Kaniz & Abbas +2

Like most parents, Kaniz and I have been reading our fair share of pregnancy and baby books.. so I thought I'd post a quick review of Be Prepared: A Practial Handbook for New Dads since I just finished it! Overall, I think the book is well worth the $14US/$16CND price tag (thanks to Rahul & Pratiksha, I got mine for free). The book covers your baby's first year and is divided into 2-3 month sections (e.g. the first week, 0-3 months, 4-6 months, etc.). Each section discusses how your baby is developing, the type of issues they may experience and practical tips for dealing with these issues. A few examples: First week: what your newborn will actually look like, how to do a basic diaper change 0-3 months: how to deal with your partner's mood swings (basically ears open, mouth closed) 4-6 months: taking your baby's (rectal) temperature - ouch! 7-9 months: babyproofing your living room, kitchen, bathroom 10-12 months: how to travel with your baby (if traveling with bot...

So I promised a more entertaining post today, but unfortunately I don't have any fun news to write about.  Luckily, a friend of mine sent me this awesome e-mail from another friend who just had a baby ( ok , so my friend actually sent it to Kaniz who forwarded it to me).. but basically, this couple ended up having their baby at home in the bathroom, with the dad doing the actual delivery! Not as crazy as the woman who gave birth in a car near Dundas /Highway 427 , but still pretty crazy. Here is the e-mail (verbatim) from Dr. Dad (names have been changed): ...still thinking about Monday and it was pretty CRAZY. What's even crazier is that all of the following occurred between 9:15 am and 9:59 am. Julie was in the bathroom and couldn't move because she was in sooo much pain, while I was running around our tiny apartment literally like a chicken with it's head cut off - running back and forth from the bathroom to the balcony area in order to get reception on the mobile...

Tonight Kaniz and I went to our first prenatal class at Women's College (WC), which was actually more of an information session where the audience (pregnant women and their partners/friends) could ask questions of a panel comprised of an obstetrician, a family practice doctor, a couple of nurses and an anesthesiologist. Overall, I would say the session was fairly informative since we were able to ask questions specific to the setup at WC. A few interesting notes: Cord Blood : If you've sat in an Ob-Gyn's office waiting room lately, you've probably seen some sort of literature on umbilical cord blood banks. Cord blood is blood from the placenta and the umbilical cord, and the idea with saving or banking this blood is 'biological insurance' in case your baby is diagnosed with a blood or immune-related disease. This procedure isn't covered by OHIP (universal healthcare system for the province on Ontario, where we live) and can be quite expensive ($1500 upfront ...

Just like daddy, our +1 makes friends easily - so even before making his/her debut, +1's got a pretty cool group of friends. Last Wednesday (my birthday!), I picked up Kaniz (and +1) after work and we dropped by K&R's place to see Safiya (+1 crew member #1) before her big trip to Dubai and India. She was a little busy watching Dora (as you can see from the picture) but we got to hang out for a bit while her parents finished their trip preparations. After dinner that night, we ended up at Javed & Nishat's for dessert and had a fantastic time hanging out with Rayn (+1 crew member #2) & Co. For an 18 month old, he sure knows how to smile for the camera! Here are some more shots for you to enjoy!

Ok, so I hope you've come back after Abbas' corny post, although I have to admit, the graphic of the software box with him on it, is pretty darn good! Must be why I love him so. So, we bought our crib! We had our hearts set on the BabyMod Parklane from Walmart.com (only) in the States, which is very modern looking, the right price for us and got good reviews on Apartment Therapy. (The other option I had listed previously was the StorkCraft Ariel , also from Walmart - a little more traditional looking but we had decided against it.) I still think both of these options are great though, especially if you live in the US. Anyhow, on the spur of the moment, we decided to stop at Nestings , a very cute store on Yonge to check out their showroom. We walk in and I see "Winter Sale 20% off" on practically everything! We spotted the AP Lollipop Crib in Weathered Black, off in the corner and we both really liked it. It seemed to combine both the modern look and the traditional ...

Ok, so not really a +1 related note, but I did turn 30 today and figured it deserves a quick mention. Since I have a tendency of forgetting how old I actually am, having a kid this year may help me remember in the future. Now, I'm not a math major, but I am studying for the GMAT, so here's a quick formula I came up with.. x = y + 30, where x is my age, y is +1's age. Brilliant, I know. Not only am I getting older, I'm getting wiser as well. If you don't think the above is funny, just be glad I didn't use my Abbas 3.0 release party joke !

