Cam just had his two month doctor's appointment, and the entire staff couldn't believe how big he was when they saw him - even his doctor barely recognized him.  He weighs in at 15lbs 10oz, more than double his birth weight of 7lbs 8oz.  Babies are supposed to double their birth weight by three months, Cam has done it in two, and his weight is at the ninety-eighth percentile!  The growth chart actually shows from 3% to 97%, so when the doctor plotted Cam's latest measurements, he exclaimed "Wow, he's off the charts!"  That was only for Cam's weight, though - his head circumference is only at 50 percentile.  So he's bigger than pretty much every single kid his age but he's got a small head.  Great.

The two month appointment includes a couple immunization shots, and we were big time worried that Cam would be crying all day after his shots.  When we were in the waiting room, all we heard were babies screaming behind the doors - no doubt screaming in pain from the shots.  Sara and I got really freaked out over how hurt Cam would be.  After the doctor finishes with Cam, the nurses came into the room, prepped him quickly, and jabbed him with two shots, one on each leg.  Cam cried for all of 5 seconds, and then sniffled for a few more seconds, and then was fine.  Aw yeah, that's my boy!!!
 
When we brought him home, he started to fuss a lot and by the time night fell, he was crying and nothing would soothe him - he just seemed absolutely miserable.  Sara thought it may have been a fever as a result of the shots so I ran to the nearby Walgreen's to get some infant tylenol, but that didn't help either.  He was in a lot of discomfort and we just couldn't soothe his cries.  Finally, I decided to change his diaper in the midst of his crying, and after I took his pants off he stopped crying and was pretty much back to being a happy baby.  Turns out his pants are too small, especially the elastic waist band.  Jeez - he barely flinches at needles but cries like there's no tomorrow when his pants are squeezing his fat tummy.

The portable crib we bought was only rated to support up to 15lbs so it can no longer support Cam.  We looked for a new crib a couple weeks ago and ended up ordering a crib, mattress, and some linens online.  The stuff all got shipped separately and the crib showed up a full week before the mattress did.  What's up with that?  Anyways, all the stuff arrived, we assembled he crib, and now Cam's got a slick new crib to support his weight.  He's so heavy that he's already left an imprint of his body in the mattress and he's only been in it a few nights!  Surely we don't need to get a Sealy mattress for him??!!??  What a little fatty.

Over the last couple weeks, we've visited a few more daycares and were very happy to find that most daycares do not feel like orphanages, unlike the first one we saw.  We checked out a few home daycares and decided that was the way to go - it feels more comfortable to leave Cam at somebody's home with only a few other kids than at a facility with many wailing babies.  We found two in particular that we liked: one run by a Russian woman and one run by an Indian lady.  Both of them were very nice and seemed good with the kids; the Russian daycare is much closer to Sara's work and very convenient, whereas the Indian woman's home has more room for the kids and she seemed much calmer and quieter.  We debated between them and in the end we decided that we preferred Cam speaking with an Indian accent rather than a Russian one, so we chose the Indian daycare.  :)

Auntie Alice and Cam

My sister Alice was in town for a weekend - the first Tay family member to see Cameron!  :)

Alice was in Edmonton for a conference on Thursday, Friday, and Tuesday, and rather than stay in Edmonton for the weekend, she decided to jet down to San Francisco and hang out with us on the weekend.  What a busy weekend it was, too - meeting up with cousin John, Chinese and Malaysian dinners, lots of shopping, and of course, lots of holding and playing with Cam.

Alice wanted to get Cam a gift -of course, how can you resist our cute little tubby Cam?- so we picked out a Jumperoo for him.  It's something we wanted to get for him as he likes being bounced and we figure he'd enjoy bouncing himself.  Well it turns out he doesn't even reach the ground so we had to stack a couple books as a little booster for him.  He's not really bouncing himself on it, but we just found out the Jumperoo is meant for six months and up, so I guess Cam's not quite ready for it yet.  Can't wait to see him bouncing in it!

Sara is back to work in January, which means we'll be leaving Cam in a daycare near Sara's work, which means Sara will be taking the car everyday, which means I'll be commuting via the Bart commuter train, which means I'll have an hour and a half commute each way every day.

Which all means I need some commute toys.  :)

First up is a hard drive for my laptop.  I've only got 80G and I'm down to my last 4G of data - I'm constatly moving stuff to the external drive and deleting stuff just so I can do my day to day work.  I'm shopping for a 250G hard drive.  Once I get that, I'll be upgrading to Leopard, the latest Mac OS.  Leopard supports Bluetooth A2DP profile, which means I can connect a Bluetooth stereo headset directly with the laptop.  Once I've got Leopard installed, I will get a Bluetooth headset with a built-in mic and simultaneously connect to my BlackBerry.  This will let me listen to music from my Macbook, then the headset will automatically pause the music for an incoming call on the phone, let me take the call, then automatically resume the music once I've finished my call.  I'm looking forward to this very cool feature.  And finally, since my commute includes a 20 minute walk from the Bart station to home, I'll be getting a 2G microSD card for the BlackBerry to listen to mp3s during my walk.... although I'd consider getting a bluetooth-enabled mp3 player that has a digital FM tuner.

