bonnie & jason

Chinglish

I walked to Chinatown today to get some lunch and came back with a can of Khao Shong Wasabi Coated Green Peas.  In examining the can, I noticed English, German, and Japanese text but no Chinese.  The can also says to look on the bottom of the can for the ‘Best Before’ date.  As it turns out this can is best before ‘Lot No K157.’  Anyway, this got me thinking, “Who are these people?”  So I looked at their website www.khaoshungnuts.com.  This is what I found:

We are always know in all over the world for delivering high quality products with excellent logistic management and assuring the guarantee satisfactions to our valued customers. We are very determined to keep this commitment for not only our short-term goals but also in compatible with the company’s long-term objectives as well.

Here’s some more:

The company welcomes all nut-snack special orders bearing a customer’s brandname. Infact, the company has an experience in supplying snacks onboard as well as s nacks in bulp packs for restaurants and the like. 

Is it that hard to find an English proof reader?  I should start a Chinglish to English translation service.

Did you ever notice…

babies have really, really big heads?  One doctor purports that human babies are essentially born “early” in order to get them out before their heads get too big to physically fit through the birth canal.  As such, he terms the first three months of life as the “fourth trimester.”  That’s fine, but he didn’t really go into why their heads developed so much faster than the rest of their bodies.  I noticed this recently when Alissa was doing her standard “you just woke me up from a deep sleep so now I need to stretch my arms above my head” pose.  In the picture, you can see that her hands barely reach the top of her head!  Now imagine how funny you would look if you stretched your arms up and your hands barely reached the top of your head!  Either you’d have a monstrous Mayor McCheese head or stubby Grimace arms.  (I must have McDonald’s on the brain.)  No wonder babies have a hard time keeping their heads up.  Anyway, just a funny observation.

Ooooo… new Honda S2000?

One of my daily reads, www.vtec.net, reported today that there may be a Type R version of the Honda s2000.  How cool would that be!?  That might push the Lotus Exige off the top of my lust list of cars.  Of course, it’s pure speculation at this point and I would say the chance of anything materializing is probably less than 10%, but it’s fun to think about.  Also interesting, the same article mentioned that the next generation s2000 may be a down-market version designed to compete against the Miata instead of the SLK/Boxster/Z4.  That also sounds interesting as it would be much easier on the wallet.  Besides, I always thought Honda would be able to come up with something at least as good as the Miata… like a lite-s2000.

Better late than never

Alissa was only five days old when Christmas came around.  At that time, her head was way too small for the santa hat that Bonnie was so excited for her to wear.  So today, Bonnie had a little extra time on her hands and decided Alissa had grown enough to fit the hat.  So, here you go… Christmas redux.

Speaking of growing, I forgot to mention a couple posts ago that Alissa is now 8 lbs 11 oz, and 20.5″ long.  That’s almost 2 lbs and 2″ bigger than when she was born.

Start them young!

Many of you know I’m a huge Honda fan.  I’ve owned three Honda motorcycles (1991 Nighthawk 750, 1997 VFR750, 2001 CBR929), four Honda cars (1996 Acura Integra, 2000 S2000, 2003 Accord, 2006 Pilot), a Honda riding lawnmower, and I’d like to get a Honda generator and maybe someday a Honda powered shifter kart.  Then there’s the Honda tshirt, sweatshirt, hats, keychains, models… damn, I never listed them all out like that.

Anyway, Deeann knows about my bias so for Bonnie’s baby shower, custom designed the onesie on the left.  Pretty sweet, huh?  Bonnie has joked that she’s waiting for me to get her Honda harness pads to replace the bunny ones she already has.  I think I’ll leave those alone for now.  But who knows… the stroller can use some Honda stickers! 

Alissa’s 1-month checkup

We went to Dr. Langston for Alissa’s one month checkup today.  He signed off on a clean bill of health.  She’s still on the short and light side of the curve, but has made progress towards the center.  Alissa also got her second Hep B shot today.  The first one was given shortly after being born with nary a whimper.  This second one was good too… she cried for one second and that was it… probably because we started feeding her immediately after.  We’ll see what happens next month at which point she’ll have a whole battery of shots to take.

Tummy time

Alissa has been getting stronger and stronger every day.  She still has the wobbly head thing going on, but we’re trying to give her some tummy time fairly regularly so she can strengthen those muscles.

Alissa is one month old!

I can’t believe a whole month has gone by!  On one hand, it seems like just yesterday we were able to leave the house sans diaper bag and all the other accoutrements of having a newborn.  On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine life without Alissa.

On the whole, we feel very lucky about how things have gone this first month.  True, we have faced many of the challenges that most first-time parents face.  But the fact is, Alissa is well-tempered, healthy, and of course, super cute… even with her baby acne.

Mmm… crepes

For some reason, Bonnie was craving crepes so we decided to make our own from scratch.  It’s actually easier than I thought.  4 eggs, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of flour and voila!  Crepes.  We made sweet ones with strawberries and chocolate and savory ones ghetto style… spinach and hot dogs!  We really need to do some grocery shopping.

The many sleeps of Alissa

We’ve been able to get Alissa to sleep in all sorts of places.  In her pack and play, on my shoulder, in our bed, on her gymnasium, etc.  We also just started to try to sleep train her via the Babywise method.  It hasn’t actually changed our behavior that much since we’ve kinda been doing what it says from the beginning (by accident more than anything).  One new thing is that we have been letting her cry herself to sleep.  Usually it works ok, but every once in a while, her screaming overwhelms us (Bonnie) and we pick her up.  Hopefully the method works for us overall and we can get her to sleep through the night in another few weeks.  We’ll see!