Chao Lam

Here’s Elaine’s sweet and poignant year-end newsletter…

After 9.5 months in alpha and 12 months in beta, come January, we’ll be releasing our first original [;,mn,(that’s her wrestling the keyboard and putting in her comments) version of baby Shuya 1.0.

But for now, here comes Christmas, and Shuya is nearly 11 months old. Someone told us the days are long but the year flies by fast…how true.

I couldn’t imagine I’d get to this point. When I held Shuya during the first month she was here, she was either crying, feeding or needing a change. It wasn’t easy eventhough, I had lots of help from Shuya’s grandparents and Chao.

But through the months our tightly swaddled baby slowly unfurled and graduated from the tiny baby bassinet to sleeping with arms spread out in her own crib.

At four months I was despairing if I’d ever be able to communicate with our baby. We could understand our cat better than our own human child. But Auntie Veronica reassured me, don’t worry, soon at six months baby can point at things, she said. And of course she was right, and we began to see an inkling of Shuya’s thinking.

Meantime, Chao spent time with Shuya each morning to practise pushing up from her belly and rolling over from her belly to her back and over again, in preparation for crawling. They progressed so fast that at seven months, Shuya could stand holding on to her crib rail.

All that work is paying off now, because Shuya scuttles around getting into all kinds of mischief, standing up to grab stuff and letting us know when she’s bored.

All the lovely outfits and toys you’ve all given us came in very, very useful to clothe and entertain Shuya, so we didn’t have to rush out every few days to get stuff. It really helped keep us sane. Although, Chao still thinks of Shuya as our little bundle of chores.

But here we are, Shuya is almost talking. Her first real words with meaning are “Dada” and “..tt, ..tt” when she sees our cat. She can feed herself small bits of fruit and steamed broccoli, and change the playlist on her Dada’s ipod. She always comes up with great mixes like a random shuffle of Erasure ballads or a selection of New Age music. She’s already surpassed my abilities with electronica.
We are enjoying her company and looking forward to Shuya discovering new abilities and leading us into adventures as she grows.

Happy Holidays, everyone! May 2007 bring you as much joy, learning, and adventure as we think it will for us