Liam's Moon Yuet - One Month Old

March 24th marked Liam's one-month of life!  In Chinese this is "Moon Yuet" which means "Full Month" and traditionally Chinese parents will celebrate this milestone by inviting friends and family for a grand meal.

Here in Toronto we don't have any Chinese relatives, so we just had a quiet celebration at a Chinese restaurant with Grandpa Brian and Grandma Jackie. Well, it wasn't that quiet because there's no such thing as a "quiet" Chinese restaurant! The grandparents did their 'homework' and gifted us a couple of red "licee" lucky money envelopes for Liam.  Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa!

Liam poses for a one-month photo at home to commemorate the occasion. :)

 

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Photoshoot at CA Talent

I purchased a photoshoot 'deal'. For $99, we get two photoshoots where we'd receive a disk of all the shots. This sounded like a super deal, considering that most photographers will not give you the digital files at all. The company is CA Talent - a talent agency and not a photo studio, but they do some photography. We went for the photoshoot the previous Monday (about 2 weeks ago).

Overall we were not that happy with the shots. Out of about 250 shots, Linds thinks only one or two of them or good as far as lighting conditions go. Many of the shots are blurry and some shots had questionable backgrounds or composition, for example he had us stand in front of a mirror which you can see the photography lights (you can see in some of the shots here) - why would you do that?  I was also hoping to get good shots of Liam for his 'announcement' card, and we didn't even get that many shots of just Liam.

Below are a few shots which I found to be OK to show you all.  They are definitely better photos than I could take, but I don't think I will take this deal again. We still have one more photoshoot, which Linds says doesn't want to bother with.  

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Liam, Week 3

Liam had his third doctor's visit today and he weighed in at 10lbs 8oz! He is in the 85th percentile for boys - this means that 85 percent of 4-week old baby boys in Canada weigh the same as or less than Liam, and 15 percent weigh more. He also gained 1.5cm, his length is now 54.5cm.

I was surprised he is already over 10lbs - no wonder he seems SO heavy to me now (weakling that I am...). He doesn't seem to feed more than what I might think is a lot - it is still changing quite a bit, it ranges from every hour, 2 hours or 3 hours. But he doesn't feed for more than 10-15 minutes usually. He is a good sleeper most of the time. He will actually sleep on his own in his bassinet or in his bouncy chair. He's in Size 1 diapers and no longer fits the Newborn size for about a week now. The NB size sleepers no longer fit him either. He is noticeably chubbier too!

Here are a number of random photos, as I have not posted any for a while here on the blog. The first one, in the car seat, is from today. There is also with Uncle Andrew, who visited us last Friday.

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Smile Baby

Liam is still too young to really smile, but he does crack one every so often. Here I caught a few on camera, while he was sleeping...(dreaming of milk?) :D

According to a Baby Milestone chart from BabyCenter.com, smiling is an 'advanced' skill for a one-month-old baby.

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Happy Birthday Kolton!

My cousin Kolton is 3 years old today!  I hope he enjoyed his birthday cupcake from school - his Mom sent me a video to watch.

Cousin Kolton, here is my video birthday greeting for you!!

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Sleepyhead Liam

Liam had his second weigh-in at the doctor yesterday and he is doing well. Last weigh-in he was 7lb 12oz, and yesterday he was 8lb 3oz which according to the doctor is right on track - she even predicted that, if he gained accordingly (1oz a day, I think she said).

Here is a video from March 4th of Liam being very sleepy and I'm trying to wake him up. This little guy is a GOOD sleeper. No complaints there, but I do have to wake him up to feed every 2-3 hours to keep the milk supply up (the body produces as much as is needed). Note how his legs are crossed and one arm is again near his head. I think this must have been his regular position when he was inside me, as every ultrasound I saw did have one hand near his face and it would make sense that his legs are crossed when he was all curled up inside me.

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Liam at 10 Days Old

Liam has been eating and sleeping well. It took a few days for him to really catch onto this business of breast feeding (had some trouble latching on each time and he always gets his little hands in the way), but he finally got the hang of it and I think he's starting to plump up! The photo of him sleeping here is from Friday, his one-week birthday!

After a feeding, Liam sleeps in his bassinet or in his crib without crying. This is such a new thing for us since Connor would never let us put him down to sleep when he was a baby.

We've been doing a lot of laundry too since Liam is very good at relieving himself right when we are changing his diaper! That plus the occasional diaper leak, milk spit-up (rare so far), and a few cloth diapers makes for lots and lots of laundry.

Connor has been excellent with Liam, thank goodness. He's always kissing Liam's head and petting his hair and saying "I love you, Liam". Connor decided to use his bear Keswick as his own 'baby'. He put a diaper on the bear and pretends to feed it breast milk from his own nipple!  It's so cute. Here he is posing for some photos with Liam and he's all smiles.

Connor recently had a growth spurt. He looks much bigger now, his thighs and arms are much larger. I had not been lifting him up for the past month or two while pregnant, and now I feel he's SO heavy I can barely lift him up (keep in mind I am still recovering though plus I'm a weakling!). We weighed Connor yesterday and he's 32.5 pounds, which is in the 50th-75th percentile according to this percentile calculator http://www.justmommies.com/articles/childrens_growth_calculator.shtml.

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Our first family outing (the four of us)

We had our first family of four outing today. Where? To the mall, of course! We took out our new Joovy stroller, which we had on our registry and was gifted to us by Auntie Rose and Uncle Pau. What a great stroller for two kids! Here is a video of the stroller with Connor standing on the back and the baby in the car seat in the front. The one down side would be that when you have the car seat in front, the child cannot sit in the back but he can stand. But the stroller is quite light and handles easily, it's great!



We ate at Spring Rolls where they had all-you-can-eat lunch, Thai and Japanese. Yum yum, and Connor got a nice little cheesecake cupcake dessert for eating part of a vegetarian spring roll (he still refuses to eat a lot of foods). He was very happy with the dessert of course and licked the plate clean!

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