Saturday, May 23, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Another Milestone Today!
Today, we found Nathan has his first tooth coming out! Yahoo!!!!!!!!! He's been teething A LOT lately so it was nice to finally see what it was all about! We love you Nathan!
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Update
Thank goodness Estela was able to get Nathan on a really good schedule. His bedtime is just around 11:30pm and he sleeps throughout the night with a short milk break at around 4am. He's not fussy and doesn't cry at all. In fact, I'm starting to wonder when I last seen him cry. He's just a happy baby. I get a few hours alone time with him in the mornings and it's a little bittersweet watching him grow up so fast. He's kicking like crazy these days and doing squating exercises regularly. He'll be walking in no time. He's also getting really good with his hands....grabbing everything around him and waving them around and taste testing it all. I think he's teething...we could see a little white in his gums.
His 100 day past recently. We couldn't really afford to throw a party so we passed. But he did get some really nice gifts(which he loves) from his aunties. So thank you guys mucho. He's loving it. He really seems extremely curious about everything. The lights, sounds, and of course, taste. It's so cute.
I'll post some pics in a follow up post soon. He's growing up so fast.
As a father, it's really heart wrenching to be away from him. I love him so much. An eternity to spend with Nathan still doesn't feel like long enough.
His 100 day past recently. We couldn't really afford to throw a party so we passed. But he did get some really nice gifts(which he loves) from his aunties. So thank you guys mucho. He's loving it. He really seems extremely curious about everything. The lights, sounds, and of course, taste. It's so cute.
I'll post some pics in a follow up post soon. He's growing up so fast.
As a father, it's really heart wrenching to be away from him. I love him so much. An eternity to spend with Nathan still doesn't feel like long enough.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
PRODUCT REVIEW: BABY WIPES
Huggies Wipes Natural Care at AMAZON $25.26Kirkland Brand at Costco $15.49
Huggies Wipes at Costco $31.99
Huggies Wipes individual 64 count $3.79
If you buy the individual Huggies for $3.79... to get 720 sheets you'll end up paying around$42.00
The SMART way to buy the wipes would be by the box!! ( at costco or anywhere..) They're cheaper than the Huggies brand and they're just as good as Huggies..... If you ask me.. THEY'RE ALL THE SAME!!!
If you can't make it out to Costco there's always NATHANIEL'S AMAZON STORE where you can purchase the Huggies Wipes by the box. Yes it's a little more than the Kirkland brand but it's convenient because it gets delivered to you!!!! SAVES TIME AND ALL THAT COSTCO TRAFFIC!!!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Geez Louizzzz
Man, I've been on a really screwed up schedule. My night job hours suck ass, and they're really starting to take a toll on my list of to-do's. Aside from not being able to get certain things done, the worst of all is that N8 is kinda copying my schedule. And guess what, Estela has been getting the short end of the stick. She is getting the least amount of sleep. Poor Estela...I love you BA! :) Getting N8 on a proper schedule is really becoming a pressing issue, especially since Estela's gonna start working next week! Not much time to get an effective solution going. Suggestions please. You know what, my bro actually offered to buy me a book that his friends are raving about regarding baby schedule. I declined w/o much thought...arghhhh! Can you say brain fart? Anyway, I'm gonna have to find out which one it was and pick it up with a quickness. Hey, I'll buy it through my amazon affiliate link! (See sidebar :P)==>
But for all of you who have been waiting for my lazy ass to update this blog, here's a few things N8's been up to.
Lately, he's been a little sick. When he wakes up and cries, his voice is a little raspy and so are his coughs. He has the cutest coughs by the way. We suspected that the air was way too dry in the room so we got a humidifier which seems to have helped alot. We haven't taken him to doctor for his little cold yet cause the benchmarks to warrant that have not yet been met. Knock on wood his cold just goes away....soon! He's been drinking about 4-6 ounces per sitting consistently, and sometimes up to 10! I think he's in a rush to grow up. He smiles a lot, looks around a lot, and seems to like being around a lot of people. We've been going to Immo's house a lot, and he really likes all the ruckus. He's been spending more time with his grandma and seems to be really at ease with her. Not surprising since she has such a good way with babies....she's raised 5 in the last 8 years. Amazing lady. N8 has also been kicking his legs, flaying his arms, and exercising his neck. He's getting pretty good at supporting his head on his own and looking from side to side. It's a little nerve racking to watch him practice cause he really goes at it sometimes, but I think he's really getting the hang of it. I'll try to get a vid of this and post it. He's still really infatuated with his hands. I catch him holding his hands out in front of him and just staring at them....I mean like seriously zoning out on his hands. Oh if his hands were the blades of a helicopter...LOL!
