Posts

Posted on

Curie January 2017

One of Albert’s oldest and closest friends just told him that he has been in the hospital for nearly a month and had almost died. He is fine now and will be discharged soon (his wife only now let him have his phone). His advice to Albert, and indeed to all of us is to appreciate what we have and that he was glad to see us and the girls this past December. We take his words to heart and cherish our families and our children.

Curie started kindergarten less prepared than we would have liked; her pre-school, the one we just moved out of did not give her everything she needed, and as the youngest child in the class, she did not have as much time as others to get ready. That all being said, she started the year at 103 out of 193 on her diagnostic test and six months later is at 163 out of 193, a great improvement celebrated not only by us, but by her teacher as well. We have finally bought her workbooks and are working to help her in school (though carving out time is proving harder than we thought). She loves to write in the numbers on our receipts for tips and loves to read books with us each night (she is also proving to be a good role model for Elia who wants to learn).

She finally outgrew the forward facing seat and has transitioned into a new booster seat (Elia wants one too), got a new backpack (hers was 12 liters and the teacher asked us to get a new one, now 18 liters – Albert got it from REI and did not get a character backpack), and a new water bottle after we found out that we had not been cleaning the straw and bite valve as well as we should have.  She loves having a wallet and money to buy snacks at martial arts.

Curie’s favorite shows are DC Superhero Girls (though she calls it Disney Superhero Girls), Sarah and Duck, and Moana clips on YouTube (“Eggs”). She and Elia sing the songs from Moana every day and likes when Albert spoofs them with “I am sitting at the edge with my daughter, because I am her father,” and “Awake awake, you have to be awake.” Albert bought the girls a 70% off Moana boat that pops up and the girls can play in it. It has been tremendous for the two of them, though Curie insists on being Moana, and Elia tells us she is the pig. The Moana clips even surpassed her “Egg” viewing and Sarah and Duck.

We documented the girl’s lesson in gift giving recently and are planning to do more. In martial arts, the students can earn tips for their belts, colored tape on the ends of their belts, for various things; Curie has an orange tip and is earning a red tip for her form. But one tip we want to get for her is the yellow tip, that a parent can do when a student does something great at home, and we feel that this may be the thing for which to award her.

Curie has been wearing long fancy dresses at school (Elia too), had her hair cut again (her hair is getting fuller), letting Albert brush her hair each day, and generally being a great kid that whines sometimes, but only when she is hungry or tired. We got a photo album for her pictures and she immediately took to arranging them. It is interesting how the physical picture is so precious. Her friends Navi and Natalie both took pictures home with them as souvenirs. We have been going to Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot a lot recently where Curie has liked both chicken and meat, and recently started to eat the meat in Pho rather than just meatballs. Her favorite is Chuy’s mac and cheese, though she loves to help cook, and recently did almost all the prep work except for cutting the meat for beef noodle soup. She is quick to use the kitchen scissors and now uses a sharp knife blunt nose tip knife for her cooking (under supervision of course).

These days, as rough and eventful as they might be for us at work and in the world, are still enormously special times for us where the kids love unconditionally, and play time is paramount in a child’s mind. Curie looks for more time with both of us, with her writing at school that she aspires to spend more time with momma. Besides playing school, and mommy and baby, and doctor, magic and queens, we spend time in bed pretending to be things. The other day playing with Elia and Erin, Curie said that she was queen of the pandas and that Elia was the baby panda, Albert was the daddy panda and Erin was the Mommy panda named Herrera. At least she didn’t call Erin the grandmother like Elia did.

Posted on

The Gift of Giving: Beauty Lesson Revisited

Back in September of 2015 we were teaching Curie the lesson that “anyone who smiles is pretty, and that your actions dictate whether or not you are beautiful.” Since then, it is something that we have reinforced whenever we could and something that we have started teaching Elia, though not as pointedly.

Yesterday, on the day after the inauguration, a week after MLK’s birthday, and on the day of the Women’s March, Albert stayed with the kids so that Erin could go to the march. By the afternoon, to keep the kids busy, they went to the mall to walk around. While waiting for Erin to return and join them, Albert bought a case of Frozen blind boxes at half price at Barnes and Noble’s clearance section and told the kids that they could open one box with Erin at the restaurant.

