american boy

here's a+g singing american boy. check out alicia's 'tude and griffin's cool shades.

Griffin is 3 (+1 month)!

my little boy is 3 years old!

 
 
 
 

40 is the new 30

my favorite husband turned 40 this past monday.  we celebrated this momentous occasion at an intimate dinner with a few close friends.  edward was roasted a bit, as our friends shared some funny and embarassing stories about him.  

my favorite story was the one about how edward forced a very pregnant me to sit on blankets thrown over his precious sofa because he was worried my water might break while i was sitting on it.  and of course, my water did break while i was sitting on the sofa -- and all i could think about was how to get to the bathroom without getting the sofa dirty!!  to his credit, he didn't check for stains until after we got back from the hospital with baby ally.  haha.  funny guy, that edward.

the weird thing is, 40 really is the new 30.  when i was in my early 20's, i dated a 40 year old guy.  i thought he was pretty old.  but when i look at my current 40 year old guy, i think he's pretty young.  not as young as all the random strangers who meet him seem to think though.  my hairdresser met him and went on and on about how young he looks, especially compared to me (thanks a lot mrs. hairdresser).  his fantasia buddies were all surprised to find out he is a father, and then were shocked that he is 40.  of course, he does work hard to keep his girlish figure -- swimming 3x a week and drinking only 1 pearl milk tea a day (versus the 2 he used to inhale).

happy birthday mr. yim!  love, your thirtysomething wife, ellen.

Second child syndrome

Edward and I are both the second and youngest child, and we have both suffered from the “second child syndrome.” Our older siblings have tons of pictures, videos, and stuff from their early childhood. We are lucky to even show up in the background of their pictures. So we swore that we would not do that to our second child … and then we had our second child.

Poor poor Griffin. Not only does he get stuck wearing the occasional girly hand-me-down, but he has considerably fewer pictures and write-ups documenting his development. I did a week-by-week account of Ally’s first year. For Griffin, I think I summed it up in a single blog.

So here’s my (lame) attempt at doing some catch-up.

Stupid (baby) human tricks – Since Griffin was about 22 months old, he could play “Name that Tune” with ~30 tunes, including Mamma Mia, Alicia Keys, and Rent (the Musical). You could play or sing a few notes from any song, and he could name it. It was (and still is) pretty amazing.

Bi-lingual – Griffin was slower than his sister in developing his verbal skills. But in the last few months, it’s really picked up. His Chinese and English are coming along nicely, but it’s especially cute when he mixes them.
• Mama, can you “bao-bao” [pick up] me?
• Can I have some more “je ge” [this]?
• It’s not “ho dai ah” [so big]!

Other cute speech thingy’s:
• Deng yi shiao (instead of shia)
• Dia-dee (daddy)
• Jie-jie’s hitting! (followed by Ally yelling, “I’m not hitting!”)

Morning Knocker – Every morning, we wake up to some gentle knocking. It’s slow and steady and pretty quiet, but it just goes on and on until you walk over to his room. Griffin doesn’t seem to know he can open his door, and he just sits against the door and knocks it until one of us opens it up. Then he springs to his feet and greets us with a big smile.

Puzzle Solver -- Griffin loves puzzles.  Unlike Ally, who felt that puzzles were to be completed just once, Griffin will play with his 12-piece puzzles again and again and again.

He's a boy all right -- This past year, Griffin has had 2 incidents of nursemaid elbow (kinda like a dislocated elbow).  The first one happened when we were playing and dragging both kids around by the hands.  After we let go of his hands, he burst into tears and was clutching his left wrist.  After a consult with Dr. Ah-gu, we rushed to the ER.  They listened to my account of what happened and immediately diagnosed it.  A doctor popped it back into place within minutes, and we were on our way.  The second time it happened, Griffin was (supposed to be) sleeping in his bedroom when suddenly we heard him wailing.  Edward found him sitting on his bed, slumped against the wall and nursing his other elbow.  We recognized the symptoms right away and went off to the ER once more.  This time, they had a harder time popping it in, and they made us get X-rays since we weren't in the room when it happened.   (I think they also do this to make sure it's not abuse or anything like that.)  Anyway, after the X-rays showed no breaks or fractures, the doctor tried once more and successfully popped it back in.  Crazy kid.

The Princess and the Pooh

Wild guess what Alicia was for Halloween this year. Yup, another Princess. Woohoo.

