bonnie & jason

Alissa’s first real sentence

Alissa’s vocabulary and verbal skills continue to develop normally as far as we can tell. A lot of her communication is in one word bursts. Sit! Stuck! Sleep! Poo! Help! But she also has two word bursts. Open it! Catch it! Bye-bye! Thank you! See ya! Apple juice. Her favorite phrase is probably, “No way!” But today, she said what I would consider a real sentence. Bonnie asked me if I wanted to see something on the computer and then out of nowhere, Alissa said, “I wanna see!” That quickly evolved into, “I wanna cookie!” I’m sure “I wanna car!” is just around the corner. Anyway, here’s some video of it.

NAI-NAI! visit

My mom (Nai-nai) is here for a little while to Alissa’s delight. For some reason, she likes to yell, “NAI NAI!” when she’s not within a direct line of sight. As if she’s going to get lost without the loud beacon of Alissa to guide her back.

We’ve tried twice now to go to the Academy of Sciences and both times, the crowds have been crazy. So we’ve just gone to other little parks somewhere along the way. Here are a few pics from those outings:

Alissa’s hair is getting pretty long too… sort of long enough for a pony tail:

Happy Holidays!

Alissa’s second birthday party

We just had a small group over for Alissa’s birthday party this year. Bonnie made a request for chicken cacciatore and a Panormous Pizza Hut Pizza. So I got up early and threw all the cacciatore stuff in the slow cooker for four hours and picked up a not quite ginormous panormous pizza after picking up the cake.

Here’s my attempt at making the pizza look bigger than it actually was:

Here’s Alissa enjoying my chicken cacciatore:

The Elmo and Big Bird cake from Lucky:

Happy 2nd Birthday Alissa

As is now the tradition, Bonnie and I put together a video for Alissa’s second birthday. Dennis, once again, helped with the soundtrack. This may be the last one for just Alissa with the twins on the way. Instead, we may end up doing annual family videos. I guess we’ll see how much time we have next year with the twins at our feet. Enjoy!

2008 12 20 Alissa’s 2nd year video from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

Baby it’s cold outside

Although it was a bright sunny day, the temperature was downright chilly today. Despite the nip in the air, I took Alissa to the park with many layers and the hat she loves to hate.

Baby B’s first glamour shot

We haven’t been publishing ultrasound pictures since they’re not that great usually and we go all the time anyway. But yesterday, we got a good one of Baby B since she was in a good position. (By definition, Baby A is closer to the cervix than Baby B.)

Bonnie thinks she looks like Alissa already. Unfortunately, Baby A was facing away from us so we only saw the back of her head.

Otherwise, things are going well. Bonnie continues to be disciplined about bedrest and the doctors are optimistic we can make it to 36 weeks. That’s really just around the corner, although sometimes, it feels like a long time off.

Another potential prom date for Alissa and her sisters

We went to visit the latest addition to Alissa and her sisters’ pool of prom dates, Gavin, earlier this week. I didn’t get to take any pictures because Alissa demanded to be held so she could see the baby. She was very good at narrating and pointing, “Baby!”, “Cry!”, “TV!”

Xiao-Yi and Jeff seem to be doing well, despite the big poop that we witnessed. It brought back a lot of memories… and also foreshadowed a bit of what we’ll be doing in the very near future. Here are some pics that Xiao-Yi took.

I took this not so good one:

Ready for a test ride!

I got the bike back from the shop today and installed all the parts. Unfortunately, when I first stomped on it, one of the joints came loose (left side dropout). Oops! I rebrazed it and now it seems fine… for now. As a first time bike builder, I’m not all that confident in my handy work so I won’t be going on any long rides on it for a while.

Anyway, here’s a pic:

Canon 5D2 – short video sample

Bonnie’s dad just got the Canon 5D2. I haven’t had a chance to put it through it’s paces yet, but I did try a short video clip.

This was taken in pretty bad lighting with a 24-105mm 4.0 IS lens. I think the ISO ended up at 3200. There’s no autofocus feature in video mode so that will take getting used to. Otherwise, it works pretty well! The coolest thing is the bokeh in the out of focus areas. Take a look for yourself. (You can view in HD if you click through to vimeo.)

2008 12 09 5D2 test video from Jason Wang on Vimeo.