Ah, how the dominoes fall.

A couple months back, I was recommended a bit torrent of the pilot for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles -thanks Ben!- and the show totally rocks.  Lena Headey is a perfect Sarah Connor and I love that River from Firefly is in the show.  :)

I had heard nothing about the show and I wasn't sure if it was going to get picked up, but I finally saw a commercial for it: it's going to air in January on Fox.

Check out the awesome posters for the show, courtesy Gizmodo and thanks to Brian for the pointer.  Click for a bigger image:

Took Cam for a walk the other day while Sara was at her dentist appointment.  We wandered over to the harbour and as I was walking along a pier I looked into the water and saw a couple jellyfish.  JELLYFISH!!!  Jellyfish are tropical animals, what the heck are they doing pulsing aimlessly amongst moored boats in a San Francisco Bay pier??  So weird...

And speaking of seeing things in weird places, last Friday I went to the bathroom at my office and ran into the CEO.  I barely ever see the CEO in the office, let alone in the bathroom.  It was so surreal, and he even spoke to me: "Hey, how's it going?"  I quickly ran through some responses and shot them down:

- It's Friday!  I'm sooo looking forward to the weekend - I didn't want my CEO to think I was some weekend party animal dude.
- Busy as hell, we're behind schedule and I have to work through the weekend - I don't think it's a good idea to tell the CEO that we're behind schedule
- I'm soooo tired, my newborn son is keeping my wife and I up all night - too whiny and really does he need to know about my lack of sleep?  I'm just Some Random Office Dude In The Bathroom.

Anyways, I ended up just blurting out "I'm good, thanks."  There were so many things I could have mentioned: the company stock doing well, holidays approaching, even the old stand-by of mentioning the weather.  Maybe my short response impressed upon him that I'm busy, focused, and don't waste my day away with idle chit-chat.  Then again, maybe he thinks I'm a self-centered jerk for not reciprocating and asking how he was doing.  Argh, stupid CEO, of all the times he could have used the bathroom, did it have to be when I was the only other person in there??

Cam and Lennox

Cindy, her sister Janet, and her three-month-old baby girl Lennox came to visit for a few days.  Lennox is such a happy baby with big bright eyes and lots of smiles.  She's long and lean and feels so different to hold compared to the big lump that Cameron's become.  We did a weigh in and Lennox was 11 pounds while Cam clocked in at 13 pounds!  Lennox is twice as old as Cameron!  I can't believe just how big Cam has gotten - it's pretty fun to look back at pictures from his first days of life and see just how much he's changed.

It was neat having two babies in the condo, especially when Lennox is so well behaved.  She sleeps well, barely cries, and is just a generally happy baby - hopefully some of it rubbed off on Cam.  I was surprised that they didn't really take much notice of one another; I was expecting them to curiously stare at one another.  Of course, whenever you have a little boy baby and a girl baby, they will get setup.  They didn't appear too interested in each other so we didn't pre-arrange their marriage.  They did hold feet, though.  :)

Cam appeared a little confused at one point when Lennox was crying, as if he was thinking "I hear crying, but I don't feel anything wrong.  What is going on??"  Lennox and Cameron's cries sound very similar - Cindy and Sara were reacting to the other baby's cries for the first couple days.  By the last day, though, I was able to recognize their different voices.

We had a lot of fun with them in town, going for walks, shopping, and of course, trading baby stories and Cindy dishing some wisdom on us - she does have twice as much experience as we do, afterall!

Take a look at all the pictures.

Our first Hallowe'en

We received a great Hallowe'en costume for Cam as a gift -thanks Uncle Chi-Chi!- and Jenn also graciously sent us a costume as well.  We didn't really have anywhere to go since he's too young to take trick or treating so we were just going to take pictures of him wearing the outfits at home.  Kinda sad, but what are you going to do?

Then I received an invite: my company was throwing a Hallowe'en party at the office!  Yes, we have somewhere to go!  ...and show off Cam in his costume.  :)

Everybody brought in their families so there were kids everywhere, of all ages.  Cam was actually the same size as a couple 3-month olds - people were pretty amazed when we said he was only 6 weeks old.  Cam ended up sleeping through the whole party, so he missed out on all the colourful outfits and decorations; it woulda been fun to see his reaction to everything.

The party only lasted an hour, but it was great fun.  Our first family party.  :)   (Check out the photos by clicking the image above)

As a side note, these latest photos came out of the camera with id P1060342, and the camera started at id P1010000 - we've had this camera less than a year and we've shot over fifty thousand photos!!?!?!  I know I take a lot of pictures, but that's just crazy.
   ... after digging a bit, it turns out the id counter increments from 1010999 to 1020000, which means I've taken five thousand photos, not fifty thousand... okay, that makes more sense.