Thursday, January 27, 2005

Happy Birthday Mom

Today is mom's birthday. Happy Birthday Mom. I'm not revealing your age on the internet because I know you'll scold me for the rest of my life. We'll have dimsum on Saturday and celebrate her birthday.
Coincidentally, today is also Mir's Dad's Birthday.

Monday, January 24, 2005

Only Child

This weekend, S kept asking me to call my friend Steve so his kids would come over and play with her. Unfortunately, they live in Pasadena so it's not a stone throw away to say "Hey, wanna come over and play with S?" I got the message that she lacks play mate or play date in her life and with the baby on the way, it'll still be a couple of years before she'll have a play mate. Sigh….
Last night, in order to get her out of the bathtub after her bath, I asked if she would like to play playdoe with me. S quickly jumped out of the tub and said "OK, let's play playdoe!"
She was the chef and I was the assistant. We started making pepperoni, green pepper pizza and later realized that pizza was not challenging enough so she decided to make sushi. While she was making the sushi, I can see that she was proud of her creation and she appreciated my company. She made the wasabi, soy sauce and even green tea.
Last night, I realized that S and I have only 4 months of one on one time before her sibling will share all the attention she had all to her self for the pass 4.5 years.
I'm going to throw her a Hello Kitty birthday party this year and I hope Steve's kids will be able to make it.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Pho Review

We went to lunch with a friend of mine at a Vietnamese noodle place name Pho Vu. I was excited because this restaurant is closest to our house. Both hubby and I ordered the large Pho bowl. He offered to share his large pho bowl with S so that I can order a different dish but I decided to try their Pho this time. We also ordered egg rolls as appetizer and we were not impressed. When our Phos arrived, I noticed the soup was not boiling hot and there were not much noodle in the bowl, at least not as much as I would expect in a large order.
Hubby: "Did I get a regular bowl by mistake? I ordered the large bowl."
Me: "No, you got the large bowl. They just didn't give us as much noodle as others would have"
Besides the lack of noodle, the beef that was served in the soup was chewy and the bean spouts were not fresh. With the soup not being boiling hot, it didn't really cook the bean sprout either.
My friend ordered the BBQ pork with vermicelli noodle and she was disappointed with her dish.
Over all I rate Pho Vu below average. Pho 99 in Lake Forest is better than Pho Vu but Thanh in Irvine is the best I've tasted so far.

Friday, January 21, 2005

Size of baby

Since I've been pregnant, friends have been forwarding me baby or pregnancy related articles. This 16.7 pounder baby was a scary reality.
S weighed 9 lb 9 oz when she was born. She was also 13 days overdue.
With this pregnancy, I'm hoping, praying, begging and doing what I can to produce a 6-8 pounder. I'm not eating as much as I did when I was pregnant with S so my weight gain is on track thus far.
My ob/gyn also agreed to induce labor on the due date if the baby/body doesn't initiate labor.
I spinned again yesterday and was surprised by how many extra bikes were available.
Eventhough I think Dr. Phil is a sell out but I believe in his saying "The predictor of future behavior is pass behavior." This has been true for new year resolutioner and they are dropping out just like last year.
In the locker room, I noticed people are starring on my belly. Some fellow spinners were joking on how I'm not exersizing enough since I'm not getting any smaller.

Another weird dream.
This time, I was at a funeral and I saw the funeral workers rolled the coffin out of the car with the dead man's legs danging out. Dad quickly ran to help so the legs weren't run over by the roller under the coffin. As we were there at open casket funeral service, I saw the same man moved as if he was sleeping and changing his position from sleeping on his back to sleeping on his side. I quickly told everyone that he was not really dead but asleep and hubby woke me up.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Observation

I lucked out yesterday when I was able to get a spin bike with out any reservation;however, spinning just isn't the same when you are pregnant. Yes, I am 5 months pregnant and it feels like I've been pregnant for a year. My belly is in the way as I peddle and the bike seat which is not really comfortable to begin with is REALLY a pain in the butt now that I am prego.
I also modified my speed to keep my heart rate ~140 beat/min which is what my ob had recommended.
The baby starts to kick me now if I had the seat belt too tight or sitting in a position that is uncomfortable for her.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Stuff

Work has been super busy so blog suffers since it's on the bottom of my to do list.
A friend of mine visited from the East Coast with two toddlers, 3 & 20 months old. My friend M said that the kids were asking to go home on their 2nd day in California. The last time I saw her it was at least 4 years ago. I invited 2 other couples who are also friends with M had a little get together. Everyone was 1-2 hours late because there was a big accident on the 5 north of us. The traffic convinced M and her husband that moving to the East coast was the right decision.
We had 6 kids total, and the noise level in the house was extremely loud. S didn't play much with the younger kids but Karl who is 5 years old was filling that role. When he walked in the house he asked me : "Do you have a boy?" I said: "No but I have a girl you can play with." He wasn't impressed with the option given to him so he befriended the 3 year old boy and played with him instead.
It was nice seeing everyone even though we all live far away from each other.

