bonnie & jason

Alissa’s first bubble bath

Alissa explores the Exploratorium

Sunday was Family Day in San Francisco so a lot of the museums and other family oriented things to do were free admission. We took advantage by hitting the Exploratorium down by the Palace of Fine Arts. Neither Bonnie nor I had been in years and I took the chance to show off my inner dork. Bonnie was very impressed. Frankly, who wouldn’t be? Any guy who can explain how polarized light works and why cars have differentials must be one heck of a catch. Alissa, however, was less impressed. She did seem to like looking around at all the hands on displays and got to touch a few things. But she’s probably a few years away from being in awe of what a total nerd her dad is. When that time comes, she can reflect back on these pictures to see that her dad didn’t just become a nerd, he’s been a nerd for a long time.

Jamie’s birthday

Alissa is barely one and already getting invited to all these birthday parties. I don’t think I’ve ever had as busy a social life as she does. Today was Jamie’s third birthday party hosted at Gymtowne. Alissa is a little too young to really participate but we took her on some of the apparatus.

The older kids, however, had a grand ole time jumping, tumbling, hanging, etc.

And of course, there was the obligatory birthday cake complete with candles and flashing hello kitty figurine.

Cake is great and all, but like Kaila, I thought the lumpia was where it was at.

I think she may have had too many though… I know I did.

That’s ok though… daddy will make it all better!

More pictures HERE.

Boring video

Alissa seems to be at an age where her development is accelerating in a number of different areas. She’s starting to understand more of what we say along with using gestures of her own to communicate what she wants. She’s starting to walk on her own more consistently without prodding from us. And she definitely is starting to have preferences when it comes to food and play toys. Speaking of toys, Bonnie captured some footage of Alissa diligently pulling out the alphabet in her basket of toys and arranging them on the shelf just as diligently. It’s kind of boring video but I think it’s neat to see the little developmental steps that seem to happen a lot these days.

Alissa plays with her letters from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

How to replace a Canon 550EX hotshoe

As Alissa gets taller, she is able to reach more and more stuff she isn’t supposed to reach. A couple weeks ago, she reached up and grabbed my camera strap and pulled it off the shelf. Camera is fine, lens is fine, but the flash was a casualty. The flimsy plastic hotshoe connection snapped in a few places. So, I ended up buying a new Canon 580EXII which is very nice but soon thereafter, realized that maybe the broken one was repairable. A few minutes in front of google and then ebay revealed a $12 replacement part. Yay!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find instructions on how to actually execute the replacement so I thought I’d put up a few pictures and explain the process briefly.

Here’s my broken flash. Notice the four holes in the corners. This is what you should see after removing the screws that live in those holes. The long ones go on the bottom and the shorter ones go on top.

After you remove the screws, you should be able to lift the back end up and then pull out to clear the tab on the front side. Then you should see this:

On the right side, there are two screws that secure the external power plug. Remove those two screws. On the top, there are two smaller screws that secure the switch that determines the “off/master/slave” setting. Remove these two screws as well.

Now you should be able to access the four screws that hold the hotshoe assembly in place.


You can really only see the bottom right one in these pictures, but they’re arranged in a square pattern. They’re kinda tight with the wires that lead to the hotshoe connectors so be careful you don’t accidentally break the solder connections. Also, it’s worth noting that these four screws have a larger head on them so you’ll want to use a larger screw driver vs. the little jeweler screw driver you’ll need for all the other screws.

Anyway, after you unscrew the four screws (don’t back them out of the housing… just let them hang out there so it will be easier to reassemble later on) you’ll be able to pull the hot shoe assembly out. Be careful as there is a spring and locking pin that will be loose once you remove the assembly. The rest is easy. Just unscrew the broken piece out of the assembly and replace it with the new one being careful to replace the spring and locking pin in the correct orientation. (Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of this part.) Then just put everything back together and voila! The only thing to be careful of is to make sure you gradually screw in the last four screws on the outside of the housing. If you tighten one side too much, you won’t be able to get the other screws started at all.

If I was to do it again, I might apply a tiny about of grease to the locking pin and the threaded part since mine doesn’t seem to work as smoothly as it used to. Hope that helps!

Abigail comes to visit

Deeann and Calvin had a wedding to go to Saturday and we were lucky to be offered the opportunity to watch Abigail for a few hours. Everything went pretty smoothly as Abigail and Alissa sort of played together. The only minor hiccups were about 5 seconds of crying right when Deeann and Calvin left (solved immediately by a few pieces of popcorn) and getting Abigail to go to sleep in a strange environment without mommy and daddy around. That was solved by me playing and watching her in the crib for a little while before she put her head down and went to sleep. Piece of cake compared to Alissa, who still won’t go into her crib unless she’s already passed out. Anyway, here a are a few snapshots of them. (I was experimenting with some wireless flashes so some of the lighting might look a little funny.)

Connor’s first birthday

Alissa was invited to another birthday party today. Connor is just a little bit younger than Alissa and also had a pizza party to celebrate. Alissa seemed to tolerate playing with the many other toddlers there. I’m not sure how much kids are supposed to play with each other at this age. They more accurately play around each other.

Alissa did have her first taste of pizza though. (She didn’t even have pizza at her own party.) Now that one of her first top teeth has poked through, I think she was able to kind of drool this piece of crust into submission before semi-chewing it into little pieces.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to Connor! Hope you have as much fun with present wrapping as the presents themselves!

LOL 2

With every passing day, Alissa becomes more and more interactive. She imitates actions and sounds and her personality continues to evolve. Overall, she seems to be a happy baby and only occasionally forces her will upon us. And we’ve been extremely lucky that she eats and sleeps well and has been healthy with the exception of a short cold when we were back east in May. All in all, life is very good. But if you’re having a bit of a down day yourself, see take two of the Alissa LOL video and the bath picture below. They’re guaranteed to put a smile on your face! If not, see take one.

bonnie tickling alissa 3 from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

LOL

Bonnie tickling Alissa from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

Happy New Year!

Another year has absolutely flown by! What a difference a year makes!

Jan 1, 2007

Jan 1, 2008

The “after” picture above was taken last week on the way to one of our family outings. Here are some more.

Megan is bigger than Alissa even though Alissa is about 2 months older. This picture makes her look like Godzilla compared to Alissa but they seemed pretty evenly matched in their “fight” over the snacks.

Here they are combing the carpet for any wayward Cheerios.

Alissa doesn’t really like wearing her new big girl towel on her head.