I’ve pretty much got the new video camera figured out. It’s one of the new hard drive high def cameras. It took a little figuring out since it records in a different compressed format than what I’ve ever seen. But I downloaded a trial of the updated Sony Vegas and all is well. Though uploading on youtube messed with the quality quite a bit. But here it is: my kids at grandma and grandpas house on Christmas Eve. My brother Edwin is behind the camera in the first half.
I haven’t figured out how to download video from my new video camera. So, until I get around to reading the manual, here is a video clip from this summer.
We had been asking Alex to imitate different animals. Periodically he would put his finger to his chin, roll his eyes up, and say “Uhm.” It took me a while before I realize he was imitating me. Between animals, I would pause and say “uhm” before I’d think of the next animal. So this is Alex imitating one of my odd mannerisms.
In October, we had our family photos done by Angelica Goulding. These were taken at McKinley Park in Sacramento. It was a really beautiful fall setting. I wish I had taken my camera and photographed Angie at work. Her sister Laura was there to assist her with the lighting. When she was taking these photos of Zoe, Angie actually got down in the dirt (with her clean white shirt) just to get a good angle! I just got the enlargements in the mail today, and they look stunning.
Our camera is still sitting on a shelf with it’s lense bent out of shape. We haven’t been able to take any new photos of the kids for almost a month, so I thought I’d post a few photos from the past year. 
I know, that doesn’t sound like a very big deal. But Alex just recently got over a stomach bug, and had consumed nothing but watered down grape juice for about 6 days. We finally took him to the doctor, and just like what ALWAYS happens he started showing signs of improvement immediately after visiting the doctor. But for the first couple days of recovery, he looked like he had spent his life in a concentration camp. Unfortunately, our camera is broken, otherwise I would have taken some photos to share.
It’s funny how different children are. Zoe had this same illness just the week before Alex, and I never had the same worries with her. She was a good eater before getting sick, and even in the middle of her diarrhea and throwing she was so pleasant and easy going that we were sure she must have some sort of food intolerance. On the doctor’s recommendation, we started her on rice and apple sauce. She ate it with gusto, and she was finally pooping normally again.
Alex on the other hand was a picky eater before getting sick, and would go for weeks nibbling on bits of this or that. And getting him to eat protein foods has always been a particular challenge. To make things even worse he caught a really bad cold just a couple days before getting diarrhea. So unlike Zoe who started off her stomach bug by playing and eating like usual, Alex was wiped out from the get go and spent a good part of the week doing nothing but sitting on the couch and wanting to be held a lot.
I sometimes think that I worry about the strangest things. Because my son is a picky eater, I’m a little compulsive about keeping mental tabs on what he’s eating throughout the day. The conventional wisdom says not to worry, that children won’t starve themselves. Yet, after a full week of Alex not eating, I told Kyle that I always suspected that Alex might be an exception, that maybe he really could starve himself. But yesterday conventional wisdom stood it’s ground and put my worries to shame when Alex ate his 6th cheese stick. That represents 36 grams of protein (probably more protein than he’s eaten in the last month), 120% of his calcium needs, and 24 grams of fat! I won’t be worrying about his protein intake for another week!
I wanted to add, too, that to help get his calories back up, I made some hummingbird muffins, which is just hummingbird cake baked in cupcake form –and with just a fraction of the sugar and no frosting. I got this recipe years ago from Oprah.com. It’s the best cake recipe ever!
