the "S-video out" on the camcorder to the "S-video in" on the TV capture card. That means that I could turn the camcorder to "stand-by record" mode, set the TV tuner card source to S-video, and use it as a regular webcam! The best thing about it, though, is that since it's a decent-quality camcorder, you don't get any of the frame rate issues of a webcam. Plus you can zoom, use effects, and even play back videos that are on the camcorder. (by the way, having the TV tuner card recognized as a webcam source also means that you can let the person you're talking to watch live cable TV...) And, of course, you can simply hit the record button like we did...
Alena has always been good at going to bed. Lately, it's been really fun to go through her bedtime routine. First comes the bath and the lotion, then we read a book (or two), read the scriptures, have a prayer, and sing a song. Often, Alena likes to play around a little too, and we can't resist.
And recently, she has started tucking in her dollies & stuffed animals. It's adorable:
Yesterday, I was playing with her after coming home from work, and I laid down on her carpet. She then patted my cheek, said "night night," and closed the door while saying "bye bye." Yup, that's exactly what we do when putting her to bed. She walked down the hall and then I pretended to cry like a baby. She came back with a huge smile on her face and just giggled with delight.
Happy Year of the Ox! Though the new year started on Jan 26 this year, celebrations continue for 15 days in China, so I'm not even late. Nor was our cousin dinner at Andrew & Liew's place, which was last Sunday. We had a scrumptious meal and had a great time. Alena & Andersen had a great time together too. We found them reading together quietly:
I posted the entire video because they're so cute. We also gave her Lucky Money, and she was much more efficient at opening the envelope than last year.
Alena doesn't really pose for pictures. She either doesn't even look at the camera or just begs to see the camera. We should have one of those hidden camera crews that records every precious moment in our lives. Or at least a secret camera in my glasses frame. Happy Chinese New Year!
Well, Christmas has come & gone - and so has (almost) 3 weeks - and we finally have some videos of Alena on Christmas morning. I think she had a great time. Enjoy the videos, but be forewarned: they're long.
I think Alena was the most excited to put up the Christmas tree and ornaments. And to take them down.
Talyn & I were up at 8:30am and we had a relaxing half hour until Alena came out of dreamland. I don't think she knew what to expect on a Christmas morning.
Opening the gift from Grandma Lark & Grandpa Mickey:
I admit, I have no idea what a meerkat looks like.
On to Grandma & Grandpa Wong's present:
I love the "ahs", "oohs", & "wows". And let's not forget the "uh ohs" and "where'd it go?s". Hope you had a Merry Christmas!
Alena has made leaps & bounds in learning to imitate words & sounds, and associating them to people & objects. Here is just a smidgen of what she knows:
She also loves to sing & dance (thanks to Talyn), plus she's really good at folding her arms for prayer.
This video is from over a month ago, but it's so cute that I had to post it. Plus my parents were begging for more video. No walking is involved (it took place when she was just starting to walk), but there are a lot of giggles!
This footage was taken the day after the last post, but was edited today.
This morning I took off all of Alena's clothes, because she had dirtied them. As per usual, she was playing before I got her dressed again. (I just can't handle making her cry by taking her clothes off and not giving her a break before I make her cry by putting her clothes on, at least not when I have the entire day before anyone is going to see her.) So, she was playing and she found her church shoes and brought them to me one at a time for me to put them on her. She's really into shoes these days.
She's also into moving things from room to room. She used to have to do a gimp crawl to carry something into another room, but now that she's walking, not so. So I find all kinds of things in strange places, like one of my shoes in the drawer in the kitchen, or several markers in the drawer in the bathroom. She really enjoys drawers. She likes to pull everything out. She does clean up after herself, only she puts things away where they don't go. For instance, pulling all her clean clothes out of her basket and moving them into the hamper.
Needless to say, we really enjoy having her around. In fact, she's my favorite baby ever.
I realize that most of you will watch about 12 seconds of each video, because she's not your baby, etc. But, she is my baby, and I think she's pretty much the cutest little girlie I've ever seen. So, I'm going to let you watch her. Feel free to watch them over and over and over again, like her cousin Reuben does. Feel free to pretend you did also.
1. Alena loves to race. Lately she's even taken to giving me a certain mischievous look and then taking off full speed hoping I'll chase her. I usually do, because she's having so much fun that I do to. Perhaps I have stumbled upon motivation for running...
2. However, when I'm not running, I do my workout to Step-Mania, and Alena participates as well. It's loads of fun. And I mean loads. When I do my pilates she often comes and lays her head on my stomach and smiles at me (kind of like she does at the end of this video on Kevin's lap.) I told you she was cute.
Disclaimer: I didn't scatter that junk all over the floor, or all over the desk. Alena scattered it all over the floor and I put the things I didn't want her to eat on the desk as I went.
3. A few weeks ago Alena decided she needed an obstacle course, and since I was there...
4. She also enjoys making noise. Especially with wet hands on the bathtub. Often she does this over and over and over again, kind of like the obstacle course.
I'll have to admit - limes aren't the most liked fruit. I'm not sure I even tasted a lime until I served my mission among the Hispanic people in Miami. There, I had a lot of dishes made with lime or even cooked in lime juice. Needless to say, I grew to love them, and I can now be seen sucking on a wedge. So perhaps, in some way, Alena acquired this liking from me. We went to a restaurant the other day and decided that we'd give her a lime wedge just for kicks. We figured she'd make some sort of cute face, and we were right:
But surprisingly, she went back for more. And more. Pretty soon, she had sucked out most of the juice.
So add limes to the long list of foods that Alena will eat. We have yet to find something she'll refuse more than 3 times. (that was the potato)
It used to be that we could put her in the middle of the floor and she'd just sit there. She'd play with her pacifier, examine the grout or the tiles, or talk to her stuffed animals.
Now, Alena finds that there is more to the world than grout, so she is scooting her way around to find it. She can traverse across an entire room within minutes, and if there's anything on the ground, it will somehow find itself into her mouth. Sometimes, she does an army crawl, but she's started to do a "normal" crawl on carpet. Soon, she'll be into everything...
In addition to being able to entertain herself for long periods of time:
Alena is loads of fun to play with:
As you can see in the first video, she's working on learning to fly, just like in one of her daddy's favorite movies, Chicken Run. She's also learning to wave, although at the moment it looks a bit more like "gimme gimme!" She just wants to be able to see the fingers moving since that's the fun part. You've had your whole life to see fingers moving, so just give her a chance for once. Sometimes she sits and talks to herself and rearranges the toys around her for several minutes. I know someone else who would organize his toys and thought it was entertaining... Although the defining characteristics of Alena's organization are not apparent to her parents.
The last few videos are a poor representation, because she's never quite as fabulously hilarious when the camera is out. On the last one she had been giggling for quite some time, but we only got 10 seconds before she was tired of being tickled.
Mommy has had all the fun. Up until this past Wednesday, Talyn has been the one privileged to feed Alena for 99.99% of the time (I'd fed her twice with the bottle). But the time has finally come for me, Daddy, to step up and physically nourish our daughter. As is recommended, we started with rice cereal mixed with breast milk, once a day.
The result? She likes it! Sure, it's a little messy, and we're still getting the hang of it, but it's quite an enjoyable experience. I've learned that Alena's quite coordinated - as you will see, I finally let her grab the spoon, which she quite accurately stuffed in her mouth!! Watch the (moderately long) video for the full effect...
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