I-Chwen and Kevin's Blog

Whoa! She can do that?

2010-05-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

Meg went to a birthday part at the Seattle Gymnastics Academy and did this:

You can hear by the sound of I-Chwen's voice that this was the first time we saw this. She can already write her name (and Kevin's), knows the days of the week and is starting to tell time. I think maybe it's time to encourage those big motor skills.

Wayback Machine

2010-05-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

Before I bought digital camera back in 2006, I was using a Contax G1 rangefinder for shooting film. A few weeks ago I ran across this old camera in a closet. Taking it out to look at it, I noticed that there was a roll of film in there - and only 8 shots had been taken. Hrm... what were those photos? I was thinking the last time I really used that camera was at a friends wedding. Maybe there were a few shots left from the trip home (the wedding was up on Cortez Island). Only one way to find out... So, when we went to the University Street fair last weekend so I took the Contax along.

First, it was nerve wracking taking a picture on film again. Once you press the shutter, there's no delete button and you only have 36 goes before you need to reload. Second, I forgot how much fun this smaller camera is to use compared to a honking big D300s that I use now. I'd switch to a digital rangefinder if they were as capable as the DSLR but they aren't quite there yet. Leica makes a nice one... for $7,000. Anyhoo, I'll get in trouble if I type any more about cameras. Maybe in a few years when they are cheaper and there are more rangefinder like options.

So, it was very surprising to see pics of Meg that first summer she was home. The quality had degraded as the film had sat in the camera since 2007. I think we may have been hanging out at Greenlake.

What was even more surprising (and brought a tear to my eye) were to see these photos next to ones I took that weekend.

She went from a 9 to 10 month old little baby trying to eat a flower she just picked to a 3 foot tall little girl eating a doughnut and an ice cream cone.

I think I'll put another roll of film in that camera, take 8 shots and then put it away for a while. It's nice to be reminded just how much can happen in three years.

Long Shan Yuan Shan & More Food

2010-02-23T00:02:00.000-08:00

Kinda losing track of the days here but we've had a few outings in the cold rain over the holiday week. We headed over to the Long Shan Temple in the old part of Taipei to have a look around and we headed up the Yuan Shan Hotel for a bit of brunch.

Long Shan (龍山寺)
Long Shan Temple is an older temple located in the Wan Hwa section of town. It's an older part of town with lots of narrow streets. It used to have a night market and lots of food vendors outside the front door. It has it's own subay stop so it's not surpising that the shopping and market had seriously expanded since I was last there in 1988. Instead of just food stalls crowding the streets around the temple (which is still the case), there is an underground mall connecting it to the subway line. The park above the subway line is also filled with vendors. It was also packed with people when we went.

Inside the temple is was even crazier. It was packed shoulder to shoulder with people but now they were holding buring insense and trying to get a good spot to say a few prayers.

While I-Chwen and her sister went in to do the same, Meg and I hung out outside under the umbrella. Here's our view:

...and it wouldn't be a trip to the temple without a few squid balls on a stick. 3 for NT$10. Meg loved these.

The Grand Hotel (圓山大飯店)
We headed up to the The Grand (Yuan Shan) Hotel for brunch. The Grand Hotel was built in the 1950 by Chiang Kai-Shek in the 1950s for visiting foreign dignitaries. According to I-Chwen's Dad, it was pretty much off limits to the general public for years. It had fallen into direpair over the years and where it once had a reputation asa world class hotel, it was not really a destination for the locals anymore. I-Chwen's Mom commented that we'd be disappointed if we were heading there for the food.

I think there's been some effort to build it back up as it was a pretty good meal. The food was pretty good. They made a great "guo bing" (red bean paste pastry that Megan loves).
I-Chwen's dad (a man with a lot of opinions about food) really tucked into brunch. The facilites showed a bit of age and the huge red carpet in the lobby was stained but I heard later that there is about NT$500 million (about US$30 million) going towards its restoration. My theory is that restoring it imight be a matter of "face" - the place was packed with mainlanders....
Some interior shots:

Meg also liked the train ride there. She loves the subway system here.

OK - I was going to put something about going out with friends but it's getting late. I'll try and get something up here tomorrow.

Happy New Year from Taipei

2010-02-15T05:25:00.000-08:00

Been here for a few days...kinda lost track of how many days. It's the 17th so that would be around 7 days. We landed at around 5:20 the morning of the 10th after a 12 hour flight. Twelve hours was one less than we expected but after 6 hours it doesn't really matter how long the flight is; you lose track of time. Everyone was tired and had some measure of a head cold, cough, jet lag etc.... The first few days were a haze of sleeping and thanking the gods of instant coffee for getting me through the day.

I'm going to be a bit slow on getting photos up. The new camera (or maybe lens) is giving me some headaches. I can't get a clean, sharp, natural looking photo out of the thing. They were so bad I was suspecting that the camera orlens was faulty but after getting some time to run some test shots in, I'm suspecting user error.

It was sunny 80 degrees the first day so that was a bit of a shock to our pallid Seattle dispositions. Then it was 50 and rainy the next few days so I should stop complaining. It beats coming here in July. Over all, it's been cloudy and bearable. Good cool spleeping weather. Bit cold the last two days. You just got to get out and keep moving or you freeze at home.

Meg has loved exploring the big park across the street (Da An Park). There are ants to find, puddles to play with and even a big stage she can get up on and dance on.

We spent 20 minutes taking turns being the audience and being the dancer. I was a bit miffed when she decided to go all the way to the last row when it was my turn to dance.

Meg's other favorite thing is to water Gong-gong's plants on his terrace. He has the top floor of a building so has a great patio outside with tons of plants. Meg water the pants with him last time we were here and that was the first thing she wanted to do this time. Would have gotten some great photos if the camera would cooperate. Here's a few of the OK ones.

We went over to Taipei 101 today but didn't go up top. It was cloudy so we went to the basement and the mall area instead. The basement is where the food court is (typical of malls and department stores in Taiwan). We had a great meal there. I managed to get a second bowl of beef noodles in. It was OK but I'm still looking forward to going to Yong Kang Niu Rou Mian. After that we browsed the "Designer" level of the mall. Cartier, Tiffany's Dolce & Gabbana Louis Vitton, Gucci etc... When the in-law got a bit tired, we split up and they headed home and we went off to buy some books for Meg at Eslite book store. Along the way we ran into a performance by some students playing some taiko style Japanese drums. It was pretty good.

No pictures up yet for that day but email me if you want to see some....once I get them up.

PS. Food.

We also managed to get a bite of Stinky Tofu in. Meg and I-Chwen enjoyed that.

Something New

2010-02-07T01:24:00.000-08:00

Saturday night Meg woke up a bit nauseous around midnight. Way too much junk food for the Chinese New Year's recital at her weekend Chinese School. After pacing for a bit hand hanging out waiting for something to happen, we decided to watch a little Blues Clues (on-demand) to take her mind off it while the feeling passed. Turns out it was a new one with Joe, and not the original Steve (the only one she knows). After a bout five minutes of watching Joe act just like original-Steve and mumbling "huh, it's different", she figured it out.... She said, "He got a new head!"

Here are some pics from the recital. She did great and she practiced real hard for this. Every day we'd watch a video of the routine that the teacher posted on Youtube and she'd mumble along. We were thinking, it's too complicated of a song, she'll never get all the moves down. Last recital she gave, she wouldn't go on stage and just clung to me the whole time. Not this time. She did great!
Here's a video. Can't seem to get the embed html code to work... and the quality is not so great... but I like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDtZO8AMBGA

Hi Everybody!

2010-01-27T20:32:00.001-08:00

It's good to see people stopping by and commenting on the blog. It kind a fizzled a bit. I'm a bit busy right now but it's because we are getting ready for a trip to Taiwan. I hope to have some more opportunity to update this thing when we get there in a few weeks.

I also just picked up a new camera and look forward to getting an opportunity to play with that in Taipei. Fun!

Twos-day

2010-01-26T11:30:00.000-08:00

At breakfast today, Meg said she wanted to go to Chinese School today. She goes on Saturday and often gets a lollipop at the end of class. I told her, "No muffin. Today is Tuesday, not Saturday". She thought for a minute and said "Twooooosday? Can I get two lollipops?"

Blog Entries can be short...

2010-01-19T23:21:00.000-08:00

I got my daily affirmation from Meg today at breakfast. While she was standing on her stool watching the egg fry she looked over at me and said, "Daddy, I'm glad you're here".

Bonus affirmation (and quivering bottom lip moment) when at dinner she said, out of blue, she said, 'Daddy, you're my best friend."

Then It Was December

2009-12-10T21:34:00.000-08:00

So... you may have noticed we slacked off a bit. Not sure why. We didn't seem that much busier than back when we blogged constantly. Maybe it's because we are on Facebook and that eats up some time and maybe it feels like we are keeping folks updated. We started this blog partly to keep the spread out family and friends informed but also to keep track of the days with Meg. Since we are missing a few months, I'll try and bring things up to speed. First I need to go upload a bunch of pics to the Smugmug site.... Halloween for one.

-Kevin

Summer in New England

2009-09-06T00:55:00.000-07:00

So, this post was written in September but never published. It's now December and I don't think this post will improve by adding anything at this point. It's pretty good as is. So, here it is.

In late July, we took our what seems to be by now annual summer trip to New England to see families and friends. We spent time in mostly Maine (Kevin's family camp) and a few days in Massachusetts (I-Chwen's brothers).

Megan got to play with her cousins who enthusiastically surrounded her the whole time. They usually started with "coffee tea?" (a game Megan does with tea set) every morning. Then moved outside to explore the ground.

When weather permitted (thankfully many days), we all go to the lake.

It's been a year since Megan last saw the lake, she was only shy for about 5 min before putting her feet in happily. Then she got comfortable enough to walk around holding our hands - and went deeper and deeper (which wasn't that deep, maybe 2 feet at most). Then she got brave and let go of her feet, so I got to drag her around in about 2 feet of lake, she thought that was great fun! The next thing I knew, I turned around and she laid down on her belly and flopping her arms (with water wings) as if she was swimming!

When Megan was tired of swimming, she found other things to keep her busy:

You can't go to Maine without going to LL Bean in Freeport. You can't go to LL Bean without taking a picture with the boot:

This was last year:

Summer = lots of fun + too little time

2009-09-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful and BUSY summer as you can see we were absent from the blog ^_^

So what did we do this summer? The highlights are:

A trip to Maine/Mass, we went to New England for 2 weeks. A thankfully uneventful trip - as opposed to last year's saga - you can read about our last year's trip: august-is-for-recovering-from-vacation.

Our great friend Nancy, or Ancy as Megan called her, and family came to visit and stayed with us - it was really fun for Megan to have them as house guests.

Megan turned three!! We had a small party for her in her favorite park - Matthew's Beach

A trip to Lake Quinault - the first road trip we took together as a family of FOUR, yes Rufus got to stay with us in Lake Quinault Lodge in Olympic Peninsula.

We took lots of pictures and you can see them in our photo site (link to the right). Blog posts are under way - stay tuned!!

Neat and Tidy and 筷子

2009-07-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

Meg has been in her big girl bed for several weeks now. The room is pretty well child-proofed and we have a gate at the door to her room so she can't get up and wander around at night. Neither of those things seems to have been necessary yet. She tends to stay in there in the bed when she wakes up. Sometimes we have to climb into bed to pick her up to drag her out of bed. She loves to just lounge around, read books and giggle in bed.

