I know... It's been ages since my last post. So that means that now that I'm finally writing, I should have something phenomenally, fantabulously exciting to report, right? Well, no. Not really. See, the thing that's finally inspiring me to update you isn't all that exciting or important. It's not a milestone, a major occurence, or anything to really write home about. Not that there hasn't been a lot going on in our lives. Come to think of it, there have been any number of things that I could have devoted multiple blog posts to. Such as our recent trip to Hawaii.
What made this trip so remarkable was that we took it sans kids. Yup - our first vacation as a couple since our first child was born! A real grown-up vacation! One that included real grown-up meals in real grown-up restaurants followed by dimly-lit, romantic and passionate real grown-up se-- Nevermind.
We had greatly anticipated this trip for months before, so it seemed like a cruel trick that seemingly everything we saw reminded us in some way of our two rugrats. Sigh. Guess that's parenthood for you.
A week after our trip to Hawaii, we packed up the entire family for a trip to Asia. The excruciating plane ride over there deserves a blog post all its own. The thirteen hour flight broke down like this:
HOUR 1 - Calliope sleeps. I give myself a smug pat on the back and start reading People magazine.
HOUR 2 - Calliope abruptly wakes up, realizes she's in a tin can hurtling through thin air and begins to wail.
HOURS 3-8 - Calliope does an incredible impersonation of Linda Blair in the Exorcist. I alternate between feeling horrified by the realization that I am the parent of THAT screaming baby on the plane and being in awe of my daughter's sheer stamina.
HOUR 9 - Calliope passes out. I use the restroom for the first time in eight hours.
HOURS 10-12 - Calliope wakes up and stays calm enough to eat something and watch the first five minutes of all two dozen DVDs I've brought with me about five times each.
HOUR 13 - Calliope starts to get upset again and ramps up for another epic Linda Blair impersonation. Thankfully, we land before her head starts spinning.
Torturous flight notwithstanding, our stay in Taiwan was wonderful. It was great to visit with family we hadn't seen in years and introduce our relatives to Vince and the kids.
After Taiwan, we flew to Singapore, the country where I lived before going to college, and the place I consider home. We visited various museums, historical locales, famous restaurants, old friends and the world-reknowned zoo, but what did the kids love the most about Singapore?
The bed in our Four Seasons hotel room.
Aside from the bed, I think what made the biggest impression on them during our Asia trip were the various modes of transport. Forget national monuments or breathtaking natural vistas. Bring on the planes, trains, and automobiles (not to mention the subways and monorails). Speaking of modes of transport, I picked up a nice souvenir while I was in Singapore - a nice new stroller. I also got a nice new...
...tattoo! Well, technically I didn't get a NEW tattoo; I simply added onto an existing one. You see that dragon? That's the tattooI got on my last trip back to Singapore in 2001. See the cherry blossoms and the Chinese characters? That's the new part. In case you're wondering what the characters say, it's "midlife crisis." Just kidding! It's the kids' Chinese names.
I was lucky enough to have the same guy who's been tattooing me since I was a teen give me my latest one. His name's Chak, and he's the one who gave me the dragon tattoo eleven years before, as well as some of my other ink. When I first met him 18 years ago, he was just one of the artists at Johnny Two Thumbs Tattoo. Now he owns the place. I'm hoping that that means that when I go back again in another ten years, he'll still be there to add the names of all my new children to my arm. ;)
It seemed like we barely had a chance to recover from the jetlag of our Asia trip before the holiday season got into full swing.
Keeping the Asian theme going, Benjamin melted our hearts with with a spirited rendition of "Jingle Bell Wok" in the preschool holiday show.
Then before we knew it, Christmas was here! We got the best gift ever when Benjamin rode a two-wheeled bike (with no training wheels!) on Christmas Day.
Not to be outdone, Calliope decided to surprise us by giving up diapers a few days later.
Along with diapers, it looks like she also lost her sense of style. Luckily, her modeling career didn't suffer from her fashion faux pas.
Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to walk unawares into TJ Maxx and see a larger-than-life-size poster of your child hanging over your head? Most people don't realize that just because you're hired for a modeling job doesn't mean that the company that hired you tells you when or even if your photos! So believe me when I say that it was a shock to suddenly see this picture of Calliope. As for the pic on the right, that's for a costume company called Disguise. Little do they know, dressing my daughter up as a witch can hardly be called a "disguise."
