Elliot Thomas Quong-Charles

Thanks to our phtoographer-friend Deborah Lykins,  Elliot is now featured prominently in Austin City Hall!  Deborah was the recipient of a Austin People’s Gallery award, and her work will be featured there for a year.  She does Halloween portraits of kids in her neighborhood and then sends them to the families.  She has a 10×3 grid of the photos on display, with Elliot featured prominately in the center!  Thanks to Marti, who works across the hall, for finding it!  She’s also responsible for the very nice green circle around Elliot in case you weren’t sure which was him

If you want to see a high resolution version of the image, click this one.

Also, I was awarded a spot in the Austin People’s Gallery, you can read about that here.

I was playing with my new audio recorder for an upcoming project and made this audio recording of Elliot and Kymberlie reading a book.

Standard Podcast [ 3:36 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We want to wish all of Elliot’s loyal followers a healthy and happy 2009 and hope that we get to see you this year.  We also want to apologize for being so neglectful of this blog.  There just doesn’t seem to be time in the day to have a toddler and do anything else.  He sure does keep us in shape.  Those of you who have spent any time with him in the last several months understand why my dad has nicknamed him “The Terminator.”

Rather than spend much time  trying to catch you up, we’ll let the photos speak for themselves (that’s what you really want anyway, right?).  The most recent album takes you from October 2008-January 2009.

We do want to commemorate a few important events.  First, my maternal grandmother (Paw Paw in Chinese), Kwock Cheng Quong, passed away on December 29, 2008.  She was in her late 90′s and spent the last couple of months of her life between a nursing home and a hospital.  We made a quick, unplanned visit to see her in L.A. in November because of concerns that she was nearing the end of life.  At that time she got to see Elliot for the second time and we said our goodbyes.  Paw Paw helped to raise both me and my brother when we were babies, and it was special to me that she and Elliot got to meet.  She is responsible for giving Elliot his Chinese name, Sunlight.

On a celebratory note, our dear, dear friends Allison and Jonathan welcomed their baby girl Minya to the world on January 12, 2009!  She came almost two weeks past her due date and we’re so happy that she’s finally in the world.  Allison and Jonathan have been so supportive of our journey as parents  and have been wonderful surrogate Auntie and Uncle to Elliot.  To be sure, Minya has been added to our list of “Babies of the World United” to the right.