Andrew - Weeks 17 and 18

For no apparent reason, Andrew's drool production facilities kicked into overdrive last week. They say that this might be because he's teething, but that really doesn't appear to be the case because he's stopped drooling just as suddenly. OK, "stopped" drooling may be a bit of an overstatement, but for about five or six days there you would've sworn he'd sprung a leak.

Andrew - Week 16

Speaking of strollers, Charity got a new toy a couple weeks ago - a Bob Revolution jogging stroller. She'd been pretty excited ever since she placed the order for it back in December. Now that it's arrived, I have to say that it's a marked improvement from what we'd been using before. It's so much zippier and yet remains very stable.

On a related note, Charity's been walking with Andrew to downtown a lot more recently...

Graco Recall

Since becoming parents, we've paid more attention to the product recalls put out by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

C: Can you believe they recalled some Graco strollers because FIVE little baby fingers have been amputated?

M: Well, 1 or 2 fingers are just bad parenting. But 5! Now that's a reason for a recall.

Lullabies

I think we all dig back to our own childhood memories when we have kids of our own. There's a Taiwanese lullaby I love, except I only know the chorus. I sang the chorus to my Mom, and she only knows the chorus too. No wonder that's the only part of the song I know!

Thanks to the great internet, I found the rest of the song. The website even has the song's history. I'd say every Taiwanese person has heard of the song and can sing the chorus. If I had to guess I'd say the song was passed down for generations. Surprisingly, the song was written in 1945. That's like only 2 generations. Heh.

Here's the first verse, the rest of the lullaby and the history can be found here: http://www.taiwan123.com.tw/main_digi.asp?id=59 (in Chinese)

搖嬰仔歌

嬰仔嬰嬰睏，一暝大一寸；
嬰仔嬰嬰惜，一暝大一尺，
搖子日落山，抱子金金看，
你是我心肝，驚你受風寒。

Andrew - Week 15

Everyone's gone and we have the house to ourselves again. It was strange going back to work on Monday after spending the past two weeks at home with Andrew 24/7.

the Dish - a Failed Attempt

I'm happy to announce that I'm finally confident enough to take Andrew out on my own for recreational purposes. I practiced over the past few weeks, but had mixed results. Sometimes he slept and I was able to run errands and get things done, but other times he would just cry and cry. I think the key is to time his naps to the car ride. What also helps is that he is now older and more responsive, so I can distract him with toys hanging over his carseat when he becomes restless. All in all I'm pretty happy with my new gained confidence.

Today, we went to the Dish behind Stanford. When I was in school I'd run the Dish loop. Nowadays I'm only fit enough to walk it. I snapped Andrew's carseat into our carseat stroller frame and started walking. The whole time he was asleep - I totally had him "handled!" Unfortunately, even though the Dish route is paved, the stroller frame we have feels very unstable. After fifteen minutes I turned around and walked back to the car. The Dish is pretty hilly and the simple carseat + carseat stroller frame combination made the ride too rickety for my taste. We ordered a BOB Revolution stroller over the Christmas break. It's an "SUV" stroller with big wheels and fancy suspension. I'm super excited about it. I look forward to the day when I can take Andrew out for a good 2 hour Dish stroll!

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