Studio Portraits

Sunday, 29 June 2008

Chase has had a lot of firsts since he turned one this week. He has fun copying us. He walked around the living room pushing the back of his Lightning McQueen car (though he would often get stuck when he ran into a wall or other obstacles). He clapped his hands for the first time, though I'm not sure if he's trying to say "more" too because we were eating eggs. I think it was a clap though. I haven't been so consistent with the sign language.

The boy has been hurting me too though. In the first hour since he awoke, he bit me during nursing (and made a cut where you don't want to be cut, so now it burns when he nurses on the right hand side) - he's teething - already his 7th tooth broke through this week, and he's been gnawing on my shoulder and his finger a lot lately, so I know there are more teeth breaking through. Plus, he scratched my eyeball when he threw a magazine at my face, and he poked my eye with a fork. By 7:30 am, I was yelling at Chris to wake up and come get him. Chase is just so active that he doesn't know how to control his body and jumps and bounces around all over the place.

For some reason this morning (perhaps it's because I have no more 1st year birthday lu'au to plan!), I had a burst of energy. Well, also, I opted out of yoga. So, I had Chris take Chase upstairs and I rearranged the entire living room furniture. I vacuumed and swept (which was much needed) and moved all the couches and chairs so that there's a little more space. It looks better. Of course all my guests are gone. I should have done this before they came. But oh well. Now that Chase is more mobile and seems to enjoy nesting objects into crevices, I need to find ways to block off areas where he might hide his toys (though having rattan furniture with cracks in between the cushion and the frame don't help with that problem either, so we'll see how the new arrangement goes.).

We went to Sears today to take Chase's first set of formal studio pictures. We had never taken any before like we had hoped to when he was an infant. I brought a coupon to use, but of course we got suckered into getting a much larger package because of his birthday. He didn't even eat the cupcake prop they used in the photo and kind of freaked out from my reaction when he got the frosting all over. Oh well. He took a nice picture by the wooden number 1 prop. Chris and I decided that each year, we can make this a birthday tradition. He can take a picture by the next number prop and we can see how much he's grown. Eh, you only turn one once. And, now some of you will be getting pictures of Chase in the mail, so you better keep them and treasure them (and not throw them away!).

Tonight, at our Sunday dinner at Big City Diner with the Halsalls, Nana got to feed Chase his first spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream for his birthday. He spit it out several times, but of course, after a few scoops, he kept wanting more. Darn it! Nana was waiting for this day though. She's been wanting to give him ice cream for so long, but we kept refusing. We figured his 1st birthday would be okay. Just a little. So, of course, I videotaped it. On our way out, someone stopped Chris' mom (who was carrying Chase) and asked, "Is this John Mau's grandson?". He played UH volleyball with my dad. We recognized each other from the alumni volleyball games. He told me that my dad is watching over us.

Here are the photos from today's studio shots at Sears. He threw the teddy bear on the floor out of excitement. But, he wasn't so sure about the cupcake...and got scared (as you can see in his face in the photo) when I reacted to him getting the frosting all over the place.