Naturally, Griffin wanted to be a princess too. When asked what she was going to be for Halloween, Alicia would happily reply, "I'm going to be Sleeping Beauty!" And Griffin would cheerfully add, "And I'm going to be Belle!" After correcting him several times, he finally realized that the Belle thing wasn't going to happen (at least not in public) and started getting into the Pooh Bear thing.

We also took them to a pumpkin patch this year. Alicia wanted to pose with the pumpkins, but Griffin was not so cooperative. The picture below was the best we could get.

We were also fortunate to have Miss Julianne (teacher from school) to come and help the kids carve their pumpkins. The kids were delighted, and Edward and I were mostly pleased that we didn't have to touch the goopy stuff. :)

No wedding dress required (aka Vote NO on Prop 8)

this past august, we attended the wedding of our close friends, qing and diego. it was a beautiful ceremony in a breathtaking location overlooking the pacific ocean. but what made the wedding so amazing for us was the tremendous feeling of love and joy from all their family and friends who were there to celebrate together with them.



when we told ally that we were going to uncle qing's wedding, she excitedly asked, "will there be a wedding dress?" so we asked her who always comes to see us with uncle qing, and she quickly responded, "uncle diego." i nodded and said, "yes, that's who uncle qing is marrying." she was quiet for a minute and was clearly mulling this over. finally she looked up with a concerned look and asked, "but who's going to wear the dress?"

i have to admit, i thought it was cool that the only thing that fazed ally about this was the fact that there would be no dress. maybe we can get uncle qing and uncle diego to photoshop one in for her!

Long lost cousin

after twenty some years, edward and his long lost cousin, phil, were finally reunited over the canada day weekend this past summer.

for years I had heard edward mention his phantom half-shanghainese, half-swiss, canadian cousin. they had met only once before, when phil's rugby team was at some competition in hong kong in high school. in the last few years, we have gotten to spend some time with edward's auntie linda, who is phil's mom. she and uncle tom would talk about phil, sheila, and the girls quite a bit, and we started to feel like we almost knew them.

so this year, we decided we would finally go up to vancouver and meet them. we were all very excited about meeting each other, and having the kids get to know each other.


as you can see in these pictures, the kids got along fabulously. i think they were a bit confused as to how they were cousins, given how they look so clearly different. but ally and griffin really enjoyed staying at their beautiful home. griffin loved having free rein to run in and out of the house, and ally had a blast sleeping upstairs with fiona and elsa.  and, perhaps the most pleasant surprise of all, was how well we got along with phil & sheila -- it was better than being just cousins, it was like we were becoming good friends.
 

we are very excited to have "discovered" new family, and we are hoping to be able to see them more often than once every twenty years!

Can I see? Can I see?

These days, any time I take out my camera to shoot pictures of the kids, they come rushing over shouting, "Can I see? Can I see?" I now have lots of pictures of them storming the camera.  I started wondering what "nice" pictures of the kids might look like, and I even dared to daydream about how lovely it might be to get a *gasp* family photo with all 4 of us!

So in early July, we hired a photographer, Annie Tao, to spend an hour or so with us and take some pictures of the kids -- and to take a rare family photo. We spent the morning just walking around the Stanford quad, and the kids had a great time goofing off and mugging for the camera.

We really enjoyed the photo shoot, and we absolutely love the pictures.



We highly recommend Annie!

If you want to see the rest of the pics, check out our picasaweb album.

my baby girl is in kindergarten

last wednesday, my baby girl, Ally, started her first day of kindergarten. she had been very much looking forward to starting kindergarten, and she was very proud to be going to a big girl school.

that morning, she jumped out of bed when she heard me enter her room, and she was super excited. i took this picture of her showing off her yoga skills in her cute little uniform right before we left the house. (btw, i love uniforms. how cool is it that i don't need to fight with her about clothes now!!)

when we got to the school, i walked her into the playground. she seemed curious and excited. we said hi to the teacher, and she got in line with the other students. when i called to her, she waved and smiled. then she walked in to her classroom with the other kids, and she was clearly very happy and proud to be in school. the other kids kept looking at their parents worriedly, but she didn't even look back.

i was proud of her for being brave and even happy with the situation, but i also felt a tiny pang of sadness knowing that she's just like me -- unsentimental about the past, and always looking forward. today it's kindergarten, tomorrow it will be college, and then ... well, i guess we'll need to enjoy this time with her while it lasts!

