So here is a copy of the picture that we used for our Christmas cards this year:


And here's how many pictures we had to take to get the one good one.



Ninja Baby wishes you all a Merry Christmas. We will see you in the new year!

Here are some visitors from November.

Grandma Connie

Uncle Wayne

Cousins J and K

Aunt Sia

Uncle Ngai and Aunt Jen

"The many faces of K"

I just thought I would let you compare these two photos so you can see how much Ninja Baby has changed in the past month.

Oct 24, 2008

Nov 24, 2008Nov 24, 2008

NB has been eating with gusto and sleeping as well as you can expect from a 10 day old. I have been getting use to the idea of naps and how refreshing they can be.

We have had some visitors the past couple of days.
Grandma "M" held him for a while...

Cousin "A" was quite happy when he got a chance to cuddle with NB.

Uncle "P" has two kids of his own, so it takes a lot to make an impression on him.

Aunt "M" and Cousin "J" were way easier to impress.

Aunt "A" and Cousin "E" couldn't take their eyes away from NB.

Neither could Uncle "S"...

Cousin "O" was happy to smile for the camera!

Congrats to Jenn and Emily who both won the 'Guess the Birthdate" contest for Ninja Baby. They both will receive 4x6 glossy photo of NB

Here are some more NB photos.

After a twenty-eight (!) hour labour, Ninja Baby arrived kicking and screaming into the world, at around 6:00 o'clock. He (yes it is indeed a boy) weighed in at a fit seven pounds, and when I say kicking, I personally observed NB deliver a stunningly technically accurate side-kick and center-level punch (thumb outside of fist instead of inside) while the doctors and nurses worked on him at the incubator. A natural born martial artist, perhaps?

I call this his "Bill the Cat Face"... "ack" indeed!

I call this his "James Brown" face.

Number One Mom & Dad with Ninja Baby.

Number One Mom knit him this nice sweater. Big shout out to Non-Asian Sister-In-Law who knit NB a nice warm burgundy cap.

Cheers!

(PS: For those of you who know NB's real name, we are kindly asking that you do not use it on anything that will end up on an Internet blog or Facebook page. Feel free to use "Ninja Baby" from now on. Thanks.)

Unfortunately, Barbit is out of the running of the Baby Contest. Her guess of Oct. 17 has expired. Incidentally Number One Mom's guess of Oct. 19 has also expired.

The suspense continues....

A temporary distraction from all the economic doom and gloom. Here are my top 10 all time favourite Sesame Street bits.

10) Pinball



9) Would you like to buy an O



8) John-John counts to 10




7) Twinkle Twinkle



6) Captain Vegetable



5) Alligator King




3) Ladybugs Picnic



2) Heeeeere Fishy, Fishy, Fishy!



1) Feist "1,2,3,4"

Just a reminder that tomorrow is the last day to get your guesses in for the contest.

Here is a belly photo.

In preparation of Ninja Baby's arrival, Number One Mom has read many baby books, including The Mother of All Baby Books, Sheila Stubbs's Birthing the Easy Way and two different editions of What to Expect When You are Expecting.

Number One Dad, on the other hand, had a hard time reading baby books. Most baby books read like textbooks and I have to admit I found that I was struggling through most of them. Some of them were downright scary and reading them were not exactly what I would call enjoyable. I will go ahead and assume that most Dads-To-Be have a similar issue, and this problem is mostly a "guy thing".

But I did find one or two books that really made an impression on me as a Dad-to-Be, and in the interest of helping other dudes who find reading baby books a chore, here are a few that guys can relate to:

1) The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-Be by A. Brott and J. Ash



This book was recommended by a good buddy of mine who was a new father himself. My buddy passed me a copy of this book, and after one look at the title, I knew that I found a book that spoke to my particular concerns. It was written by a man, for men, and addressed some of the things that guys often worry about when facing impending fatherhood. I recommend it to other Dad's-to-Be, as it is a good tool to get your mind focused in the right. It's not nearly as scary as What to Expect When You Are Expecting, although given that it was written with an American audience in mind, some areas are not specifically relevant to Canadians. Still, guys, you want to begin with this book.

2) Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife by Peggy Vincent



This book is a marvel! I can't recommend it enough. Most baby books tell how to prepare for a birthing situation, but fall way short in providing a good description of a birth situation. Even the information given in the omnipresent What to Expect When You're Expecting is just too plain clinical, and fails to describe a real-life birthing situation. Peggy Vincent's memoirs were a revelation, because it's basically a series of stories about a variety of different births she observed as a midwife. Most of the stories are absolutely funny, and does more to make one feel at ease with the vagaries of how men and women react during labour. She takes the whole mystery out of the birthing process and presents it as a life-affirming event that you would be crazy to miss. A lot of the initial fear I had about participating in our baby's birth were successfully dispelled after reading this book. Now I'm absolutely looking forward to catching of the baby and the cutting of the umbilical cord, and the fear I initially felt at the prospect has transformed to a kind of expectant exhilaration. Baby Catcher is just great, and it's a book that husbands should share and read with their wives.

