Adventures By Design

Today we had a photo shoot with a photo studio near our previous apartment called Ivision Photography. We had heard good things about the studio from friends and colleagues, and we liked their style. When we lived near the studio, we had often seen the photographer, Happy, shooting photos on the grounds. He even tried to get Inca to pose with clients a couple of times (Inca was not cooperative… we think it’s because he hadn’t properly compensated her, in bones, for modeling.)

We planned on taking photos of the whole family, and so brought Inca with us. Unfortunately the flashes, noise, and general busyness of the occasion made her nervous. Thankfully, Mark and Lyndal live really close to the studio, so I just ran Inca upstairs for some quality time with Mark.

Within a week we’ll see the proofs, and then we’ll chose which photos we want, and what kind of prints. We’re thinking of getting mostly prints for our apartment. Once we have something to show you, we’ll post them.

Hi everyone! It’s that time of year again when we come to Canada and have a mad month or so of intense visiting. This year we’re planning on going to Ontario to introduce Aria to Gin’s clan. Other than that, we’ll be in Vancouver, Kamloops, and Calgary. Unfortunately, this year we have to be back at school in early August (!?), so it will be a shorter visit than we’d like.

Here are our (tentative) plans for this summer. (You might have to click on the arrows to find the month you want.)

Now that Aria has her first tooth, we knew it was time to start feeding her non-milk foods. Below is Aria trying food for the first time.

She’s a happy little person.

We recently bought a new point-and-shoot digital camera. Although we like the photos produced by our DSLR, we find that it is just too cumbersome for quick everyday use. Plus, it doesn’t do video (for that we would have had to wait for the Canon T1i).

So, hopefully we are now able to show videos on our blog. If the video below doesn’t work right on your browser, please tell us so we can figure out what we did wrong and fix it. Actually, if it does look right, can you tell us that too, please?

Here’s our first video showing Aria learning how to blow raspberries. She’s been trying to master this skill for weeks… and is almost there!

Note: we are still figuring out how to properly embed videos into a blog post, so if something doesn’t work for you, please tell us!

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).