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...