Looking Back: Out of Asia

Ok, this post is a bit after the fact, but in October we went to Portland, Oregon, USA (USA! USA!). Mother had a conference there, Ara went following her food source, and father went to carry spears and watch World Series of Poker on ESPN. Luckily, Portland is located on the same coast as much of Ara's extended family, so the conditions were right for some first meetings. We flew for 5 hours to Tokyo, and then another 9 to Portland. Yes, you can fly from Tokyo to Portland. As a veteran of air travel, Ara had no trouble with a slightly longer flight. Her only condition was that she be held by someone standing up the entire time. Luckily there was a good spot in the back where other parents were doing the same thing. One set of parents dead set against enjoying life had 3 kids under 5. The flight attendants alternated between being friendly and reminding us that the fasten seat belt sign was on (it never actually goes off) and that we were responsible if anything went wrong. Seven (!) people from Ara's grand-generation came from BC and California to see the little monster in action. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh were replaced with clothing, blankets, and little shoes. Farmar and Brian met us at the airport and whisked us off to their Hotel where Heather waited. For an hour or so Ara entertained the room with her cooing and smiles. It was very festive. Grandfather arrived a few hours later to see Ara sleep. When she woke a few hours later the whole scene was repeated. That night we feasted on seafood at a nice spacious American restaurant. Ara was very good and only had to be taken outside screaming once. We all took a turn holding her so the others could eat. Maybe she fell asleep at some point. A day or two later, Mother was in the swing of the conference and Gordon, Mark, and Donna arrived. More first meetings, more laughing, and more photos. Ara never really got the hang of sleeping during the night, so we didn't force it. We just stayed up all night long in our hotel room, keeping her entertained and watching HBO. When she got fussy, we headed down to the enormous lobby and walked up and down the halls. During these lobby sessions, Elisa pioneered the side shuffle toward the mirror which made Ara laugh really hard for the first time. It was the perfect joke as it combined two of Ara's favourite humour (too much canadian spelling?) elements: depth perception and movement. In order to get any sleep at all, we got into a good routine where dad bundled Ara up and stuffed a bag full of provisions and marched her over to the extended family hotel for playtime and a nap. After a few hours of sleep and an hour of World Series of Poker, dad would join the party while mom went to work the conference. After a few days, the service was enhanced and farmar collected her from our hotel. Of course she slept like a baby (hah!) once she got there making it look easy. At the end of the week, mother had finished doing her thing and farmar took us to the airport. Another exhausting 15 hours of flying later we were home! All in all, the whole thing was immensely successful and a good time was had by all. Portland ended up being as good a meeing place as any. People there were very friendly and intelligent, and the air was clean and crisp. I didn't get much of a sense of the place, but I think I can summarize it by saying that there is a high hipster per capita ratio, one gigantic bookstore, and a collection of bridges that they may or may not take pride in. Also they have very coordinated traffic signals. J-walking is nearly impossible. I wouldn't even try it if I were you. Nope, don't do it. Not recommended... Where will Ara go next?

