visitng auntie noelle

kai being born at the advent of the cold and flu season meant that some visits to loved ones were delayed. he didn't get to meet his auntie noelle until he was over 4 weeks old.
here's hana dancing with her kitty cat in auntie noelle's living room. she always has such a good time with her.

grandpa jim's visit

my dad came for a visit to meet the new baby and visit hana. it was a whirlwind tour but one of the highlights was that we took hana to children's fairyland for the first time. for those of you not from the bay area, children's fairyland, based in oakland, is what walt disney based his idea for disneyland on. however, walt disney made disneyland 100,000 times more elaborate.

hana dragged grandpa jim all over fairyland... she rode this merry-go-round by herself but grandpa jim escorted her off.

here's the little ferris wheel at fairyland. really cute. i'm surprised that hana was willing to ride this by herself. none of us could go with her so she would either have to go alone or not at all...

i feel like i'm in the belly of the whale... ooooh oh oh oh oh.... (that's a song for those of you who didn't grow up in the 80's).

hana and kai

these pictures sort of speak for themselves. on night after hana's bath (hence the hair) she showed some interest in holding kai, which she hasn't done since we were in the hospital. we thought: photo op!
however, hana wasn't really into that so therefore would only make silly faces, or none at all. the one above is the best of 23. here's a sampling of the rejects. this is not incidental blinking. this is her making a funny face. there are several pictures like this... sigh.

the kids at play...

i can't tell how good it feels to say that. "the kids"... sigh. i love our little family.

here are some random shots of the kids at play. hana and bailey are still tight, tight, tight. my folks asked me if bailey takes as much interest in kai as he did hana... well, the answer is sort of. you see, bailey doesn't care too much about newborns, he just cares about their stuff. when they start playing with their stuff, well, that's when he sort of sees them as playmates. so he's not so into kai yet, but i think that will come. maceo, on the other had, has always been more interested in babies. that is, until they start moving around. he was very protective of hana as an infant, standing over her as she slept, and alerting us when she stirs. he continues his baby sentry role with kai. while he won't go so far as to hang out in the living room with us, because hana still is a bit much for him, he will stay close to him if he's in our bed. and whenever he cries, he comes to check on him no matter where he is in the house.

here's kai "playing" for the first time... i think he's 3-4 weeks old in this picture. he's especially taken with the mirror. he thinks that other baby is handsome... and i agree!

bailey's not the only one taken with all of the baby stuff. hana was helping her baby "go to sleep" in the swing.

hana's fake smile... this is the precurser to hana's camera strike. after several hundred thousand pictures, she's finally becoming disenchanted with posing for pictures... you will see more evidence of this in later posts...

and this, my friends, is what happens when your child leaves her dolls unattended around a sleep-deprived, but pretty-silly-anyway parent.

but seriously, it sort of lends perspective to his size, since close up pictures don't really do him justice. he's big for a newborn, but still pretty small.

"stomp the yard"

hana has become a fan of music and dance. correction, SUPER FAN! she loves all of the big shows: "so you think you can dance", "dancing with the stars", "america's best dance crew"... dancing with the stars, particulalry the results shows when they have the special guest performances, have been a huge hit for her. these all have come on after bedtime so ife we start them for she's settled into her lion king sound track, she'll sneak down the hallway to watch it... until she gets caught. she usually can't contain herself so she'll start dancing and of course that makes noise, which gives her away... we have to stifle laughs before sending her to bed because the whole thing is pretty cute despite her defiance...

when the broadway production of the lion king performed circle of life in the season opener, she watched it about a dozen times a day every single day for about 3 weeks. we tried to mix it up to get a little variety for us. sure, she liked the trojan marching band from the following week. and she really liked the step dancing. but she would finish those and ask for the lion king. i was growing tired of this so i hipped her to fact that she's not the only fan of the dance in the house. her budding fanaticism with musical theater she comes by honestly. i shared with her that i actually own the original broadway soundtrack to the lion king on cd and that she could listen to it at bed time. i have never seen her go more willingly and stay in her bed so consistently as she did on this night. and from that night forward, she has listened to the lion king every night at least 1.5 times before going to sleep. she has even learned how to restart the cd herself. well, anyway, she's a super fan now, but she is at least content to listen to the cd. this revelation enabled her to move on. to other things.., thank gawd!