At the restaurant, Curie asked to open her box and we told Curie that she could open one now before we ate, or two after we ate, and she chose two (marshmallow test); but upon opening them, both of hers and Elia’s were duplicates we already had. We then told them that there were kids who would love to have the toys and that giving is sometimes better than getting. So there we were at Tysons Mall, looking for kids young enough to be unjaded and appreciative, parents who looked like they might be receptive to this lesson we were teaching, and, as a rule, they couldn’t be carrying American Girl doll bags.

Curie found a two year old girl at the Disney store (yes, ironic that we were giving away Disney toys at a Disney store, but it was the same one where we started this lesson in 2015) and before Curie could do her spiel, the girl had the doll in her hands and looked like it was instantly hers. Her mother thought her daughter had taken the toy away from Curie, but we explained that we had duplicates and that we were learning that beauty comes from within, and that the gift of giving is sometimes better than getting. It was well received and she asked the little girl to say thank you, also a good lesson.

Curie had a second Elsa to give, and gave it to a second girl at the store;  again we received a positive response, more so in fact: the father seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing, as well as grateful that we were giving the toy to their daughter. As we were doing this, the woman behind the register overheard us and, though we thought she would ask us to stop since it was a store, instead took it to heart and said, “well this needs to be rewarded,” and proceeded to reach behind the counter to give Curie, Elia, and the little girl each a Disney bracelet.

Well, Curie loves little kids to begin with, and was so moved by how grateful the girls were; the fact that she “got for giving”, and that her parents were so proud of her, really reinforced the lesson and she wanted to do more. So, instead of going home to open the rest of the blind boxes, we opened the entire case, and Curie and Elia gave away almost every figure to kids in the mall. There were so many different reactions (the 1/36 rare Olaf with an upside-down head was hard to give away, the first girl gave it back), from pleasant surprise to gratitude, all saying to our kids that giving was as important as getting.

We had been trying to figure out how to include charity in our children’s life lessons with things like keeping one-third of your allowance, saving one-third, and giving one-third, but the kids have been too young to even appreciate money yet. We wanted to go to Arlington to lay wreaths, but that day there was an ice storm. We teach, as often as we can, the strength of kindness, the will of charity, and the importance of from where beauty derives, but it is hard to make an object lesson of it. We got that opportunity by chance on a day where the voice of tolerance was being spoken, and a sleeping giant awoken; the case of blind boxes was a frivolous $36, but it turned out to be a chance to see our kids embrace such an important lesson at such a critical time in history.

A quick addendum from Albert’s Facebook: “So, to be fair, I don’t want anyone to think that our parenting is a bed of roses, FB has a tendency to filter for the things that we want to talk about, things we love and things we hate, so the feed is gets pretty polarized (talking about the mundane in the early days of social media has thankfully largely gone away). I just wanted to say that we have good days and bad days,and yesterday was extraordinary so we wanted to celebrate it. However, there was as much whining and hangry frustration as there was beauty and joy – as it is with any day. It is parenting as it is with life, you take some good with some bad and hope that there is more good than bad at the end of each day.”

Posted on

Elia January 2017

So a lot happened this month, but we would be remiss if we did not address the bullet through Elia’s daycare class window. Frightening enough as it is, it was more frightening to find out that there were three bullets (still likely a random shooting considering the spread of the bullets) and that the bullet through the window was at child level. It was lucky that the shooting took place at nap time, however, the facility reacted poorly without locking down the facility until asking the police, and trying to downplay the incident to a parking inconvenience. We are still trying to decide if we will stay at the facility.

On a brighter note, it was Elia’s birthday this past month, at three she is 15 percentile for height and 3 percent for weight. She was so quiet at the doctor’s visit until the doctor told her she did not have to get a shot, after which she brightened up considerably.

