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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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?

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

Reflexology session

This holiday season, it felt like I spent most of my energy figuring out how to eliminate shoulder, arm and hand pain that I've been experiencing for the pass few months. Since mid December, my left arm has been bothering me for one whole week and when the pain goes away from the left arm, then it traveled to the right. Feels like a loosing battle but I'm determined to get rid of this pain. I’ve decided to give reflexology a try. I've read that by massaging the certain spot on the bottom of foot would resolve the issue you have on the body so I was hoping that massaging my shoulder spot on my foot would solve my problem.
Before starting the reflexolgy session, the Chinese reflexologist/accupressurist gave me this extremely hot herb tea to drink which was suppose to flush out toxin in my body while I soaked my feet in hot herbal bath. She said that I'm experiencing pain because the toxin were blocking the circulation to my arms and hands.
Me: "Where did I get all these toxin from?"
Reflexologist: "From your diet and from what ever your liver cannot process."
Me: "Where can I buy this tea so I can flush out toxin more often on my own?"
R: "This is my own secret recipe, it's not available at any stores"
Figures because I've never heard of such de-tox tea. It's her sales strategy so I give her that. After soaking my feet for 10 minutes or so..
R: "Do you feel hot? Are you sweating?"
Me: "Yes, I am sweating and feeling warm?"
R: "Good. Sweating out all the toxin"
Me: "If that's all it takes to remove toxin, wouldn't exercise gives the same result as long as I sweat really hard?"
R: "Exercise help but doesn't have the ingredients in the tea to detox your body"
I personally thinks that exercise does help detox the body naturally so that was a great clue from her which I've had forgotten.
Once she felt I detoxed enough, she started to work on my feet starting with my little toes.
R: "Does this hurt?"
Me: "Yes"
R: "That means your eyes are not good."
She works on my big toe
R: "Does it hurt here?"
Me: "Yes"
R: "You teeth are not good."
As she move from toe to heel, all my answers were yes it hurts so every organ in my body is not healthy in her opinion. I think any healthy person would hurt too if this is their 1st exposure to this painful experience but she disagreed with my conclusion.
One positive outcome from the experience is that I temporarily forgot about my shoulder pain since all the pain were intensified on my foot. It wasn't a relaxing session at all.
At the end of the session, she said that she took it easy on me since it was my first trial.
At the end, reflexology didn't solve my problem but I might go back again for the torture.

Oddity in this world we live in

Most of you probably heard head lines about this story of fetusnapping but I found this article which goes in to details of how she did it.

Mellow weekend

Didn't do a whole lot of shopping but I did find some great deals at Kohl's. I bought 2 tops that cost $1.50 each. I thought $5.00/ top was a great deal. I wore it to work today. It's comfortable and fit for the hot weather we've been having for the pass few days.
Can't believe people are coming over for dinner this Saturday. Speaking of company, I must only clean the house when we are expecting visitors. Why you ask? As I was cleaning the master bathroom this weekend, S came in and said
S: "Who's coming to our house today?"
Me: "No one. Why?"
S: "Why are you cleaning the bathroom? You usually clean when someone is coming to visit."
Me: " To day, I'm cleaning because I want our bathroom to be clean"

On the subject of cleaning, S is becoming a great helper now that she's 4.5 years old. She likes to sweep our kitchen floor so I let her do it while I cook in the kitchen. She's so proud of how much dirt she's able to gather. Most of the dirt are crumbs under the table where she sits daily.
S: "Mom, look at how much dirt I got"
Me: "Wow.. That's a lot of dirt.."
S: "What do the dirt say when we sweep them up and put them in the trash?"
Me: " The dirt say 'Oh.. man, I wanted to stay, I didn't want to go in the trash!'"
She'll just laugh and continue to search for dirt to sweep up.

