A Preference For Mommy

Valerie won't let anybody else do anything for her when I'm around even daddy. It's somewhat flattering to know that my daughter loves spending time with me, and I'm grateful for her attention, but she seems too dependent on me. My hubby is saying I'm holding her too much, I give in to her demands too easily and I don't discipline her. She definately behave differently when she's under daddy's care, she's well behaved and less clingy when daddy is taking care of her. I talked to other parents, they say it's a transitional stage. I want to provide enough love, comfort, security and support but don't want to over do it. Recently, I incorporate playdates and a daily walk in the neighborhood, she likes to play with other childrens and seem less dependent on me. I know she won't learn to let go overnight. Being good parents is the toughest job in the world, it takes a lot of work to raise good, healthy and happy kids but very rewarding.

Latest Tennis News

Former Miss Universe 2005 Natalie Glebova will marry tennis player Paradorn Srichaphan. Don't they make a lovely couple? In record-breaking news, Rafael Nadal records his 72nd consecutive victory on clay court. Man, does Roger Federer even have a prayer of beating him in the French Open? One can only hope, one can only hope...

Comics Galore

I couldn't believe Marvel would make this kind of product available, but they did with Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers, and now the Incredible Hulk all available on DVD-ROM, each containing over 500 issues of comics spanning over 40 years! That's a total of over 2500 comics to read, and at a rate of one comic per day, it would take me more than 6 years to finish reading them all. I'm not that big a Marvel fan, but when each DVD-ROM costs less than $50, the price translates to around 10 cents per issue, and that's a deal that no comic enthusiast today can pass up. The only drawback is you need a really large monitor, at least a 22", or else you may end up getting headaches trying to read them on a smaller screen. Now if only DC would put some of their stuff on DVD-ROM....

Guess who's birthday it is today?

Happy Chinese New Year!

Thank you for the lai see, Mommy & Daddy! Love, Val

Password consolidation

With the advent of the internet, I started with a couple passwords that were easy to remember, but now that number has grown to over 9, and I’m starting to lose track. For work alone, I have 3 different passwords, and it doesn’t help that the computer system requires me to change one of them every few months, and to make matters worse, new passwords must be different from the last 4 passwords.

With password requirements like numbers embedded in the middle, certain minimum or maximum lengths, and even a capital letter required somewhere, it’s no wonder I can’t remember them all, without referring to my cheat sheet. Well, just recently I decided to consolidate all my passwords to one that’s 8 letters/numbers in length with 2 numbers embedded somewhere, such as 00, which will allow me to rotate passwords as needed by increasing an embedded number by 1, while keeping all the letters the same. Hopefully, with this new system, I can cut down most of my passwords to just a few now, and still deter most hackers.

Day-Care for Val

Working full-time and taking care of Valerie full-time without day-care/nanny, We are going to enroll her in a part-time day- care later this year. The quality of care at the day-care is not as good as mom and dad's. We don't mind taking care her ourselves, but she needs social interaction. We can also have more time for ourselves to unwind. I'm also thinking switching back to day-time if day-care works out for us.

Booster Seat

Valerie is going to be 11 months old next week, and she's getting too big for the car seat. I tried looking for a booster forward facing car seat at Babies”R”Us online, because it has a wide selection. I want to look for a safe and comfortable booster seat for Valerie but all of the booster seats that listed on Baby R US online are ugly and the designs are not my taste. I'll stop by the store soon, maybe they have one that I like.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Woah, just saw the new trailer for the new upcoming Fantastic Four movie and it looks incredible with the Silver Surfer in it. It looks like they’re really raising it a few notches by bringing him in. The Silver Surfer is an extremely powerful being imbued with cosmic powers, which I believe makes him even more powerful than Superman. It’s heavily debated in the comic world who is more powerful between the two, but as big a Superman fan as I am, I would still have to side with the Surfer. Really, he doesn’t need to eat or breath and is capable of hyperspeed travel (faster than light), which Superman is not capable of. Haha, the Fantastic Four is a joke compared to the Silver Surfer.

Here’s the link to the trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/fantasticfourriseofthesilversurfer/

-Cecil

P.S. I think a Super Saiyan Level 3 Goku of Dragonball Z fame would wipe the floor with both the Surfer and Superman.

Valerie speaks!

For the longest time, Valerie has been saying na-na, but we couldn't figure out if she was trying to say ma-ma or da-da. For a lot of parents, it's a contest to see whether their babies can say ma-ma or da-da first, but for us, when the moment finally arrived, it didn't matter at all. We were just happy to be lucky enough to capture it on video (thanks to Sherry's quick thinking and acting!)

Baby Food

We started feeding Valerie baby food, it's usually recommended to star at 6 month. Val is little over 5 month and we think she's ready for solid food. It is very messy in the beginning but today she doing a lot better. she can swallow faster now. We started out with banana, but she didn't like it, then we switched to sweet potatoe. she likes the sweet potatoes and keep arching her head for more food. she can finish the whole jar every feeding. we only feeding her the baby food once a day. It's a lot of fun to watch a baby learn to eat. Val enjoys her baby food and we recorded it.

Dream job: Stay at home mom

Many women are giving up their career and salary to stay home to care for their children. I personally can't be a stay at home mom, as much as I enjoy taking care of Valerie. I wanted to become a young active mom, and be able to juggle my work and also take care of my daughter. Being an overnight pharmacist allow me to do both, stay home half of the time and work half of the time. Since Cecil has the opposite schedule, one of us is always home with the baby that she is in good hand and get the best care. It's not easy, and it's a lot of work being parents. We don't get to spend as much time with eachother as we used to. We try to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and take a morning nap together. For now, we are doing good. Cecil is a wonderful dad and Valerie is a good baby. She sleeps through the night, so mommy and daddy can get a restful night of sleep. now, I put her to sleep before I go to work and she's up when I get home in the morning. I'll see when Val gets older and start crying for mommy, then I might consider going down to part-time.

The Cage

The cage, or you can call it a playpen, is up and ready. Even though Valerie can't crawl yet, I'm already concerned that when she becomes mobile, she may wind up hurting herself somewhere in the house. Now I have a place to put her where she can play safely, which also means more time for me to sleep. Am I a great parent or what :-)

New Superman Trailer!

(Quicktime 7 required to view)

Daredevil Valerie

This happened a couple weeks ago on my watch and baby Valerie sure gave me quite a scare! I woke up in the middle of the night and left her sleeping on the mattress and when I came back an hour later, I found her lying on the floor face down! Thank goodness she was sleeping soundly and wasn't seriously hurt because the mattress was only less than a foot off the ground. I know she turns sideways at times from kicking her legs while crying constantly but I didn't hear her cry at all when I was in the other bedroom. I have to say that I've been really dumbfounded by how she was able to pull off this stunt.

The pic below is a recreation of an actual event using a fictional character: