bonnie & jason

We’ve been sick

Alissa has been fighting a cold for the last week or so. Unfortunately, I caught the same cold late last week but both of us are on the tail end of it I think.

I’m not sure if it’s related to her cold, but Alissa has refused to take milk the last couple days. One of our theories is that she may have developed an ear infection which made sucking milk out of a bottle painful. We’ve been trying to get her to change her habits with regard to milk for a while now so this may be a blessing in disguise. Perhaps, instead of requiring warm milk, in a bottle, held by us, she’ll start accepting cold milk in a sippy cup held by herself. One can dream, no?

So instead of milk, we’ve been trying to feed her liquids in other ways. Mushier oatmeal, thin mashed potatoes, jello, and her favorite, yogurt/milk/peach smoothie. Funny thing is, she takes the smoothie through a straw in a cup we got from T.G.I.Fridays. And she wants you to take a sip after she takes a sip. She’s so high maintenance. Oh well, as long as she doesn’t get dehydrated I guess.

In other news, Alissa is done with swim classes now and seems to be more comfortable with water. She still doesn’t like it in her face, but it’s not as big a deal as it used to be.

Also, today, she refused to go down for her second nap and so instead, decided to take one half way through dinner.


2007 02 24 Alissa falling asleep while eating from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

And finally, here’s Alissa laughing at how silly daddy looks when trying to imitate her:

We’re gonna… Pump, You Up!

Megan had her first birthday party today at Pump It Up! It’s one of those places with a bunch of inflatable slides and obstacle courses. Alissa is a little young to enjoy everything on her own but we helped her in and around most of the features. I think the adults had more fun (and more injuries) than the kids did. Unfortunately, Megan was kinda sick but she was a trooper and seemed to enjoy her place on the birthday throne. Here’s the full set of pictures.

Hat and Mittens

Happy Valentine’s Day

My other blog…

Bonnie is always trying to figure out how I can bring home more money to support Alissa’s milk addiction. Since I like blogging and giving people advice about stuff (regardless of my qualifications), she thought I should find a way to monetize my interests. So I am excited to announce that I am now the author to the Digital Camera blog at Content Quake. I have no idea if I have enough interesting things to say about digital cameras and photography that would make people want to read my blog vs. the horde of other photography related sites out there, but we’ll see what happens. Who knows, maybe if I get some traction from the readers of this blog, I can make an extra couple bucks a month!

Alissa in the park

We took a little field trip today to Parkside Square, a mid-sized park just a few blocks away on Vicente. They have tennis courts, a softball field, as well as a playground for kids from toddlers through pre-teens. We had brought Alissa here a number of months ago but she was way too young to appreciate any of it. This time, however, she was able to enjoy the swing, the dome, the squishy ground covering, and many of the other features.

Frankly, I think she was more interested in just watching all the other kids who were there. This one little boy walked up to her and then backed away. And then walked back up a little closer and then backed away. The next time he did it, Alissa went to follow him. Ai-ya! I think he might have been a little older than Alissa too…

One feature of the playground that Alissa did seem to enjoy was the sliding blocks. She insisted on moving all of the blocks all the way to one side. Not until they were all in the proper place, did she want to move on to the next thing. That must be from Bonnie’s end of the gene pool. I’ll let you in on a little secret… Bonnie uses up all her pens until they run out of ink. And she uses all her erasers until they literally turn to dust. I’m pretty sure she still has erasers from grade school that she’s still trying to finish off.

Alissa also had her first real taste of ice cream today. ($2 at the park.) Not surprisingly, she loved it!

Here’s the whole set of pictures if you’re interested.

Alissa playing the piano

I benefited greatly from piano and violin lessons growing up. (Dork alert, dork alert!) I don’t know if music will play as large a role in Alissa’s life, but she seems to like “playing” the piano already. Interestingly, she didn’t just bang on a the keys. She actually seemed to experiment with how keys on the left side sounded compared to how keys on the right side sounded. I think that’s the first sign of a child prodigy, isn’t it?

And by the way, Happy Chinese New Year! To help celebrate, Alissa is wearing a Chinese outfit that the grandparents bought in China last year.

Run Alissa, Run!

Alissa is now pretty much walking everywhere. She still falls down a lot but for the most part, she has said bye bye to crawling. It looks kinda funny to me since she’s still pretty short and small. And it takes her a hundred steps to go from one side of the room to the other. But she is definitely enjoying her new found speed.

In other developments, she’s starting to exert her personality and will more and more. It’s especially evident during meal times. Whereas, she used to eat most anything we fed her, now she is picky about not only what she eats but how she eats it. For example, baby food is definitely not at the top of her food choices. Also, when eating our food, she would prefer to feed herself instead of have us feed her. Furthermore, sometimes she won’t eat anything unless there’s accompanying entertainment. Either I have to sing her the ABC’s. Or we have to put sesame street videos on the laptop. To top it off, when we went to Fresh Choice today, she wanted to eat peas, but would sometimes only eat them if I fed them to her. And other times would insist on feeding herself, using one hand to peel the skin off the pea and the other hand to shove said peeled pea into her mouth. She’s actually surprisingly dexterous. I’m not sure what normal is, but it seems like she has a pretty good grasp (no pun intended) on the finer motor skills.

Alissa walking around from Jason Wang on Vimeo.