Looks like he's Canonbolt at the time of the snap! :)
Taken with our 5-year-old AXIS 2100 network camera.
Long time since I last posted any family photos here or in our Gallery so here are a few!...
Here's Justin on Sep 30, 2004 at the waterfront McDonald's at Fenwick Pier in Wanchai. Sadly, that McDonald's has since closed down apparently due to lack of business.
Rare good photo of the 3 of us at Cyberport in Pokfulam (South side of Hong Kong island) on Dec 4, 2004 (usually I'm missing because I'm shooting the photo or one of us is not happy with how we look in it!).
Justin at home on Jan 29, 2004 (BEFORE his haircut):
Justin at My Gym on Feb 15, 2004 (AFTER his haircut):
Justin actually got his much-needed haircut on Feb 14, 2004 at "Magic Mirror Kid's Hair", the specialist kids' barber shop which reopened in the newly-refurbished Lee Gardens Two building (formerly Caroline Centre where it was originally) in Causeway Bay.
The pretty little girl is Edwin & Mag's daughter, Beverly.
I just added more photos to our gallery section. These are of Halloween 2003, Gung-Gung Tom's visit, and Justin riding mini sports cars.
Justin's speaking more and properly says "mommy" rather than "meemee". His "daddy" has been pretty good for some time now. The other night he said "poo-poo" and he had done just that!
Justin can now identify mommy, daddy, aunty pina, his hair, nose, mouth, ears, hands, legs, feet, cars, balls, (teddy) bear, bananas, soup, and doors... when he's in the mood, that is! He doesn't speak too many words — just car, ball, [ba]nana, bear-bear (his teddy bear), pear-pear (pear), door, f[i]sh, bu-bu (balloon), da-da (daddy), [mom]mee (or "ma-ma"), and no! Any question you ask him, he'll answer with a firm "no" or "no-no" — even if he really means "yes"! His favorite exclamations were "aiya aiya!" and "batam!". His favorite foods are noodles in soup (Chinese style, Japanese style, or even Campbell's Chicken Noodle), Chinese soups, bananas, papayas, oranges, pears, Goldfish crackers (cheddar cheese flavor), animal crackers, McDonald's french fries, Cheerios, Kix (cereal), and corn flakes. He loves playing with toy cars, phones, and a few stuffed animals. He loves riding in his Little Tikes car, on his 2 "auto-walker" scooters, and on his little tricycle (which his Gung Gung bought him from IKEA). He loves going out in general and enjoys playing with his little friends — Rico, Sydney, and Wei-Wei — in our apartment's kid's playroom.
Justin at Deep Water Bay beach on September 28, 2003. The Ho family (Rob, Janey, Lauren & Kaitlyn) were nice enough bring us along! :)
Justin in his Little Tikes car at home on October 16, 2003.
Justin all decked out at home and ready to go out (but not actually going anywhere!) on October 17, 2003.
Justin on August 18, 2003 with his cool shades that Aunty Corrina got him.
New photos of Justin at around a year and a half old in our gallery section. Check 'em out!
Photo below was taken on September 1st, 2003.
I just added a new video clip of Justin "babytalking" into a toy phone at Aunty Corrina's apartment on August 16, 2003. 3 separate video clips (AVI format using Motion-JPEG compression) were shot using a Canon PowerShot G1 still camera then combined (using just copy and paste) into a 53-second video using QuickTime Player Pro 6.3 on my PowerBook G4/500 running Mac OS X 10.2.6. In QuickTime Player Pro, I then exported the combined file to an uncompressed AVI file (file ballooned to 179MB from original 12MB QuickTime file). I then used Windows Media Encoder 7.1 to create a 1.7MB Windows Media Video format file using WM8 compression for the PC version. For the Mac version, I exported to a 2MB QuickTime movie file using the "DSL/Cable - Medium" and "Fast Start - Compressed Header" settings and MPEG-4 compression (QuickTime Player 6 or higher required).
I've put up 115 photos of our Hawaiian vacation in our Gallery section. Please go check 'em out if you like!
