Today, I saw that Alexa was diligently finding all of her dolls and stuffed animals, then placing them carefully on the couch. After she was done, I caught her trying to pick up Malena off the floor...! It became clear that she was trying to put Malena in her lineup of toys :-)
We indulged her, and Alexa was very proud of her artistic layout. Malena looked a little concerned at first, but then gave in to her big sister.
See those pictures and more...
Time for some photos and an update on the girls:
Malena's almost 4 months old. She's smiling a lot and showing off her big eyes. Her hair doesn't want to lay down flat, which always makes us laugh. In Korean tradition, we took 100 day photos of Malena. She was happy and calm the entire time (unlike Alexa's 100 day photo shoot).
Alexa still smothers Malena with affection and tries to get the baby to play with her. Alexa is a little disappointed when the baby won't throw the ball back to her. But the other night, Alexa was eating some ice cream and Drew asked if we should give some to baby. Alexa immediately responded "too small for ice cream!" Funny how the baby is too small when it cuts into her interests...
Alexa is taking swim lessons. She had a rocky start - the first instructor was a big guy that scared her - she cried in the pool for 45 minutes straight. The following week, we tried a young woman instructor and Alexa had a lot of fun. She's not very disciplined in the pool. Instead of following instructions, she just wants to jump in from the sides of the pool.
For President's day weekend, we went to Mendocino with our friends Dave & Cindy and their girls, who happen to be the same ages as our girls. Alexa and Matea spent the weekend jumping off of anything they could find. They also had fun playing the same iPad games next to each other using different iPads at the same time. It turns out one iPad is not enough - there's nothing worse than sharing an iPad when you are 2 years old! Thanks Steve Jobs :-)
Alexa started to get familiar with the Happy Birthday song a few weeks ago, when people were singing it to her when she turned two years old. She quickly mastered the song in order to suprise her mommy:
She even squeezes in "happy birthday to Umma..." (the Korean word for mommy)!
Alexa and Malena joined mom and dad for a trip to Las Vegas - Monica's company had an offsite the weekend before Drew was there to work events at the Consumer Electronics Show. We all went out for the weekend, then Drew stayed for the conference. It was Drew's first trip to Vegas where had to find kid-friendly activities (and yes, there are many)!
After Monica and the kids came back to SF, they met up with their cousins Isaac and Roselia from LA. Monica's sister Sandy had her baby Roselia only one month before Monica had Malena. We're hoping they'll grow up to be good buddies. Check out the baby fist bump in the pictures!
To cap off the festivities, we had a small, early birthday party for Alexa. And now we know that she loves strawberry ice cream cake, just like her dad.
Almost a year ago, I took a class on night photography. I finally dusted off my tripod on our recent trip to San Luis Obispo and took some pictures of star trails. I've wanted to try it for a while, but it doesn't work in San Francisco, since you can't really see the stars due to the light the city generates at night.
San Luis Obispo doesn't have that problem. Each night was crystal clear with stars everywhere. I started taking shots with the shutter open for about 5 minutes, then pushed it to 15 minutes, then at the end, I was leaving the shutter open for 30 minutes straight.
The effect is pretty amazing - since the earth spins on its axis, keeping the shutter open that long creates star trails. I'm a newbie with star trails, but I learned a lot. Here are a few tips beyond what I listed in my previous blog post:
One interesting point - the curvature of the star trails depends on where you point your camera in the sky. In some of my photos, you'll see the stars are curving down, looking kind of like a meteor shower. But in one or two shots, you'll see the stars curving up in a circular pattern. Some photographers can compose shots where the pattern is a full circle. If you want to get your geek on, read this article.
Some people create this effect by merging a series of many shots in photoshop (e.g., merging fifty 30-second shots). Given my lack of photoshop skills, my shots are au naturel. Round 3 will have to wait until our next trip somewhere quiet :-)
We took a road trip for the new year holiday weekend. We drove to the San Luis Obispo area, where we rented an amazing house in Arroyo Grande. It's a great location, which is about half way between LA and SF. Monica's family drove up, so we had a Chi family get together. Yes, there was kim chi involved...