Once in a while she will get up on her own... but the results are the opposite of what you might expect. Sometime during the first few weeks, she got up and put all the Winnie the Pooh story books (that were spread around the room) and put them back on the shelf, organized by color. Just this past Wednesday, during her nap time, we think she didn't sleep a wink. I could hear a bit of rustling on the baby monitor but it sounded like she was just reading a book. I was wrong. Here's what she was doing:

Looks like an ordinary box of tissues, doesn't it? Perhaps that top one is a bit wrinkly? It's bulging a bit on the sides too. Meg had not only pulled all the tissues out, she has also put them all back in and then put the box back on top of the dresser. I think I might set her loose in the garage for a few days to see what she can do about the clutter.

Here's some more evidence of developing fine motor skills. We made some makeshift "kids" chopsticks using the paper wrapper they come in and a rubber band. She got the hang of that pretty quickly so we gave her a pair of short child sized chopsticks... Results: not too bad!

Fourth of July Weekend

2009-07-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

This sat in the draft folder for a week - sorry.
We had a busy 4th weekend. On Friday, we managed to get out of the city for a hike at Twin Falls - a very "family friendly" hike (read: it' pretty flat, short and had a river to play in along the way). I-Chwen had a concert on Sunday so also had a dress rehearsal on Friday. Saturday, we headed to the farmer's market and then had a BBQ in the afternoon. Sunday was the concert.

Twin Falls
Yes, we found a caterpillar.

Yes, Meg picked it up...

Yes, she let it crawl on her hand....

Yes, it started to crawl up her arm...

....a little higher...

It got real high up her arm. Don't worry, I moved it to the leaf before it ended up under her shirt.

Getting Ready for the Concert

For I-Chwen's concert I rented a longer and faster lens (AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED). I figured I needed a longer lens with vibration reduction to manage taking pics of the choir in a poorly lit church. I took a few shots random before hand. It's an impressive lens... so much so that I had folks coming up after the concert to ask me photography questions :-) It's a $2k lens so I won't be getting on anytime soon but $30 for a weekend is a good deal. Here's a hand-held snapshot I took of Meg in the kitchen

I used this lens a lot at the concert.

At the dress rehearsal, Meg got to hang out with Laura, the daughter of one of the choir members. Laura had brought along a few books about fairies and was more than happy to read them to her.

The Concert

There were three choirs involved in this concert: Four Seasons Chorus （四季女聲合唱團），Seattle Emerald Singing Group ( ) and the Crystal Children' Choir (晶晶青少年合唱團）

The lens I rented was well worth it. Not only did it allow me to get some close ups on the performers, but the vibration reduction helped me actually get clear pics. Not only was the light dim but I was shaky by the end of the concert. It was well into the 90s in the church and stuffy, stuffy, stuffy. Towards the end of the concert, I was seeing rays of light filter down from over the stage... rays of light as in sunlight passing through clouds of moisture. With all those people sweating and breathing in there, clouds were starting to form over the stage. I was soaked head to toe and a bit shaky after running around for over and hour with 5 lbs of camera and lens held up to my face.

No idea how the performers survived and managed to do such a great job singing (and dancing occasionally). Everybody did a great job.

OK - this post has been sitting in the "drafts" folder for a week. Time to publish. I'll get more concert pics up online eventually...

Megan and Mama

2009-07-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

The other day after I changed Megan, she patted me on the head and said "Bird nest!". Then she said "Tweet tweet", as if to make sure I know what she meant. Earlier in the week, we found an empty bird nest from the hedge in the front yard, and I got a haircut I wasn't happy about and decided to trim my own hair. Somehow, Megan made a connection of the two.....

The next day, after I washed her face, she patted my face and said "You're so cute!", then she said "You're fat". I said "What?", she said "Yah, you're fat"...

Tugger the Big Blue Monster

2009-06-27T23:22:00.001-07:00

It was real nice here this morning so we decided to head off to St Edward' Park. It's an old seminary with several miles of wooded hiking trails:

Besides the giant play structure (castles, mountanis etc...), we can bring the dog along. Rufus got a quick walk around the park and got to play with a bunch of kids who fell for him instantly. Here's Meg exploring the play structure

and then took a short walk down a trail into the woods.

Meg heard some birds and made a comment about a "birds nest" and "tweet, tweet"

Once home I (Kevin) had to do some work. EcoFAB is taking part in an "event" next week that will have some political big cheeses so need to do some prep work. I-Chwen went down for a nap with Meg. Around three, I was putting the final touches on a lasagna for a former co-op pre-school classmate's family. (It was standard for everyone to take turns preparing a meal for anyone who had a child during the year to help them out during the first few weeks. This person had their child the week that school ended so we thought we'd continue the tradition). Right around 3:15 Meg woke up screaming and kicking.

It took I-Chwen a few minutes to get her to wake all the way up... but she was kicking and thrashing and screaming. Once she calmed down we managed to get that she had had a bad dream. She was scared by a big blue monster named "Tugger" (or something that sound like that). That was a neat moment. We'd never managed to get her to tell us about a scary dream, even though she'd told us several times over the last month that she'd been scared in her room. Scary stuff for her I'm sure but very cool to hear the story about "tugger"....

毛毛蟲 and 爸爸 Day

2009-06-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

Note: long post but lots of pictures.
毛毛蟲 (mao2 mao2 chong2 - caterpillars) are Meg favorite outside friend. She loves finding them, looking at them, talking to them, telling them what to do, picking them up, putting them down and generally making their days just a little more interesting than they might otherwise be. We can't head out the door without her calling out for "Chong-chong?"

We had two of them on the front porch who received a pretty gentle handling from Meg.

Uh oh.. looks like trouble for Chong-chong

Soft...

He's OK

In that case, let's pick him up.

He's soft.

Gentle...

Here's your bed Chong-chong. See you tomorrow

For Father's Day we headed downtown for a walk through the Sculpture Park and brunch.

She watched some cars go by from the overpass over Elliot Ave.

She enjoyed hanging out on the chairs with Mom most of all

We saw a WWII B-25 fly over on it's way to Boeing Field (click the pic for larger size)

...and B-17 go by. I think they were ging Father's Day flights. (click for larger size)

Meg did pretty good at the restaurant (Boat Street Cafe - good food but a tad slow)

Meg and mom had a great card with Meg's signature AND drawing of dad (a squiggle with three dots in it.... which is more of her "signature drawing")

We played with our shadows on the way out and headed home for a nap.

The afternoon was Pooh Sticks...

..and a bit of running around a park over in Kirkland

It was a good day. Thanks mom and Meg!

Cheese! and Sand?

2009-06-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

Meg and I went to Magnuson Park on Sunday morning. I-Chwen had choir practice so it was just Meg and I and a picnic lunch we picked up on the way.

It was cloudy and gray so there were not too many people there.

We watched a float plane take off and land a few times. Guess they were practicing. The yellow plane was one of the only bits of color around that day.

Meg picked me a "lupine!" We had some lupines next to the driveway at home so all flowers have now become lupines. if she runs a crayon over a piece of paper and we ask what she is drawing... it's "lupines!" This one is a clover with some of the white bits removed. She calls it a baby lupine.

We chased some ducks, but not for long. She was a bit tired from not sleeping that well (for what seems like the last month or so...)

She saw dad taking pics so grabbed her camera and hammed up some cheese.

Finally, we settle down onto a blanket and had some more snack and played with some bugs we found on the tree we were sitting under. She wandered off and I hung back while she wandered. She was playing in some sand with an old house key she likes to carry around in her pocket. She even laid down on the sand for a few minutes.

When she came back, she had sand all over her chin. I wiped it off. She went back to the sand again later but this time she was facing me... and I saw her scoop sand into her mouth with the key... twice. She stood up, smiled, wiped off her hands and said "Crunchy!" I took the key away for the rest of the trip and we stayed away from the sand.

Meg actually fell asleep on the way home. Since she's been waking up when we move her after falling asleep in the car (see comment above about not sleeping well), I just pulled into the carport, cracked the window, reclined the seat and took a nap as well. Cheese, sand and a nap.

Bounce Megan Bounce

2009-06-09T09:13:00.001-07:00

Just one more video from the batch we just downloaded off the camera.

Meg inherited a little keyboard from her cousin. She tickles the ivorys now and again but she seems to prefer the 'Demo" button....

Useless Bay, Twinkle & 三字經

2009-06-07T07:22:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pics and some videos taken a few weeks ago. We had spent a day up on Whidbey Island visiting Double Bluff Beach and getting some lunch at Langley. The beach looks directly south towards Seattle and Mt Rainier. We managed to time our visit with a real low tide as you can see.

It was a bit gray but not too cold

Still had a little view of Mt Rainier and the tips of the taller building in Seattle. Kind of hard to see but Rainier is behind the destroyer heading north (from Bremerton Naval Base probably). Click the image for a larger view.

The bay is called Useless Bay... probably on account of how shallow and flat it is...

But that also means acres of squishy stuff to step on

...and mud to explore

It was Mother's day that we took the trip so we made sure we got a few pics of Mom and Meg:

One the way back, we had to wait for a few ferries. Meg was tired but managed to stay awake and happy while we sat in line. We even got a few songs out of her.

Flowers and Worms

2009-04-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

We headed up to the Skagit Valley last weekend to check out the tulips. Situated on the Skagit River about an hour north of Seattle, is the 2nd biggest tulip growing region outside of the Netherlands. We hadn't been for several years and we thought Meg might enjoy kicking around farms and tulip fields.

Looks like we called it a week or two early. Only the daffodils were in bloom

Instead of driving around looking for the few fields of flowers in bloom, we drove for a few miles more out to La Conner - a cute little town on the coast. We shopped a little, looked at boats and grabbed a bite for lunch.

On the drive back to the highway we stopped off to look at the few tulips we saw that were in bloom

We are thinking we might swing by there again this weekend to see how things are. We had a warm and sunny week so there should be more color.

It took 2 hours to get home. The first 3 miles from the last farm to I5 took over an hour. If you go, do not go home through Mt Vernon. It's a bottle neck so go north or south to find a different on ramp. The last 45 miles took 45 minutes.

The weather was good so I-Chwen went out to do some gardening. Meg enjoys hunting for worms with mom while weeding the roses:

When it comes to worms, we have a catch....

...show a bit of the world to...

...carry...

...and release program:

Spring is starting so look for more outdoor adventures.

The Rufus abides....

Family Day & a Cake

2009-04-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

We had a bit of rain on our plans this weekend so we ended up doing things like jumping in puddles and eating chocolate cake. This Sunday was Family Day - two whole years since the day we met Megan. A few weeks ago, we had taken some pictures at the spot (by Green Lake) where we wrote our home study.

No family day is without a chocolate cake... and boy was that a hit... (I was manning the point and shoot as well as the DSLR at the same time so there's a 2 minute video at the end of the post).

Cake, did you say cake?

Oh yes - with candles too!

Yaaaaaaaaay! Candles!

Inhale.... ready to blow.

Still ready...

Wait for it... and....

First one...

...and then the other

Yaaaaaaaaaay!

Small bites Meg....

I can feel the chocolate and sugar... more yay!

Be sure to take a moment to soak all that chocolate-ey goodness up...

Rock, Sun, Pink

2009-04-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

It was beach weather here in Seattle this weekend. The sun came out and it hit 60 so we spent as much time outside as possible. Megan has been missing her nap (well, maybe we've been missing it more than her...) and going to sleep late so we thought some outside time would help tire her out a bit.

First it was Dahl Field - one of Meg's favorite park - with a new bucket she got at her co-op pre-school classmates 3rd birthday Saturday morning.

One of her favorite thing in the park is the bio-swale (fancy name for a drainage ditch) around the playground equipment. Its filled with rocks to climb on. She's still cautious but she seems to have started a new hobby - rock climbing.