3) Lone Wolf and Cub, Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.



Obviously, this one is my wild card pick, and is only partly intended as a joke. In truth, I'm reading this magna comic series for pure enjoyment. But there is something to this tale of a wandering ronin and his son that speaks to some of my thoughts about impending fatherhood. This may be a generalization, but it seems to me that an expectant mother focuses mostly on the birthing process, but expectant fathers tend to focus on providing for the baby. In many ways Lone Wolf and Cub addresses this crux. The main character is a disgraced masterless samurai and hired assassin who has embarked on a long, complicated and dangerous journey to avenge the death of his wife and the desecration of his family's name and honour. But he walks the assassins path with his four-year old son in tow. A hitman with a child: an extreme extrapolation of our common male worries of facing the daily dangers of the world in order to provide for our families. I guess I take some comfort in knowing that the challenges I face daily is nothing compared to the challenges faced by an Edo period Japanese warrior with a bounty on his head and a hungry child riding a tricked out baby cart.

August was a busy month for Number One Mom and Dad. First, the Jeneric Clan came for a visit. Toddler Jeneric wanted to say "hi":


Then, a special rug we ordered from way out in Toronto finally arrived:


And with the help of a couple of Enterprising Grandparents-To-Be, we were able to finish decorating and outfitting the nursery with some spoils from a baby shower:


Number One Dad repainted and refinished a cute little round table for the nursing nook:


Enterprising Grandparents-To-Be found and installed some window dressings for the nursing nook:
The crib is dressed, toy-ed up and ready to go. Some kind souls hand knitted a couple of sweaters for Ninja Baby:



The changing center is stockpiled and ready. The painting is a souvenir from our tropical holiday:

And of course, we were provided a cows for a nice final touch, in honor of Number One Mom's humble farming roots:


So we are roughly two months away from Ninja Baby's world premiere (ETA October 26, 2008). Number One Mom and I think it's time for a contest. Contestants are invited to guess Ninja Baby's actual birth date and time and gender, and submit their guesses in the comments section of this blog entry. The closest guess of the date and time will win. In the event of a tie, we will use the gender guess as a tie-breaker. The winner will receive a gen-you-wine, 3"x5" glossy picture of Ninja Baby. The deadline for entry is September 30, 2008 at 12:00 PM. Any entry after that date will be eliminated from consideration.

Good Luck!

Ninja Baby recently enjoyed a luxurious 5-day vacation to the tropics. Most of the days were spent lazing around on the beach...:



...Enjoying fine dinners...:



...and just generally chilling out:



Meanwhile, back home, some enterprising grandparents-to-be were helping to finish decorating Ninja Baby's new lair:



All in all, it's been a good week to be a Ninja Baby.

When you have a child nicknamed "Ninja Baby" it stands to reason that the baby's real name should be distinctive and unique. The problem is that, with over 6 billion people on planet earth, all the really good distinctive names have been taken. New parents seeking help from baby name books are pretty much SOL because while most of them brag about having over 1,000 different names for boys and girls, they are generally the most common names.

A family member once suggested that we consider naming Ninja Baby based on our progeny's possible future profession. Based on that suggestion, here are some examples we (oh, so briefly)
considered:

Profession: Finance and Securities
"Visa D. Mastercard" (the "D" stands for "Diner's Club")

Profession: Actor
"Angelina Drew Roberts"

Profession: NASCAR Driver
"Shake n' Bake"

Profession: Crappy Right Wing Politician
"George W. Harper-Regan"

Profession: Movie director of an Oscar-caliber pedigree who's quality of work declines significantly in the later years:
"Francis Ford Lucas Spielberg"

Profession: Angry white hippie poet-novelist-songwriter
"Jewel Atwood-Morisette"

Profession: Self-destructive Rock n' Roll has-been
"Axl Osbourne-Simmons"

Profession: Movie director of an Oscar-caliber pedigree who retains their god-like status in the hearts and minds of movie fans, in perpetuity
"Quentin Cameron Thomas Anderson Scorsese-Mann"

Profession: Angry black hippie-poet-novelist-songwriter
"Nikki Walker Scott-Badu"

Profession: Philadelphia-area martial artist of Italian descent
Salvatore Antonio Pasquale Giuseppe Boriello-Lucas

Anyways... for the sake of an update, here is a tummy pic. The belly-button has almost "turkey-timer"ed, so things are getting pretty exciting. Ninja Baby is kicking up a storm, but has yet to respond directly to Number One Dad's voice. The kid's not even born yet and already its ignoring me...

Seeing as we have updated what has been happening here in about a month - I thought I should post the most recent photo of Ninja Baby.

Ninja Baby 19 weeks

The ultrasound tech said she was printing off a bunch of photos for me, but when I went to pick them up there was only two - this one and another one of the the face that is not as clear. The white mark above the face is the hand. Ninja Baby was looking at the their hands.

Ninja Baby was gently kicking so I could feel it's presence for about 3 weeks now, but it has been the past couple days that I have been feeling kicks during the entire afternoon.