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Archives for 2003

Grandma Chang Visits Katherine

My mom (Grandma Chang) arrived yesterday to help babysit Katherine this week while Patty is on vacation. The great thing about having grandmothers visit is that they sometimes see very obvious things that you may have missed.  For instance, she pointed out today the presence of something fairly hard under Katherine’s bottom right gum. Also, when I gave Katherine my finger, she stuck it directly in her mouth and chomped down on it. Katherine is really teething, a breakthrough seems fairly imminent though we don’t really know for sure. This may help to explain why she hasn’t been sleeping thru the last several nights or it may just be her 4 months shots bothering her.

Mom also brought along four rolls of slide film or “color transparencies” from when we were little kids. Steve and I whipped out the light table, blew the dust off the slides, scanned and adjusted the pictures to get rid of fingerprints and dirt. If you look closely – or not so closely – it’s fairly obvious that Katherine looks a lot like her Aunt Sharon! She’s got Sharon’s eyes, and unfortunately my baby double-chin. We’ve also noticed that Katherine is developing red highlights in her hair (Steve’s happy), which is pretty cool considering that red hair is a totally recessive gene.

BushChang.com Reorg

I did a Google link search on bushchang.com yesterday and found quite a few non-family links to my home page. I’ve decided to use the home page as my weblog and move all of the family stuff under the “Family” section. Our weblog on Katherine will be accessible under the family section. Some time when I have a free weekend, I will make the family section private to family members.

Back Dating a WebLog

I have to admit that I got behind on posting to my weblog and wanted to catch up. After posting all of my weblogs, I thought I would go fix up the weblog entries to have the right dates (back-posting). It turns out this is a harder problem than I thought as you need to trick Radio into generating the archive pages. After much tinkering, I came up with the following reproducible steps:

  • Write your web logs in reverse order as you want them to appear. Write the oldest first and so on until you’re current. Radio numbers all of the logs sequentially and expects them to be in order.
  • Post each web log to category. I created a temporary category called Temp. This will force Radio to add the web log to it’s database.
  • Open Radio, the application. From the Window menu, select weblogData.root
  • Using the Radio outliner, open the last X entries where X is the number of entries you want to back date. Double click on the entry (eg. 000000064).
  • Change the when field to the correct date
  • File->Save to save weblogData.root
  • Now you need to force Radio to regenerate the pages. Go back to each weblog and move it from the Temp category to the category you want it to be in. This forces Radio to rewrite the calendar, archive, and home page for that category.
  • Go back to Radio. Select Radio->Publish->Entire Website (forces entire web site to be regenerated)

If the steps worked correctly, you should have been able to backdate your posts.

Katherine Experiences Snow

On Friday, March 7, 2003, it snowed near our house in Redmond. We bundled Katherine up and took her outside to experience the snow. She really didn’t know what to make of the falling snow flakes. She tolerated the cold pretty well and enjoyed watching the snow fall down.

Katherine’s 4 Month Checkup!

At 9A this morning, Christine, Patty, Katherine and I headed off to Pediatric Associates in Sammamish to visit Dr. Claudson for Katherine’s 4 month old checkup. The nurse called us and we all trotted off to the examination room. We packed the four of us plus Katherine’s backpack and car seat into the tiny examination room. The nurse and Dr. Claudson were surprised to find three adults waiting for them in the examination room. We introduced Patty to Dr. Claudson and he proceeded to examine Katherine. Katherine measured 25 1/4 inches high which is in the 75-90 percentile. Her weight was 14 lbs, 7oz which places her in the 75 percentile for weight. Her head circumference was 41.4 inches which places her in the 50-75 percentile. Overall, Katherine is doing excellent for height, weight, and demonstrated abilities. Demonstrated abilities are things like rolling over, sitting up, babbling, etc. Dr. Claudson gave Katherine a clean bill of health and praised her as being a very healthy baby with no concerns whatsoever.

Dr. Claudson left the room and a few minutes later the nurse returned with four shots for Katherine. We were prepared for this and had given Katherine an infant dose of Tylenol 15 minutes earlier. The nurse prepared Katherine for the shots and Katherine got this look: “Oh no, not this again!” The nurse was professional and quickly administered the first three shots. Katherine got progressively more and more pissed. She has lungs now and knows how to use them. The fourth shot had problems and the nurse had to quickly run and get a replacement. By now, Katherine is screaming at the top of her lungs: “bloody murder”. The nurse quickly administered the final shot and daddy scooped up Katherine to soothe her. Daddy got to soothe Katherine because he was the quickest, both Christine and Patty were not fast enough ๐Ÿ™‚

After the doctor’s visit, Christine and I went to work and Patty took Katherine home. By the time we left the doctor’s office, Katherine was upset but no longer crying. Patty took care of Katherine during the day. Katherine was only a bit more cranky than usual. Christine and I came home that night to a worn out Katherine.