I have just put up 47 new photos in the misc photos from march 15 - june 17, 2003 album of our Gallery section. These are photos of Justin at 1-year to a year-and-a-half old. There are shots of him... with Rainy, at Ocean Park, at home on his 1st birthday, at home just horsing around, at Hong Kong Park, with Almen and Lauren at WOW kitchen showroom, at Stanley Market, at Ruby Tuesday's, and at home hamming it up. Gwen should be adding captions shortly. Hope you enjoy 'em!
The next set of photos I plan on putting up (soon!) will be those from our vacation in Hawaii.
Justin at home on June 4, 2003 (14 and a half months old), ready to join the Ho family for lunch at Ruby Tuesday in Cityplaza, Taikoo Shing.
Photo taken on April 24, 2003. Justin at about 13 months old.
Here's Justin, happy as ever!... He now enjoys pretending to talk on the phone. He'll grab his toy mobile phone or our real Siemens cordless phone (or actually anything that he can grasp in his hand and bring to his ear) and start, well, making noises — most of which sound like "aaah" and a few like "hello". He's almost 12 and a half months old now.
This CNN article supports my thinking in that the virus could be airborne.
When I think back to the initial spread of the virus in the Metropole Hotel and how total strangers staying at or just visiting the hotel got infected, that is good indication that the virus could spread not just by, say, one person talking to another but by people just breathing air where an infected person had been. In that case, it would seem logical that the virus is airborne.
The world had better take notice of this virus!
Hooray! Happy Birthday dear Justin — you're exactly 1 year old today! We're just having a quiet celebration at home with Auntie "Pina". Mommy and I baked a chocolate yogurt cake for you last night. It didn't turn out quite as we expected so we'll probably bake another one for you on Saturday and celebrate again!
Here's Justin at home 3 days ago:
Today we had a fantastic time with Seung Ah, Leonard, and their daughter Shiu Shu at Ocean Park. Well, the weather was pretty hot and Justin was very cranky but we still managed to enjoy ourselves. I really enjoyed the cable car ride up to the "Headland" area and the Atoll Reef Aquarium. Will be putting up photos of this outing soon. We also had a nice, casual, home-cooked Thai dinner at Pattra's apartment in the evening.
What I really meant to write about are the 71 new photos (in 4 new albums) that I just put up in our Gallery section. Please go check 'em out!
Aiya! He woke up at 3:30am and kept on wailing unless mommy either patted him on his back or carried him. It's past 5am now and he only went back to sleep about 20 minutes ago. Oh boy, I hope this doesn't mean we'll have to "sleep train" him again! Well, time now for me to try get some sleep before I have to wake up for work!
Here's Justin (a little over 9-1/2 months old) at Lauren Ho's 3rd birthday party on January 11, 2003. The party was held in the function room of our apartment complex. I believe Justin's wearing a gift from the Lam's (Corrina, Alvin, Alex, and Katie).
About a month ago I added over 100 photos (in 3 or 4 new albums) in our Photo Gallery. Check 'em out!
I just put up a new photo album, december 11 - 23, containing 33 photos of mostly Justin at around 9 months old.
More photos to come... I'm trying to catch up but the selection process especially just takes so long!
I stayed up till almost 2am last night to get this done! There are 3 new video clips of Justin:
http://derektom.com/gallery/jt21
1. Babbling - Take One
2. Babbling - Take Two
3. Almost Walking
For each video, there are 2 versions: 1 for Mac users (QuickTime progressive) and 1 for PC users (Windows Media Video).
If you are on your PC, click the files on the top row. If you are on your Mac, click the files on the bottom (2nd) row. To be sure you view the correct one, you can also read the captions underneath each picture.
This video was shot on a Sony MiniDV camcorder, brought into iMovie on an Apple PowerBook G4/500 via the FireWire interface, and exported to QuickTime format. The Windows Media Video files were created by converting from the QuickTime files using Discreet cleaner 5.0.
Hope you like 'em!
Uh oh!... For the past 2 nights, Justin has been waking up in the middle of the night and wailing. Last night (actually, at 4am this morning) he wailed for 30 minutes straight, although it felt like over an hour! We held strong and didn't give in and pick him up to comfort him. We're hoping he'll go back to sleeping through the night from tonight onwards!
BTW, it's COLD here! Today the temperature dropped to a low of 7 degrees Celsius (44.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Yup, we'll probably have our fan heaters blowing throughout the night.