Girl, You Couldn't Get Much Higher

Solid Foods have begun. Actually, they began a little while ago, with me, my mom, and Ryan all crouching around a disgusted Ara on the floor of the living room, trying to entice her with increasingly sugary morsels. We started out with the recommended Rice Cereal (organic of course!). We had heard wonderful stories from two women in the "neighborhood" (read: communist block apartment complex). They both claimed that the addition of a little baby rice to their childrens' diets resulted in a shift from 2 hour sleeps to EIGHT HOUR SLEEPS! So we were pretty excited. They both said their kids gulped down the baby rice (or as the scottish of the two put it, beebee rayce) and then conked out for hours. Well, Ara did neither of these. She DESPISED the beebee rayce, and then slept worse than ever before. So much for silver bullets filled with beebee rayce. Finally, however, we reasoned that there were more reasons than just Ara's sleep patterns for starting her on solid foods in earnest. We had to admit that, while convenient, it was unlikely that Ara would continue to drink from bottles into her 20's. Also, she was starting to reject the bottle, and do fake chewing a lot. But even still, the beebee rayce was going NOWHERE! We then tried beebee oatmeal, but still nothing. Then banana! Re-Jected! Finally, in a fit of teething, screaming madness, we tried maple-flavored teething biscuit! And we had success. Ara was totally happy with the teething biscuit. She could hold it herself, and slam it into her mouth, drool all over it, and best yet, chew it! But man cannot live on teething biscuit alone, so eventually we mixed teething biscuit with oatmeal (melting the biscuit to make the whole thing taste mapley) and voila! We had a child who actually likes oatmeal! (she still can't stand beebee rayce though). So, as we progressed from sloppy to sloppier, we realized that the hover wasn't going to work. To feed her on the living room floor we had to prop her up on the sheepskin, cover it with protective muslins, and then hope that she could sit up unsupported long enough to get her food down (and by "down" I mean "everywhere within a metre radius"). This was a messy business. Finally, we had to admit the wisdom in yet another conventional baby item, and came to terms with the fact that highchairs were not just a marketing ploy. Out we went, now with another grandmother (Farmar - the grandmother formerly known as "Syd") and grandfather (Opa!!) on a death march to find the perfect highchair. Well - there are LOTS of varieties of high chairs out there in the world, and nearly all of them are either incredibly ugly, or wildly expensive (though tasteful to a degree only attainable by the Danes or Swedes), or totally impractical (a high chair with no little table? With no safety harness?? WITH NO CHAIR??!!). Just when we thought all was lost, we found, to our surprise, a wooden (for the yuppy in us), practical (has both a table, AND a safety harness), inexpensive (for the chepos in us), high chair that converts - get this - into a little table and chair for later use (for the ever-diminishing sensible in us). What's more, it had a whimsical animal (cow? giraffe??) for a back cushion. So Farmar and I wrestled the high chair home, while daddy and Opa partied it up in Lan Kwai Fong watching the premiership in an "Irish" pub owned by an Aussie. We were actually kind of nervous about how Ara would take to her new piece of furniture. We'd bought her a chair in the past: a Chicco Rocker, which was more stylish than babyish, even we had to admit. We also had to admit that she's just not that into it. As in, she wants out of it! Invariably. So it was with bated breath that we observed Ara's first few minutes in the high-chair. Amazingly, she LOVED it!! She banged her toys on the little table, just like we'd hoped she would, and then dutifully spat out an entire meal while laughing her head off.

Serious Play

SO - Ara has always been a serious player, and this was still the case when she headed over to the playground with Gramma for some time on the swings and ... zebra? As you can see, she was highly contemplative in both these activities, and was not quite sure what to make of either one. I think she felt this was a time for serenity and, perhaps, to continue her ever-difficult struggle to attain enlightnment.

搖擺的小您 Oh swinging baby
不坐高在椅子笑 You sit high on the zebra
的問題小心 No laughing matter

Ara and her Four Legged Friends... (+ snakes)

I'm not sure if we've mentioned this widely, but for some reason, Ara is completely obsessed with our cat (Mia, AKA The Meeps, AKA The Kiffin). Every time Mia walks by, Ara's face lights up, and she starts trying to walk (no - you didn't miss an update, Ara can't actually walk yet, but this doesn't stop her from trying) towards the kiffin (see how useful that one is?) to play with her! We found this intriguing, not only because, of course, everything our goddess child does seems, to us, to be divinely inspired, but also because it suggests that even before Ara understands who mommy and daddy are, and what food is, and that muslins do NOT taste good, she DOES understand that cats are nice! How shocking! Is this innate? Hard to say, but it would seem so! Some of Ara's first real smiles were inspired by the sight of the meeps. Unfortunately, the feeling is not mutual, and as soon as Mia realizes that she's being stalked, very slowly, by a tiny human, she high-tails it (literally, in this case) out of reach. Note the non-plussed kitty in the photos on the right. So anyway - based on this evident love of animals, we decided to take Ara to the "zoo"! I say "zoo" and not Zoo, because this is a tiny selection of cages in the heart of downtown (sorry, "Central") Hong Kong, where hilarious animals are on display. These include the scary boa constricter, a tiny crocodile, a group of exciting Lemurs, our personal favorite the Lesser Mouse Deer (more mouse than deer, hence aptly named, shown second photo down, less than a foot in length) and a pair of orangutans that lead most people to say "What The Hell Is That Thing??" (see odd photo on left for evidence). After an arduous hike up what can only be described as a mountain, we finally arrived at the zoo - sweaty and ornery. But Ara's delight over all around her lifted our mood, and soon we were ZOOming around (ha ha ha!) looking at everything. But: when I say "all around her", I mean "ALL". In descending order, Ara was completely taken in by: railings, gravel, other children, leaves, people trying to make her laugh. Nowhere on that list appears: The Boa Constrictor, The Crocodile, The Lemurs, The Lesser Mouse Deer, or The Disturbing Orangutan. Ah well. Kind of a positive actually, I mean, how often can you actually do something for the first time more than once?? So, spent from our ambitious travel, we rocked it First Class on the way home. Ara was almost all tuckered out, but managed to do some serious playing and with her reflection, and some (enchanting to us, alarming to others) high-pitched "vocalizing" before falling asleep in her new hoodie. An Urban Traveller is born.