Last night I had a hard time falling asleep. When I did, I had a stressful dream. In my dream, I was living in the Song Dynasty. Dad and I found this treasure and inside there were piles of cash in $5.00 denomination. We decided to hide it from the Emperor and keep it to ourselves but the Emperor seemed to know about our plot and was trying to expose us with his spies pretending to be our housekeepers. Dad and I kept moving the treasure to new hiding places but the housekeepers had morphing power so we continuously had to look out for the spies.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Green Bear

Daughter's favorite stuff animal is a green bear. For some reason, she choose green bear over the over stuff animal before she was able to walk so 4 years later, GB is close to falling apart. Hubby used to throw it in the washer but not it's to fragile to be machine washed. S prefers it being stinky and she proudly asks us to smell GB.
We've tried replacing GB with other bears and those bears just sit in her toy chest.
Last night we were saying that it might be time to retire GB by putting it in a glass case to preserve it. This way the limbs won't fall off like Woody's arm in Toy Stories II. When she heard my suggestion, she was crying as if GB's arm had fallen off. It's hard to believe how much she loves her GB and it's such an important part of her life.
I recalled that my brother had a teddy bear when he was a toddler and he was quite attached to it too.
Seems like GB will have her love from now 'til eternity. I wonder at what age she'll be ready to retire GB?

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Kitchen remodeling

My inlaws are in the process of remodeling their kitchen so on Saturday, hubby and his brother decided to go with them to assit in picking out the flooring while I hung out with my mom.
At night, we went to Mother inlaw house for dinner and they brought home some samples of real wood and engineer wood.
Brother inlaw: "Sam, which style of flooring do you like?"
Me: "Which ever one mom likes."
BIL: "Good answer. Unfortunately, we don't even know which one she likes. She doesn't like anything"
BIL has been involve with the remodeling from the beginning and he's exausted by the parents' indecisiveness.
Hubby said that mother inlaw doesn't like the wood grain in the wood floor. If that's the case then they should go with pergo where the grains are uniform since it's mass produced. BIL felt real wood would last longer so he's insisting that they go with the wood floor.
I don't get involve so she can decides faster and get the kitchen finish and move on with her life.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

No spin & no rain

Wasn't able to spin today since I didn't get to class on time. I was on the treadmill and the lady to my right was Deb who tried to get a spin bike but didn't make it on time. She said that we'll have to get to class half an hour early if we don't want to pay.
As I fast walked on an incline, I was out of breath when my heart rate was around 130-140 beat/min. When I spin, I don't get out of breath until my heart rate reach about 162 beat/min. Big difference in tolerance level and amount of calories consumed.
It was nice driving in to work without any rain pounding on the windshield constantly.
Daughter is into watching old cartoon on the Boomerang channel. She thinks Tom and Jerry is funny and She also enjoys the Smurfs

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

New year resolutioners

I really hate going to the gym in January because of it's packed with people with short term new year resolutions. I'm thankful that they are short timer so things can get back to normal hopefully by February.
November, December were such great month for working out in the gym since almost everyone are either shopping or taking time off which result in only 10-15 people/class.
Comes January, it's total opposite. Yesterday, spin class completely filled, all 30 bikes were taken by the regulars and new year resolutioners. I got one of the last two bikes. One of the lady who is a regular, lets call her Sue didn't get a bike and she was not a happy camper. The instructor welcomed the new comers and verbally encourage them to stay with the program. In reality, she worked the class extremely hard and see who would survive and return? I might have to pay again to reserve the bike for January or I may just use the treadmill until things go back to normal.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Reality show gone too far?

Last night, daughter and I were on the computer playing games on pbskids.org and hubby said "You got to watch this show, it's interesting!". He was watching Who's your daddy reality show where the daughter had to guess who is her biological dad out of 8 men. I started watching it with him and got sucked in to it. I had to know who her real dad is. At first I was judging by how emotional those men were towards her comment but hubby reminded me that the others fake dad could be really good actors. I think it was cruel for this woman having find out why she was put up for adoption on national television with 7 men pretending to hold back the tears with her every attempt to justify her decisions. Once the fake dads were weeded out, then they state who they really are and some mentioned what they do for a living.
At the end she did pick the right man to be her father who had remarried and had 3 other daughters and she was also reunited with her birth mom. I was sobbing like mad at the end of the reunion. I know some friend and relatives who are adopted. Some parents told their kids that they are adopted and some parents kept it a secret due to fear that the child would leave them and seek their biological parent. If I were an adopted child, I would seek my biological parent also and get to the bottom of why they had to give me up. Is knowing better than not knowing?

Monday, January 03, 2005

Back to the daily grind

With our 4 days off, hubby and I spent most of it with family and watched DVDs.
Hero was OK. Cinematography was beautiful, the fight scenes were believable but the story line was weak.
Bourne Supremacy was OK also. I liked Bourne identify more than the sequel.
I wanted to rent Napoleon Dynamite but it was all rented out.
We celebrated father inlaw's birthday on Saturday. I got a cake from a Chinese bakery in Irvine and it was light and spongy. I single handedly ate 1/4 of the cake. They put lots of whip cream frosting so 50% of the cake was frosting so in realty I ate 1/8 of the cake since I scraped off all the frosting. Other than the cake, I did not over indulge on other things.
On Sunday, Uncle Sun from Boston visited with us briefly after he had a long flight from Taiwan. He was so exhausted that he fell asleep in the middle of a conversation so they went home early. I have not seen him for at least 20 years and yet he's still get a kick of telling old stories when I was a child. One particular story is that he used to pick me up from daycare and other kids would say "Sam, wake up, your dad is here, your dad is here!" The teacher heard the comment and she was totally confused as of who was my real father. I have no recollection of this incident other than what was told to me.
He also verbally shared with me recipes on how to make Pad thai and Tom Yum Kung soup. I'll have to try it before I forget. I promised I'll visit him in Boston soon