Talking baby

Alden's been really really talkative lately. He's been saying Da da a lot. He doesn't know what it means but it sure makes Joe happy! :D Following is a video of Alden on the changing table with hiccups, trying to speak to me. At the end of the video, he finds the strap for the camera and gets occupied with it...

Sophie and Alden

Sophie and Alden are going to be best friends. :) Alden had a lot of fun this past weekend with Sophie. Here are some pictures.

This is a video of Sophie and Alden playing. It looks like, however, that Alden was holding on to Sophie's sleeve, ticked her off, and gets scared by her attempt to pay him back. You can hear him start to cry at the end of the video. lol

Photo restoration

Joe and I are really into photo restoration now. We even went to a class offerred by BYU on Wednesday and learned a few more tricks. Here are some examples of what could be done. I used Joe's dad's baby pictures as examples.

In the following picture, I erased gma's shadow on the lawn, erased the dry spot on the lawn, and improved the color of the picture.

Here's one more example.

Surprise trip to the ER

YES! It was scary! We had just gotten home from my mom's house and were getting Alden ready for bed. I found these mosquito bite looking things on his legs. We had seen them before, and we thought they were bug bites (he would only get one at a time). But this time, there were quite a few of them. We gave him a bath first and started getting him ready for bed but I kept finding more and more by minutes! We figured it was an allergic reaction to something, but we didn't have any benadryl. Some of the spots were getting bigger and bigger, and he was starting to get the swelling everywhere. Joe and I drove to the nearest grocery store with Alden, and gave him some benadryl right there in the aisle even before paying for it. By then, he had developed swelling around his neck, and it was getting worse. Because of the benadryl, he started being drowsy, and I had to make sure he was breathing because he wasn't crying. The swelling in the neck was getting worse, and we headed to the Emergency Room. Fortunately, by the time we got there, he was already getting better. Even though he was still puffed up, the swelling around his neck was going down, and his vitals were all normal. The nurses checked him in the triage. Even before we properly had the chance to see a doctor or get a room or anything, the nurses were talking suspicious amongst themselves, and we overheard (because we were in the triage room, not the waiting room) that there had been a lockdown in the waiting area. Apparently, somebody walked in the waiting room with an unknown substance, and everytime that happens, the protocol is to lock down the area until they figure out what that is. The nurses kept saying that the "unknown substance" was airborn but we shouldn't be worried.... (?) Anyway, we had to wait about half an hour for the situation to be resolved, and by then, Alden was doing much, much better. So we decided to just come home. I watched him until 3am to make sure that he was okay, and by then, he was completely normal. It was so scary because he had never been sick before.

A picture of first "bug bite" we found. We took a picture to show his pediatrician later, but we kept finding more and more, and these became really big...

Picture taken after we got back home. I was going to take some pictures at the hospital but I forgot the camera at home after taking those initial pictures. (We were in a hurry) You can kind of still see his swollen ear, and his lower half of face is swollen, too.

How his body looked like after we got home. Notice the thigh, and how red it is. It was like that all over his body, red everywhere.

So until we go see his pediatrician, we won't know what he is allergic to. He's been eating rice, broccoli, potatoes, bread, cheerios, some tofu, etc., but I'm not giving him anything besides rice until we find out what caused this reaction. Our prime suspect is almonds. Yes, we haven't really fed him almonds, but my mom gave him cheerios that night from her cereal jar, and there may have been almond bits left in the jar from previous cereal (honey bunches of oat). We'll keep everyone posted on how things turn out.

Baby model

Joe and I are very conceded parents, and we think Alden is the cuttest baby boy in the world (and Sophie's the cuttest baby girl). I keep trying to take professional quality baby pictures, but it diesn't always work out well. The other day, however, I got the perfect model pose out if him.... Lol.

Oops, but he started falling over soon.

Yep, he's done taking pictures....

Kisses from mommy makes him happy. Sometimes...

Whenever Alden's being fussy or is screaming, I open my mouth wide like this, and he stops screaming for a moment. I don't know why.... I think he just gets distracted. My sister Yearim says it's because my bad breath paralyzes him.... Hm...

When Joe and I try to kiss him on the lips, he always tries to eat our lips. lol. Joe likes to make Alden try to eat his nose. :P

I bought this jumperoo on craigslist from a lady in West Valley. Because I bought it second hand, it only costed us $20! And Alden LOVES it. :) We don't have room at our apartment so we keep this at my moms.

Catching up

Wow.. I have a lot of catching up to do! I've been busy and lazy this past week. On Tuesday, I got to go up to Bountiful! I actually think the pictures below are from the trip before that one, but oh well... A couple of friends were taking an English proficiency exam in Salt Lake, so I dropped them off in SLC and drove up to Bountiful with my sister Yearim. Joe and I've been scanning all of our grandparents' old slides, so I wanted to have their input on labeling all of the pictures. We had fun looking at old family pictures. It brought back a lot of good memories (not mine, because I wasn't there, but Grandma, Grandpa, and dad had a lot of fun).

Alden's been doing really well with the nightly routine. Joe and I haven't been though. We are really bad at putting him to sleep at the same time everyday so we always mess up his sleep schedule... He was down to only crying for less than 5 minutes before falling asleep but after a few late nights, now he's back up to 10 minutes or more... Bad parents!

Joe has been a lot of help in watching Alden lately because of my wrist injury. It hurts to lift the baby up so he's taken over the bath time. :) It's a nice bonding time with daddy, I think. Joe does a really great job.

After my friends' exam on Tuesday, we went to gateway mall. There was a new shop called Urban Outfitters. It was an interesting clothing store. They had a couch there so people could try on the shoes, I wanted to take some pictures of Alden.

We kept taking pictures after another so he started getting fussy. lol.

Turtle Eater

Alden really likes turtles..... You can see it yourself in the next few pictures. :D

He especially likes to eat them!!! I should make some turtle soup for him. Ha ha.

So... I have de Quervain's tendonitis! It's a special type of tendonitis in the wrist that new mothers often get from lifting the baby up. Ha ha. It's mostly in the base of the thumb, and if I twist my wrist or use my thumb in certain way, my thumb likes to get dislocated! And I have to pop it back in... Very painful. It's all thanks to our "healthy" baby Al! So Joe's been helping a lot lately, especially with the bedtime routine (giving bath, rubbing him down, etc.).

These are pictures of Al right out of bath. He doesn't usually look this calm or happy.. lol.


Bonus picture! I was holding Al in my arms, waiting for Joe to finish up an interview (for the internship this summer), and Alden got too heavy for me, so I put him down in the stroller. He's standing up. :D