From about the past 2 to 3 months, Justin has shown signs of wanting to walk — bringing himself up to standing position, "cruising" along our couch and nearby large beanbag, happily taking steps while supported, and balancing for up to 10 seconds while standing. Today, however, Gwen noticed a marked improvement in his ability to balance and take more steadied steps. Will he be walking in 2 days? A week? I dunno but I get excited thinking about it!
Justin's favorite foods: spinach, bananas, grapes, and yogurt.
Merry Christmas!
Here's Justin's latest trick — drinking milk while holding the bottle on his own. Doesn't he look sassy with his legs crossed like that?!
Today for lunch we had a small gathering at Pattra's apartment. For that, I baked a pumpkin pie and we also brought over some Jenny-Os turkey bacon and a bottle of wine (I know, that's a strange combination!). We had dinner at Karen & John Lam's apartment. For that, I baked a gammon smoked ham (4 pound, boneless). Yep, lately I've certainly been in the cooking mood.
On Christmas Eve, I had lunch at Kublai's with John & Gloria Young who are visiting from New York. They also came by our apartment to see little Justin. In the evening, we had a nice dinner at Rob & Janey Ho's apartment in Happy Valley.
Oh, I thought I'd also share that I'm really getting into drinking wine. My current favorite is Irvine's Eden Crest Merlot from Eden Valley in Australia.
Right now, the local temperature is just starting to dip down to the forecasted 9- to 12-degrees Celsius (48- to 54-degrees Fahrenheit). Our livingroom window is starting to fog up! We'll no doubt be bringing out our fan heaters tonight!
We enjoy another public holiday tomorrow (26th, boxing day) and the following day (Friday), Gwen and I have taken annual leave so we have a nice, long weekend ahead of us — woohoo!
Last night was the first night ever that Justin slept the whole night through — from 7pm to 6:30am! We started "sleep training" Justin last Friday. Sleep training basically involves letting him cry until he falls back to sleep on his own.
That first night he cried for around an hour at about 11:30pm and then for about 15 minutes a couple of times after that, probably at around 1am and then 3am. We went "cold turkey", making sure he didn't see us while he was crying. Of course, we naturally wanted to go in and comfort him as we had done night after night ever since he was born but we knew that if we did that, he'd cry and yell even more hysterically and chances are we'd then end up picking him up (he was conditioned to that). I think it helped that during that first hour of crying, I was in our dining room and so his cries were muted. Now, whenever Gwen and I are sleeping in bed (right next to his crib), when he cries we hide under our blanket so he doesn't see us. For us, ensuring that he doesn't see us in the middle of the night has been key. Thankfully, the nights following that first night, he has cried with less frequency and duration (not more than 15 minutes). We'll have to see if he can keep this up... We've got our fingers crossed!
We also note that since we started the sleep training, his appetite in the mornings has been excellent — probably because he's not getting breast fed anymore during the night.
Justin will be exactly 9 months old tomorrow!
Justin's a wonderful baby BUT...! Well, the only thing we're still struggling at with him is his nighttime sleeping habits. He's now 1 week shy of 9 months but he still wakes up 2 to 3 times every night crying and yelling his heart out until mommy puts him on her breast. He's addicted to her breast and he can't sleep unless he's pacified by her breast (he does drink breast milk while he's there)! This means mommy gets only a little over 3 hours of sleep every night and of course that's very exhausting for a mommy who's working fulltime! Yes, our little Justin is conditioned to be this way and we've got to break that.
We've heard and read that the right thing to do is to let him cry. So we've tried and one night we even managed to "ignore" his crying for 25 minutes (seemed like an hour!) but of course it was so agonizing for us we gave in and picked him up. We know, this is making it worse because it's teaching him that if he cries and yells loud and long enough, he'll get what he wants. He also doesn't like any pacifiers — won't even let you stick it in his mouth! We do have him on a strict daytime napping schedule and bedtime routine but this has not proven any help at night.
We plan to try the Ferber method very soon.
A very relevant CNN.com article, When sleeping like a baby is just a dream, just popped into my Inbox as part of today's "CNN AM QuickNews" daily email newsletter — very timely!
Here's a shot of Justin just after his bath this past Wednesday.