The most recent of the many milestones that have happened since my last blog post was the kids' birthday. We celebrated with a rock star party at Music Stars and Masters in Westwood where Benjamin channeled Billy Joel and Calliope dressed up as an 80s fashion victim.
So you can see that a lot of pretty major things have happened, any one of which I could have devoted a blog post to. But it's not the big things that made me want to get off my butt and start writing. It's the little things.
Like the fact that Benjamin still doesn't understand a critical aspect of playing hide-and-seek.
Or my constant wonder at the size of my daughter's appetite...
...and temper. Lawd have mercy!
It's Benjamin's recent strange new creation, a creature he calls a "humpdacat."
And speaking of strange, it's Benjamin's cross-dressing tendencies. After he put this outfit on, he proclaimed that he was a Superman Princess. I find this endearing but distressing. Any child of mine should know that that cape doesn't go with that tutu!
So yes, it's the little things that want to share with you. Which brings me back to the first image in this post:
This is Calliope using a Nosefrida Snotsucker. On herself. The Nosefrida is a nasal aspirator for babies and children. The pointy end of the plastic receptacle goes in the nostril, the end of the tube goes in your mouth, you suck, and a little blue filter prevents you from gagging on your beloved's boogers. Yum! Last week, Calliope was sitting on her potty and somehow got her hands on this Nosefrida. I thought it was pretty funny that she was using it on herself, so I took a pic. A moment later, I heard the sound of bubbles blowing. I stopped and saw that she'd put the nostril end of the gadget into her potty and was blowing bubbles into her pee. WARNING: If you think that's gross, stop reading now. Ok, ready? The next thing I heard was silence, which I correctly assumed meant that she was now sucking her pee UP. EEK! I shrieked, grabbed it out of her hands, and took it apart to be cleaned. I was pleasantly surprised to find that none of her pee had made it past the filter into the tube. I guess that thing really does work!
You'd think that I'd be more excited to share stories of our world travels or my son's first bike ride than stories of my daughter sucking pee up with a nasal aspirator. But in a way, I'm not. I have a hunch that, more than these big trips, it'll be these little things which I'll remember and treasure in the years to come. You see, people take trips all the time. Everyone eventually gets potty trained (I think) and learns how to ride a bike (except for my mom who rides an adult-sized tricycle). And everyone has birthday parties. But humpdacats, Superman Princesses and unfortunate Nosefrida-pee incidents? Those are special, because those are the stories that make my babies all mine.
Last week, at the age of one year, one month, and 18 days, Calliope started walking. I captured this vid of her toddling around in a racquetball court at the Y and sent it to some friends and family:
The responses were enthusiastic! "So cute!" "Those irresistible legs!" "Adorable!" My favorite response, however, came from Yvonne, who can always be counted on to keep it real. She said, "Now more than ever, she looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man." Before you jump to Calliope's defense with righteous indignation, take a look at this: .
Two milestones in one blog post. I have to admit that I feel a little guilty about that, especially when I compare it to the nauseatingly over-the-top coverage that Benjamin's first haircut and first tooth received. I guess that's what happens with the second-born. Sorry, Calliope! If it makes you feel any better, my own mommy milestones have received short shrift, too. I never got around to blogging about the joys of sneezing without peeing. I've just been too busy. But if you'd like to hear more about that, dear readers, let me know!
At the beginning of this month, Benjamin began attending classes at Redwood Village, thereby making the leap from toddler to preschooler. PRESCHOOLER! Wow, where did the time go? It seemed like just the other day that I found out we were pregnant with him, and now he's going to school. It seemed like we only just toured Redwood and put our names on the waitlist. In reality, it was almost two years ago. Yes, two years ago. Gotta love Los Angeles - the race to stay on your A-game begins with preschool! .
We'd heard that tears weren't uncommon on a child's first day of school, but Benjamin seemed to have no problems adjusting. As soon as we arrived, he saw his friend Nolan and his teacher Ms. Gisele and took off running with nary a backwards glance.
