Keira Wu Klemmick - The First Week

Sunnyvale, CA - I'm not going to write a lot as I want to get this post up asap and so far I've only been able to work on things in 5 minute bursts. Either I'm too tired to concentrate or little Keira is asking for a bit of attention, which of course, I am completely unable to refuse.

It has now been about a week and a half since the birth of our daughter, and things are starting to return to a somewhat sane and normal pace. It's still all about sleep, milk, and poop but at least we as a group are getting a little better at all three. Anyway, this is my photo summary of the first week.

Sorry to all the non-facebook folks whom I've neglected. I meant to do this a lot earlier.

Delivery:

A lot of folks asked if I was going to film or photograph the delivery. I said no. However, I ended up going back on my word. To be honest, it was just too amazing not to try to capture. Here are some shots from the delivery room.

Recovery and Bonding:

By law health insurance plans are required to cover 4 days in the hospital after a C-section and the doctor suggest we use all of them. We were in no shape to argue. Plus it's kind of nice to be waited on around the clock. However, by Sunday we were itching to get home.

At Home:

Our first couple of nights at home were a little rough. It was just about that time that I began second guessing everything I'd read or learned in the hospital. The lack of sleep didn't help. But we had an appointment on Monday with the pediatrician and it seems all is going alright and we're doing fine. We just need to concentrate on fattening up the little nugget for now. As of Friday she was almost back up to her birth weight, which is good. We're heading in to weigh her again on Tuesday.

Here is a link to the slide show:

Keira Wu Klemmick's First Week

Introducing Miss Keira Wu Klemmick

Palo Alto, CA - Here is the very first of many photos of our daughter, Keira Wu Klemmick, born 12/8/10 at 12:35 pm. She is 8 lbs 2 ozs of pure love nugget. More soon when I figure out how to post more photos (hospital has picasaweb blocked for some reason).

Big Day Tomorrow

Sunnyvale, CA -  The anticipation is killing us.  Tomorrow we will celebrate the birth of our daughter.  Of course ever since Suwei went on maternity leave, we have been meaning to get some photos her in all her massive glory.  And of course, we waited till the very last moment.

Well, this evening we finally got around to taking few photos, about an hour before sunset.

Thank you to Eng-Shien for the flash equipment and technical expertise (I look forward to seeing his photos). As for my photos, my main goal was to avoid the cliche (like this http://tinyurl.com/2c6o9ac) or anything too awful (like any of these http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2010/07/wtf-pregnancy-photos-of-day.html). I still have a lot of learning to do, I still end up masking many of my mistakes by tweaking the photos Photoshop.  Anyway, this is what I've got.

Well... wish us luck for tomorrow! Here is a link to a very short slideshow:

Maternity Photos

Packing up the House in Lafayette, CO

Sunnyvale, CA - By now I'm sure all of you who are actually following my blog, know that Suwei and I have moved to back to California. Heck we've been here for about 3 1/2 months now. That shows how far behind I am on these posts. And, with only 7 more days to go before we enter the crazy new world of parenthood, I'm not so sure I'll get caught up any time soon.

I am currently working on a large chunk of photos that I took on our road trip on the way out to California (yes, another one!) But in the meantime... I have couple of photos from July.

Just after the West Coast Trail trip, we flew out to Colorado to pack up our house, put our stuff into storage and get the place rented out. Colorado was blazing hot that month, so we cranked up the AC and went about boxing up and labeling all of our stuff. Stuff that we needed right away and that would fit in the Volkswagen (which was not much and mostly had to do with Burning Man) went down to the garage. Boxes marked with blue tape were for items we would need soon in California. Those items would go into storage until I could go fetch them (turned out to be October). And finally, boxes marked with red tape were for items that were destined for deep storage (those items are still in a container in Colorado).

Our House in Lafayette, CO.  We used this Collage for the Craig's List Ad.

The goal was to do all of this in 3 weeks and hit the road before the 1st of August. As it turns out we got lucky. The first couple to respond to our Craig's List ad, turned out to be sane, responsible, and extremely interested. Because Suwei was well beyond the point of doing any heavy lifting, we hired movers to load all of our color coded boxes into storage. We hired cleaners to make the place look spic and span. We crammed all the crap we could into the VW and left the rest in Suwei's Parent's garage. Then we handed the keys over to our new tenants and hit the road.

Which brings us to our next entry... coming soon-ish.