A quick update on all the 'baby stuff' that Kaniz & I have been accepting on behalf of our +1: Adam Pratt, one of my Adobe colleagues, gave the +1 his/her first outfit (we've received others, but they were hand-me-downs). No doubt anyone who knows me will be shocked by the shirt's tagline, but I must admit there's some truth to it. Thanks Adam! Another first in the nursery - our first piece of nursery furniture. The Luca glider got delivered last week while I was at Macworld. It looks fantastic! Can't wait to get some quality 'gliding' time with the +1. On a side note, check the vignetting on the picture, taken with our new Nikon D80 - not sure how to avoid that, but I'm on the case. Kaniz organized a surprise brunch for my 30th birthday on Sunday at the Stonegrill on Winchester in downtown Toronto. I can't believe that I completely fell for it and was stunned speechless for a good five minutes. Just for the record: I'm not 30 yet though ...

Since Blogger lets you post to your blogs using mobile devices, I figured I'd try it out with my Blackberry. So here's a picture of Kaniz, sitting across from me, patiently waiting for her ultrasound appointment. And as I was typing this out, she just got called in, but I have to wait out here until they call me in. I'll post the latest ultrasound pictures if we manage to get them off the lab tech!

After years of taking pictures with a traditional point-and-shoot digital camera, I finally decided to buy a digital SLR.. but hey, it's not for me, it's for the +1! ;) And since I'm in San Francisco this week (for Macworld), I figure now's a good time to get the camera so I can get used to it before +1's world debut. If you know of any good baby photographers with online portfolios, I'd love to get some creative ideas (so please send me an e-mail, or leave a comment here). If all goes according to plan, I should have the camera tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed!

On Saturday afternoon, Kaniz and I test drove the whole toddler thing, thanks to our friends Pam and Junya (and their 15 month old son Noa). While the 'rents were out at a movie, Kaniz and I tried our best to keep Noa entertained. This involved: feeding him (a cup of applesauce, two crackers, some chicken and a sippie cup of milk); changing him (one #1 diaper, one #2 diaper); and chasing him (for a little guy, his legs sure move fast!). Kaniz and I love Noa - he's a really, really good kid. Very happy, very active and very easy going (must take after his dad), but babysitting him for 3 hours was about as much as we could handle. It's incredible how much attention toddlers need, and I have to wonder how parents manage to take care of their kids 24 hours a day. Is this some sort of superhuman power that manifests itself once you become a parent? In our case, I think the fact that we were looking after someone else's child added to the challenge. It's like when you bor...

Yep, knock another 'to do' off the +1 list! We had initially thought about registering at Moms To Be & More, but since Dear-Born Baby offers an online registry, we ended up registering at Dear-Born (& Babies R Us ). The actual process of registering was less painful at BrU since we had a fancy scanner, but the DBB staff handed us a clipboard and a pen and set us loose. Aside from the above two stores, we're convinced that our +1 will be a huge IKEA fan, so we'll also accept gift certificates on his/her behalf. ;)

I've gotten a few questions from friends about the best way to set up a website for their own +1s so they can easily share photos/videos with family and friends.. so I thought I'd write down my thoughts here. While there are hundreds of ways (literally) that you could go about doing this - from designing your website from scratch and hosting it yourself to customizing ready-made templates and paying a monthly fee (e.g. Babyjellybeans ) - I think the easiest (and cheapest) way would to be to set up a blog. Here's why? It's free (on sites like Blogger, Wordpress, etc.) It's easy to customize the look & feel. You can choose from lots of different templates (or search the web for others), and even change the colour scheme for the blog to match your baby colours ( see post on Kuler ). It's easy to add text/posts. If you can log in to your Hotmail or Gmail account and write an e-mail, you can post text. It's easy to share photos and even videos. For example, y...

We got our car seat yesterday, so I thought it would be appropriate to post some information on car seat safety. Back in November, when Kaniz and I went to the Baby & Toddler show in Toronto, we got this great DVD on car seat safety produced by the City of Brampton.. I thought it might be available on YouTube, but it wasn't, so I ripped the DVD and uploaded the video. After I went through all the trouble, I found the videos on the City of Brampton website ( link here ) - doh! In any case, I'm sure the safety videos will serve their purpose on YouTube as well.. so here they are: Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: Interestingly enough - within an hour of the videos being uploaded, they've already been viewed 4 or 5 times. Here are a few other useful/interesting reads on the subject: Child Safety Seat Coalition - unfortunately, this group hasn't released their 2008 clinic dates yet MTO Tips for Installing Child Car Seats - decent article with helpful pictures CBC article on ins...