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When I picked him up that afternoon, the teachers said that Benjamin's first day went really well. He enjoyed playing with the other kids, managed to make it to the potty when he needed to, and didn't have any separation issues. They did, however, have two requests of me. They asked that I buy him a smaller lunchbox that was more proportionate to his small stature. They also asked me not to dress him in skinny jeans anymore because he'd spent the day hitching them up after they'd shimmied down below his bottom. .
February is a busy month for our family. Vince's birthday is in February. Benjamin's birthday is in February. Vince's nephew Tyler's birthday is in February. Valentine's Day is in February. Chinese New Year (usually) falls in February. Now we have the upcoming birth of my brother's first child, not to mention the imminent arrival of our own daughter. February's shaping up to oust December as the most festive month of the year! .Vince's birthday was the first February event to be celebrated. We marked the occasion by indulging in a sumptuous family-style dinner with a few of our closest friends at nearby Mosto Enoteca. We took a leap of faith by allowing the chef to choose each dish for us and were not disappointed; the meal was one of the best to be devoured ever. After three-and-a-half hours of sheer gluttony in their private dining room, we rolled out of there, happy and sated. . The next evening, we drove down to Long Beach to celebrate Tyler's third birthday at an indoor playground. . Although the Boo was the youngest one there, he had a great time. Never one to let his Liliputian stature hold him back, he jumped right into the fray, swimming in the ball pit, bouncing on the mini-trampoline, and playing "follow the leader" right along with the big kids. He also shocked us with a demonstration of his surprising upper body strength: Maybe we should sign the kid up for gymnastics classes! . In order to avert a potential conflict with his sister's birth, we celebrated the Boo's birthday a few weeks early. So last Saturday morning right after he woke up, we gave him his birthday gift, a bright green, pint-sized running bike. Also known as a balance bike, running bikes have two wheels and no pedals. The idea is that the child will propel himself with his feet and get a sense of how to balance the bike as it moves without the help of training wheels.
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With the help of Daddy and Hao Gong, the Boo was able to tool around on his bike. Kind of.
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We went across the street to Nolan's place, where Benjamin let his best friend take his new wheels for a test drive, too.
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Later on, we got ready for Benjamin's birthday party. Our original plan was to order pizzas for our guests, but when my mom got wind of that, she made a horrified face. She sniffed that her precious grandson deserved to have something better than mere take-out for his second birthday party. So instead of pizza, my mom cooked up a big batch of Chinese-style fried rice from scratch. And if that wasn't enough, she also whipped up a huge tray of stir-fried noodles!
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While my mom was cranking out fifty pounds of Chinese cuisine in our kitchen, I headed down to the toddler playground to stake a claim. My faithful friends Deb and Julie were there to help me out. Together, we blew up monkey balloons, arranged the monkey goody bags, and set up the monkey pinata. Did I mention that the theme of the party would be "monkeys"? I'd even had a special monkey birthday cake custom made by the talented Elizabeth Lam, the same pastry chef who'd crafted Nolan's birthday cake several months earlier.
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The guests arrived shortly after, and soon the party was in full swing. Although February had been plagued by cold, wet weather, we were blessed to have clear skies that day. Benjamin seemed to understand that the fuss was for him, and seeing him joyfully running around with his little friends made me so happy that I thought my heart was going to burst.
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As the sun started to go down, we gathered around and sang "Happy Birthday" to Benjamin.
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In the spirit of the celebration, I put aside my food tyrant ways and allowed Benjamin to have a cupcake. We won't talk about what it did to his tummy the next day, but he sure did enjoy eating it at his party - and wearing it on his face! . It's hard to believe that our little boy is growing up. It seemed like just the other day that he was born, and in the blink of an eye, two years have passed. In a a few short weeks, Benjamin will have a little sister, and he'll no longer be the baby in our family. But until then, I'll hug, hold, and celebrate Benjamin. Wonderful, beautiful Benjamin. .
Benjamin hit a potty milestone this week: without prompting from me, he stopped playing, took his diaper off, sat on his potty, and peed - in that order. See, sometimes he'll sit on the potty and pee, but forget to take his diaper off. Sometimes he manages to get his diaper off, but then gets distracted and continues playing, and winds up peeing on the floor - or worse. So this is a major potty coup! Of course, it's only happened one other time since, but such is the rollercoaster that accompanies all toddler milestones. The fact that he was even able to remember to take his diaper off before going potty is enough for me. .