Sitting Pretty at 6 Months!

Can you even believe that our little Ara turned 6-months old yesterday!? It's amazing how far we've come: through the "loud" first 6 weeks, then through the serious next 2 months, and finally the jovial last 2.5 months. In this time, Little Ara has travelled to two countries other than her native Hong Kong (world powers USA & Japan), and has mastered the art of flipping over, passing objects between her hands, fine motor control with thumb and forefinger, blowing bubbles, gurgling (melodically) and of course, eating toes. We were, however, a little concerned about her sitting. It really didn't look like she was going to catch up to mommy, who (as shown in hipster 70's photo on left) did manage "all by herself" sitting at 6 months (nearly to the day). That was on an Easter visit to my grandmother's house. Imagine how proud she was that I reached this milestone thanks to her intervention! Well, it seems like grandmotherly visits are the catalyst to uprightness, because lo and behold, two days after my mom's arrival, and just two hours before the 6-monthiversary of Ara's birth, she achieved Alone Sitting! As with flipping over, Ara just needed the right motivation. And what was that motivation? Once again, taking after mommy, it was Ara's new found love for technology, specifically, Digital Cameras. Ara was hanging out, leaning back against me, when grandpa-Essy held the camera out in front of her. Would you believe she sat right up, using her arms for balance when she threatened to topple over, and then tried to grab the camera for herself! Up to this point, Ara had been comfortable enough when propped in a sitting position, with her arms suggestively placed in front of her for balance. But up until last night, she was content to let her arms slowly but surely bend, and would lower herself face-down (in an enviable yogic forward bend) onto her mat and start licking it! Either that, or she would overcompensate for her descent, and would frantically arch her back so that she fell backwards instead! But no more! Now she's busy practicing all the things a baby can do from a seated position, including reaching for something placed right in front of her without losing balance. This usually involves a comic amount of arm flapping, as though she's trying to achieve flight in order to maintain her seat! Keep trying to soar, little one!

Ara of Dune: She IS the Quizatz Haderach

Well, I guess it was only a matter of time before the shock of motherhood wore off, and poor Ara was doomed to become the victim of my extensive fashion experimentation. I suppose it all began with Halloween, that fateful day, when the sewing machine was dusted off for the sake of floral adornment. In my search for said machine, I ran across, you guessed it, my old knitting needles, and became ever so slightly obsessed with Getting Ara Ready For Winter. This of course involved a very determined trip to the local mall (home to 2 million people, or something like that) to try to convey the words "NATURAL FIBRES" to the cantonese-only, acrylic-clad but good-hearted sales women. Finally, they got it ("Ah so! WOOLY!! WOOLY!!!!") and they directed me towards, if not the purest stuff in the store, definitely the most expensive. What you see above is without a doubt the priciest single foot-square of knitted material ever produced, but which I am proud to say is "Mostly Merino! Cashmere! Hai Ya!". The styling of the arms, in case you're interested, was somewhat unplanned, but seemed appropriate once they'd got going. They're futuristic sleeves for a futuristic baby! Okay, so she looks like something out of a Frank Herbert novel, but she still manages to keep it real, and stay down to earth. Sadly, this little number will probably have been outgrown by the time that it's cold enough to wear it, but I'm sure, as past experience tells me, this is just the first of a number of insane sweaters that dear Ara can look forward to covering in goat-milk. [PS: The little circle-bandaid on her thigh is the last reminder of her latest set of innoculations, obtained during a visit to the new (better) doctor, who claims that she is "Very Aware!" and "Incredibly Strong" for her age! That's our girl!]