Christmas Recital

Last night was daughter's Christmas recital at her pre-school along with the kindergarteners. I took half day off work to attend the event. I was in such a hurry to leave and beat the traffic that I forgot to bring the digital camera nor the camcorders.
Before the recital, I surprised her by picking her up at school. When I got to her school, she was playing with her best friend H on a tricycle. She was happy to see me and gave me a professional tour of her classroom which impressed her teacher.
After the tour, we hung out with my dad while waiting for hubby to get off work so we can catch an early dinner. Dad just returned from his South East Asia vacation and was happy to his and mom side of the family and also really happy to be home with his fruit trees. He mentioned how harsh the weather was in Menado where his sister lives. He ate ikan bakar (Grilled fish) while in Menado and it was delicious but gave him sore throat. He also suffered from stomach issues since his intestines are no longer immuned to the bacteria.
Hubby was stuck in traffic for 1 hour so he was not in the best mood when he arrived. We went out to Happy House with dad and my in-laws and everyone liked the food dad and I ordered. S ate some beef which I told her was chicken.
After dinner we headed to the church and the chapel was full of parents and family members. We sat on the 2nd to the last row which made it difficult for me to see the performance. I was instructed to take daughter her teacher but teacher was no where to be found. I sat with S until her teacher arrives while watching people looking for better seats that weren't there. The parents were out of control with their cameras and video cameras. The adults were disregarding the director's request to stay clear of the isles so the kids can get on and off the stage easily. Serenity now.... The school provided picture time at the end of the songs but some parents just felt that was not sufficient and must take pictures while the kids were singing. May be I was jealous because I forgot my camera or I would have been one of those people? No.. I respect the teacher's request so the show can go on.
Over all, S did a great job. I didn't really watch any other kids except for the ones standing next to her. She did the hand gesture right on the beat while singing the songs. With one number each of them got a bell in their hands and they were shaking the bell like crazy and having a great time.
One of her classmate, F did not want to be on stage and was crying so one of the teachers went behind F and moved her hands like a puppet during the songs. S stood next to F and consoled F during the breaks. I think S will be a great big sister some day.
The performance capability of a 4 vs. 2 year olds is night and day. When she was two, we went to her spring recital where she dressed as a flower singing "Mr. Sun". When her group got on stage, she stood there in front of the audience and sucked her thumb through out the whole song while some of the kids were singing.

Christmas Lights

Here's the labor of hubby's hard work on the christmas lights. It looks better and brighter in person. I told him we have the best lights in our street but he didn't believe me.

Craving crab

I was craving for crab so we went to a Chinese market and bought 2. It's lots of work cleaning and cooking it but it was really tasty. Not as good as the restaurant version but good enough to satisfy my craving.
Spicy Crab

Yeah.. Friday :)

I've been receiving Christmas cards from friends and family already. My weekend task is to get stamps and figure out what type of card to send. Still contemplating if we should include the letter with the card to let everyone know what we are up to. I enjoy reading them and it's not as time consuming hand writing every single card. We'll see.
S is into Shania Twain's UP album so hubby is tired of listening to it daily in the car. I enjoy singing with her. Her favorite songs are 1) It only hurts when I'm breathing. 2)Forever and for always.
Ant: Could you email me your address please. Thanks

Voice of an old friend

Saturday night as we were finishing dinner, the phone rang. I picked up the phone and it was my friend Jo who resides in Taipei, Taiwan. Because our moms were good friends and we were neighbors, Jo is my oldest friend I know. We have been friends since we were 1 year old. I have lots of fond memories of fun and carefree good time together as kids even after our family moved to Indonesia. When I was 4 or 5 years old, I got in big trouble with both our moms when I picked ear-wax out of her ear. Sorry Jo, I was a kid pretending to play mommy. I hope there was no permanent damage.
When I visited Taiwan during school season, her mom would send me to school with her and I experienced life of a Taiwanese 6 grader for a couple of days. I got to meet her teacher, eat bien-tang (Chinese version of bento) like everyone else and have fun with her and her friends after school.
For a period of time Jo was in the US getting her master degree in film school and we were able to hang out together. She is a very giving, kind and thoughtful friend.
I still remember the day when she surprised me by sending a dozen of roses to work on my birthday. I thought it was from hubby who was then just a boyfriend but I was wrong. The roses touched me because she was on a graduate student budget and she could have had a great meal instead.
Over the years, with her movie directing, she’s always on the move. We've kept in touch here and there but it was nice to hear her voice once in a while. Her sister, G just had a cute baby girl so G is enjoying motherhood and Jo is having fun being an Aunt.