pewfie.com

...how does this work again?

It's been an obscenely long time since I last posted. 6 months, a year? I lost track a long time ago. It seems Tonia completely took over maintenance of this site since we moved to Squamish. She's done a bang up job though; keeping our friends and family updated on how our little Kadin has been doing.

Now though, we're very happy to say that we're expecting a second little pewfie this year! That is to say, we're having a baby! Tonia's somewhere around 7 weeks along, give or take a month (we'll know for sure in the coming weeks).

Jumping WAY ahead of myself, we've tentatively decided on a boy's name:
Ard-Greimne (Gaelic). It's very catchy and he'll never, EVER be made fun of.

For a girl, we're 100% behind this gem:
Khayriyyah (Arabic) We'll call her Khayyyyyy for short.

Let the family hate mail begin!!!

Good night.

Of Santa, allergies, and sleeping in your own damn bed!

This past Sunday Kadin and I had a day to ourselves which we spent downtown at the 1st annual Santa Clause Parade. While it is extremely difficult to keep a 14 month old child interested in a milling crowd for 1.5 hours, once the action started he just sat quietly on my shoulders and drooled on my head. You know, as opposed to squirming on my shoulders and drooling on my head.

Kadin was especially fascinated by the bagpipes and firefighters marching band. I thought at first Ronald McDonald would be a sure winner, but the guy sounded like he was a homeless guy in clown make-up "HEY KIDS, WHO LOVES CHEESEBURGERS?!?!". Maybe you just had to be there...

Since the parade didn't start until 11:30, we only watched for about an hour until we absolutely had to find a fine dining location for him to get a nutritious lunch; Denny's!

While sharing some chicken nuggets and nacho's with Kadin, we witnessed the charming young family at the next table go from "Do you want me to order you a coffee, sweety?" to the father kicking the table and demanding the mother not ever do what she was doing. It appeared she was leaning over the seat to pick up a toy from one of their two sons, so I'm still not sure what happened.

In any event, without Tonia there to stop us, Kadin and I stared with absolutely no shame whatsoever and enjoyed the lunch-time theatre playing out right in front of us!

Skip ahead to Tuesday...

As Kadin had recently had two bad reactions for fish, we went in for his scheduled allergy test. Apparently Dr. Kim is not entirely comfortable around small children though. While we were all in the tiny waiting room, Kadin was getting understandably restless just sitting in my arms. So I asked Dr. Kim for one of the tongue depressers for him to play with. Kadin of course dropped it 20 seconds later, at which point I just scooped it up and handed it to him.

That's when Dr. Kim looked a little shocked and said "Don't you want to give him a ...sanitary one?". I just laughed and said he'd had worse in his mouth. At that point I think Dr. Kim started paging the child welfare office. I still found the whole thing quite amusing, as he was acting as if the stick fell in a pile of FECES or something, as opposed to a carpetted floor.

Oh, he didn't show any reaction to fish, but we have to book another appointment and bring cooked samples to see if those do the trick.

Skip ahead to Wednesday night...

Fed up with the situation we've created for ourselves (Kadin sleeping in our bed and one of us invariably moving to the couch so the other can get a decent nights sleep), we bit the bullet and decided to put him back in his crib that night. Well, 3952305293 stories and 2 hours later, he was lightly asleep IN HIS OWN CRIB AND NOT IN OUR ROOM! Granted, he woke up crying a few times that night, but still it was a success.

Since then he's taken all of his naps and gone to bed only in his crib. Tonia currently holds the record of 1 hour from room entry to exit. Our next target is to reduce the blood curdling screams and increase the..uh...well, really just decrease the blood curdling screams. See, Kadin isn't convinced just yet that his crib is a good place to be, but we'll get there soon enough.

Oh, my friend Marla was kind enough to send some pictures taken on Halloween. Enjoy!

LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!!

The past week-ish has been a period of remarkable achievments for Kadin.

In no particular order:

1. He's learned to feed himself with fork and/or spoon. Granted, his spoon handiwork results in about 99% of the food in question (generally cereal) to end up on his neck, chest, or crotch. He almost stabbed me in the eye with his fork earlier today while at the mall, so we do recognize there is still some room for fine tuning.

