family portrait

this family portrait was taken at a wedding for friends leah and stuart. it's one of the rare shots of us all together. also, kai's outfit is the first one that i have purchased for him since i realized the day before this event that he actually didn't have anything to wear!

camera strike!

ok, when i promised that i would have pictures of thanksgiving, i was apparantly lying. i know we brought the camera, but evidently, it never made it out of the bag... mostly because hana has been on a camera strike, but also because it's a lot to keep track of when your thanksgiving dinner involves 30+ people. but these pictures are from november so this will have to do.

kai is now 2 months old and he's pretty alert. and by alert i mean he really doesn't sleep all that much during the day. which of course means that i spend my days doing whatever it takes to make him happy. which of course means holding him all day and/or enduring his crying for every minute that i'm not holding him. in retrospect, i have learned that this is colic. however, in the moment i did not recognize it as such because i always thought that colicky babies were inconsolable even when you were holding them. apparently, colicky merely refers to those babies who cry 1.5 to 3 hours per day for at least 3 days a week. well kai could do that daily so he definately qualifies. i'm not sure what that would have changed for me, at the time because i knew that i was doing everything for him that could be done and i concluded that he was just very, very particular. it was definately exhausting and it is probably one of the reasons i got back to running so quickly.

of couse, he wasn't always crying. there were many people who remarked that he was the happiest and most peaceable baby they'd seen. and i would agree that when he wasn't crying, or asleep (which at the time, he had to do on my lap or while i was wearing him in order for him to have any substaintial daytime napping), he was definately happy and full of easy smiles. in fact, his first smile was at 2 weeks (which is fairly early since most babies smile between 4-6 weeks). but perhaps that was a survival instinct because it was those memories i could draw upon when he was screaming his head off because i had the audacity to set him down to use the bathroom.

despite his 2 colds that he's suffered up this point, he contined to gain about an ounce a day. his pediatrician says that i have some supercharged milk because while i was concerned about how infrequently he was nursing when he was sick, dr. bean reminded me that his growth was either at the top, or actually off the charts "so he's doing great!"

it is also around this time that he starts to outgrow his 3-6 month clothing, despite the fact that i continue to cram him into them. some outfits were just so cute and he hardly got to wear them. fortunately, i have not had to buy any clothes for him (except the halloween costumes) because everything was either a baby gift or one of the many, many, many, fine hand-me-downs from jack, cole or tony.

hana has been flirting with potty training but not really committed as of yet. she's trying to make sense of grandma kay moving in and worries that she sometimes doesn't feel well. she continues to be totally enamored with her baby brother, and loves to cuddle him and make him smile. he has a special extra wide smile that he only flashes for his sister and it's pretty cool to see.

she has also been on a bit of a camera strike for the last several months. it could be because there are literally thousands of pictures taken of her first two years of life, but i dunno, i think it's cause she's almost 3. in the series of pictures below, hana has decided that she will only cooperate with the picture of her and baby kai if cinderella can be the focus of it. sigh.
this first one was candid and she didn't know the picture was being taken. after we convince her to allow us to take another picture with kai, she insists on getting cinderella and having her be the subject of the picture...

oh we try several tricks to get her out of the frame...

... including putting her down so low that she can eventually be cropped out. but hana's on to us. she wants to see each shot after it's taken (damn digital cameras!)...

when i insist that i want a picture of her and kai and no cinderella this time, she channels her inner norma ray and decides to go back on the camera strike and refuses to cooperate. and so it goes... (this is the "what-EVER" pose)

an early november shot of kai wearing one of the 3-6 month outfits that he's outgrown but is so cute i can't resist cramming him in it one more time. note how short the legs are on this long-sleeved long-legged outfit...

alright, alright... so kai is 6 months old.

ok, before anyone chastises me for being an absentee blogger, let me first remind you that i have 2 kids now and when the latter, who is just 6 months old now, was 12 days old, we had to move a sick relative into our home (she's much better now, but still lives with us nevertheless).

when i left off, kai was just 4 weeks old. we pick up the story at the halloween festivities, of which there were many (which i hope also explains why it has taken me so long to catch up). we went to the pumpkin patch a couple a times, which was always a hit with hana. she talks about the patch year round so to finally get to go back after ll months of waiting was just too exciting for hana. the first trip was with jack and charlie. hana was dressed as tinkerbell and kai was dressed as a skeleton. these pictures show just how close jack, charlie and hana really are.

