November 2007 Archives

This was from quite a while ago, but I wanted to give major props to sweet Rachel who came to visit me at work. Not only that, she brought homemade lunch for me!! We booked a meeting room, munched on delicious food while catching up, then I went back to work. Totally made my day...thank you, Kitten.

Then this past Monday, Elida came over to our house and cooked a whole dinner for both Dav and I. Elida just came back from a trip to Kenya [Rachel is actually in Kenya now...isn't that ironic?], and we wanted to catch up, but since it's hard to go out easily, I prefer folks to visit me at home. Yet with work and Tesla, it's harder to "host"...so it was exceptionally nice to have Elida over and have her take care of dinner. Chile Rellenos made from scratch. Absolutely amazing, and 100x better than what restaurants serve.

Elida's trip to Kenya sounded fantastic. Hardcore because she volunteered, and wasn't on a posh safari. But the stories of the animals, and the people she met were eye-opening for sure and even life-changing for her. Dav left the dining table after a while, and Elida and I kept talking, laughing, and crying. T'was a beautiful evening. :)

Tesla loving the sofa pillow fun Sofia introduced her to.
Above pic is Dav showing Markus the famous cork in a bottle trick, and of course some after meal Wii playing.

We did a pot-luck chez nous this year. Granny Marie, Anthony, and Dav's bro Markus were the first guests, then we invited Michelle, Jeremy, and Sofia. Then Cesar since Rachel was out of town, then Nik too. In the end, we had quite the group together.

Pot-luck is definitely the way to go...no stress so everyone can have more fun. Being us, we decided not to do turkey and all that, but just focus on good dishes, whatever style. I made chirashi-zushi, and 2 kinds of baked salmon. Marie brought ribs, corn, corn bread (since Dav really likes it), and 2 pies! Michelle brought mashed potatoes, sorbet with champagne, and salad. Nik brought a cheese platter, and Cesar brought various appetizers. Markus brought bread/cheese, and also...fireworks! ...as well as punk rock underwear for me.

Tesla followed Sofia, and learned for the first time the pleasure of piling up pillows and jumping into them. Tesla looks up to Sofia so much it's adorable to watch them together...especially when they both sat at Tesla's new little table.

We started at 3pm and continued to about midnight. I think eating with friends and family is just about my favorite thing to do.

As some of you may noticed, we had some server issues which made posting not possible for a few days, and old lost posts suddenly appearing. Didn't matter that I couldn't post...what I love most about the holidays is the lazy free time. One of my favorite moments was watching a movie during the day (a rare rare thing) as Tesla napped. Snuggling up together, Dav and I just enjoying it. Nothing extraordinary, but that's exactly how we like it.

Anyhow, the night before Thanksgiving, Michelle and I went to Kiss. We actually hadn't gone out just the two of us, so it was special. We'd booked our calendars months in advance for this!

Ele gave birth to Finn on November 19th. We've all been waiting eagerly, and I'm SO thrilled for Ele and Will. They will be great fun, loving parents, and I'm excited to watch their journey.

It's been such a pleasure to share my pregnancy & Tesla with Ele and Will. They've become super cool friends, and I just can't wait to hear all about Finn (thankfully, Ele has a blog. Yay!). I met Ele when she was single, and as soon as Will entered the picture, all made sense. They are perfect for each other, and it's so wonderful they now have Finn together.

They live in North Carolina so I can't hop over easily to see them, but we're planning a summer vacation together so I'll get to meet Mr. Finn then. Can't wait to see Tesla play with Finn!!

Congratulations, Ele, Will, and Finn. Big hugs from CA.

Julia and Tyler gave Tesla their old baby chair, and Tesla has been loving it. She'll get up early in the morning and just sit in it, even if Dav and I are still in bed.

She's definitely into copying what big people do, so we figured Tesla would love to have her very own table to go with her chair. Dav made one last night with a nice marble-like top. Sure enough, she thinks it's the best thing ever. This morning, she looked so happy feeding herself...sorta. Near the end, she got frustrated that she couldn't scoop together the food in the bowl. When I did it for her and fed her, she got even more upset; she got up from her table, went to the kitchen counter facing away from me and cried! She really didn't want me helping! Soooo cute.