She also made sure mom and dad were careful on the spinny wheel of "this could really hurt" thing...

To finish up we went to a Japanese restaurant where Meg ate about a third of a mom's udon and a bowl of tofu AND her first Hershey's Kiss...

Mmmm tofu:

Mmmm chocolate..

The next day we got to the beach at Carkeek Park. It's always pretty when the sun comes out in the winter/spring as the mountains still have some snow on them. Those are the Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound:

Meg made sure she wore her hat just right

She really loves throwing rocks into the water. I think she did this for 30 minutes and some of the rocks were HUGE for someone Meg's size:

This one must have been 3 lb:

Time for a snack after all that shot putting and rock tossing:

Finally, after her nap on Sunday, we changed into an all pink ensemble with a twirly spinny thing to go down the hill to Thorton Creek to throw more rocks and "catch bugs!". The latter was a request from Megan

The big find was the worm...

We eventually let him/her/it go so no worms were harmed (possibly quite annoyed, but not harmed) during this weekend of sunshine and fun. Fingers crossed for next weekend. We might try and go up to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

A to Zoo!

2009-03-31T20:17:00.000-07:00

First this:

She loves her ABCs and the sounds that they make.

Meg has spring break from the pre-school co-op so we headed out to the zoo this morning. It was like 40 degrees and raining but, being Seattlites, we ignored that and went anyways. Good thing we did as it turned out beautiful. As a bonus, there were lots puddles to stomp in along he way. The zoo today was an assortment of interesting puddles with the occasional exotic animal along the way.

Meg walked almost all the way around the Woodland Park Zoo... I think it must have been 1.5 miles (PS.. She didn't actually get tired enough to crash for a nap later). Some of the highlights were the gorillas. No pic but there was a baby gorilla there and Meg thought it was funny to see a pile of gorillas sleeping. We got to say "Goodnight Gorilla" many times.

The highlight was the Australian section - specifically the emu and the Australian budgie, cockatiel etc... exhibit. She was excited to see such a big chicken when she saw the emu (and the kangaroo going bouncy, bouncy, bouncy).

She puzzled over its chicken-ness for a while. At one point it was just a "biiiiiig chicken!". In the end, she decided it was a "turkey"

In the budgie exhibit, they let you feed them with birdseed stuck on a popsicle stick. This was early in the morning so the birds were still hungry and pretty excited... so was Meg. By the time I bought the second stick, the birds had spotted me and Meg as a great place to eat breakfast. When trying to shoot the photo below, I had three budgies on my arm, one of the larger gray birds (forgot their name) on my head and one on my shoulder (pictured). Meg was skittish at first with the aggressive budgies but the bigger gray guys were more her speed.

It was a great day at the zoo and a good way to relax after the stressful build up to the Seattle Green Fest this past weekend. EcoFAB ha a booth there to roll out a new service (Home Energy Performance Assessments)

Last Sunday - Daddy Daughter Mall Day

2009-03-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Blog is slow and the post is late.

Last Sunday I-Chwen had choir practice so Meg and I headed off to U Village and maybe a park. It was a bit drizzly so we thought we'd start at U Village (an outdoor mall sort of place with play areas and stuff).

We got there around 9:30 which meant we had the place to ourselves mostly as nothing opened till 11am. We headed straight to Meg's favorite spot - a fountain with frogs and turtles spraying water at each other. They take turns spraying and go on and off in a patters (so clever parents can pretend they are telling the fountain when to start and stop).

She stayed clear of the water but edged in close so she could feed the turtle some bunny crackers

Then we went to check out some other bronze statues of cows:

Yes, she did stick her finger in her nose

Then we wandered around reading letters on signs, went through the B&N book store, and then stopped by Kidd Valley for a burger, sweet potato fries and a vanilla shake on the ride home. Meg loves vanilla shakes. She had some folks in there laughing when she put the straw to my face and announced "Daddy try! It's gooooooooood!".

Then we went home and napped.

See why it's hard to update the blog? We need to do more stuff.

Pomelos are Fun

2009-02-04T20:52:00.000-08:00

We had gotten a 柚子 for Chinese New Year. You might know it in English as a pomelo. It's basically a kind of real thick skinned grapefruit and I've had it on some holiday's like Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival.. though it's mainly the latter.

Megan enjoyed eating it and playing with the peel. I put together a video of some of the fun. She decided I was a banana when I put the peel on my head and she sure thought it was tasty. It's 2 minutes so feel free to fast forward.

Not a typical Sunday....

2009-02-01T22:53:00.000-08:00

Breakfast: Pancake with maple syrup (actually mostly maple syrup because pancake was just a tool)
Snack: French Toast with maple syrup (ditto - French Toast was merely a tool)
Snack2: Apple chips, cream cheese pastry, kettle corn
Lunch (pictured above): Vietnamese pho (little bit) and a mini cream puff (licked all the cream off the puff pastry)
Snack3: an entire 烏梅酥 (Taiwanese fruity pastry, like a fruit filled short cake cookie)
Dinner: Hummus & baba ganoush with pita (again, pita was mostly a tool)
Snack4: Lemon ricotta cheese cake (it's one the birthday cakes for a December Birthday Club celebrated in February)
730 - 9pm: Danced and jumped around the house with her three auntie friends Chiung-I, Sandy and Julie:

Bed time: 9:15
Fell asleep: 10:22

It was a nice day for Meg!!

Dance!

2009-01-31T22:25:00.000-08:00

Meg has worked out a little dance (her first) a few days ago. She started out the day dancing and kept it up throughout the day. She's also been saying things funny where she repeats the first letter. Eg. Buh-bye becomes "buh-buh-buh-buh bye!" She did it to dance as well.

Here's a little sample of her moves:

And then it was almost February

2009-01-30T20:58:00.000-08:00

Sorry - we did it again. We didn't get around to updating the blog. We have some excuses... recovering from the holiday time off, being sick for a week etc... but we'll skip that and get right to the Megan news.

She's back at pre-school coop after the winter break and has tried her hand at riding the tricycles. She can't quite reach the pedals and the extra small helmet still fits her like a bucket but she seems to enjoy the challenge:

A few more from a later ride (around the tennis court):

She had her first ice-cream cone. Judging by the amount of times she's said "ice cream cone" since that first one, it apparently was an important moment in her life. She likes ice cream cones.

Last Sunday morning, I-Chwen slept in (she got the upper respiratory virus that Meg and I gotten and had mostly recovered from), we spent the morning reading the paper and watching Sesame Street.

She also recently went through a spell where appropriate head protection was required for certain activities. Playing with Mr. Potatohead (AKA "Gary") required the right Mr. Potatohead box. Looks like she's heading out on the gridiron...

This was also useful for feeding Rufus

Chinese New Year's was low key this year. We were toast after the virus thing went through the house. It was a tough one. 1/2 the kids in Meg's co-op were out sick and one little boy was hospitalized with bronchitis that wasn't responding well to treatment. We managed to get to the basics - some food. "什锦菜" , "年糕", a "柚子" and a whole fish. Those would be a stir-fry dish with like ten things in it, a "year cake" made out of sticky rice flour and red beans and a pomelo (think giant grapefruit - see pic below).

Snow cookies!

2008-12-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

To our amazement - we got more snow! We were used to waking up in a world of white - white trees, white roof, white deck, white lawn, white driveway, white cars, white mailboxes,... you name it - it is white! We also had some freezing rain which formed a nice thick layer of crust on top of the 3 inch snow. That made perfect snow cookies! Rufus has been going out side first thing in the morning to - first stick his nose in the snow, then fall over to form a nice "Rufus angel" imprint in the snow, then roll around on his back to maximize his contact with his beloved snow. Megan learned all about snow from watching Rufus and became a snow enthusiast herself. So far, crunching on snow cookies had been her had been her favorite snow activities (more than sledding), here is how:

Megan: Mesus (Megan's name for Rufus for now), I got something for you...

...it's a piece of snow cookie!

Rufus: Let me taste it first, lick lick lick...

...mmm yum...let me take a bite....wow....

...crunch crunch crunch....

Megan: Hmmm, that sounds like good eats - should I try it too?

Rufus: YUMMMMMM.......

After a snow cookie feast, it's time to go sledding. Rufus took off after Kevin and Megan trying to save them:

Rufus: Sniff sniff sniff, Megan are you ok?

Megan: That was a nice ride, my snow cookie made it ok too! See what I am holding in my left hand....

Where have the bloggers been?

2008-12-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

Been busy! After jet lag was over, we dove right back into our routines. This week we had a couple inches of snow followed by 20 degree temperature which changed our routines quite a bit, but who would complain? Megan and Rufus had a great time - Rufus chased and ate snow balls whenever they were thrown to him. Megan wanted to make 'Fosy' (Frosty for short). It was too cold for Fosy to be reasonably shaped, so his body didn't hold up and his head kept shattering - but we had FUN!

Wow, snow!!

Hey can I blow it like a dandelion?

Wow, a snow ball!

Let me throw it -

This is my very skinny Fosy (Frosty the snowman was a happy jolly soul):

Rufus had a snow feast!

Waffles at 5 AM

2008-11-30T07:35:00.000-08:00

A slight improvement from yesterday. Megan got up at 4 AM after a 7+ hours sleep. After a whole waffle (much better appetite), we skyped with Gong Gong, Po Po and A-yi (my parents & sister) because it was evening Taipei time. I have confidence that she will be adjusted back to normal time by Monday, in time for work week. Now we will see what actually happens! Now back to watching Sesame Street...

Waffles at 4 AM

2008-11-29T17:20:00.000-08:00

We're back home. It was a quick flight (9.5 hours only) and we all slept a bit. Now, if only we could get Meg to sleep at night. She woke up at 1 AM after 3 hours of sleep and stayed up. We had waffles at 4 AM, Sesame Street at 6, etc. Once we get everyone back on schedule, we'll post some pics from the second week. Till then... *yawn*

This Toddler Goes to 11

2008-11-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

7,000 miles...
Half a dozen or so time zones...
Crazy busy and noisy city...
Little or no fixed routine (and very little of the one we had at home)...
Different food...
Only a few toys...
Molars on the move (why does she wait till we travel?)...
Dad with a work deadline...
Mom with family to take care of...

Actually, she's doing better but has had a few bad days of acting up (especially at meal times and not wanting to sleep). I think Meg is just reacting to the stress of a new location and situation. She always was kinda sensitive to her surroundings. We've found that she's much happier and calmer when it's quiet. The park across the street (the big DaAn Park in Taipei) has been a quiet little refuge.

We made a quick trip to the zoo on Sunday. We went via the train and made it out there in 30 minutes or so. It was a gray day and threatened to rain but never did. Meg insisted on holding her own umbrella. Well, it was mom's umbrella but it didn't really rain:

We bought the stroller she is in for NT$760. In hindsight, we should have just made the extra effort to lug the nice one from home. We've used this one a lot (e.g. to put her to sleep in the park at 10:30 at night) but it doesn't recline or have space for extra stuff.

I think they were looking at some antelope

They had a good sized butterfly exhibit

These brown leaves are actually butterflies with their wings folded. Pretty cool huh?

Yes, I will walk carefully near the toilet souvenirs

Yes! A nap! Finally! She slept most of the way back.

When she woke up, she had a giraffe... that she calls "horsey".

We finished he trip to a shabu shabu restaurant (Japanese hot pot). Can you imagine taking a 2 year old to a restaurant that specializes in bowls of boiling soup with no child seats. We all survived and had a good meal.

OK.. more out and about to come. I just submitted what I needed to for work and Meg seems to be easing into a workable routine.