Now, if only he could figure out how to get the diaper back on. .
Not too long after the first teeth started sprouting in Benjamin's mouth last year, we noticed that the two front ones seemed a little... odd. Rather than smooth chiclets, they resembled curved crescents. When I pointed this out to Boo's pediatrician, she said that it might have something to do with his blood disorder and instructed me to take him to a pediatric dentist. After a cursory look inside his mouth, the dentist told me Benjamin's teeth were "normal," said there was no such correlation between Benjamin's blood condition and the state of his teeth, and sent us on our way. Within months, the chipping had become much more pronounced, and I decided it was time for a second opinion. Enter the wonderful Dr. Walden Yu, referred to us by a neighbor.
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Dr. Yu examined the Boo's tiny mouth and informed us that his two front teeth weren't just chipped; they had cavities. Cavities!! He went on to confirm what our pediatrician had suspected all those months ago: that Benjamin's dental woes were, indeed, related to his spherocytosis. In a nutshell, kids who don't get enough oxygen often form imperfect enamel. After silently cursing Vince's genes, I scheduled an appointment to come back in two weeks and have the cavities filled.
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Vince took the morning off of work to accompany us to the dentist. He was there not only for moral support, but also to help hold the Boo down so Dr. Yu could work on those two teeth. Luckily, there were DVD players installed above each chair to help distract his little patients. I selected "Beauty and the Beast" for Benjamin to watch and prayed that he wouldn't been too freaked out.
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He was. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre could have been playing for all the good that DVD player did. I guess nothing can distract a toddler from the fact that he is being held against his will while someone is drilling inside of his mouth. As you can see in the video, Benjamin had gotten so worked up that he'd managed to kick off one shoe and one sock during the procedure. The other thing you can see is that Vince was smiling. I know that he hates musicals, so that leaves just one conclusion: I married a sadist.
Half an hour of drilling and filling later, Benjamin emerged plus two perfect front teeth and minus one pint of sweat. You can't tell from the picture, but there was a dinner plate-sized wet mark on the front of Vince's shirt where Benjamin's head had been restrained- er, resting comfortably during the procedure.
I have to admit that we were pretty shocked by the cosmetic change in Benjamin's smile. We'd grown to love his crooked little crescent-shaped teeth, and it was odd to see them replaced by perfect pearly whites. Then again, we do live in Los Angeles, home of Hollywood and Dr. 90210. So, as they say, when in Rome...
But I draw the line at Botox. No Botox for Benjamin - at least not until he's ten.
Benjamin has been on a couple of trips already. There was the trip to Atlanta when he was six months old for his uncle's wedding. And then there was the more recent trip to Vancouver in which we tagged along on one of Daddy's business trips. This past weekend, however, we took Benjamin on his first bona-fide vacation to sunny San Diego. Making it even more fun was the fact that we were going away with another family - close buds and neighbors Shawn, Julie, and Nolan. .We left LA on Friday morning and drove to Carlsbad for our first stop - Legoland. There was much for the kids to enjoy - a water park that offered them some cool relief from the scorching heat and dozens upon dozens of displays, all meticulously crafted from Legos.
More than the intricate exhibits or the cooling water fountains, Benjamin seemed to enjoy running around the open walkways the most. Seeing him savor such a simple task with such relish brought a smile to my face.
After two hours at Legoland, we were ready for dinner. We stopped at nearby Encinatas for a quick dinner of Mexican food before driving to our hotel in San Diego's Gaslamp District.
On the agenda for Saturday was a trip to the San Diego Zoo. As we pulled into the parking lot, Vince murmured, "The San Diego Zoo. This is where you belong, Benjamin." I found this to be a rather odd and mildly offensive thing to say, and I told Julie and Shawn as much when I relayed the story to them. Almost immediately, the three of them started singing in unison: "You belong in the zoo - the San Diego Zoo." What the--??! Upon seeing my look of shock, Shawn offered by way of explanation that they were singing a jingle from an 80s-era ad campaign which apparently didn't make it to Georgia where I was living at the time.
Once inside, we made a beeline for the petting zoo. Benjamin wasted no time making friends with a small goat who was approximately his size. Although there were many other goats in the petting zoo, for some reason, the Boo kept returning to that particular goat. I was almost worried that he would try to carry him out with us when it was time to leave.
