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October 31, 2004
A Little Dragon Tells Me That
"Do you know what day today is?"
"No, what day is it?"
"Today is Halloween. Children go trick-or-treating on Halloween--but you're still too little to go."
"Oh, I guess I'll cry then. Except that I don't have any teeth yet, so I can't eat candy anyway. I'll just try to scare the kids who come to the door with my screams."
She's facinated with a mobile she has on her swing. She smiles at the animals on it and tracks them as they revolve around their hub. Often she will make small vocalizatons to them; perhaps inviting them to talk.
Posted by Mike at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2004
Safe
Sleeping safely in Mama's arms.
Posted by Mike at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
Play
I can play for a few minutes and then I will scream my head off.
Posted by Mike at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2004
Dangling Objects
have infinite appeals. They seem like her favorite toy so far.
Posted by Mike at 07:38 AM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2004
Postpartum care
Do you remember the entry for 10/21? I found this article on the web on traditional Chinese postpartum care. It will explain a little about why we had all that michiu (rice wine for cooking) in the house.
Postpartum Practices
Chinese women believe strongly in postpartum practices. Caring for oneself immediately after childbirth is very crucial in restoring women's health to pre-pregnant condition. There are wide regimens of self-care and special food intake during postpartum period. A period of care right after the delivery ranging from one to three months is known as the "sitting month". Depending on regional differences, there are variances in regiments and practices associated with sitting month. During the sitting month, women are to abstain from taking a bath, washing their hair, exposing themselves to cold water, cold temperature environment and wind, drinking ice water or eating "cold" food (i.e. uncooked vegetables, salads or fruits). The reasons for these restrictions are based on the beliefs that women are undergoing a cold stage right after the delivery due to loss of blood. In order to restore the energy, women need to consume food that are considered "hot" (i.e. hot water, soups, ginger, wine and food that are high in protein) and avoid exposing themselves to cold air, cold water or wind.Western providers and health care members who are unfamiliar with sitting month have a difficulty time in understanding the Chinese women who just gave birth. In Western culture, cold drinks such as milk, orange juices, ice water and cold food such as salad, cold sandwiches, tomato based sauce dishes and deserts such as Jell-O, fruits and ice cream are routinely offered to women during their inpatient stay. In contrast, for Chinese women these are the types of food that their mothers, women friends and relatives have advised avoiding as much as possible. Women who had Caesarian section would want to avoid not only "cold" food but also beef or seafood. Beef and seafood are believed to prolong the healing process. It is not unusual for hospital staff to find the food served left untouched. Inpatient women preferred to have their food brought in from home. For women who have an episiotomy, nurses will advise women to use ice packs to reduce swelling and inflammation. Young Chinese women who have been exposed to Western culture will heed the advice and adopt the practice. For the majority of Chinese women, however, the practice is considered contradictory to their Chinese health belief. Traditionally, women should avoid using anything cold for fear that cold compress will increase their risk of incontinence, headache, backache and/or arthritis in old age.
Posted by Mike at 01:52 AM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2004
Investigating
Our cats don't know what to think of the baby yet. They are curious enough to sniff her head when they get a chance. They are not sure if she is a new junior servant, and therefore have been treating her with respect.
Posted by Mike at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2004
Full Month
Little K is one month old today, that means Hsin-I does not have eat stuff made with rice wine (michiu) any more. Hsin-I's parents bought six dozens of rice wine for the postpartum diet/care and she managed to finish only two. Tsk tsk, the elders frown on that.
Posted by Mike at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2004
Evolution
A balding baby with growing eyelashes.
Posted by Mike at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2004
K
is for Kathleen. We have been calling our little bundle of need different [English] nicknames and can't settle on one. Katy has been the one we use at this website. We have also talked about Katie, Kay, Kate, etc. One of the parents prefers K, like the character in Kafka novels, but the other doesn't think it would go well in kindergarten. We will just call her however we like.
Posted by Mike at 01:16 AM | Comments (0)
October 17, 2004
Double Feature!
Bonding with Daddy...
...and details of her expression.
Posted by Mike at 05:42 AM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2004
Sleep
I guess it looks like the only thing the baby does with me is sleep. I nap and she sleeps. I read and she sleeps. I surf and she sleeps. I take pictures of her and she sleeps. And we try hard to make her fall asleep too.
I guess ideally we would fill every moment with intellectually stimulating activities for her. But this bundle of need usually prefers eat, sleep, and excrete to anything else. Sure she likes to study her environment (e.g., looking at bright lights), but it is not what we plan for her (e.g., solving Lego puzzles). I guess we can wait for another week to try again.
Posted by Mike at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2004
Smile
We think it is her "first" real smile. We had trouble taking pictures of her smiling; she frowns instantly when the flashlight goes off.
Posted by Mike at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2004
The First Day
Here is a picture of Kathleen in her first day of life. Notice how chubby her cheeks were.
Posted by Mike at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2004
All Cocooned Up
Here is a picture of Katy being swaddled. We don't swaddle her much nowadays; she is a long baby. Back in the days when she still drank formula from a medicine cup, we would swaddle her first before giving her food. Pretty soon, she learned to associate swaddling with food. Consequently, she would be even more frustrated (and scream louder) if we just swaddled her to keep her quiet. We managed to break the association eventually.
Posted by Mike at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2004
Pacifier
We finally gave Katy the pacifier to keep her quiet. It worked the first day; she suckled like there was no tomorrow. And then, from the second day on, she learned there was nothing coming out of the pacifier, so she would spit it out every few seconds or so. Maybe she found it more entertaining to spit it out, watch us squirm to put it back in, suck for a few minutes, and repeat.
Posted by Mike at 07:56 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2004
Audio milestones
Well, I haven't got any way to record her, but Katy is now testing out her voice. While her screams have been nearly loud enough to raise the dead, her voice has always been "binary." You know, "on" or "off." She's generally quiet until she starts crying, and when she is crying, her face gets red with the exertion of maximizing her volume / breath ratio.
Starting yesterday and on into today, her vocalizations have been at a more pleasant volume. While I would hesitate to describe them as a full-fleged "coo," I suspect they'll grow into cooing soon.
Posted by Mike at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)
Sleeping in the Library
As this picture shows, Katy loves to sleep--or maybe we love it when she sleeps. Whatever. She's especially fond of sleeping when she can be in close physical contact with someone. Here, I'm counting on her being comfortable enough to stay asleep so I can do a little reading. All told, I think I was able to get about :45 min of uninterrupted reading while she was there.
That was pretty good, but I'll need a lot more. I was able to pick up Neal Stephenson's The System of the World on Saturday night. At 800+ pages, Katy should have plenty of time where she can nap on my shoulder in the library.
Posted by Mike at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2004
Smile or gas?
Here she is with a cute little smile. I wonder what her secret is? There's a good chance that her little secret is gas. It seems she always has this expression when she's a little gassy.
She is asleep in the picture, so I could be wrong. It is always possible that she's having a nice baby dream.
Posted by Mike at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2004
No more hammock days
Looks like we can retire the bath hammock, since Katy has now lost the stump of her umbilical cord. That means that she can now actually take a real bath, not just a sponge bath.
This evening when I picked her up I noticed that the stump was missing. I pointed that out to Hsin-I who asked "where is it?"
"I bet the cats got it." (Ew!) Luckily, that wasn't true, it was just on the floor.
Sorry, no picture for today.
Posted by Mike at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)