Back in Taiwan

2008-11-13T21:29:00.001-08:00

Took me a few days to find the time (and energy) to write this so it covers a few days.

We just flew back to Taiwan for a few weeks so Megan can spend some time with I-Chwen's parents and sister. It was a long flight and Meg does OK but could be better.. she will have almost 20,000 air miles on her by the time we get back. I think she slept for maybe 4 hours during the first half of the 12 hour flight. She then skipped a nap after we got back to I-Chwen's parent's place. It was 20 hours, and boy was she loopy-tired, before she crashed and slept for 12 hours. She did wake up every 2 hours or so but went right back down. Now she's refusing to go down for a nap... We'll figure out the time zone change soon enough.

We took a limo service from the airport. This is the first time we've done that and it was pretty nice. Airport to door for around NT$1,300. After a long flight, it was totally worth it.

The first day we laid low and just took a walk to the Starbucks a block away. Meg got to have a cup as well (it was milk) and loved it

Things were a bit different when we were here last with Meg.

I-Chwen crashed in the afternoon and I chased a sleep deprived 2 year old around an extremely non-childproofed house. "Meg, don't touch that super glue". "Meg stay away from the hacksaw and jar of rusty screws". "Meg, please don't slam the door of the microwave and just because it's at toddler eyeball level is no reason to stare at it while it runs."

Day two...three. can't remember was more of the same. Meg is having some trouble getting used to a new place. She refuses to nap so we spend the afternoon watching a Goodnight Gorilla DVD on the laptop. By the end of the day she is beside herself and eventually crashes. We'll get her used to naps again some day. (Edit on Sunday: We went to the zoo and Meg slept in the stroller for 1 1/2 hours... we had to resort to walking her in the park at 10:30 pm to get her to sleep)

Shes loves spending time with Gong-Pong, Po-Po and Ai-Yi. She gets a kick out of Gong-Gong and follows him around. Here she is doing some gardening with him.

...and then sitting back to admire their work.

We have headed over to the park across the street to burn some jet lag induced crazy steam as well. Yay Da-an park

Last time we came to the park, things were a bit different

I hope to get to the Sunday trip to the zoo soon.

First Brake Job

2008-11-09T13:48:00.000-08:00

Megan got a chance to show off her fine motor skills this morning. When I-Chwen was driving back from a few errands and picking up Rufus from the groomers on Saturday, the Subaru started making an awful grinding metallic noise. She pulled over to the side of the road and me and Meg went to get her (and Rufus).

After looking at the car I was guessing (correctly it turns out) that a rock had gotten in between the front brake disk and the debris shield that sits right behind it. I-Chwen had just left a gravel parking, everything else looked fine and didn;t make that noise when you banged or turned it etc... We drove it the mile or so home with the noise.

We all headed out to the drive way this morning so we could take a better look. I figured it was a learning opportunity for everyone to see a tire getting changed and where all the tire changing stuff was in the car... just in case we needed to change a flat on a dark and stormy night. I learned all this watching my dad and grandpa rotate tires and do brake jobs. Pop quiz! Q. Do you tighten the lug nuts while the car is in the air or after it has been set down and it what order? Don't know? Go check your owner's manual.

Anyway, the point of this blog post from the guy who said he wouldn't be posting for a while, is this - Meg saw tools and a situation and needed to get her hands dirty. She loves tinkering:

She even knew exactly where to stick the screwdriver to bend the debris shield back a bit to free the stone:

I eventually took over and extricated the stone with a pair of chopsticks. Meg went on to play a bit but came back to use the tire pressure gauge when I checked all the tires. She almost managed to get a good reading off on of the rear tires.

She's quite mechanical and oh so organized

She even put the bowls back in the drawer, stacked neatly in the IKEA dish rack thing you see.

OK... now I need to go pack.

Just a Few Fall Fotos

2008-11-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

I just uploaded some photos so I thought I'd do a quick blog post.

Meg and I wandered 3 blocks down the hill from our house to Thorton Creek. Thorton Creek, as it runs through our neighborhood, is surrounded by a hard to get to park. There aren't a lot of obvious entrances and it's not really developed. We lived here for like 5 years before we discovered that we could walk in from our street. I think they keep it natural because it's a salmon bearing stream/restoration project.

Anyhoo, I took a few pics that look like nice fall colorful pictures.

See the bubbles? (click to enlarge)

Here's what happens to them with a long exposure (slow shutter speed)

Well, I thought it was a pretty cool effect.

Rufus came along and enjoyed the smells down in the gulch:

And where there's water, Meg and some rocks... the inevitable happens

That's it.

Oh, thanks to all the folks who commented on the last post. It's nice to know folks have stopped by. We do try and get to all the JOH blogs we can but we lost our bookmarks during a upgrade on the laptop and have slowly been building them back up. It's amazing to stop by a blog you haven't seen in a while...

Rest of October and Halloween

2008-11-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

One more trip to the Beach
The rest of October turned out to be real nice. Nice enough to get to the beach one more time for some walking and rock collecting. This time it was South Beach at Discovery Park and we had to pack Meg in on a backpack. Because there is no parking right at the beach, and it's October, the beach was pretty empty.

She got busy doing her usual collecting rocks and sampling handfuls of sand.

She enjoyed walking in the park on the way to the beach as well.

Halloween
Megan had her first trick or treat experience this Halloween. Neighbors of ours, Karen and Matt down the street, did a "gathering" party. Several families and their kids met for pizza etc.. at their house and went out as a group. It was quite lively. I don't remember seeing this many pirates, ninjas and mermaids on the street in a long, long time:

Meg was warmly dressed as a flower and, I think, really pulled off this look quite well. The nice flower suit came to us from I-Chwen’s good friend Vakula – thank you Vakula!!

By the third or fourth house, she was saying something that sounded like "chucka tweet" or "tweet tweet". She was also making pirate noises, saying, "arrrrrgggggh" over and over again because our friend Chiung-I was dressed as a pirate.. She's still doing it today.

She got the whole idea of ringing door bells and getting a piece of candy in no time and really enjoyed it.

At one point she even had to upgrade to a larger bag. She borrowed Auntie Chiung-I's Sponge Bob box.

There may not be any posts for the next few weeks. We will be kinda busy as we prepare for a two week trip to Taiwan to visit family. We're really looking forward to this trip and will be posting lots of pics after we get there... TTFN.

Back on the Beach

2008-10-24T21:10:00.001-07:00

So, in keeping with the one week delay, here are some pics of a trip to Richmond Beach last week. We brought along Auntie Chiung-I this time. Megan was happy to be there...

It was a foggy morning, but by the time we got there, it was burning off. Good thing too - it was just hitting 50 and a cool breeze was blowing off the sound.

A looong train went by as well. Wish I had a longer lens to get a better picture but this one came out neat.

Rufus had a good time too

..and managed to get into the water...

Like last time, we got some big waves/wake from a passing cargo ship. Megan enjoyed them as you can see here:

She found this stick particularly exciting too:
However, best of all was collecting pieces of shells with Auntie Chiung-I.

Meg would browse the interesting rocks and shell and put the ones she liked in her pocket. Meg's coat pockets were full by the time we got back to the car. She's been carrying those shells and playing pretend "feed her stuffed animals" game every afternoon this week... ignoring all her other toys.

Wet and gritty Rufus with his cold and wet leash stuck close to Auntie Chiung-I

Unrelated to the beach - Meg loves her sunglasses. She'll put them up on top of her head or, as in these pics, on her face and leave them there for quite a while.

...and she knows how to use the glasses for maximum effect:

(Last) Weekend at the Beach

2008-10-17T22:59:00.000-07:00

It is so hard to keep up with posting blog posts. This week, one of my east coast nieces - Madeline, told me she liked to see the pictures and read the story that went along with it. That has given me encouragement to post some more. Thanks Maddy!

It was sunny and dry last weekend so we took advantage of that increasingly rare occasion (Seattle winter is on its way) and went to the beach. She loves the sand. Just today, after coming home for her nanny mate's house, she looked at me and said "hand!", took me by the hand, and started to lead me down the street to the park with the sand-box in it. I had to convince her that Rufus (aka "Harvey") was at home waiting to sniff us to get her to ga back to the house.

Anyhoo... we went to Richmond Beach. Any JOH-ers will recognize the name. That's where the JOH picnic was and we drove past the Seattle office to get there.

Meg ran and ran and ran around the beach... which isn't easy in the soft sand but she loved it.

Rufus came along as well. He can't go to the beaches in the Seattle but up in Shoreline it's OK. He hung out by the bags and watched the other dogs walk by.

Meg really likes the sand/ She loved looking at all the different rocks, dried seaweed and shells:

Once in a while, she'd dig up something unfortunate. She's always had a knack to pick out the unnatural item in the park, in the wood chips in the playground and in the beach. 9 times out of ten it's a cigarette butt:

Didn't see that till we saw the picture.

A big car carrier boat on its way back to Japan went by which stirred up some big waves:

A big train went by, pretty normal for this track, on its way to Canada.

OK.. that was last weekend. We'll try and be quicker about his weekend. Have a good one.

Here are a few other pics pf that weekend. There was a regatta that day further down the sound:

A cool bi-plane also made its way by...

Good Boy!!!!

2008-09-24T00:15:00.000-07:00

Megan started saying 'I poo'. Among all the new words and sentences she had picked up, this is not one we specifically taught her. But you bet she heard it a thousand times. Whenever she said that, there was a 50/50 chance that she actually had a full diaper. She has been doing this for a couple of weeks now everyday consistently (on her own initiation). The fact that she would say something "before" she actually does her business was a sign of readiness. We hurried out to get a potty.

Any time she said it, we'd go in to sit on the new potty which she thought was really cool. She would be sitting on her potty, pointed to the adult potty (aka the toilet) and said 'Mama' - which means I had to sit with her - naturally we each had to have a book. There are three books in that bathroom: Reader's Digest September 2007 issue, Sudoku and Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan in paperback. You guessed it, her choice is always the last one. I tried to trade RD with her thinking she might like more pictures, she refused. The book is kind of heavy for her, so she will use her toes to help hold it in place. Yes, the book is as long as her legs. I would make the 'Nnng' noise to encourage pushing - she will make the same noise back, giggling at the same time.

So it was the morning before COOP preschool, we had breakfast and were just hanging before leaving for school. She said 'I poo'. I took her to the bathroom and we did the routine as described - including holding Omnivore's Dilemma on her lap. She didn't stay very long before she got up rushing off to her next interest, so I thought nothing of it. But was I surprised when I looked - we had results - #2 nicely sitting inside the potty!! I held her back long enough to say 'yay' and gave her a high five. She gave me five back and said - Good Boy!!!! I guess Rufus did a good job of showing her how to potty in style. Pictures to follow....

Pre-School Co-op

2008-09-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

A week ago, Megan started in her Pre-3 preschool co-op. She will go two mornings a week and as it's a co-op, we will be there for one. We got very lucky and got the only spot on the co-op that is located just one block from home in our neighborhood park. I don't seem to have any good pictures of it but I'll try and get one for the blog. Cute little brick building next to the play ground where you've seen Meg playing in here on the blog.

Here she is with mom and Teacher Pam

On the lower right is the "teacher" for the co-op. The co-op is part of North Seattle Community College and includes once a month parenting classes.

I don't have too many pictures to share as I'm trying to just post those with Megan in them. Model releases were signed etc... and restrict the use of some images. Our job for the year is Photographer so we need to keep on top of that.

She really loved being around all the activity, new toys, surroundings and she especially loved circle time. They sing and Teacher Pam tells stories. Last week Megan sat mesmerized. I-Chwen tells me that this week, she scooted forward during the stories to get a front row seat.