(Here's a recent pic of my beautiful Estela and my beautiful Nathaniel. Cute huh? Estela sends me these pics to cheer me up and to make me a little jealous while I'm at my Oh So Exciting job.)
On another note, I'm starting to make a little headway into one of my projects and vow not to leave this blog behind. In fact, I'll probably be incorporating some new things into this blog or moving this blog somewhere else. Blogger has a few limitations I'm having trouble with. But at the same time, I like the simplicity....I dunno, can't decide.
Anyway, Happy New Years to everyone!
But for all of you who have been waiting for my lazy ass to update this blog, here's a few things N8's been up to.
Lately, he's been a little sick. When he wakes up and cries, his voice is a little raspy and so are his coughs. He has the cutest coughs by the way. We suspected that the air was way too dry in the room so we got a humidifier which seems to have helped alot. We haven't taken him to doctor for his little cold yet cause the benchmarks to warrant that have not yet been met. Knock on wood his cold just goes away....soon! He's been drinking about 4-6 ounces per sitting consistently, and sometimes up to 10! I think he's in a rush to grow up. He smiles a lot, looks around a lot, and seems to like being around a lot of people. We've been going to Immo's house a lot, and he really likes all the ruckus. He's been spending more time with his grandma and seems to be really at ease with her. Not surprising since she has such a good way with babies....she's raised 5 in the last 8 years. Amazing lady. N8 has also been kicking his legs, flaying his arms, and exercising his neck. He's getting pretty good at supporting his head on his own and looking from side to side. It's a little nerve racking to watch him practice cause he really goes at it sometimes, but I think he's really getting the hang of it. I'll try to get a vid of this and post it. He's still really infatuated with his hands. I catch him holding his hands out in front of him and just staring at them....I mean like seriously zoning out on his hands. Oh if his hands were the blades of a helicopter...LOL!
(Here's a recent pic of my beautiful Estela and my beautiful Nathaniel. Cute huh? Estela sends me these pics to cheer me up and to make me a little jealous while I'm at my Oh So Exciting job.)
On another note, I'm starting to make a little headway into one of my projects and vow not to leave this blog behind. In fact, I'll probably be incorporating some new things into this blog or moving this blog somewhere else. Blogger has a few limitations I'm having trouble with. But at the same time, I like the simplicity....I dunno, can't decide.
Anyway, Happy New Years to everyone!
Friday, January 16, 2009
In love with his hands
Nathaniel loves to eat his hands....even when he's hanging out with his buddy Mr. Monkey.
Another Interesting Tid-bit from THE TIPPING POINT
Excerpt from The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Chapter Three - The Stickiness Factor
"...Many critics of television, to this day, argue that what's dangerous about TV is that it is addictive, that children and even adults watch it like zombies. According to this view, it is the formal features of television - violence, bright lights, loud and funny noises, quick editing cuts, zooming in and out, exaggerated action, and all the other things we associate with commercial TV - that hold our attention. In other words, we don't have to understand what we are looking at, or absorb what we are seeing, in order to keep watching. That's what many people mean when they say that television ispassive. We watch when we are stimulated by all the whizzes and bangs of the medium. And we look away, or turn the channel, when we are bored.