our little tinkerbell

for some reason, kai really enjoyed being on the ground amongst the pumpkins. he gave many gratuitous grins to be amongst the big kids and all these crazy pumpkins.

i LOVE this shot...

this might be my most favorite picture of kai ever!!!! such a sweet baby.

sometime after the pumpkin patch trip... hana asserted herself for the first time ever about how she wanted to wear her hair. she said that she wanted it "curly". so after a bath she had that afternoon, i put a little product in it, combed out the tangles and let it fly. personally, i LOVE it. it kinda gets on hana's nerves after a little while and she wants it out of her face but she still asks for curly hair every now and again. the major downside is that there are plenty of tangles that i have to spend a good about of time working through each day and hana definately does not love that. you might also note how much taller than the twins hana is at this point. shortly after this, the twins had a growth spurt which shortened the gap slightly, but it's hard to believe that these kid are only two weeks apart in age!

the second trip to the pumpkin patch she went with butterflies preschool (the daycare). the weather was unseaonably warm this day (in the 80's) but the big beautiful blue sky made for awesome pictures and fun times. the very first picture of this post, of hana on a play structure with said blue sky in the background, is from this day. this is jon's favorite picture of hana of all time (now you KNOW how many pictures that is, so that's saying a lot...).

the butterflies.

meanwhile, on halloween proper, butterflies had a big halloween party, and as with tradition, they walked in the halloween parade at the elementary school down the street. last year the parade was rained out so this was our first experience with this. lets just say that this was an excercise in barely controlled chaos. i don't know that i ever need to do that again, but hana had a good time. when we got back to ms. leona's we had a big party with plenty of treats and dancing. we supplied "hana's special dance party" playlist on my ipod which was a hit with the kids. ms. leona was grateful that she didn't have to play her alvin and the chipmunks cd for the 1 millionth time. i tell you, she has the patience of a saint.

kai loves being around all of the kids and the kids are so taken with him as well...

as you saw, all of the costumes were pretty cute, but there were several girls sporting some rather elaborate princess shoes that deserved documentation. check them out! fabulous.

the dance party in full swing... you might be able to tell the song by the choreography. that's right, "single ladies" by beyonce.

this. was. hilarious!

after the dance party wound down, (and believe it or not, there were naps), we headed to auntie daniela's and uncle aaron's for some trick-or-treating. their neighborhood really gets into it and there were hundreds of kids out it seemed.

hana was scared of this mummy but we convinced her that it was ok to be scared and if she was also brave she could hold her ground and get her candy and come on back. i don't know what she said to the mummy, but she handled her business for sure!

kai slept through much of the trick or treating. this was the debut of his peapod costume. it kept him nice and cozy on a chilly night.

surveying the haul... it was quite substantial acutally. it's almost six months later and we still have halloween candy.

p.s. kai seemed fine once we got back the house with the kids and started checking the candy. we got him out of his costume, he was up and social and in good spirits. we got his jammies on him, he nursed mightily and we drove home. when i took him out of his car seat at home, he was burning up with fever (102.5). this meant i had to take him on a late night run to the emergency room. they tested him for h1n1 but they did not wait for those results (he was negative) before starting him on tamiflu (which by the way, was $25 copay for less than an ounce!!!!). we were lucky because the week after halloween most of the kids at daycare were sick, one of them with h1n1. this cold of kai's took 2 weeks to recover from but he never had another fever after that night. it was scary how fast it came on, but he was feeling better by the next day.

so given that halloween night was kinda hectic (the picture we did get of him from halloween night was from jenny's camera), we didn't get any pictures of him really. so we crammed him back into his halloween costume once he was feeling better. (and i do mean crammed.) he cannont staighten his legs in this and it was all we could do to snap the top. and note how short the sleeves are on him. this costume was a 3-6 month costume but in this picture, he is 6 weeks old.

so there, now i'm done with october. there will be more... but you will just have to wait until i have another moment, can't sleep, or both. but you can expect to see some thanksgiving shots, christmas pictures, and many shots of the first trip to disneyland. and let's not forget kai's first school picture day in february. stay tuned.