2. Bottle? WHAT BOTTLE?! Tonia, fired up with strength stemming from GOD ALMIGHTY and many generations of Hanrahan women, has eliminated all bottles from Kadin's diet. Well, his last milk of the evening is an 8 oz bottle (we plan on continueing that for several months yet), but any other milk/juice/water intake is through those damn fangled sippy cups.

3. He can snap. Yes, it's true. Well, not really. Alright, so last night I was laying down with him and in the sacred ritual known as "MAKE NOT THE CHILD CRY", I was alternating between clapping my hands and snapping my fingers while singing Twinkle Twinkle little star about a billion times in a row (I'm nowhere near the musical encyclopedia Tonia is: my repertoire consists of A-B-C, Twinkle Twinkle little star, The Elephant Song, and snippits of Urdu songs that make no sense to me and I suspect might actually be dirty jokes my older cousins taught me when I was a kid).

Kadin has been able to clap for some time now, but last night he started to mimic the snapping motion; he would rub his fingers together and then curl his hand like someone revving a motorcycle. Wooo!

4. He peed on the floor of his room during naked time the other day. Heh.

Just two quick pricks...

On Thursday Kadin had his 12 month immunizations. Yes, he's over 13 months now, but it's been a rough couple of weeks for our little boy.

Since Tonia & Kadin were leaving for Newfoundland a day after his birthday, we had wanted to get his shots a week or so before so that he wouldn't be unduly cranky on the long flight. The public health unit said they preferred to wait until after the birthday, and it would be fine to have it done upon his return to BC.

Of course, within days of getting to Newfoundland he got the measles.
When he got back he had projectile vomiting due to a bad fish incident.
Then he got a cold which has led to really, really gross snot for about a week now.

So yeah, it's been a fun couple of weeks for him! But back to our story..

As Tonia had caught Kadin's cold, she stayed home to rest while I took Kadin to the public health nurse for his shots.

Overall it actually went really well. Instead of three shots in his legs, this time it was one in the thigh and one in the arm. The arm proved tricky, as he actually jerked violently when the needle went in. I almost threw up on the spot, but it went out cleanly and didn't cause any bleeding. So the nurse just went at it again and within about 90 seconds total, his shots were done.

He had the big fat THERE IS A NEEDLE STICKING IN MY ARM AND IT REALLY HURT FOR A SECOND tears for a few minutes, but a bottle put him at ease right away.

Now as painful a process as his shots always are, it was fun seeing him play with the other kids in the waiting area. One of them was standing quietly staring at Kadin. So Kadin stretches out his arms and walks towards him with a HUGE grin on his face, then pokes him in the eye. The kid didn't react at all, so I quietly turned Kadin to face in a different direction and we both toddled off...

Then that same kid was playing with a small plastic shopping cart. Kadin put his hand on it, so the kid screamed and yanked the cart into a different direction. Kadin laughed and put his hand on it again, then the kid wailed so hard his mother took him away.

After much amusement at the expense of other children, both of us headed home to Tonia who was convinced I was going to come home with a Chinese baby or something...heh.

All is well with the world. Except of course the fact that green baby snot is really, really, really gross.

Oh, we took the password protection off the site because..well, nobody ended up visiting anymore. We've kept the family tree section password protected, and you may have noticed some other small changes on the right. Wheee!

9 days, 1 hour, 35 minutes to go...

Oh, and Kadin has

MEASLES

He's doing well though, all things considered. More on this later, as I'm late for work.

Mooooooo

Kadin loves real milk! On Saturday we replaced one of his 4 oz formula bottles with milk (Homo, of the 3.25% variety) and he just sucked it back like it was nobodies business. After seeing that success repeated with the rest of his bottles that day, we decided to hell with the rest of his formula!

Life just got easier by a small but significant notch as we no longer have to worry about feeding his $45 dollar/month formula habit.

Earlier today we were at the mall and put Kadin on one of those mechanical rides. Some sort of plane with Woody Wood-Pecker in the back seat. Kadin had a great time, even though he insisted on standing for the most part.

When the ride was over there was a woman with her young son and another woman who appeared to be the grandmother standing nearby. All were quite friendly, and the grandmother started a quick conversation.