What the pioneering television researchers of the 1960s and 1970s-in particular,
Daniel Anderson at the University of Massachusetts-began to realize, however, is that this isn't how preschoolers watch TV at all. "The idea was that kids would sit, stare at the screen, and zone out," said Elizabeth Lorch, a psychologist at Amherst College. "But once we began to look carefully at what children were doing, we found out that short looks were actually more common. There was much more variation. Children didn't just sit and stare. They could divide their attention between a couple of different activities. And they wren't being random. There were predictable influences on what made them look back at the screen, and these were not trivial things, not just flash and dash." Lorch, for instance, once reedited an episode of Sesame Street so that certain key scenes of some of the sketches were out of order. If kids were only interested in flash and dash, that shouldn't have made a difference. The show, after all, still had songs and Muppets and bright colors and action and all the things that make Sesame Street so wonderful But it did make a difference. The kids stopped watching. If they couldn't make sense of what they were looking at, they weren't going to look at it."
"...One of the standard myths about children's television, for example, had always been that kids love to watch animals. "The producers would bring in a cat or an anteater or an otter and show it and let it cavort around," Palmer says. "they thought that would be interesting. But our Distracter showed that it was a bomb every time." A huge effort went into a Sesame Street character called the Man from Alphabet, whose specialty was puns. Palmer showed that kids hated him. He was canned. The Distracter showed that no single segment of the Sesame Street format should go beyond four minutes, and that three minutes was probably optimal. He forced the producers to simplify dialogue and abandon certain techniques they had taken from adult television. "We found to our surprise that our preshcool audience didn't like it when the adult cast got into a contentious discussion," he remembers. "they didn't like it when two or three people would be talking at once. That's the producer's natural instinct, to hype a scene by creating confusion. It's supposed to tell you that this is exciting. The fact is that our kids turned away from that kind of situation. Instead of picking up on the signal that something exciting is going on, they picked up on the signal that something confusing is going. And they'd lose interest."
Chapter Three - The Stickiness Factor
"...Many critics of television, to this day, argue that what's dangerous about TV is that it is addictive, that children and even adults watch it like zombies. According to this view, it is the formal features of television - violence, bright lights, loud and funny noises, quick editing cuts, zooming in and out, exaggerated action, and all the other things we associate with commercial TV - that hold our attention. In other words, we don't have to understand what we are looking at, or absorb what we are seeing, in order to keep watching. That's what many people mean when they say that television ispassive. We watch when we are stimulated by all the whizzes and bangs of the medium. And we look away, or turn the channel, when we are bored.
What the pioneering television researchers of the 1960s and 1970s-in particular,
Daniel Anderson at the University of Massachusetts-began to realize, however, is that this isn't how preschoolers watch TV at all. "The idea was that kids would sit, stare at the screen, and zone out," said Elizabeth Lorch, a psychologist at Amherst College. "But once we began to look carefully at what children were doing, we found out that short looks were actually more common. There was much more variation. Children didn't just sit and stare. They could divide their attention between a couple of different activities. And they wren't being random. There were predictable influences on what made them look back at the screen, and these were not trivial things, not just flash and dash." Lorch, for instance, once reedited an episode of Sesame Street so that certain key scenes of some of the sketches were out of order. If kids were only interested in flash and dash, that shouldn't have made a difference. The show, after all, still had songs and Muppets and bright colors and action and all the things that make Sesame Street so wonderful But it did make a difference. The kids stopped watching. If they couldn't make sense of what they were looking at, they weren't going to look at it."
"...One of the standard myths about children's television, for example, had always been that kids love to watch animals. "The producers would bring in a cat or an anteater or an otter and show it and let it cavort around," Palmer says. "they thought that would be interesting. But our Distracter showed that it was a bomb every time." A huge effort went into a Sesame Street character called the Man from Alphabet, whose specialty was puns. Palmer showed that kids hated him. He was canned. The Distracter showed that no single segment of the Sesame Street format should go beyond four minutes, and that three minutes was probably optimal. He forced the producers to simplify dialogue and abandon certain techniques they had taken from adult television. "We found to our surprise that our preshcool audience didn't like it when the adult cast got into a contentious discussion," he remembers. "they didn't like it when two or three people would be talking at once. That's the producer's natural instinct, to hype a scene by creating confusion. It's supposed to tell you that this is exciting. The fact is that our kids turned away from that kind of situation. Instead of picking up on the signal that something exciting is going on, they picked up on the signal that something confusing is going. And they'd lose interest."