More fun tomorrow.

Megan's 2nd Birthday

2008-08-27T13:55:00.001-07:00

Megan had her 2 year old b-day party this weekend. We decided to make it simple by ordering some pizza, buying a half-dozen cupcakes and having it in a local park with a playground. The weather was good and warm. Mark, Lori-Ann, J & Skye, C & J & Cara, Chiung-I and Rufus were there.

The balloons were popular

Chiung-I brought along some great gifts for Meg - a book, bunny and a bag:

Meg enjoyed the pizza:

Meg's nanny-mate Cara shows how good she is at sharing by feeding meg some of her blueberries:

In case the pizza, berries and cupcakes weren't enough, there were plenty of apple windfalls around. Some were durn good:

Some, not so much:

Check out the great doggie cupcakes I-Chwen got from Whole Foods:

Nom, nom, nom!

There were bunny ones as well. They didn't stand up to the heat so good:

A few minutes on the playground to round the day out:

She didn't go to sleep till almost 10 pm the night after the party. I think she was still buzzing on party and cupcakes. As you can see in the photo below, she woke up a bit tired the next day. We applied a bit the hair-of-the-birthday-party-dog to nurse her "hangover" - a leftover tiara, balloon and cupcake (on a fork).

... and it was right back to "nom, nom, nom!"

August is for Recovering From Vacation

2008-08-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

We've been back home over a week now. Megan is back on schedule. My head cold is fading. I-Chwen is back to working all hours of the day.

Here's a wrap up of some of the photos from the last extra week back east (or "Down East" if you prefer). We took some walks:

Met some friendly golden retrievers. These three 100 pound guys were brothers:

Smelled some flowers:

...and brought them back for a recovering mommy:

We went to the game farm where we dispensed some "hairy eyeball" looks to strangers

and cousins:

We tried out a bit of boating:

We got another dip in the lake (this time without a diaper). "Hey fishies!!!"

There always seemed to be time for a bit of Nintendo Gameboy DS on the way back from the beach:

We took a rainy day trip to Freeport to visit the main LL Bean store:

We also headed to the Cumberland County Craft fair to peruse the selction of knick-knacks and local food. Good place to ride your duck umbrella:

They had good fried clams there too:

...and lots of room to run when your started to get "loopy-crazy tired" just before nap time:

We headed to Logan Airport on the 7th to get our flight back home only to sit in the airport for several hours until the flight was canceled at 12:30 AM. Yay Jet Blue. So, the short version of our fun filled evening in Logan after the cancellation is we rented a car (they tried to give us a 2 door convertible which might have been fun if not for the car seat and all the rain) and headed to I-Chwen's brother's house after standing in line for a few hours at Jet Blue's customer service counter with a plane full of angry customers. We got there at 5 AM. Luckily we had the GoGoKidz car seat holder thing. We wheeled a sleeping Megan all over Logan in that thing and thankfully, she slept.

We spent the weekend at Shou and Jean's where Megan had a great time. She even got to take walk around and a dip in Walden pond.

I even got the look once:

Well, we had a few extra days in Massachusetts which we decided to just enjoy (rather than stay angry at Jet Blue). After getting back, Jet Blue came through with some vouchers for the canceled flight but we'll need to fly Jet Blue to use them. We weren't happy with their lack of customer service as it seems to have gone from very helpful to "our policy this and our policy that"... Oh well. They used to be our first pic because of the direct flights. Not anymore.

We're getting ready for fall. Megan will start at the co-op pre-school thing in September so we need to adjust our schedules and nanny schedules for that. It's also her 2nd birthday this coming weekend. We'll post what we manage to do for that event.

Part 3: Day 18 of an 8 Day Vacation

2008-08-09T19:43:00.000-07:00

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? You head back east to see the family up at the family camp in Maine and in Boston for a week or so... and you end spending 10 extra days there. It's not as good as it sounds.

Starting from the last post, we had gone back to Maine for a few more days or fun in the sun, swimming at the lake, maybe a few games of Mahjong. The week was OK, hard to remember a this stage. Megan got to hang out with Me-mere:

She worked on a look that she developed up in Maine that became known as the "hairy eyeball"... originally reserved for those folks she just wasn't too sure about but later saved for teasing folks:

Megan got to play with a tiny toad her cousins caught for her and placed in a bucket (BTW - I'm happy the way this photo came out):

Megan had a 10 course meal at Cole Farms that included raisins, milk, avocado, sweet potato fries, potato chips, rolls, a few other things I can't remember and this entire dill pickle spear:

She got some golf in:

...while sporting a Dairy Queen hairdoo:

There was more happy splashing in the lake with her cousins:

Yay, splashing!

We did a group photo of the cousins:

It took a few tries as some cousins looked away or "oversmiled":

...and, Megan even spent some cozy time with Me-mere:

Then I-Chwen woke up with some pain in her lower back, bring you to your knees pain... the kind of pain that needs a trip to the ER at the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston Auburn.

I-Chwen had a kidney stone and it was on the move.

So, we called Jet Blue, with doctors note in hand say "no flying for you till this stone is gone". $510 later, (I'm saving that story for another post), we are booked for a week later... that would be this past Thursday the 7th. More on why we are still on the east coast on Saturday the 9th later.

The following weeks was dreary and wet for everyone. Cabin fever began to take hold with the 5 cousins - the adult to child ratio was skewed in the ankle biter's favor. There were fewer parents in camp so it was quite hectic and quite tiring for the two main camp "counselors" - my younger sister and my mom. We were down an adult as it was an even worse week for I-Chwen. Pain meds etc.. no need to go into details. That week is truly a blur. Megan got to spend several more days with her cousins but it was very trying for all.

Megan got to spend time with me-mere and cousins at the beach for at least one day (out of 7 rainy ones):

We celebrated the August birthdays for Megan, my younger sis, Christine and myself:

Mmmmm - purple frosting:

Ok, looks like I ran out of uploaded photos. I'll get back to the rest of the trip, and photos soon. I've got some post-recovery trip we did to Freeport and game farms to post. Ill get to that when we get back home. Fingers crossed that our flight actually leaves Boston tomorrow. This same flight, the one we re-booked for $510, was canceled on Thursday... at 12:50 AM in Logan airport (more on the wonders of Jet Blue later). We rented a car and headed to I-Chwen's brother's house outside of Boston and arrived there at 5 AM on Friday. Boy was he surprised when we called him from his drive way... and boy were we tired.

OK - got to go pack. More to come.

Trip East Part 2: Hi Guy

2008-08-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

We packed I-Fan, Preston and us into a van and headed to Boxborough MA where my (I-Chwen's) brother Shou lives. As we drove passed the lake, Megan waved and said "Bye-bye bubble!" to the lake (which she says ever time we drive by the lake). It was a quick drive just short of 2 hours. Arrived at Shou's there were the three boys playing frizbee - even though they are well into their 20's I still call Alfred, Alex and Chris 'boys' because I just remember them as babies! After dropping off stuff and a light lunch, we put Megan down for a nap while Jean took all four boys to Kimball Farm next town over. We met up with them later, Megan got to hang out on green grass and watch her cousins swing golf clubs around (I guess the proper term is Driving Ranch?). We couldn't leave without getting ice cream, which is what Kimball Farm was known for to begin with - I recommend Chocolate Mint Oreo and Black Raspberry - yum!

After the ice cream feast, we headed back to Shou's for the Sichuan feast (take out from a near by restaurant) plus some salmon we brought with us from Seattle (flown in from Alaska two days before it was bought). We 'skyped' with my parents and sister in Taipei, who missed this mini reunion due to distance. We passed the computer around so everybody got to talk face to face with my parents. No Lee get together is complete without a game of Mahjong, this year thanks to Alf we added Texas Hold'en as an 'appetizer'. The betting gets quite wild and unruly since the only thing at stake was a pile of colored chips! We had fun! The boys wanted to watch 'Batman: the dark knight' together, so they went out after the game. They work or go to school in New York, Boston or Baltimore but don't get to see each other often, it's good to hang out.

Megan had a great time with her four big boy cousins - and learned to say 'Hi Guy' the first time. She started out saying it to the wooden carved masks decoration on the wall, then quickly realized it's more fun to say it to a roomful of people! She even decided the plural 's' is optional!!

Trip East Part 1: First few days in Maine...

2008-07-31T13:44:00.000-07:00

We've been up here at the family camp up in Maine for a week now. Had a long red-eye out here where Megan decided not to sit in the seat we got for her. I hand carried while standing her from Seattle to somewhere over Michigan. She recovered nicely from that trip and we've been to Maine, to I-Chwen's brother's outside of Boston and back to Maine.

Lots of folks were here or came up to see us and visit with Megan for a day or so. Lucas, Seth, Seth girlfriend Emma, Wendy, Benson, Kevin's sisters - Beth and Christine, their husbands - Tom and Steve, Megan's four cousins - Madeline, Jack, Bridgette and Daschel, Kevin parents... Christine fixed up her cabin (trailer/parch thing) for I-chwen and I. Then, I-Chwen's sister and her son, Preston flew in from Oklahoma for a few days. Whew.... Here' some pics from that first day or so...

It rained a bit that first day:

Hanging out on the porch is aforementioned rain:

Heading to the beach with big cousin Madeline, Megan gets a look at the lake (Little Lake Sebago):
Megan explains the lake to Maddie:

...and then contemplates the whole big body of water for a bit:

Megan got a few gifts from Auntie Wendy, including an exciting moose:

The first dip in the lake was pretty darn exciting too. Even Auntie I-Fan came all the way out from Norman Oklahoma to see the first dip...

Really exciting:

Hooray for beach sand!

I-Chwen was all smiles in the sun too:

Next up is the weekend at Shou's (I-Chwen's brother).. followed by a few more days in Maine... and then the kidney stone that is keeping us in Maine an extra week.

No - not yet...

2008-07-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

Hi All. It has been a month, hasn't it? Thanks for the reminder Jeff.

We are off on vacation in Maine in a few days. The camera should be back in my hands before we take the red-eye back east. Look for posts and pictures by the end of the week... or maybe the one after that.

We have some vids but needed to reformat the MacBook's harddive.. so I haven't gotten around to processing them for the web. We've got a good one of her saying apple.

Thanks for your patience.

Kevin

Blog Slowdown

2008-06-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's been a while since we last posted. Same old excuse (busy, sick, blah, blah, blah) + a broken camera.

We're sorting out out plans for summer travel and will be heading to Maine at the end of July. I have family in Connecticut but Maine has been the summer place since the early 50s. They have a few cabins. Translation: trailers on cement blocks with roofs built over them, enclosed porches, running water, electricity.. . the works. They are actually the perfect vacation home. Uber low maintenance, comfy, long since paid for... and a great location. They are on Little Sebago Lake which it just 60 miles from the New Hampshire border. We are very excited to be bringing Megan there. She may be a bit young for all the activities but maybe her cousins could get her interested in a game of kick the can. The lake will sure be a blast. She calls any large body of water, from the bath tub right on up to Puget Sounds, "bubbles". Lots of fun for sure. PS. We'll be back in Seattle in time for the JOH picnic and hope to meet some more JOH-ers there. Drop us a line if you'll be in town.

This last week Megan has been a bit under the weather. Runny nose and a cough. Both have been keeping her up at night and making naps very difficult. At night, she's been taking a long time to go to sleep, been waking up every 1 to 2 hours over the last few days and getting up early... one tired and cranky baby. I should type faster so I can crash. She's sure to wake up.