Elia loved all the lead up to her birthday, telling us she wanted a Star Wars birthday for months until her birthday, the couple days before her actual birthday though, she switched to a Thomas birthday. We had her party at Busy Bees an indoor playground. Erin told Albert that Elia wanted it there, and when Albert asked Elia, Elia outed Erin and said “Mommy says we have at Busy Bees.” To be fair, Erin had given Elia three choices. We had a black out at her actual birthday where initially the owner was not going to discount the party, he did later, but likely realizing that we would tell everyone of the service we received. We bought flashlights for everyone as part of the party, and we gave away IKEA tool boxes for giveaways. Elia LOVED being the center of attention. We caught her singing happy birthday for days later. She also sang in the low funny voice that Curie did back in the day, but had not ever heard it. Amazing really.

Albert’s birthday is the day after Elia’s, his is effectively eliminated with hers. On his birthday, Elia said “my birthday too.” For days, she would say “happy burday to Dada! Happy burday to me!” Albert would say “Happy Birthday Elia!” She would reply “Happy Birthday Dada! It our birthday, we sang happy birthday to us!”

We went to California for the Christmas holiday and went to a hotel the night before the trip on Albert’s birthday. Albert caught pink eye on that day and spend his birthday in the urgent care getting an antibiotic ointment. When talking about the trip, Elia would tell us “I go trip with you,” apparently we have been going away too often that she wanted to make sure she came with us.

At three years old, Elia has the appropriate level of sass, when talking about  pink eye, she spoke up and said, “don’t touch dada’s yucky poo poo eye.” And then proceeded to laugh knowing she told a funny.

On the plane she wanted a window seat and when we were split up, Albert and Elia went to the back of the plane to their seats, but that seat didn’t have a window. Elia cried. Eventually she calmed down and flapped to help the plane take off. She had such an excited face.

Part of our trip was going to Disneyland the day after we got there. We went with Bernard and the twins and met up with George and his family. At three (we paid for her to go as a three year old instead of free as a two year old, because we were certain that she would say she was three if asked. It was only two days after her birthday). Elia is at that amazing age where it was all magical. She met Tinkerbell who became her newfound character. We even bought her a doll. She loved, and we mean LOVED Small World, it was set up for Christmas inside and she was amazed. It rained that morning, but it didn’t deter us. At one point when she clapped, we said “what did you do? did you clap?” She said, “yes, I clap like this!” And proceeded to demonstrate with a wild clapping all around her face.

For Christmas all the grandkids got Instax cameras from Albert’s parents, and while the camera was pretty much above her recommended age, she loved it shooting an entire ten frames of Albert’s ear. Since then she has learned that there are limited frames and that if she can see you in the view finder, it will take a picture of you, which is amazing. Santa brought her an entire case of superhero blind boxes which she loved (see picture). Her birthday and Christmas so close together, she loves the idea of presents.

We took the kids to see Moana, and Elia, who is very tempo oriented would bob at all the songs. While Maui was doing his dance, she started saying “round stom stom, round stom stom, doodly doo doodle doo,” while bouncing her fists on each other for the first half and twinkling her fingers for the second part. Her favorite song is “Away away (Aue aue)” and will say “dat my favrite, Dada’s favrite too.” She has been quite the daddy’s girl wanting him to drive her to and from school, likely because he takes her to Target after picking her up. When the song comes on the whole family raises their hand to check the stars.

Elia loves to get her hair cut and we went back to the same Cartoon Cuts for her to get her hair cut again. She asked for the same guy. Very cute. She loves to twirl in dresses, loved to be in matching black with Dada, asks for Dada to pick her up everywhere except recently when Erin kept her home for the day. After that she has started to ask for Mommy again. Each night Erin has the kids say what they are grateful for as part of the bedtime process. She regularly says “I grateful for you, and you, and you (all three of us). The other day she wanted to add: “I grateful for sun” and made slow vague sun gestures, which was hilarious. Then after, she askd to add another thing; she said “I grateful for doctor.” We thought she meant the doctor at her check up, so we said “we love our doctor.” She then clarified: “I grateful doctor take me from Mommy belly – we had made our annual visit to the NICU – still, how sophisticated is that?