I hadn't seen my dad in 4 and a half years (!) but Dad finally made a trip over to Hong Kong to visit. Gwen and I took a week off from work and so from November 22 to 29 we all had a wonderful time — eating, drinking, shopping, listening to jazz music, reminiscing about old times, and just hanging out, watching DVDs at home. This was the first time my dad got to meet his first grandchild in person so our time together was especially meaningful. I now refer to my dad as "Gung-Gung Tom", meaning "Grandfather Tom" in Cantonese. "Gung-Gung" actually refers to the grandfather on the mom's side and "Yeh-Yeh", grandfather on the dad's side so I should actually be using "Yeh-Yeh Tom" (or I think actually "Tom Yeh-Yeh"). When I was a kid though, I called both my grandfathers "Gung-Gung" and so that's why Gung-Gung Tom it is!
Check out the 61 new photos that recorded our fun times together!
My favorite Justin video clip!... Justin babbling to himself on November 2, 2002 (at around 7-1/2 months old):
Took this using my Canon PowerShot G1 digital (still) camera. Converted the original AVI file to MOV and WMV formats using Discreet cleaner.
Top photo is of Justin tonight feeling miserable with a runny, stuffy nose and a cough... Poor baby! He's still as active as ever though and he's still able to smile! Photo below is of him showing off his big smile on Saturday, November 16th. His first signs of a cold were a fever and cough, last Thursday. His fever went away on Friday but then his nose became conjested and runny and his cough got worse over the weekend. Mommy took him to see Dr. RuLin Fuong this afternoon.
Today I put up 111 new photos (in 4 new albums) in our Gallery section. Spent several hours late last night selecting those photos from probably 400-500 photos. By the way, I think I'll stick to using the term "photos", instead of "pictures", when referring to my digital photos. (Yes, silly, I know!) I still need to get that video I mentioned up... Need to do that AVI to QuickTime MOV conversion. Ah, probably tomorrow!
I've lots of catching up to do here. Got loads of digital photos I still need to sort through before I can create more albums. It's the sorting and selecting that takes so much time. I've been much busier at work so that's part of the reason for the lack of new content. It's been a long week (TGIF!) and I'm pretty tired so I probably won't get around to more of this until tomorrow.
Biggest Justin news of late: one of his teeth (lower central incisor, we think) has just surfaced.
Sadly he's not as "talkative" as he was a week or so ago. Is it because of his tooth?
Got a great Justin video clip that I'm going to put up tomorrow. Need to convert it to progressive QuickTime format first (from the original AVI format). Will use Discreet's Cleaner to do that. I've already converted to Microsoft's WMV format for emailing to my folks (Windows users). Conversion brought the file size down from 5.1MB (AVI) to 1.7MB (WMV) without degrading quality much.
For Halloween 2002 Justin was this cute bumblebee! Here we see Auntie Pina carrying Justin with Alvin Lam's mom in the background. Thanks to Corrina for letting Justin borrow what was Alex's old Halloween costume!
Happy Halloween! Here we have Katie Lam (chickee duck), Lauren Ho (leopard), our little Justin (bumblebee), and Alex Lam (dinosaur) ready to go "trick-or-treating" at the Lam's apartment complex. Next year baby Kaitlyn Ho will also join in on the fun! Thanks to Corrina Lam for organizing the fantastic Halloween party! Too bad Alvin missed out on the festivities with the kids too!
This photo is a couple days old but today, Justin for the first time is crawling quite steadily — not falling on his face as he had been doing earlier, at least!
Just tonight he started doing this — sucking his UPPER lip! About a month back, for a few days, he was into sucking his LOWER lip! Is this a sign he's teething?
Here's just a cute picture of naked Justin behind his beach ball. Taken on October 22, 2002.
When Justin wakes us up at 5:30am to 6am every morning, these days this is often how we'll find him — peeping out of his crib, wide awake and trying to figure out what we're doing (sleeping, of course!). Amazing how babies learn to roll over on their tummies, sit upright, and then stand up on their own.
Justin surprised us on October 19, 2002 when he stood, balancing on his own without any support for about 20 seconds! He didn't get up and stand on his own but he was able to balance on his own for quite that long while.