It was a lot of fun - Monica's sister Sandy has a baby Roselia, who is four weeks older than Malena. The two little girls took turns showing off how much they could spit up. I think Roselia won that contest! Alexa had fun hanging out with Sandy's older boy, Isaac. He's a bit of a daredevil, which is a perfect match for Alexa's death defying stunts.
The house was really, really cool. It has a really open design, with a garage door in the living room that opens to the outdoor patio. It was a great place to just hang out and visit with the family. The owners live there normally, but they left their two super friendly dogs at home. Alexa, who is normally shy around dogs, had a blast throwing a ball over and over to Marley. Did I mention they had chickens? And to top it off, there was a kid-friendly trampoline waiting for Alexa and Isaac at all hours of the day. If we ever have the space, we'd build a house modeled after that one!
Here are some photo highlights. If you look closely, you'll see a picture of a fluffy dog that likes to ride on the swings at the playground (seriously):
We're finally getting around to posting a recent batch of photos. Here are some more photos from Thanksgiving holiday, when Drew's parents were in town. For Christmas, we stayed in town since it's a little hard to travel with the baby. Drew's brother Marc and his wife Jen came over and we watched Alexa open her gifts. She got a little carried away and started to tear pages out of some of her books... I guess theres a fine line between having fun tearing paper when opening gifts and tearing paper anytime you see it!
Alexa continues to be a loving sister - she loves pushing Malena in her baby swing, kissing her, holding her, tickling her, etc. Now, if we could just teach her to change Malena's diapers...
Drew's parents (aka Nana & Papa) are in town to see the girls. Nana & Papa have been really busy taking Alexa around to have fun - they got to see Lexi at her art class, gym class, and the playground.
We also decided that it was too expensive to hire a baby photographer (plus, photographers don't like handing over digital copies of the photos). So, we're trying to do it ourselves. We bought a stand to hold backdrop fabrics and we borrowed a black felt backdrop and a white muslin backdrop. We also bought some props to take some cute pictures of the baby.
We've learned a lot already. Here's a sample of the photos we've taken, but it's all been practice so far... We'll take more for the final set of pictures before we print anything out.
I've been off work this week on paternity leave. It's been really nice to take time off with the family, but I found out my job isn't really to help out with the new baby - it's to distract Lexi so that Monica and Lena can get a break!
Alexa loves the new baby. She loves to kiss her, grab her hands, tickle her feet, feel her hair, etc. Unfortunately, those dispays of affection tend to wake Lena up from her peaceful naps. It's helpful when I can take Lexi out on the town to give mommy and little sister some time off.
A few people have commented that Lena looks similar to Lexi when Lexi was a newborn. I put together a few side by side pictures for comparison. I've also added a few photos of Alexa's daytime adventures with her dad. We went to Alexa's music class on Monday, the Bay Area Discovery Museum on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, we hung out at Crissy Field in the Marina in SF.
We're getting settled with the new baby and a very active 22 month old big sister. Monica's parents were in San Francisco helping out for a couple of weeks. It is really nice to have family coming out to see the baby. Drew's parents are also coming out to visit during the week of Thanksgiving.
Malena is doing great - she's sleeping on average 3 hours at a stretch, but she's surprised us a couple of nights by sleeping 6 hours straight. She's keeping her eyes open a lot more, which is great for pictures. I think babies her age can only focus 12 inches from their faces, so she gets a confused look on her face pretty frequently.
Alexa has adapted to her role of big sister. She's constantly kissing the new baby. Alexa will even sneak in the back room and kiss the baby when Malena is sleeping - after we have warned her to let the baby sleep. We know this because we busted her! Alexa was eating her favorite blueberry bagels with strawberry cream cheese, minding her own business in the front room (or so I thought). I couldn't remember Alexa leaving my sight, but when we picked up Malena after her nap, we found remnants of cream cheese kisses all over the baby's face :-o
Until next time, here are some recent pictures:
