Adventures By Design

Our sincere apologies… we don’t know how more than a month has gone by without an update about Aria. Life’s been busy we suppose.  We had Ric’s mom, Marie here to visit for a couple of weeks and at the same time Ric was off school for the Chinese New Year holiday.  You’d think that during that time collectively we could have pulled off a blog post, but nope, didn’t happen, sorry.

Aria has changed so much in the last month. She’s sitting up by herself for a few minutes if she is propped up with a few cushions. Once she starts to slouch over, the game’s over, and much to her constant annoyance, she’ll need help righting herself. She’s getting adept at sticking things in her mouth, and anything that comes within her event horizon is fair game. Aria continues to develop her ability to laugh and scream, and has quickly married the two in her ultimate expression of pleasure: the ear-piercing shriek. She still is eating only breast milk, however she seems to be definitely curious about solid food: Ric was offering her a piece of bacon to smell, and she immediate opened her mouth and made a snatch for it. She was also drooling over Gin’s coffee earlier today. (Don’t worry, she won’t be getting bacon or coffee as her first foods!) She still requires significant coaxing to sleep at night, but once she gets to sleep, she generally stays that way for a few hours. Gin has been making a concerted effort to teach Aria how to take naps in her crib, and is making slow but steady progress (ten minutes today!). In the past, Aria’s walks consisted of only three states: sleeping, crying, or being carried while Mommy pushed the pram with her other hand; however, Aria’s recently discovered a love for her pram/stroller, and will sit back and enjoy the ride. She is getting much better with strangers, and will allow anyone to hold her, as long as mom and dad are nearby.

Every week Gin and Aria go to a meeting of moms and babies to hang out, share poop stories, and drink coffee.  It’s a great time and a highlight of our week.  Below are some photos from last week’s meeting.  The baby to Aria’s left is Luke, and yes, he did try to eat her hair. To Luke’s left is Matilda, a perfect English lady who was holding hands with Aria a few minutes before this photo was taken… so cute! (but no photo, sorry).

Now that Aria is over three months old she’s decided that laying around is for little babies, and she is not a little baby.  Her favorite activities these days are sitting and standing up (and dancing to Kings of Leon with mommy but photos wouldn’t do that justice). Of course she can’t sit or stand by herself yet so she requires a little assistance. Fortunately for her mommy or daddy is always around to help. Lately though Aria’s been thrilled with sitting by herself propped in the corner of the sofa.

Usually sitting by herself works out just fine, but obviously she has the occasional mishap. After her tumble (which really was very slow, don’t worry) I left her for a little while to see if she could turn herself over again yet. Sadly she still can’t pull that off so as usual she got pretty upset after 30 seconds or so and needed some snuggles to settle down. It got a lot harder to take photos once she was on my lap, but for you Internet, I tried. Since standing requires two parental hands you’ll all have to wait until Ric is home and we’re in the mood for a photo shoot before you see that, sorry.

Other Aria news:

on her three month birthday I weighed her and she was 7.6kg (16lbs 12ozs)!

she’s still sleeping great at night (from 9pm to 8am, only waking twice most nights)

she still refuses to sleep during the day unless she’s being held (thank you didymos wrap for my sanity)

she’s started to hold onto her toys (and put them into her mouth, of course)

at our baby group last week she was making friends with little 4.5 month Matilda (they sat and smiled and ‘talked’ to each other for a couple of minutes… cutest thing ever!)

she’s very friendly and smiles at everyone, mommy, daddy, friends, ayi, strangers, anyone who says hi and smiles at her

she’s beginning to figure out that crying is not her only means of communication, yay!

So I figure it’s my right and responsibility as a parent to take naked photos of my baby having a bath.  This way when she becomes a teenager I’ll have something to show her boyfriends love interests and mercilessly embarrass her.  My parents have a photo of my bare behind having a bath in the kitchen sink, classic.  Aria bathes in the tub but these are still pretty good.

Back when she was only a few weeks old (weird saying ‘back when’ about my 11 week old) Aria hated baths with a passion.  She would scream through the whole thing and then sulk for at least 10 minutes afterwards.  Now she’s learned to embrace the bath and is starting to play and kick her legs around.  It’s just a matter of time before she learns how to soak the entire bathroom!

Yes, I know that New Year’s Day was a week ago, I’ve been a little busy (and lazy).

It’s been over three weeks since we last updated about Aria and she’s changed so much since then.  Last we wrote she was just beginning to smile.  Now she’s smiling all the time and there’s the occasional giggle happening too… cute!  About a week and a half ago Aria was hanging out, doing some tummy time when she suddenly pushed on one side and turned herself over!  I shouted for Ric to come quickly (he of course thought something was terribly wrong, sorry sweetie!), turned Aria over, and she did it again.  We then got our ayi (maid) to come see and Aria did it a third time.  Then she got pissed off at us for putting her back on her tummy every time she got herself turned over.  We’re very proud of her rolling abilities but sadly she hasn’t been able to repeat the performance since.  I think she forgot how. Every time we put her on her tummy she fusses and kicks for a couple minutes and then gets frustrated and starts crying, poor baby! Hopefully she’ll figure it out again soon.

Other exciting Aria news is that she’s now sleeping in her crib in her own room for 5-6 hours straight every night.  This makes Mommy and Daddy very happy.  Now we just have to work on getting her to sleep earlier since now she refuses to go to bed before 10pm.

Ric had two weeks off for Christmas holidays and since Aria is too young to travel much yet we just hung out at home and bonded as a family.  It was a great time even though we did almost nothing of note the entire two weeks.  Our most exciting day was a trip to Shanghai for Aria’s 2 month (!) checkup and to pick up her passport from the consulate.  Aria is now weighing in at a whopping 6.6kgs (about 14 1/2 pounds), has been immunized against various diseases, and has been accepted by the Canadian government.

Okay without further ado, here’s what you’ve all been waiting for, the photos:

Plus bonus footage of Inca!

Please excuse Ric’s silly incredibly sexy facial hair, he did it for Movember and apparently didn’t realize that November finished 2 weeks ago! (he has shaved it off since then, and is looking a little more normal).

So Aria has begun smiling socially… it’s the coolest thing.  Today she was hanging out on the bed while I brushed my hair in the bathroom.  When I walked back into the room she smiled at me (TMI warning: I had my shirt off and I think she may have been smiling at the sight of her food source).  On Saturday she smiled at Ric and so he did what any father would do and spent the next 20 minutes with a camera aimed at her trying to get her to do it again.  He didn’t quite succeed, but surely we’ll get a proper toothless grin up here for you soon!

In a case of really bad timing the auto-focus on our camera broke yesterday.  No notice, no apparent reason for it, but it makes taking pictures much harder.  We apologize if these are out of focus, and we’ll work on getting the camera fixed soon.  In the meantime maybe I’ll just take more photos with the built in camera on my Mac… enjoy!