Basically, her grandson was Kadin's age but weighed 18 lbs (vs Kadin's nearly 27) and looked like he didn't quite have the strength to walk. When I made a move as to put Kadin down a few feet in front of the stroller, the poor boy looked like he was about to freak out...so Kadin stayed up in Abu's arms a bit longer!

Another weekend over now, and it's well past my bed-time.

Kadin's first dentist visit

As Kadin is rapidly approaching his first birthday, we took him in for his first dentist visit on Saturday.

The visit reinforced something that I have always strongly suspected; we have a strangely fearless child.

No, not just fearless, but strangely fearless. Allow me to explain.

Strangers do not scare Kadin. On the contrary, he breaks out into huge smiles and frequently puts his hands out as if to touch the passing stranger. Any person who in turn gives him some attention back (and since he's so damn cute, that happens quite frequently) gets treated to the sight of Kadin pretending to be bashful and playing peekaboo on either Tonia's or my shoulder.

The vacuum cleaner does not scare him.
Our dogs, even when barking and running, do not scare him.
The church bells from the church 50 feet from our building do not scare him.
Thunder and/or lightning do not scare him.

Then why say "strangely"?

Because the cardboard drink containers from McDonalds scare him. Heh.

Ok, so back to the dentist story.

I was quite surprised as to how a childs first checkup goes. Dr. Kwok spent a good amount of time talking about how a childs teeth develop over the first few years, and how in order to make the dental experience a pleasant one, they gradually do a little bit more each visit.

Kadin's 6 teeth are all doing quite well, thank you very much. He also had a great time when Dr. Kwok gave him a toothbrush which he sucked a little, then put in my mouth. I vaguely recall a time when a spit soaked toothbrush that wasn't mine would have sent me into fits of convulsive vomiting. These days though, it earns a "Thank you, that's nice!" and not much else.

We had also scheduled a concurrent checkup for Tonia, during which Kadin started screaming (in a happy way, there were a few dental hygeniests who he still wanted to meet), so I took him out to the waiting room where he started flirting with two girls sitting there.

Oh, to celebrate Kadin slept in until 5:30 this morning! WOW!!!!

Body parts, music and sudden inhuman strength

You know, both Tonia & I feel quite guilty for not updating this site every DAY with exactly what Kadin has been up to.

I could go on at length though with all sorts of reasons as to why we haven't. I won't. Instead, let me describe our evening last night.

Kadin went to sleep at 8:15 PM.

We went to sleep at 8:45 PM.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of how things are!

But anyways, some exciting things to talk about:

1 - Kadin stood up all on his own, without any help! It's an amazing sight. He kind of sits cross legged, with one leg under the other. He'll lean forward and just stand straight up by pushing up with his legs. No use of hands, elbows etc.

Though, he only appears able to do it when holding his ginormous Spider-Man ball in his hands. Hmm.

2 - Tonia taught Kadin to touch his nose. She called me at work explaining that she would touch her own nose while saying "NOSE". Then she would reach her finger towards his face while saying nose. He would then lean his face into her finger, only occassionaly biting it. Yes, he wouldn't just sit there waiting for her to touch his face, he'd lean his face into her finger..haha.

3 - Ok, not necessarily a NEW development, but Kadin has this plastic flute (or recorder, if you insist on being accurate) that he keeps in his mouth, not using his hands, and walks around the livingroom tooting on. Every so often he trips and pokes himself with it, cries madly, then stops and starts the process over.

Oh, one other development. Tonia & Kadin are going to Newfoundland for 3 weeks in September. Without me. That. Will. Be. Difficult. For. Me.

Look at me!

Photo's are finally online! Click on the link on the left sidebar to browse through one hundred billion pictures of our wonderful son.

Oh, galleries are username/password protected. Please email me for access.

It's a boy!

Well, I suppose I'm somewhat late in announcing that. But yes, our son Kadin Ali Hai was born at 10:25 AM on September 8, at St. Paul's hospital in Vancouver. Baby Kadin tipped the scales at 9 lbs 15 oz , woo!

This site is his, but Tonia and I will keep it in trust until he's old enough to work it himself. The name "pewfie" is derived from a mix of Pakistani (that's me!) and Newfie (that's her!).

Stay tuned for baby news, photos (we have billions), and *DUN DUN DUN* ...ok, I don't know what the third thing is. But stay tuned all the same!