These are from our last day in Hawai'i. Tesla loved playing at the beach, making a mess with the sand, and fearlessly walking into the deeper waters. Other than simply having luxury vacation time as a family, the best was seeing Tesla grow so much from all the new experiences and stimulation.

The bummer thing was it was indeed quite hard having a toddler. As mentioned before, the flight over was rather hellish since Tesla freaked out and screamed so much that the nice lady sitting next to us actually put her finger in her ear. Once in Hawai'i, Tesla had a hard time napping so her sleeping schedule got messed up...which is still not back to normal. Also, it was very hard to "be" with each other since one of us had to run after to the ever mobile Tesla who wanted to explore all the time. The only meal we got to sit down and eat together with a conversation was when we hired a babysitter.

On the way home, to be honest, we gave Tesla a tiny bit of baby medicine that would help her sleep. I had mixed feelings about this, but it helped her chill out. Without that, we would have been a nervous wreck.

We came back Thursday at 6am, and I went to work at 10. And that very evening, my good friend Deborah came to stay with us over the weekend from Washington. So it's been non-stop and I finally just finished washing our vacation clothes! Although super busy, it was a fun weekend, meeting up with Kimi (all 3 of us went to ASIJ), then a nice dinner at the Slanted Door with our neighbors, and a Japanese dinner at home with Deborah. We watched a Frontline documentary on funerals last night, and ended up sobbing and bonding together. We made Dav watch a silly happy movie with us to end the evening on a lighter note. Deborah is working on a special project, and I hope to hear how it goes by early next year. Yay!!

And just now, I got a text message that dear Ele is in the hospital on her way to become a mommy!! With the holidays coming up, life is full! : )

As we sipped a cocktail, Tesla kept us busy by running around.

They are husband and wife!

We decided to hire a local babysitter through an agency last night. It was a bit weird to leave Tesla with essentially a stranger in our hotel room, but the agency has been around and is apparently well-used, so we went for it. And yes, it was lovely to have some couple time! We initallly thought 8-12, but since arriving, we'd been on Tesla's early snooze, early rise schedule, so we changed it to 7-11...and we barely stayed awake!

Nevertheless, we had a nice cocktail, then super delicious dinner at Kenichi Pacific, the perfect Asian fusion I'd been wanting to try here. We had a miso-glazed fish appetizer, then shared ono tataki with yam puree (that tasted like apple and pork when combined), and tuna wrapped in nori and panko with a sweet white miso sauce. Totally hit the spot, and with sake, and no toddler to run after, we enjoyed our meal! Then we went to our hotel's ocean-view bar, then later met up with the wedding crowd. We cheered to finally meet up with everyone since it just hasn't been possible to hang out at night with everyone.

Today is the wedding, starting at 3pm : ) We're going to attempt to bring the hotel's fold-up crib and see if Tesla will let us stay long at the post-wedding party...

At the beach close to our hotel.

The ocean was a tad chilly today so we used the pool.

Of course, it's all about Tesla...she's been enjoying walking on new territory in bare feet, loves playing in the kiddie area of the beach where she can play with sand and the ocean gently takes it away, and is taking over our hotel room as if it's a playground.

Took a while to relax here, actually. Our plane ride was difficult - and that's an understatement. We were, uh, those parents whom everyone has seen on planes with the difficult kid and you either sympathize (and feel grateful you're not them), or you wish they and their screaming banshee were not on the plane. Yep, we were that family. Took us totally by surprise as Tesla has always been so easy-going.

Anyhow, we're here now to have fun. And on Sunday, Jennifer and Jay will be getting married. That will be fun!

We're heading to Hawai'i today. Will be at Kona for a nice week...looking forward to this a lot!! Will try to post pics. : )

Tesla keeping both of us busy caring for her... via Tangentman

Tesla would not let Dav or me feed her...

A tad belated, but here are some random pics from Halloween. Definitely Halloween is more fun for me with a kid. Although Tesla couldn't have cared less what she was dressed as (and distinctively disliked wearing her Zebra hood), I enjoyed it. Tesla and I were zebras, and Dav was a safari photographer. I liked our family coordination.

We had a busy evening. First, Six Apart had a party. Then we headed to Noe Valley to meet up granny, great-granny, and Tesla's cousin Maria-Rose. After that, we went over to Alameda to hang with my brother and family. Tesla's cousins Julia and Tyler are much older, and clearly she is fascinated with everything they do.

It was a busy evening but well worth it!