Posted on

Curie December 2016

It is always quite something to write at the end of the year. There are Christmas posts and birthdays and all sorts of things like travel and family and such. Interestingly there is little time for reflection; however, we had a revelation recently about a Curie/Elia dynamic that was proving to be interesting. We had been noticing how cute Elia is seeing her  make her way growing up that we had seemed to have missed a bit with Curie. We had attributed this to Curie’s early diction where we did not see Curie’s making her way with her language. But the revelation we have had recently is that when Curie was turning three, Elia was just born, an infant, and we simply were overwhelmed to appreciate everything at the time. Don’t get me wrong, by reading older posts, looking at pictures, and watching videos we loved Curie at the age, but simply did not have the ability to appreciate it as much as we do now.

We have also noticed that Curie is a little jealous still of the attention that Elia gets (as all first born kids get), and we are learning to be careful when complementing Elia to make sure we have parallel compliments for Curie – a thought while writing this is that we need to make sure we do the same for Elia when we compliment Curie. There is a tendency to think that Curie knows she is so smart and capable, but we have to remember that that needs reinforcement.

Curie loves kindergarten and is doing great (so far, as a parent you are constantly wary), and loved it even more when Mommy volunteered at her school. Albert really needs to do the same. She also thinks that Liam is dreamy; Albert needs to find out who this Liam is. 🙂

She has become quite sassy as of late, something we are proud of. She was explaining how she didn’t want something to Erin, and in passing Albert agreed with Curie to which she said “Thanks Dada!” In a Steve Martin, well “Thaaank you!” kind of tone. Sassy. She also told Erin to scoot over when trying to sit together in the living room chair, she said that Mommy has a bigger butt than Dada, but a smaller head. Sassy. We have always known she was willful and now sassy is a part of that. Albert has been getting  kick out of mispronouncing her martial arts form that she is doing, it is called Ki Ban Yan part 1, but Albert calls it Ban Ki Moon part 1 every time to make Curie correct him. Albert is almost certainly the role model source for her sassiness. More on sass, when we write Elia’s post later. Sassy, I tell you, it is fantastic.

We have blogged how we went to California for the holidays and took Curie and Elia to Disneyland and how even though it was so expensive and you feel gouged, it is offset by the “magic” for the kids. Curie was so proud to be exactly 40″ and riding Star Tours, her first big kid ride. She was obsessed with going up Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and was looking for Aurora. She ended up buying a Rapunzel doll instead because of a rule that she made up. You can only buy a doll of a character you actually met there, and she had seen the Rapunzel show in the park next to the castle.

We saw Moana with Curie and interestingly her favorite character was Te Fite, the island more than Moana or Maui. She and Elia agree that the movie was too scary, but<Spoiler Alert> Curie loves the twist ending and what it represents. She watches a pirated clip of that moment on “Eggs (You Tube)” a lot. She also loves singing the songs from the movie but has no desire to rewatch it in the theater. We also bought Beauty and the Beast and that was also too scary so we watched the 30 minutes of nice parts to the end which she loved. She and Elia loved the trailer for the live action as well.

Curie could stand to eat more, and eat more protein, grinds her teeth when she sleeps, is sassy as mentioned before, can tend to whine or get fussy when she is tired, but works really hard on being beautiful – our definition is, again, anyone who smiles is pretty, and beauty comes from within. She will voluntarily give Elia things Elia wants even if it is the only or last one and looks to us for recognition of her actions (there are other times of course where she does not share, but that is normal), which is pretty amazing.

Posted on

My Birthday Present

I am apparently difficult to buy presents for and so for my birthday Erin just asks me what I want now to simplify things: a 35 slot Wustof knife block (just the block, so no need to pay a penny). You are supposed to only really need one good kitchen knife (a good chef’s knife – this would be the Fibrox now – best recommendation from America’s Test Kitchen and only $24!), but apparently I have more than that. What is scary is to see all these knives in one place instead of the two knife blocks and bamboo drawer holder they used to live in. Oh, and I do hand wash all of them except for the IKEA steak knives, Erin refuses to wash my knives. 🙂
 