We hit up a few more attractions and left the zoo shortly before lunchtime to return to the hotel for naptime. While the boys slept, Julie and I took a stroll around nearby Horton Plaza and then stopped by the grocery store to pick up lunch. As I thumbed through some magazines at the newstand, I came across this:
A picture from the Graco Baby Products photo shoot that Benjamin and I did back in January! Though I had already seen another one of our ads in print, it was more exciting this time. The first time, a friend had told me that she had seen us and then sent us the magazine in the mail. It's somehow more thrilling to be unexpectedly greeted by your own picture while casually thumbing through a magazine. Of course, I purchased that issue, and had there been more on the newsstand, I would have purchased several more! After the boys woke from their naps, we returned to the zoo where we saw more creatures than we could keep track of. Sea otters and vultures and deer-like whatchamacallits, oh, my! But of the countless animals we saw, the elephants were the most majestic. Halfway through the afternoon, we realized that we were pretty far from the entrance and getting pretty exhausted. By "we" I mean "the parents," because the two little guys seemed far from exhausted. On the contrary, they were full of energy.
Luckily, that energy lasted much of the trek back to the front of the zoo, so they were happy to walk and even run much of time.
Benjamin, who was not yet as proficient at the act of running as Nolan was, tripped and fell, resulting in his very first skinned knee.
On Sunday morning, Vince and I had plans to meet up with some friends for brunch. We had some extra time before our date, so we took a stroll around Petco Stadium.
After working up an appetite running around the stands, we headed to the St. Tropez Cafe to dine with our buds Mike, Kelly, and Sydney. Sydney, who is a mere two months younger than Benjamin, developed quite a bond with Vince. In fact, when it came time for us to leave, she put up quite a fuss, reaching and calling for him while we walked away. Hopefully our own daughter-to-be will take to him this quickly when she arrives in February.
That afternoon, we reunited with Shawn, Julie, and Nolan for hands-on fun at the Science Center. Benjamin and Nolan enjoyed playing with the myriad exhibits, but the big hit (for Benjamin, anyway), was the oversized wooden xylophone in the Kid City section of the museum. Hmmmm. Maybe the Boo is destined to be a musician, and not a dancer.
That evening, we had dinner at a local tavern and then dessert at a Ghiradelli ice cream shop a few blocks away. Dinner was middling, but dessert was divine. We decided to relax his dietary rules and allow Benjamin to taste his first ice cream sundae, which he enjoyed wearing all over his face.
The next morning, we breakfasted at a local restaurant which deigned to proclaim to have the "best pancakes in the world." What their proclamation should have said is that they had the most fibrous pancakes in the world, for I found a gnarled white string cooked into one of mine. The waiter's excuse? "Oh, that must have come from a kitchen towel." Ah, naturally.
While I was trying not to think about how much of the kitchen towel I might have already ingested, Benjamin got busy moisturizing his face with creamer. Nolan must have found Benjamin's gooey cheek to be irresistible, because we caught him doing this:
Looks like Benjamin didn't mind the extra attention, either!
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Once breakfast was over, we checked out of our hotel and headed back to Legoland. After a quick run through the the Sea Life Aquarium, we took the boys to Pirate Shores for some water park fun. Unfortunately, all that gushing, splashing, falling, roaring water proved to be too overwhelming for the little Boo, so we scooped him up and brought him over to the tamer, more toddler-friendly section.
That's better!
We spent the rest of the morning at Legoland and were back in our cars just in time to beat traffic and allow the boys to take their naps. I'll admit that I did a little snoozing on the drive home, too.
Poor Vince was the only one of us who didn't get to sleep in the car. Once we arrived at home, however, the weekend caught up with him, and he collapsed onto the floor, where he remained, immobile, for half an hour.
It's a miracle that no one collapsed sooner. We crammed a LOT into our weekend: two trips to Legoland, a full day at the Zoo, a walk around Petco Stadium, brunch with old friends, an afternoon at the Science Museum, plus dinners out every night. I'm exhausted just recounting it all, and I don't think we'll attempt another trip like this anytime soon. But just when I start to wonder why we wear ourselves out taking Benjamin to all these places he probably won't remember, I think of this:
And that makes it all worth it!
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