To add to all those boogers and hacking coughs, we think shes got her 2 year old molars on the move. Besides shoving chopsticks and fingers into the back of her mouth, she also did this to a binky last night:

For you new parents, that's how you tell if they are teething or not. Took her maybe 30 minutes to gnaw through that thing. Might be some sympathetic pain from the head cold/sore throat too.. not sure. Ouch!

We all have the same cold well but with a bit of ibuprofin and some good naps we are on the mend.

Here are few more shots from the last few weeks. Photos might be more scarce over the next few weeks. We had friends over for some BBQ off the smoker. Megan enjoyed the company and playing piano with uncle (not an actual blood uncle or however you say it. bio-uncle?) Mark:

With the warmer weather (Hah! I kid. It's going down to 48F tonight.), we've gotten out an about. Note the sweatshirt. Megan loves looking at ants. She'll squat down right over an anthill and yell "Hey!" or "Hi there!". Here she is getting to know lone ant...

...for a very brief period of time. Squish...

And here she is inspecting the tennis court. Lines look OK. That, or there might have been an ant on the line.

The net looks OK from here as well... maybe a little tight.

Who left this crazy, psychedelic tunnel here in the park?

Finally - the Rufus abides

PS. The good camera has stopped working and the symptoms point towards a bad shutter. Not surprising as we do take a lot of pics with it. According to the camera, we've taken 13,000 pictures. According to Nikon, the shutter on the D70s should last for 50,000 pics but apparently, they had an above average number of failures in this model. It's 3 years old and the new Nikons are looking real nice (and expensive - eek). Need to make the repair, replace or do nothing decision. So, till we do, the will probably be fewer pics here. Maybe more movies instead....

A Few More to Catch Up On

2008-05-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

I just uploaded a bunch of pics to the photo site so I thought I'd make another post to catch up on the week.

Megan continues to enjoy sniffing the flowers in the yard. This is an iris leaning over in front of a neighbors yard. Sniffing flowers properly requires the right pose and scrunchie face:

Here she's giving her opinion on the house being built down the street. A two handed smack... but we're not sure if that means she likes it or not:

I-Chwen's choir performed at the Seattle Northwest Folklife Festival this year. after her performance, we wandered around, shopping the vendors and getting our fill of "festival food". Folklife used to be pretty laid back and all sorts of interesting acts, such as this girl displaying at least three talents that I do not posses:

It's not so interesting these days. More food and merchandise vendors and the crowd is definitely younger and a little edgier. It wasn't a bad day but it just wasn't as fun as it was before.

Megan enjoyed some of the people watching:

The Seattle mounted police were there with there incredibly calm horses so Megan even touched her first horse

...but then thought twice about touching her again

Megan is a big fan of watching folks play basketball. She decided to try her hand at it at our local park. Finding a ball laying on the court, she drives to the hoop...

...looks for and open teammates...

... doesn't see any and takes the shot...

...Bucket!

(Actually, Mom took the shot - one handed, balancing a sippy cup and a snack-trap, and got it in one!)

New Nanny Week

2008-05-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

So Me-mere (grandma) and grandpa went home this past Saturday after a three week visit. Megan just loved having them here. She was a bit "out of sorts" after they went home. Lots of clingy whining and not sleeping and waking up whining and crying.... whew! We also started her with a new nanny on Monday and that probably didn't help. She was dealing with a few changes at once and it took her a few days to cope with it all.

We've found a nanny-share situation for Megan. She shares the nanny with another little girl - C. She spends three days a week at C's house and one here. Friday she's with dad. The first few drop-offs and pick-up were filled with tears and crying. Every day seems to be a bit less though. I think she's getting used to the idea and the nanny has got tons, decades, scads of experience PLUS Megan has another little girl to play with. She even got to go to the zoo on Thursday. The timing of this nanny's availability was perfect. Me-mere came out to fill the gap for a few weeks while we looked and the nanny turned out to be available the following week after Me-mere was scheduled to fly home.

Here's a fun video of Meg getting workout with the toy that has the pegs you push in and out...

It's getting hard to get videos. She sees the camera and is hooked on electronics. As soon as she sees the camera, she stops whatever cute thing she was doing and starts saying "baybeee" over and over again and wants to see the screen.

She also developed a similar addiction to Me-mere's Gameboy DS and to pbskids.org. She mastered turning the Gameboy on and off and flipping through screens using the touch screen. On the laptop, she loved to look at pbskids.org. They have this wheel of PBS characters that scrolls by. When she sees that she makes the arm wave accompanied with a wooosh sound. We kind of captured that here...

This past Monday, she woke up at 4 AM and we could hear the "whoosh" sound coming from the crib. Kinda funny.

Here's a different kind of whoosh - dandelion blowing. She's got her own style of blowing. Hold the stem by the bottom, wind it up and make the best blowing noise you can:

As for Nintendo Gamebay - we carried it around a bit. Here we are at a nearby Italian place (Cafe Piccolo) basking in the warm Nintendo glow:

Fianlly - here's a few pics from a trip to Pike Place Market last weekend.

We were listening to some musicians outside of the original Starbuck's store. I thought they were good, kinda Squirrel Nut Zipper-y. This was Megan's reaction:

These were the folks playing. I think they were called Slimpickin's:

We had a snack at a French bakery before heading home. If you get your fingers on a cheese danish, be sure to wipe your hands off:

We cleaned the window before we left...

That's all for now.

Star Shaded Shades

2008-05-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

This vid is from a few weeks ago when Megan got her first pair of sunglasses. She spent the first few minutes of wearing them walking around the house touching things. I guess everything looked different so it must feel different. Then we brought her up on the vanity so she could check out the glasses in the mirror. I think she liked them...

She is turning into a little girl for sure.

Here's a few other fun photos. She's decided she just doesn't want to wear socks or slippers while inside. This pair of socks appeared, artfully arranged with Pooh-bear, in the kitchen one day.
We've had my folks in town for a few weeks while we try and get a nanny or day care for Megan. Megan has been having a ball (and we've gotten lots of work done having extra hands around). She's really taken to grandpa. One day last week, on a visit to REI, she decided to forgo playing in their kids play area and instead sit on grandpa's lap:

Spring is in full bloom here so we headed down to the Ballard Locks to check out the gardens there. Megan loves to sniff the flowers. Dandelions are her favorite but she'll check out anything with a bit of color:

...but I'm not always sure she likes the smell:

Next came bird feathers:
A ride with grandpa (BTW - she calls him "paw"):
..and a little boat shopping as the herd of boats headed out from the locks:

Did I mention she likes her grandpa?

...and dandelions

Yesterday we went to St Edward's State Park for a few hours. They have an enormous jungle gym/play thing that the community built. I think they raised like $250,000 for this and built it themselves. She had a great time exploring all the walkways, tunnels and things on springs:

Hoooo.... this is strange to walk on...
Peek-a-boo!

Go on Meg! You can jump on down from there no problem...

Hey, how'd you get up there Dad?

OK... that was fun. Moving on...

Three Weekends

2008-04-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

So, we've neglected the blog for a month or so. Just got busy around here I guess. Still crazy busy at work for I-Chwen. After a full day at the office, she works a few more hours after dinner most nights. We're trying to find daycare for Megan as our nanny is leaving. EcoFAB (link to the right) has helped manage a few open houses at the house we helped the Puyallup Tribe build (Elder Healthy Home).

So, to catch up...

Our neighbors are moving back east and had a tag sale/hang out and drink beer day three weekends ago. It was cold and cloudy... like 40F. Not a great day for a tag sale nor to hang out outside. Megan didn't seem to care. She even got into playing in a wheelbarrow filled with 40 degree water in it. That is our neighbor's son. He's two weeks younger than Megan but like 4 inches taller.

Two Fridays ago, we went to the zoo with Doug and J. She seemed to be most impressed by the clever newspaper box next to the spider exhibit:

...and the water feature in the jaguar exhibit:
Two weekends ago, the temp shot up to 79 and we went to the beach:

It was low tide and Megan loved exploring the squishy smörgåsbord of a mud flat when the tide is out. Kelp, wet sand etc...

She would have walked right into Puget Sound if I-Chwen hadn't been holding her hands...
We dried off in the warm sand. She loved the feel of the sand and dove right in. We found sand everywhere later that night.

Then it snowed this past weekend. We stayed inside which was just as well. Megan seems to have come down with a fever. We're thinking ear infection but we'll find out this afternoon when we go see Dr. Davies.

I also rummaged through all the scrap wood we have here and built a small table for Megan. It's plywood trimmed with VG fir and purpleheart.
It's finished with a non-toxic linseed oil finish and a bit of wax. It's about mid-torso for Megan so she can stand at it and flip through books.

Megan, Snow and "Harvey"

2008-03-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

We had some big, wet flurries today. Megan was fascinated with the white things falling from the sky during lunch so we bundled up and headed outside. Rufus came along as well.

Rufus just loves the snow and gets a bit worked up when he's out in it. He rolls in it, eats it, howls at it... Megan was impressed as well. Below are some pics of her watching it fall. The first thing she noticed was Rufus. For the last few weeks, she's been calling him what sounds like "harvey". Actually, we think that this is her way of saying "happy" but for some reason it applies to 90 lbs of fuzz and a wet nose.

I put the pics together into a slide show. Let me know if this works for you guys.

Otherwise, here are some pics from that trip into the snow:

Piano and Voice

2008-03-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

So, Megan asked to play the piano one late Sunday afternoon (by walking over to it and sticking her hands up in the air and made some "gimme" motions and noises - we're still working on please). Up she got on mommy's knee and began to pick out a tune to go with left-hand accompaniment from mom. She does seem to play a piano like she was playing a piano.. as opposed to playing it like it was a giant Whack-a-Mole* game. This bodes well for the piano's well being...

The video was shot about two weeks ago and she eased up on asking top play again. She's probably already moved on from the piano to something else. Things change quickly.

This weekend, we started to hear some more words. Rufus (our dog) is no longer called "ruf, ruf, ruf, ruf" or "sit!". Those were pretty accurate but not quite 100%. Now she calls him either "gou gou", which is dog in Chinese (狗狗), or "Harvey". We are not sure where "harvey" came from but that sounds like what she is saying. It's a good name. Maybe it will stick.

We've also heard "duck" and "pah" (ball)" is a frequently used word as is "buh buh" (bubbles). She even called dad "buh buh" for a few days. "Guh guh" (gone) with shoulders shrugged and hands up is in frequent use too. It seems like every day she adds a few ways to communicate with us. After coming back from the park yesterday, I went to the door and gave her a noisy greeting... she gave me a serious look from down on the front walk, raised an index finer to her mouth and "shushed" me. It backfired on her as we burst out laughing. I'll see if I can get videos of some more words.

*Side Note: Whack-a-Mole reminded me of something funny. I still like my nephew Daschel's name for the Whack-a-Mole game. After unwrapping one for Christmas a few years ago, he exclaimed with extreme enthusiasm and glee "Hammer Beaver! Yay!".

Megan Gets A Glimpse of Ireland

2008-03-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Irish Heritage Festival at the Seattle Center. We, I-Chwen, Megan, Auntie Chiung-I and myself headed down to check it out. I'm just 1/8th Irish but Megan has a decidedly Irish name... so we thought we should. Lots of Irish dancing and a few vendors selling Celtic styled jewelry and shirts. I even saw an "Irish sarong" booth.

There was lots of "river dance" kind of dancing. They even had a troupe of girls in from Ireland. They performed to resounding applause. We checked this out for a few minutes:

After hanging out in the crowds for a few minutes, Megan made a beeline for the door. She wanted outside! She needed room to run (and make monster noises). She loves the wide open spaces:

She watched Auntie Chiung-I play with her stroller

...and was a bit concerned when she had a near roll-over:

Then it was off for more running:

We headed back in for a few more minutes of Irish Heritage and ran across a funny mirror:

..and stopped by the taffy and ice cream place:
By the time we made it to the Hawaiian Luau BBQ in the U-District (think - cheap piles of food in the U-District. It was real grimy but eating like a grad student again was a culinary bargain.), Megan was tuckered out:

It was a good day out and about.

