Thursday, January 15, 2009

13 months

I've been inspired by some of Luca's cyberfriends who post monthly updates on how their babies are doing. So, for the 2nd year of Luca's life, I am going to try to document once a month (too bad I didn't do this last year). Thanks to Amy and Anya who I am shamelessly copying!
So, here are some highlights from the last month.
Growth
Luca is training to become a supermodel--tall and thin. He is 32 inches tall (over 75%ile) but only 20 lbs 2 oz (7 %ile). One funny thing that happened was that apparently his head circumference has shrunk from his 9 month to 12 month visit. The nurse assures us that this is all about how inaccurate any of these measures are. Anyways it is right around 47cm, which is around 50%ile.
He also has at least 10 teeth (getting harder to count the ones in the back now!)--4 top and 4 bottom in the middle, plus at least 2 molars in the back. yay baby!
Locomotion
Luca still is on all fours most of the time. I think he just likes to zip around in crawling mode and finds the idea of balancing and walking too time consuming. He has stood up and taken steps ONE TIME, and then promptly stopped doing that. On the other hand, he is definitely turning into quite the little monkey. He loves climbing up and down the stairs, onto his little toy table, and especially onto and off the couch. This makes Mom and Dad's life harder since now we really can't leave him unattended.
Speech
Luca is also definitely experiencing a language explosion. He talks all the time now, and it is funny to hear the kinds of words he likes to say. The all time favorite (loved by me, Agnish, Joanne, and Luca) is "salsa". Other words he enjoys are camel, waffle, water, socks, sun, lemon, dog, ball, lion, eggs (in Chinese) and "hug me" (in Chinese), clock (which is anything electronic with flashing lights), mama (which is me, or any complaint), and dada (which is Agnish or anything that he wants). He also does a very cute thing with Joanne where she asks him (in Chinese) if he is a good boy or not, and he replies "good boy!", then she asks him if he is naughty or not ("Naughty!") and if he smells good or not ("I smell good!")--same for 'stinky' and 'conceited'.
Eating
Luca ate extremely well when we were in Miami, and then promptly returned to his non-eating ways when we got back from Seattle. Maybe he is hibernating in the wintertime. Right now, he is on an orzo, waffles and yo-baby diet (obviously a carb addict). he still has about 15-25 oz of milk a day, and approximately one jar of food 3x a day.
Dislikes include eating anything, diaper changes, wearing socks, being forced to walk, not being allowed to hold glass objects or coffee mugs,and saying goodbye to mom and dad in the morning.
Likes include giving kisses, balls (still), liquids (still), Elmo (which he disturbingly calls "mama"), dogs (still), reading, pointing, and dancing.

Two other adorable things are (1) when I ask him, "Luca do you want a bath?" he drops everything he is doing, crawls over to our bathroom fast as he can, and pulls himself up to the bathtub to see if there is "wawa" inside--if so, he gets excited and starts trying to take his clothes off and (2) makes this adorable gesture where he reaches up with one open hand and says "light!"--as if he is a tiny god. (kind of hard to explain, I will try to catch it on video one day).

Whew! That's it. I wonder if I will be this verbose every month?! Today, Luca is leaving the US for the first time (we're off to Vancouver for the weekend).

Friday, January 2, 2009

Christmas in Miami

It was fun to go from a snowstorm to 80 degree weather in Miami for Christmas---and even more fun to be able to catch up with loved friends and family!
Here's a little video that chronicles our trip---unfortunately, Mom did not realize that the videos could not be taken 'portrait style' so we lost a lot of our really good footage.  And, thanks to Uncle Henry (Bo-yei) who served as the official family photographer!


Thursday, January 1, 2009

Snow day(s)

Seattle has a huge snow storm right before we left for Miami.  We were housebound for about a week.

As the video shows, Luca was at first unsure about the snow but then grew to love it.








Chicago Trip

Last month was very eventful - we went to Chicago to celebrate Papu Kaku's (now Dr. Papu Kaku) graduation from the U of Chicago.

Here is Luca exploring around town.


A picture with the graduate.





Uncle Ian's Visit

Thanks for visiting, Sook-Sook!  We hope you move to Portland soon so that you can play with us more often.



Thursday, December 18, 2008

Happy Birthday Luca!

When Luca was born, Christina and I talked about making an annual video to record the highlights of the past year for our family.  We are all at home together, snowed in, and decided to finally get around to finishing up this project.  

This past year has given us so many moments of pure joy that it became impossible not to indulge ourselves in memory and nostalgia.  Every picture and every video of Luca with all of the people who love him managed to leave us with big lumps in our throat and we couldn't bring ourselves to leave anything on the cutting room floor.   As a result you have two versions of the annual video.  So here it is...

Luca, Year 1
(Mom's version)





Luca, Year 1 
(Dad's version)




Untitled from Agnish Chakravarti on Vimeo.


Thank you to all the people who have figured so prominently in making the first year of Luca's life such a fun and memorable one!

Love,

Christina, Agnish, & Luca

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Who's Your Grand Daddy?

Luca was obsessed with his grandpas...
Is Grandpa Gong Gong?



Or is he Dadubhai?



Thanksgiving Dinner

For some reason, I can't get the chronology of the pictures correct, so these are in reverse order.

Thus, here is Luca after his first Thanksgiving meal. Like the rest of the family, he changed into his bathrobe and regretted over-eating.


Our first Thanksgiving as a little family!



The paternal family...



The maternal family...


A lavish spread...





Thanksgiving Dim Sum

To demonstrate the gluttony that occurs when our families get together, we made the very unwise decision to begin Thanksgiving with a big Dim Sum lunch. Luca had a great time with Dad, Tai Po, Thamma, and Gong Gong. He also had a good time with Mom, Popo, and Dadubhai, but we're not pictured.










random pics

Dazed and confused after a particularly rowdy ride on Rody:




Luca's idea of heaven--warm milk and many balls.




Caught on a night when we realized that he didn't know how to sit down once he pulled himself up on the fridge. What a cutie!