From the top left, Wustof steel, Victorinox Fibrox chef’s knife, Wustof roast beef slicer from Ed (very long and sharp, I paid a penny), a Caphalon chef’s knife, the other Caphalon chef’s knife I bought for Erin when she was in Amherst and found out that she only used a utility knife and a paring knife to cook, then, my first no-sharpen cheap chef’s knife that I still have. A fantastic Wustof Nakiri, a Victorinox Santoku, a Kyocera Ceramic Santoku, next, a custom Japanese knife from the Tsukiji fish market from George (another penny) for our wedding, an empty slot, J.A. Henkels Carver from Jim and Meg for our wedding (we owe a penny, btw), two red Spyderco 6″ Spyderco kitchen utility knives, new issue, two black original issue, the best cleaver ever from Taichung from my mother (another penny), an empty kitchen shears slot (now holding a lighter), a Jamie Oliver carving fork, three empty slots, a no name but great paring knife I think from Erin’s parent’s house referenced earlier, a Victorinox Fibrox paring knife and Fibrox serrated blunt knife, Spyderco 9″ utility kitchen knife, new issue (now in the slot next to the custom knife) a CKRT fillet knife also from George (another penny), then on the bottom row, six IKEA steak knives, a no name steak knife from my parent’s house in Irvine, and said plain edge utility knife I think from Jim and Brenda‘s house in Marshfield. So all told 28 knives, one steel, one fork, one open shear slot and four open knife slots.
 
BTW, love the Spyderco 6 inch knives for utility (when they were reissued I rushed to buy more), the no name paring for close work and boning, the Najiki for vegetables (the Santoku is too new) the ceramic for its edge on tomatoes, and now the Fibrox, but that is too new. The Tsujiki custom is beautiful and theoretically the best knife, but I have only used it a handful of times because I had not seen George since he gave it to me almost 10 years before and could only pay him the penny (or dollar?) this past year.; so now it is out of its box ready for use. The carver, slicer, and filet knives are very specialized and I admit to using a Wustof knife sharpener instead of the steel (except to straighten the tines of a serrated knife).
 
There! More than you ever wanted to know about my cooking knives; now about my many pocket knives…. Just kidding, actually of the many I have, I only use a Spyderco Delica 4. 🙂
 
Oh and thank you for the present Erin, I love it.
Posted on

Christmas in California 2016

Here is the one collected family photo. We open presents on Christmas Eve, and the grand parents bought all the kids Fuji Film Instax 8 cameras and Bernard hung some of the pictures on the wall, which was pretty cool. The silly picture, Albert asked everyone to tickle the person next to them.

We met Suephy, Edward, Jared, Dylan, Mama, and Papa at Mitsuwa Marketplace for lunch on the 23rd.

We then celebrated Mama and Papa’s 50th anniversary at Din Tai Fung South Coast Plaza 鼎泰豐. 18 trays of xiao long bao were consumed. Our parents went 2-3 hours early so that we could get in “easily.” Happy 50th Anniversary Mama and Papa!

After Din Tai Fung, we heard a live singer singing Christmas carols and the kids danced to the music. Curie has a way with little kids and she danced with two of them. Elia did too, and it was the first time we saw her as a big kid taking care of little kids since she is usually the youngest.

The next day after Suephy, Bernard, and Albert helped Mama and Papa with the house, we took the family to Kula Revolving Sushi Bar in Torrance, Erin‘s now favorite restaurant (we went once when we got in). We sat in two tables across the conveyor belt from each other and ate 98 plates, six bowls of Ramen, two bowls of miso, five desserts, two fried chickens and other miscellaneous dishes and a few drinks, and still it was cheaper than Din Tai Fung.

Agnes and the twins treated us to a Christmas concert before opening presents as is our custom on Christmas Eve. Look how proud Bernard looks! 🙂

Sam Woo Restaurant (even cheaper than Kula but no less good!) and miscellaneous fun: an epic arm wrestling contest between Jared and Erin, playing with the Instax 8 cameras, Wii and Mario Kart, making muffins, dancing in the supermarket and generally having a good time.

Bernard and Agnes chose a tour of and dinner on the Queen Mary, which was an impressive ship for its time (Ed and Suephy chose Din Tai Fung, Mama and Papa chose Sam Woo, and Albert and Erin chose Kula). One of the most impressive things was a Lego model of the ship.

We did a fair amount of clowning around, and to be honest trying to get a group of our size around at the same time was challenging, but we had a nice dinner in a private room.