Up next - Megan plays piano...

One More Chore

2008-03-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

Megan has also decided that she enjoys loading the dishwasher. As I was emptying the dishwasher, I put a few metal bowls on the ground to distract her while I finished... and she put them back... a few times.

Here's a recreation of the "fun"

I wonder how she'd do with some Windex and a ladder? The windows could use a little spring cleaning...

Megan's New Hobbies

2008-03-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

Megan picked up a few hobbies over the last month.

First we have laundry. In the clothes go and, when she thinks it is appropriate, out they come. She can manage at least half a load at a time... before the broom distracts her(see below). Here's the laundry video from a few weeks ago:

She's also discovered the swifter and the broom. She will go around and around and around with the swifter. She's often gets to the point where daddy needs to change the pad on the swifter because she's been swiftering for a good 20 minutes. That sure beats 20 minutes of TV... (This video is a bit longer so I've had to reduce the quality a bit.)

Three Outings

2008-03-01T19:51:00.000-08:00

Children's Museum with J., "bim beem bop" at Ida and Dave's and downtown with Mom.

A week ago on Friday, we headed down to the Children's Museum at the Seattle Center (where the Space Needle is). We met up with Doug and his daughter J. - also adopted through program 3. It was a nice day out but the museum has all sort of stuff to play with - knobs to turn, buttons to press, mountains to climb, whales to crawl inside of...

We explored some masks and musical instruments. That's Doug on the right
We played with some knobs and buttons that made water shoot around
Megan even tried to take home a sign about photosynthesis. She grabbed on and gave it a big grunt and pulled.
Don't have a whole lot of bim beem bop photos but here's a few of the spread. we spent the afternoon eating and chatting.

The seafood stew was a bonus dish on to of the bim beem bop (a Korean dish of rice with mixed veggies):

Finally was a trip downtown to have lunch with mommy this past Friday. The weather was nice so we parked the car under the viaduct and wandered around the Pioneer Square park area. We ended up at a small "cafe and gelateria" called Cafe Umbria off Occidental Park. Megan wasn't all that impressed with the inside of the cafe but she enjoyed saying "hi there" to folks. We ended up outside and Megan rather enjoyed playing around on the bricks.

She kept saying hi to a visitor from Michigan who was sitting outside the cafe. He had a hat on and she thought that was great. She pointed to hers to show him she had one on too. He then proceeded to take a second hat out of his backpack and show it to her...

She was very impressed
I messed this next shot up. It says "gelateria" on the window to the right. I think it would have made a cute pic of a toddler looking in the window of the ice cream place...
Then she found a puddle...

Ever watch a pigeon walk around in a park. Here's Megan's version of that. Check out Megan's wet footprints - back and forth and around in circles....

She also thought the cigarette butts on the ground were pretty funny

Finally, we spent some more time in the park. Here's two from those trips. She likes going down the slide head first...

...and equally exciting - watching water drip into the drain.

A Bit of Spring

2008-02-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

We've had a bit of good weather recently so Megan has enjoyed exploring the outside. Today we walked the neighborhood park. The park is one block south and one block east from here... quite a walk for such short legs. Megan went twice as far as I did as she either zig-zags or walks in circles. I carried her back so we could get her down for a nap. Yesterday, the nanny said she walked all the way there AND all the way back. I checked out the route on a jogging route site and it tells me that the round trip was 1/3 of a mile. Wow.

Here's a few photos of her exploring the out of doors starting with the water meter cover.

The neighbors driveway was worth taking a walk down...

I like that hat. Can you believe it's daddy's hat?

Oooooh.... it spins

..and this swings....

Oh yeah! This is almost as fun as going down head first!

Same slide, different and sunnier day

And again, once she got the hang of it, she decided to try head first.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Checking out Auntie Julie and Chiung-I tossing the ball for Rufus.

Neat stuff buried in the cement

Sand is neat stuff too. It's cool and grainy and soft enough to stick your hand in

It runs through your fingers (when they are dry)

And it sticks to it when they are wet

Helping dad with the stroller as we head home

娃娃穿紅鞋 Red shoes and New Year

2008-02-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

A year ago while we were waiting anxiously for court rulings, we sent a care package to Megan for Chinese New Year. In it there was a red dress and a pair of red shoes (pictured before sending) to match. Last week our petite little girl just fit into the dress and shoes just in time for her first Chinese New Year here with us (pictured with Mommy) !!!

Click here to see complete post about the care package

Antie I-Fan (一帆) sent us a nursery rhyme after seeing that post:
三歲娃娃穿紅鞋
搖搖擺擺去上學
老師說我年紀小
可是我會自己跑

My attempt to translate:
Three-year old baby putting on her little red shoes
waddling she goes - off to school.
Teacher told me I am still very young,
but can't you see how fast I can run?

This is so true, except that Megan is 1.5-year old and doesn't even waddle any more. Ok, maybe just a little bit.

Speaking of Chinese New Year, we certainly had a good one! I made two traditional dishes from my family's usual 12 dishes - chicken braised in fermented red rice paste (紅糟雞) and stir fried rice cake (炒年糕) on New Years Day. We had a couple of get togethers with friends as well. Our neighbors came over for a dumpling/hum bao (餃子/包子) wrapping party. Derek, Linda, Sage (4) and Jamieson (Megan's age) brought over with their version of home made vegetarian filling to compliment our traditional pork filling. After meal, the boys ran amok in the house while Megan watched in awe, it was very fun.

My choir's so very talented pianist and resident chief chef Shufen had us over for hot pot (火鍋) - another New Year tradition. 20+ people over three pots, the rooms were filled with steam, food aroma, people young and old, plus a crackling fireplace, it was a quintessential New Year event! Plus Megan was running around in her red dress/red shoes playing hard to get with newly met people. We were busy enjoying the moment and didn't take any pictures. What was I thinking.

The next event we do have pictures to show. We went to Janet, Andrew, Elizabeth (6) and Hope's (2, also adopted from Taiwan) house to have a celebration with a couple other families adopted from Taiwan. Janet's house was decorated appropriately with red lanterns and etc... she was even able to borrow a paper dragon from Elizabeth's school teacher. A dragon dance done by Elizabeth and her friends wrapped up the evening nicely. Here is Mommy frantically trying to get Megan out of the way of dragon.

Here is Megan mesmerized by the back side of the dragon.

Megan also got a chance to sit down and play trains with Hope and Aaron.

Here is Megan sitting down to reflect upon her thoughts after the rush of New Year was over.

Shoes, shoes and shoes

2008-02-12T22:05:00.000-08:00

OK - we caught a bit of the xiezi action on video. (See previous posts about how much she likes this new word...) I had hoped to get more but I think this is a good sample. This one highlights just one or two of the ways you can have fun with shoes. For example: you can carry them around the kitchen or you can look at them on the camera screen. Fun!

Today we sang "head, shoulders, knees and toes" song with Megan. She took off her shoes and socks (saying xiezi all the while, of course) and pointed at her toes. Very good Megan - you can identify toes. However, she pointed at those toes and said "xiezi". Hmmmm.... maybe xiezi doesn't mean shoes to Meg?

Another tooth and Daddy's girl

2008-02-11T22:09:00.000-08:00

So Megan surprised us today with another new tooth - this time the upper left canine (犬齒). Take a look at the ADA chart, so far she is RIGHT on schedule! After she got all four first molars in two weeks around Christmas (OUCH!!!), she got all her primary teeth except canines and second molars. We thought she will take a longer break from the teething business. Nope. She has been on the cranky side at dinner time lately, we thought she didn't like sitting down and/or wanted to feed herself (which she is trying by the way). When we gave her a bath tonight, Daddy spotted the new tooth poking through!!! Daddy is a very good "new teeth spotter". No new tooth could escape his observation. Good job Daddy!

Speaking of Daddy, Megan is going through a bit of a "Daddy" phase right now, reaching out to/whining for him whenever she was handed away from him - then totally fine as soon as he is out of sight...

Ok just a quick report on Megan progress here.

Red Cheeks and Pink Shoes

2008-02-09T16:36:00.000-08:00

Megan is enjoying her new xiezi (shoes). She loves getting out and exploring the yard and the local park. Here are some photos from two recent outings:

In a local park, playing with rocks and enjoying a stroll

Rufus came along as well

We strapped on her shoes and went on a meander around the yard. We picked up a walking/poking stick.

Checked out the trees

Checked out the pine needles

Examined the moss on the driveway

...and finally got a true taste of the outdoors

New Shoes

2008-02-06T10:33:00.000-08:00

We picked up Megan's first pair of shoes she can wear outside this past week. We headed out to a local kiddie shoe store and got her a pair of pink Stride-Rites. She's got tiny size 3.5 feet so we didn't have a huge selection. It was a very quick trip but Megan was happy with the results. In fact, she's picked up another favorite word as a result of that trip - "shoes" in Chinese (鞋子). She walks around the house saying "xie-zi". Once at 5 AM-ish we were woken to the sound of Megan saying "xie-zi, xie-zi, xie-zi". 她好喜歡她的新鞋子! (She really likes her new shoes!)

A few days later we got a call from a friend who was at another shoe store (Sole Food I think it's called) that was having a 75% off sale on kids shoes. Megan ended up with a few more pair of Merrels... they were like $9 a pair. Mommy really is an expert at the shoe shopping thing.

First trip outside in 'em was to a play area next to the Seattle Library branch nearest our house. There were slides:

woodchips...

This chip just needed to be here in this drainage "channel"

swings...

Compare this to last June. We don't realize how long her legs are getting till we see these photos.

...jungle gyms..

...with cold bars...

...and, of course, man hole covers to look at....

The rocking chairs in the library were fun too.

OK - this was just going to be about shoes. I threw the park in for the heck of it.

Rosy cheeked outdoor photos ( I guess new shoes = freedom to roam) coming up.

Enter the Dragon - Megan Style

2008-01-28T11:16:00.000-08:00

Megan got a toy from Auntie Christine this past Christmas call Pound a Ball. Basically, you have 4 plastic balls that need to be pounded into slightly smaller holes using that "best toddler toy ever" - a hammer. No batteries or electronic versions of "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain".... just a hammer.

Well, she looked it for a few weeks till mommy taught her how to use it. Leaving the hammer to those who's kung-fu was not as strong, she went at it open handed. She did a good job and made sure to let the toy know who was boss by giving it a Bruce Lee look and yell after each successful smack-down.

The first puzzled glance at the camera when the balls wouldn't go down was pretty funny too.

We met another milestone this past week. Megan finished her first "Birds" course at the Little Gym. Since she's started walking she's really enjoyed this class. After an hour of class, she will often fall asleep on the 2 mile ride home. Here's a few action shots. (Tough place to photograph as there were windows all around and dozen or so toddlers zooming around.)

Before she could walk, she would just hang onto these red parallel bars and chew on them. Now she walks.

Here she's figured it out how to go down a step without having to slide down on her belly. She'd rather go down forward facing like big people - it's more fun.

Ball time is fun...

...but bubble time is better!

She got a ribbon for all her hard work and a few words from the instructor
Mmmmm.. ribbon

Coming up - Megan gets her first outdoor shoes and we take a trip to the park in them...

Holiday came and went....