di-di's gone!

i haven't blogged in several months, and i had planned to blog after our seattle/vancouver vacation. but after this morning's excitement, i decided i needed to blog about it.

we flew in to seattle friday evening. flight was good overall, especially with virgin america's entertainment system. griffin caused a bit of a scene at the security checkpoint when he refused to give up his little backpack and started crying and tried to lie down after i wrested it from him. still, a relatively smooth trip getting in to seattle.

then, this morning, we decided to take the kids down to see the pride parade right outside our hotel. the kids and i were waiting to take the elevator down when edward yelled down the hall that his card key wasn't working. as i walked back, just 15 feet or so, ally started yelling in a panicked voice, "di-di's gone! di-di's gone!" i turned around as she burst into tears and cried, "he went on the elevator!" i ran over, but the elevator doors had closed. wow, that was a frightening moment. edward booked down the stairs to the lobby, and ally and i jumped on the next elevator down. we all rushed into the lobby and looked frantically around. just then, we heard loud, familiar crying sounds and saw a young woman leading griffin up the stairs to the lobby. the woman said admonishingly, "he came down the elevator by himself." i just thanked her repeatedly and scooped him up, and edward and i both felt a giant wave of relief. ally was so happy to see her brother, and i was so proud of how protective she had been during the whole thing.

this little episode certainly scared the crap out of all of us, and it serves as a good reminder that we really have to watch our kids at all times (especially reckless little guys).

our first family ski trip

edward decided that this year, we should let ally try skiing. mark and irene had taken the boys up to northstar in december, and they all really had a great time. so we agreed that we'd try it with them on their next trip, which was a couple weeks ago.


what an adventure. on our drive up, it was raining and snowing hard, so mark advised us to get snow chains. we spent about an hour in vacaville looking for chains. once we got onto the mountains, boy was it a painful drive. it was dark, windy, and snowing like crazy. good thing we have AWD. it took us a good 6-7 hours to drive up there, much of it done at 30mph.

but once we were there, we had a blast. ally took classes for 2 days, and she was quite the pro skiing down the little hills. griffin was a bit freaked out by the snow, but did enjoy tooling around the northstar village in his little jumpsuit.

the village was great. i had a view of the kids ski school from our condo unit. we enjoyed a couple nice lunches at mikuni. and best of all, starbucks was just downstairs, so edward would swing by and grab me a cap after dropping ally off at ski school. pretty sweet. even better was the fact that mark and irene got bumped up to a huge 3BR place, and we spent our evenings enjoying their fine cooking in their very nice, spacious pad.

here's a video of ally skiing! and one of devon skiing.

stacking blocks

here's a little video of griffin stacking blocks with frankie and ally from this past xmas down in san diego. he got pretty good at stacking them in the right order and then kicking them (with his eyes closed!). it's not very good quality video, but it's still pretty cute.

Happy Holidays!

i hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. we certainly did, although we didn't really celebrate it in a traditional way.

first, we spent most of christmas eve in our minivan, speeding down the 5 to san diego. we made it in record time (since most people were at home tucking into a lovely christmas feast). we then spent xmas day apart, with the kids running wild with cousins at home, while edward went to see a movie and i went gambling at a local indian casino with a bunch of my cousins.

here are some highlights:

* went to sea world with ah-ma. was freezing cold, but the kids enjoyed watching the jumping fish.

* went to the zoo with jack, sining, and the kids. griffin was "gang gang" (scared) of pretty much everything, and he kept pulling his stroller hood shut whenever we pulled up to an exhibit. highlight for the kids was definitely the express bus.

* went to legoland with sining and livy. tons of people this time, so we had to wait in line a lot. but ally still had a great time.

* stayed at the hotel parisi in la jolla. huge, 1k sq ft 1-bedroom apartment (with kitchen), awesome location, and great breakfast included. best of all, we could make a mess and come back to a tidied and clean (including dishes!) place. pretty sweet.

* ally and griffin got to play with lots of cousins. ally loved all the "jie-jie" -- vicky, kelly, and mimi. but she had the best time playing with frankie. griffin performed "ai wo de" and "hsin de ge" a million times for everyone, to the point where all the cousins could sing them by heart as well.

it was a relaxing and fun vacation overall. seeing as how this was our second christmas in san diego in a row, i suppose this may be becoming a tradition for us!