Sofia's Four Month Birthday

Hard to believe it has already been four months! This last month was a tough one, but it went by quick!

Some videos to commemorate! Enjoy!

Sofia enjoying a story:


Sofia eating her book:


Sofia eating Shamu!


Sofia trying to crawl:

DSLR Photos

Sofia's eczema has died down a little bit with the warmer, more humid weather. Hopefully, we can keep it under control - the last few days, we have been very rigorously keeping her moisturized, and hopefully, that will help mitigate future breakouts. Unfortunately, per the doctors and most of the research I've done online, it seems that the 20% or so of infants that are afflicted with eczema continue to have breakouts for the first several years, but the best we can do is try to keep the breakouts as short and sweet as possible, and try to prevent her from aggravating it by scratching.

Sofia Puppy Dog Pose

So, a few weeks ago, I wrote that I had made a pretty big purchase in the form of a Canon Rebel XSi (aka 450D).  Slowly but surely, some of the photo's we've taken with it have been trickling in to Grant's Pad (including Sofia's puppy dog pose above). We're still getting used to it, but we've mostly been focusing on maximizing the amount of bokeh we can get. To do this, we have been using a 50mm lens and setting the camera to Aperture Priority mode, then maximizing aperture size (this is somewhat counter intuitive on the camera itself because to do this, you actually lower the number as far as you can go...). Below are some of the results!

Bokeh Bokeh Bokeh!

White Heron

Cheap photo update today! I actually took this earlier in the week, but I thought it was pretty cool.

White Heron Stopping By the Pond

Two Fifis!

I can't imagine what having twins would be like... but I imagine it might look something like this! As we've chronicled before, Sofia loves looking at herself in the mirror. As she gets older, she now is starting to play with her image in the mirror!

So this past week has been yet another stressful one. Towards the end of last week, Sofia's rash looked like it was starting to finally take a turn for the better. So, we took a trip to Erna Nixon Park. I should add, we finally were able to successfully take a trip to Erna Nixon Park. You see, the park closes at about 4PM during the week - so clearly it is difficult for us to go before I come back from work. On the weekend, the park theoretically closes at around 2PM... but the week before we tried to go at around 1:30 and it was already closed! So, finally we were able to go by heading out much earlier - as soon as we had breakfast.

Unfortunately, before long, the rash came back, and with a vengeance. Not only was her face starting to flare up again, but she got her first case of diaper rash, and little spots were flaring up on her arms, legs, and body too. Alarmed, we took her to see another pediatrician to get some more advice, but in the end, we still had to revert to dermatologist techniques in order to subdue the inflammation.

Hopefully, we'll be able to take some prettier pictures again soon!

Goodbye, Year of the Tiger... Hello, Year of the Rabbit

And yet, another year flies by! The Year of the Tiger ended this past Thursday, which incidentally also marked Sofia's official 15 week milestone. The Year of the Tiger is a little significant for our family. Ed was born in the Year of the Tiger, two generations ago. And now, of course, Sofia is also a Tiger. Rowr!

I'll let you in on a little secret - it is no coincidence that Sofia was born on the year of the Tiger! Nay, it was quite by design. The word "Tiger" carries some inside joke significance for Cherry and me. You see, the Chinese word for Tiger is roughly pronounced "lao hu". Said quickly, it almost sounds like a Chinglish pronunciation of the word "Love". So, sometimes, to act fobby, Cherry and I would say, "I laohu you!" to each other. At some point, and unfortunately, I am not sure when, we extended the word game to the next level, translating laohu back to "Tiger", and started saying "I tiger you!" And thus, the word "tiger" came to represent "love" in our little growing family, and, as the year of the Tiger approached, we thought it would be clever to express our love for our first child by having her be a Tiger herself! Of course, there were other considerations for having Sofia aside from this rather frivolous word game... but we actually really did think about this!

So of course, we had to do some activities for Chinese New Year. Especially since, for the last two weeks, we have just been so beat up keeping Sofia from scratching her face during the whole rash ordeal. That's cleared up quite a bit, by the way, but alas, now we are dealing with diaper rash... Hooray! Regardless, now that she was cleared up, we decided it would be cool to take her and grandma to see a Lion Dance!

So, we're in the Year of the Rabbit now, and Sofia is still growing like crazy. In fact, she's outgrown her 3-6 month clothes already and her Size 1 diapers. Here's looking forward to a great new year!

I'll leave you guys with another set of videos. Remember Facebook users, click on "View Original Post to view the vids!

Self-pacification version 1.0: Sucking on Hands - She gets a little upset with the Paparazzi in this one!

Self-pacification version 2.0: Hands free!