so as i said, she's really taken with step dancing and did her own rendition. she chose to do it in the laundry basket for the superior sound quality.

kai's first bath at home

somewhere between kai's 1st and 2nd week, we did give him his first bath at home. you can't really give babies a proper bath until their umbilical stump falls off which usually takes a couple of weeks. but with kai, i think it took 5 days. but newborns don't really need baths. i mean, they don't go anywhere and they don't really get into anything... so giving those baths are really ceremonies for parents (and big sisters as it turns out). hana was really interested in helping kai with his bath.

it was during this bath that i really began to notice just how much kai really looks like his sister. i don't know how to do this fancy photography but if i were to split screen the two of them during their respective firsts baths, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart. keeping hana in the picture helps me not confuse one baby for another in pictures. that sounds pathetic but those who have recently had to care for a newborn understand... i'm tired. tired all of the time... but anyway, the bath was fun and it felt like way less of a production than it did with hana. plus, he actually liked it. hana didn't like her baths until she was much older -almost a year -and could sit in the tub and play with toys...here's she's telling him "it's alright baby brother" in her soft whisper voice. "you'll be ok". it's enough to melt your heart. and in the picture below, she's lamenting that he's still crying. when i explained to her that it was ok, and that he's just getting used to baths, she settled down and went back to trying to comfort him.

she was very excited when i let her help him shampoo his hair. she was saying to herself "gen-to, gen-to, gen-to..." reminding herself of her trianing to be gentle with babies. such a good sister! brought a tear to my eye then... and now just thinking about it.

and in these two pictures, this is where i SO grateful that he is not swaddled in hana's pink bunny towel from when she was a baby. i would not be able to tell these two apart if it were for this clever blue and white towel. at first he didn't like being taken out of the water, but once he was swaddled in the towel, he settled down and actually liked that too. but that's a crap shoot, literally (!), if you spend too long without a diaper, so that sense of calm didn't last long either because we had to unwrap him to get him dressed.

first smile! - kai at 2 weeks

i just happened to be sitting on the couch with him. he was looking so pensive and alert, i thought i'd snap a couple of pictures using my cell phone. and then he smiled! i wasn't expecting that for weeks. how fortuitous that he happened to flash his first smile when i was poised and ready with the camera. lucky me! he didn't do that much later...

in fact, the day after this picture was taken, kai was circumcised. he didn't smile again for a week. but we showed this picture to dr. bean and he agreed that it was a real smile! so it's not just me. you be the judge...

and about that circumcision, i'll spare you the pictures, but yes there are some. jon took them. dr. bean invites photos and videos because it's such a big day. instead of doing the circumcisions
in the hospital right after birth, dr. bean prefers to do them in his office before they are three weeks old. i imagine that he feels more comfortable there. and frankly i'm down with that. whatever makes the dr. feel more comfortable when working with my baby's boy business is good for me too. it was quite an experience. i believe i was traumatized. but i'm glad i was there because even though i may never be the same. it's a huge decision do to it and it will forever change our son and i can't imagine not being there (like they do in some hospitals where they don't let parents attend or they only let one attend...). and besides, if he's a punk teenager, we can pull the pictures out and show them to his prom date... heh heh heh!

kai at 1 week

for those of you not on facebook, you probably have not seen regular pictures of kai. i tell you, getting my iphone has made posting to facebook quite easy, but to the detriment of our blog. if my iphone had some sort of blogger app for blogspot, i would probably be better about that... now that i think about it, i bet they do. i'll check it out. anyway, we are admittedly behind on posting pictures. and these pictures are from the "real" camera so they'll be different than the facebook ones anyway... and perhaps better.

these are pictures from when he was a week old. it was a busy week indeed. we were getting ready for jon's mom to move in. she moved in when kai was 12 days old.

it's amazing how different he looks from the pictures in the hospital. he's growing fast!

here he's looking like "the thinker". his sister used to sleep like that too...