Justin only likes sleeping like this on mommy. When mommy tries to put Justin in his crib... WAAAAA!! So mommy has to keep Justin in this position until he's really in deep sleep. Sometimes this can take 2 to 3 hours! Yep, Justin the spoiled sleeper really tires mommy out!
Justin is now into standing up, bracing himself on our footrest or the couch or his baby crib's railing. He gets up all on his own too. His crawling still isn't too good though. He tends to move forward by pushing with his legs but then falling on his face! Better arm coordination with his legs is in order. This is okay now since he's almost always on a mattress we have laid out in our living room (or on our bed). At some point though, he's going to have to learn that on a hard surface, his technique is painful!
3 new photo albums:
1. stanley market outing - 19 photos
2. singapore vacation - 82 photos
3. justin at 6-and-a-half months - 28 photos
129 new photos total!
I now have a total of 16 albums and exactly 500 photos. Amazing that by coincidence I'd have exactly 500 photos! Gwen will hopefully add entertaining and informative captions later.
Above: Justin and Shiu Shu at the doctor's office today. 15 years later and it'll be the girl he's after and not her shoe!
Gosh, lots of changes since I last wrote about Justin. He had 2 immunization injections today and didn't like that at all — he cried and screamed his eyes out! We went with our Korean neighbor "Seung-ah" and her 7-month old daugher "Shiu Shu" to see Dr. Natalie Lee in Causeway Bay. Justin's statistics today:
Weight: 8.17kg (18.01 pounds)
Length: 67cm (26.38 inches)
Head Circumference: 43cm (16.93 inches)
Justin's a lot more expressive and responsive to stimulus these days. He shows his excitement, happiness, frustration, irritation, displeasure, boredom, and tiredness through smiles, giggles, laughs, cries, whines, frowns, yawns and peddling his legs.
We started feeding Justin solids at around 5-1/2 months. From 6 months he was "seriously" eating solids. (He's 6-1/2 months old now.) We've been feeding him pears, carrots, cauliflower, and organic rice and oatmeal cereals. Just after we got back from our Singapore vacation (about a week ago), we got a scare when Justin didn't "poo-poo" (move his bowel) for 4 days. He poo-pooed on the 5th day and boy was mommy relieved when that happened! He also had a couple cases of constipation but nothing serious. To help with that, we've been giving him Apple-Prune juice. Today, Dr. Lee also gave us a dose of "Microlax microenema" just in case he has a serious case of constipation.
Here we are on Qantas flight QF77 from Singapore to Hong Kong, about 45 minutes before landing.
32 new photos in almost 5-and-a-half months album in the gallery section. Sorry, captions to come later (Gwen's job!).
TGIF! Gosh, it's Friday the 13th!
Check out 40 new photos in the justin at around 5 months album in our gallery.
This new video (progressive QuickTime, 915K) of Justin dozing off is pretty funny too!
Check out Justing cracking up at mommy pretending to sneeze in this small video clip (progressive QuickTime MOV, 240x180 pixels, 1 min 47 secs, 2.4MB) shot on July 30, 2002. Good for at least a few chuckles!
Strange as it may seem, Justin giggles out loudly if others cough (or make cough-like sounds)! We discovered this about a week ago (accidentally, of course) when mommy choked on something and started coughing. Funny little guy!
Today Justin is now 4 months and almost 1 week old and for first time he turned over from on his back to on his tummy on his own — yay! He started sucking his thumb about a week ago too. Most of the time though, he still sucks all of his fingers instead. He's also pretty steady standing with someone or something supporting him a bit and his legs are noticably chubbier and longer. Oh, he started holding on to his feet as well.
Just before heading to the pool this past Sunday. He's got disposable Huggies swimming trunks on and is holding on to his new The First Years fish toy. In 2 days (on July 20) he'll be exactly 4 months old!
I've added 2 new videos of baby Justin to our gallery. The peeing one is pretty funny! Check 'em out!
At a little over 2 months old, Justin's at a stage where he needs to suck on something or he'll go nuts! He hasn't gotten used to any pacifier yet (and I've tried 3 different ones) but he does like sucking on the outside of my thumb (bordering on my palm) when I'm supporting him while he's sitting upright in front of me. He's got some incredible suction power there!... I'm surprised he hasn't given me a hickey there on my thumb!... Funny guy!