Katherine the Human Sponge

Over the last couple of days, we’ve noticed quite a few changes in Katherine. Katherine is soaking in her environment like a sponge. We’ve noticed her watching TV, watching us eat, and starting to imitate what we do. In the first picture, Katherine is sucking her thumb and staring up at me. If I laugh or smile Katherine will imitate me. It’s become a game for us. I smile and she smiles. I giggle and she giggles. Katherine really likes the attention and I love the interaction. I can see her think and react to me and the environment. It’s very rewarding.

Katherine Loves TV

Katherine loves to watch TV and unfortunately so does dad. Dad and mom don’t want Katherine to become addicted to TV at an early age so the TV goes off when Katherine’s in the room. Christine and I believe than when Katherine’s awake our focus should be on her. Sometimes though, dad slips and mom catches the two of us watching TV together. Notice how Katherine in the picture is able to sit up and focus on the TV with only a little support from dad.

Katherine Prefers to Sit Up

Katherine prefers to sit up. Christine and I believe that Katherine wants to take in her surroundings and can see more when she’s sitting versus laying on her back. This makes burping much easier as you no longer have to burp with one hand and try to support and hold steady a wiggling Katherine.

Playing with Dad

Katherine loves to play with dad and dad loves to play with Katherine. Our latest game is to place Katherine on my legs and elevate her over my head. Katherine likes this because she can stretch out her arms and look down on dad.

Reading is Fundamental

Over the last couple of days, we’ve noticed that Katherine remembers certain books and is starting to have favorites. She loves the Rainbow book because of the bright colors and each progressive page fills in a rainbow made of ribbon. Christine and I decided that we’d go beyond a simple reading of “Where the Wild Things Are”. The LeVines gave us a set of “Wild Things” puppets so we decided to read the book and act out the parts using the puppets. I think Christine and I had more fun than Katherine. Katherine liked sitting up in the chair by herself and watching mom and dad make fools of themselves.

Bonding with Patty

Katherine and her nanny Patty have really bonded. Patty speaks and sings to Katherine in Spanish. Christine and I decided that exposing Katherine to another language when she was little would hopefully make it easier for her to pick up new languages when she’s older. Patty reads to her, encourages development in Katherine, and takes her and Bisco for walks. We’re very lucky to have found Patty. Having to say goodbye to Katherine in the morning and go to work is much easier knowing that Patty is taking care of her during the day.

Katherine is Almost Sitting…

Katherine is on the verge of the next stage of babyhood. Today she sat up in a tripod position with her hands supporting herself for several minutes. How did we find out? This past Christmas, Katherine received a Tiny Love circular play mat from her Aunt Sharon and Uncle Jamey. Now that she is four months old, we figured it was time to take it out and see how she liked it. We found it to be a perfect toy for tummy time. Between the animal noises, sunny mirror and floating fish, she stayed distracted for over 5 minutes on her belly, pushing herself up to get a better look at it. I (Christine) then propped her up in the center of the mat, where she leaned over her arms and sat like a little tripod. Not captured in the picture is Katherine losing her balance and toppling face first into the mat – a very funny moment.

She’s also developing her sense of balance – standing up! With a little bit of help, she can stand and put almost all her weight on her feet. Katherine is a bit wobbly still, but it’s just a matter of time until she can sit on her own and stand up without one of us holding her.

Katherine and the Convertible Car Seat

We stretched Katherine out today next to a paper tape measure. She measured a whopping 25.5 inches. We shouldn’t have been surprised given that she was 23.5 inches at two months. That prompted us to go purchase a couple convertible car seats. This is likely her last week in her infant car seat. She also weighed in at 15.5 lbs; we’ll get confirmation this Friday at her four month appointment.

Katherine spends the day in Seattle

Every 6 or 8 weeks we trek into Seattle to get our hair cut. This Saturday turned out to be the perfect sunny day for a visit to Seattle. We spend the entire afternoon pushing Katherine around in her stroller past Pike Place Market to Pacific Place and back. We ended the day with a dinner at the 5 Spot cafรฉ.

Katherine attends the Sonics vs. Lakers game

Steve and I subscribed to several Sonics games this season. We decided to take Katherine to her first game this past Friday, and despite initial concerns, she loved the game. We got there at the end of the first quarter. She sat thru the entire second quarter, gazing at the scoreboard TV and people around her. When the fans clapped their sticks during the free throws, she would turn her head and watch them. During half time and the third quarter we walked in the concourse. Katherine dozed on and off. We left for home and she fell promptly asleep in the car.