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On Saturday Susan, Justin and I went to visit our friends Kevin and Hyun-Joo Laws and their very cute 3-week-old daughter Hana Elizabeth. We picked up a Zachary’s pizza on the way and we had lunch and chatted and cooed over Hana. (OK, Susan cooed over Hana). Like Justin, Hana is half-Korean and half Euro-mutt, and they were born almost exactly a year apart. Other similarities between our families: we each got married just a month apart back in 1999, Hyun-Joo and I were both born on 12-28-68, albeit on opposite sides of the globe, and Kevin and I work together at Vast. (You’d think I’d get enough of Kevin five days a week at the office!)

So we got to hold Hana and see her eyes open and interact with her a bit more than we were able to at the hospital the day after she was born, when she was understandably a bit groggy, tired, and presumably quite confused. She seems to be a pretty low maintenance baby so far - I don’t think she made a sound the whole time we were there. And she even did a full 5 and a half hour stretch of sleep one night this week. For the Laws’ sake, I hope she turns out to be as good a sleeper as Justin is.

When Justin was born he looked almost 100% Asian but has since morphed into a pretty even mix, whereas Hana does not look particularly Asian, or particularly like either of her parents for that matter. According to Kevin she looks like his sister Virginia when she was a baby. Hana has light brown, almost reddish hair, while Justin’s was quite dark at birth and has been getting lighter ever since. When you have a mixed kid it’s a pretty common parlor game to discuss the ever-changing balance of features between the two ethnicities as the kid grows, maybe because it’s easier to tell which features came from whom? Maybe in one more generation there will be so many mixed children (and children of mixed children) that the distinctions will become irrelevant. One can hope!

We took a few pictures of Justin and Hana together (so we can embarrass them when they’re teenagers) and some photos of the Moms with the babies. Our other friends Ming and Sherman also dropped by, along with their little girl Emma, or Ariel. We’re not quite sure what her name is because we won’t officially meet her for a few months yet. But she certainly seems like a nice enough baby, judging only by Ming’s belly and the fact that she’s in great spirits, although that’s not the least bit unusual for Ming. And Justin really enjoyed having Uncle Sherman toss him up in the air, an excellent fatherly skill that Sherman has mastered several months ahead of schedule.

So it was great to see the Laws and the “Mermans”. With Susan instantly falling asleep during the car ride home (presumably dreaming of having a baby daughter as soon as medically possible) I was able to drive even faster than normal in order to catch the second half of the first Final Four game and all of UCLA thoroughly dismantling LSU, only to have the same can of whoop-ass served up to them by Florida two nights later. For me having UCLA in the title game was a win-win situation: if they had won, it would have been great for the Pac-10 and West Coast hoops, but since they lost I was also happy, because I hate UCLA. Hey, wasn’t this post supposed to be about babies? Oh yeah, for the record Ming and Sherman, we’re voting for Emma, not the Little Mermaid.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 12:25 am and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.