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
PRODUCT REVIEW: Bugaboo Chameleon Stroller
We were very fortunate to have received this stroller as baby shower gift from Estela's former boss(thank you mucho by the way). When we got this gift, we tore it open even though it was still around a month before Nathan would arrive. Putting the stroller together was a no brainer. There are few components that come in the box including an instructional dvd that shows off the versatility of this stroller. Most of it is constructed from thick aluminum that makes it very stable. It comes with a bassinet and seat fabric that is interchangeable on a rectangular frame. The seat pops off and the stroller folds up for easy storage. We ordered our custom colors in grey/beige. The manufacturer claims to have 32 different color combos and 4 different fabrics to choose from. I wouldn't doubt this, as I have seen this stroller all over in all sorts of colors.
I also think that it looks cool. I like the rigid lines and minimalistic appearance of it. The wheels in the front have adjustable shocks and the rear wheels are 12" rubber which make it easy to push around. The shocks help a lot. We've taken Nathan all over in this thing, over sand, concrete sidewalks, pot holes, and it rides pretty good. Nathan likes the seat to be tilted up a little. He's very curious and this position gives him a good view of his surroundings. You can tilt it up, down, and have it face the front or the back looking at you. Popping it off requires a quick simultaneous push of two buttons on each side of the frame and voila, the seat is off for quick storage. It has a brake lever conveniently located on the handle, and some storage underneath the seat. The size is pretty good, slightly larger then other Bugaboo models. It looks like we'll be able to use this for a while.
Overall, we are very happy with this stroller. The price would probably be the only downside to owning this thing. If we hadn't received this as a gift, I'm not sure if I would've compromised for a cheaper model.
We would recommend this stroller to everyone who is looking to buy a new stroller. If it's too pricey, hey, you can do what we did and put it on your baby shower wish list or you can always ask the grandparents. :P
Monday, January 12, 2009
Conversational Rhythm with Your Baby
I was reading "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell and came across a few interesting points for parents to consider.
Chapter Two - The Law of the Few
"...Two people may arrive at a conversation with very different conversational patterns. But almost instantly they reach a common ground. We all do it, all the time. Babies as young as one or two days old synchronize their head, elbow, shoulder, hip, and foot movements with the speech patterns of adults. Synchrony has even been found in the interactions of humans and apes. It's part of the way we are hardwired."
When I was reading this, I began to think back on all the conversations I've had around Nathaniel. He's 68 days now, so I've must've already had hundreds of conversations with different people around him. Naturally, my wife and I converse at a fast pace. Could this be why our little son moves around so much? He is already moving around like a 4 month old. We are anticipating he'll be able to start rolling around very shortly. I don't know if speech patterns contributed to his motor skills, but I would say that it is very much in sync with the pace of the conversations he's mostly around.
I guess reading this passage reiterated the importance of something we hear all the time. READ TO YOUR BABY. No matter how young they may be, 1 or 2 days old, setting aside some time to read to your baby would give you the opportunity to have a nice conversation and teach him some moves.
Chapter Two - The Law of the Few
"...Two people may arrive at a conversation with very different conversational patterns. But almost instantly they reach a common ground. We all do it, all the time. Babies as young as one or two days old synchronize their head, elbow, shoulder, hip, and foot movements with the speech patterns of adults. Synchrony has even been found in the interactions of humans and apes. It's part of the way we are hardwired."
When I was reading this, I began to think back on all the conversations I've had around Nathaniel. He's 68 days now, so I've must've already had hundreds of conversations with different people around him. Naturally, my wife and I converse at a fast pace. Could this be why our little son moves around so much? He is already moving around like a 4 month old. We are anticipating he'll be able to start rolling around very shortly. I don't know if speech patterns contributed to his motor skills, but I would say that it is very much in sync with the pace of the conversations he's mostly around.
I guess reading this passage reiterated the importance of something we hear all the time. READ TO YOUR BABY. No matter how young they may be, 1 or 2 days old, setting aside some time to read to your baby would give you the opportunity to have a nice conversation and teach him some moves.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
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