Had some time to spend on my nursery wall art project this weekend. I probably need to give the animal theme a rest and try something more abstract/modern like circles, squares or other shapes - who knows, maybe I could even get some geometry practice for the GMAT at the same time! Anyone have a better idea?

The weekend was quite eventful, +1-wise, so let's catch up. On Friday evening, K & I checked out our local Babies R Us to start our baby registry. Not sure how many things we'll actually end up with off the registry, but I still found it to be a useful 'reality check' exercise. Just being surrounded by (literally) tons of bright blue, green, red and yellow plastic somehow made the whole impending baby situation more real. On Saturday, we went over to Shagufta & Hamza's house in Unionville to pick up some baby hand-me-downs. Kaniz already posted about this, so I won't bore you with the details. On Sunday, it was Khalil & Rifat's turn, and they did a great job of filling up our whole trunk and backseat with all sorts of goodies (car seat, playpen, bouncer, Baby Bjorn, diaper genie, clothes, etc.). Some revisions to our registry are in our order. Let's just say that after the two weekend hauls, 'Reuse' is my favourite of the three R'...

Today Abbas and I treated ourselves to massages...maternity for me, swedish for him. We went to a spa near our place that just opened called Rain which is very well done. It's a new building only 2 months occupied. After that, we swung by to our friends' Shagufta & Hamza's place to load up on some baby hand me downs...there we go again reusing, our favorite. We got a lovely bassinet which Shagufta's mom sewed hand made bedding for, a playmat, a baby bath, a swing and lots of other good stuff for our +1. It's fun to see the room starting to come together with baby things. It's starting to feel a little more imminent now.

I am not a handyman. I have two hands, and I can probably hammer in a nail without hitting my thumbs, but that's about it. Unfortunately, this means that I'll never be able to build an Oeuf crib for our +1 ( like this guy did for his son ). However, I do have some moderate design skills which I can apply towards building some custom art for the nursery walls.  So with the help of Kuler (to pick my colours), stock artwork and Adobe Illustrator (I know I know - two plugs in one day), I'm going to work! Here are a few examples of what I've got. I figure I can print each of these out on textured paper using our inkjet printer, glue the paper onto foam board to give it a raised look and stick it into a nice white frame. Instant modern art, no? If you like anything you see, I'm more than happy to share. Just send me a note (or leave a comment).

Obviously, I have to plug my employer, Adobe, at some point in this blog.. but it's relevant to the whole baby topic, I swear! So here we go.. Let's say you're looking for a colour scheme for your nursery (or for your baby shower, or for a wedding, or anything else), you could use Adobe's Kuler web application ( http://kuler.adobe.com )! Kuler is essentially a designer community for sharing colour themes, and you can browse/search through all the themes without registering! The screenshot on the left shows some of the results I got when I searched for 'baby' - not a bad starting point for those of us who may be colour-challenged! Once you've gotten this far, you can play around with the colour themes by substituting different colours or applying colour rules. If you're interested in learning all that Kuler can do, try the video tutorial on this page . 

For those of you who know Kaniz, you know that she really likes making lists. With all the preparation for our +1, I think I may have gotten on the Excel bandwagon as well. We made a (rather large) list of things to pack in our hospital bag and I thought I'd share that with you (feel free to copy/paste into your own spreadsheet :) Wallet Toiletries Health Card Toothpaste Hospital Card Toothbrush Drivers License Shampoo /conditioner Cash Soap Facewash Baby Body lotion Onesies (3-5) Deodorant Undershirt x 2 Hairbrush Newborn diapers (1 pack) Wipes / face towel Receiving blankets x 2 Chapstick Hat x 2 Pads / panty liners Face cream Mommy Q-tips Underwear Makeup Nursing bra Pajamas / nightgown Breast pad Socks x 2 Bath robe Slippers Hair ties T-shirt for labor Misc. Camera / Extra batteries Snacks Cell phone / blackberry Clothes for Daddy Timer / watch with stopwatch Gum Books / magazines Hard Candy iPod/Music Meds Massager Water bottle Quran (since we're Muslim) Tennis ball Did w...

Just a quick note to wish everyone a safe and happy new year! '08 should be a good one!