2008-01-15T22:48:00.000-08:00

Megan's first Christmas had proven to be a major milestone of her life - she started walking, got more than a few new teeth, got to meet many aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, got an embarrassingly amazing amount of gifts and mostly importantly - was showered with love of family. Thank you for being the loving grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins!!

Here are some more of my favorite holiday pictures to share:
Three generations hanging out at Auntie Beth's (standing in background) house.

A walk/bike ride through Jones Tree Farm just behind Kevin's parents house. This was Kevin's playground growing up and now his nieces' and nephews' for years to come.

Happy to be getting on the road to visit Great Uncle Walter and Aunt Martha in Johnston, RI.

Exchanging glances with Aunt Martha...

Playing with Uncle Walter's nose....

Waking up at Uncle Shou's house in Boxboro, MA.

BIG cousin Alf spent quality time entertaining Megan.

No holiday is complete without a fest - two of the 12 dishes served at Shou's - Auntie Jean's famous scallion pancakes 蔥油餅 and her sister Sharon's chicken fingers Chinese style 炸雞柳 - both Megan's favorites. She kept saying 謝謝 (thank you in Chinese) loudly just to make sure she gets more....

We came home to Seattle and found this pot of fabulous seafood stew waiting for us on the stove - it was Christmas gift from our friend Chiung-I. Two other dishes she made not pictured: squash dumplings with sage butter and goat cheese, breakfast pastry filled with spinach, beacon, cheese, egg, etc.. Yumm, mmmmm, mmm....

Now that we've been home in Seattle for a few weeks, daily life has been back to sort of a routine. Megan's walk is so steady and uneventful, we stopped taking as many pictures of her walking. She had learned to catch herself gracefully from falling, not to cry when she did fall (mostly on her behind), navigating skillfully over threshold between different flooring (tile to hardwood, hardwood to carpet). And most of all, she walks and walks, and walks all day just to make sure she masters it, and she is sure getting quite good at it!

She had also become very expressive, check out her new facial expressions:
Does she have an opinion or what? Pictured at friend Jeanne's house for brunch after New Year.

I love my veggie booty! I LOVE my veggie booty! I LOVE MY VEGGIE BOOTY!!!

At a birthday party: hmmm what should I play next?

Whoah...It's mid-January

2008-01-14T14:13:00.000-08:00

Hi. We are having a busy month since coming back from the east coast. I think I-Chwen is working on a post so I won't cover what she's writing about.

So, in other news... I've started helping out at the school I did my MBA - Bainbridge Graduate Institute. I am acting as a TA for the Sustainable Operations course and am really looking forward to re-connecting with the community over there. Lots of interesting and smart people with lots of energy pointed at sustainable business. It should be fun. Here are some pictures from the ferry ride - click to enlarge. (These are shot with an old manual focus lens on my D70s. It's a Nikkor 105/2.5 I've had since 1989. I think it still does a good job but I could have lightened and sharpened those pics up a bit. No time...)

Ecofab (one of my jobs - link to the right) has also gotten some more press as the house we helped the Puyallup tribe build nears completion. It's called the Elder Healthy Home and is a demonstration project that they will hopefully replicate as they build housing for the tribal elders. We are very excited at seeing the long effort come to a successful completion. Good way to start 2008.

Just letting folks know we are still here. More on Megan soon... some walking pics too but those are hard to take. She's fast!

Megan Walks on Christmas Day

2007-12-25T19:32:00.000-08:00

So, it's been a busy week here in New England. Lots of hanging around with family and more. We had a "Welcome Megan" open house party this past Saturday. Sunday we managed to get up visit I-Chwen's brother in Boxboro (Massachusetts) . Christmas Eve and Christmas day were spent back in CT with all the aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins here.

My family put on an "open house" for Megan so we could introduce Megan to as many folks as possible as well as catch up with everyone. Family, neighbors and even some college classmates came. It started out slow:

...so we decided to finally take a few pictures of all three of us in one photo. I can't believe this has been so hard to accomplish. I guess it's my fault as I'm always the one behind the camera.
Eventually it was busy enough so that it was hard to catch up with everyone. It was a huge effort by my mom and sisters and it was fantastic to see everyone in one place. Megan also left there with a ton of gifts. Thanks everyone!
The next day we headed up north to Massachusetts. Megan was going to go meet an aunt she hadn't met yet and her two oldest cousins - Chris and Alf. They are left and right below. An uncle from their mother's side is to my right.
We played some mahjhong where Chris dominated and got some takeout from Sichuan Gourmet in Billerica. Uncle Shou made some chicken soup, Auntie Jean made her fabulous scallion pancakes and Jean's sister made a chicken dish. She had a great time doing things like playing with cousin Alf's iPod...
...and hanging out in the living room watching the Patriots/Dolphin's game with her cousins.
Trying to blend in with the local sports fans, she donned cousin Alf's Bruins hat. She must have felt good in it as it stayed on her head for hours.
(The next day, she ran across a Ray Bourque poster(?) and planted a kiss on his face. I think her cousin convinced her to join the hopeful ranks of Bruin's fans)

We stayed up late. Megan slept like a log and we headed back the next day - Christmas Eve. It was a short trip but was great to hang out with everyone. Even though she was a bit shy, Megan loved meeting everyone and exploring their house. The exercise did her good... as we found out on Christmas Day.

After opening up some gifts...

...hanging out with her cousins who stopped by to get some gifts.... e.g. Jack and Daschel hang out with their dad's, playing a Star Wars game they both received...

...she decided it was a good time to actually walk. Check out the smile on her face ....

Notice how I make a pretty good "dad catch" when she gets going a bit too fast. I earn a pat on the shoulder for that from Megan. ;-)

I'll post more later about the trip but I need to crash. Her teeth are giving her a heck of a time. She's gotten 4 teeth in as many weeks. This last one (or two) are tough ones and she is guaranteed to wake up tonight.

Megan in Connecticut

2007-12-19T17:49:00.000-08:00

So, we made the cross country flight this past Monday night on a red-eye from Seattle to JFK. We thought she'd sleep and it would be easy but it was a bit of a rough flight for Megan. She had a tooth bothering her and could not get comfy for the first few hours. Luckily we had a tailwind and the flight was only 4.5 hours long. There were also lots and lots of kids on this flight. Pre-boarding had 12 or so strollers in line (so much for getting on early). I overheard the flight attendant giving the flight stats to the captain. There were 143 people on the plane. That makes it 8% babies. The car ride from JFK to CT was a snooze fest for everybody.

She's had a busy few days getting to know her cousins, aunts and uncles as well as catch up on her sleep.

Here she is chatting with her big cousin (大表姐) Madeline. Madeline was counting the days down to when Megan arrived so she was excited to get to meet her.

Here Jack(大表哥) and Daschel (小表哥) bring her up to speed on the latest in baby telecommunication technology:

She picked up some driving lessons from Me-mere:

Did a little rocking in an old family rocking chair that belonged to me-mere when she was a little girl:

She did a little rolling with Auntie Christine (小姑姑):

Grandpa tried to hypnotize her with the flashing eyeball lights on his hat (from the Singapore Zoo):

She tried out some new expressions on her cousins. First with her big cousin Maddie:
Then with her younger cousin, Bridgette (小表姐). Judging by this picture, she learned it from Bridgette:
A few head butts with Daschel:

And, much to Jack's surprise, a "left hook" to the nose:

The Latest Step in Megan's "How to Walk" Plan

2007-12-15T14:42:00.000-08:00

I-Chwen captured a bit of video of the methodical progress that Megan is making on learning how to walk. First there was standing, then there was walking with two hands of support, then one hand and now there's grabbing a leg and walking. We think it's part of a rigorous plan she's come up with. (Seriously - we are seeing her be very methodical with much of the stuff she is learning. For example: If you give her a book upside down, she will turn it right side up and place it squarely in front of her before proceeding to turn the pages. ) Here's the video:

...and here's a cute photo from a bath time this past week. It's fun playing under the puppy towel from Nancy:

TTFN

UPDATE: So, Cari (in the comments) you had it right. That movie was shot yesterday. Within an hour of me posting that video, Megan took her first 10 "unsupported" steps. Can things go any faster?

Megan Visits the Island

2007-12-09T19:34:00.000-08:00

Megan had her first ferry ride to Bainbridge this past Saturday when we took the Seattle-Bainbridge Island ferry. I was going over to attend an alumni meeting at the place I did my MBA - Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.bgiedu.org). I-Chwen and Megan came along for a day's outing and to say hi to everyone. As you can see from the picture, it was a beautiful fall day for a ferry ride.

As with most clear winter days in gray Seattle, it was a bit crisp out - maybe 35F that morning. That made for cool riding outside of the cabin but that didn't stop Megan. Megan was fine with riding on the inside - people to look at and our friend Annie's bright red pocketbook to play with... but she really loved riding outside up in front in the "refreshing" breeze. Ever been out on the water in the winter on a fast moving boat? Brrrrrr.... Megan loved it! She had her tongue out or her mouth wide open to feel the cool breeze (think: 25 mph+ wind) for most of the few minutes she was outside. Maybe it felt good on her molars?

I-Chwen and Megan hung out on the island long enough for us to have lunch with some fellow alumni. Megan fell asleep for an afternoon nap on the way to the alumni meeting location so didn't get to go inside and say hi. Mommy and Megan turned around and went home on the 2 pm ferry and I stayed for a few more hours (for the meeting). I wasn't going to stay too late as I wanted to get back for I-Chwen's mini birthday party.

The ride back was pretty. I got on the 4:30 boat and that is sunset time out here in the winter. Remember: you can click the photo's below (and above) for larger versions.

Mt Ranier:

Seattle in the sunset light:

The Olympic Mountains off behind us and Bainbridge:

Bit of a funny colored sunset.

Olympic Mountains again:

...and home in time for tiramisu cake made by our friend (and amazing baker) Chiung-I:

We Need a Whammie Recount!

2007-12-07T22:54:00.000-08:00

Friday is my SAHD (stay at home dad) day with Megan. We did the usual had breakfast, sneaked out of the house to go buy mommy a birthday gift (tomorrow is I-Chwen's birthday), came back and had some lunch, tried to get Megan go down for a nap a bit early so we can go to the Little Gym at 2:10 and failed at that, etc.. She was a very goofy girl today. She laughed at everything from Elmo, her bunny, the lift flap book with the ducks and even the hinges on the coat closet door. Not just a giggle either - these were belly laughs. We pretty much laughed at everything. Life was good and apparently quite funny from her 28 inches off the floor perspective.

Around 4 she starts to whimper and came over and buried her head in my chest. Awwww... what a cuddly daddy moment. Then she starts to shove her hand in her mouth and cry. The tears were flowing and she was wanting to be held but couldn't help but squirm, push and wail. She had been doing this the last few days but we had thought it was all part of the bug thing - maybe gas even. Mylicon didn't ease the pain so I thought I should recheck her teeth. I shoved my brown n' serve sized finger in her mouth and began to feel around. Slobbery - check. Pointy puppy teeth up front - check. No foreign objects (excepting Dad's finger) - check...

Youch!! Those molars are sharp when they poke through. Two of them no less! One on each side (top). They seem to be the ones all the way at the back too. It's a bit of a surprise as her front teeth aren't fully in yet.

Not satisfied with the double whammie of stomach bug and shots - we went for the whammie hat trick instead.

Sorry - no pics of the molars. Here's a pic from a few days back in the park. Those gloves just stayed on her hands - amazing.

4 Shots Plus

2007-12-03T09:55:00.001-08:00

The "plus" being a stomach bug/virus of some sorts.

So the last few weeks have flown by. We spent Thanksgiving here at home with just us and one friend. This means lots of leftovers. That's old news and the turkey is long gone. Here is a picture of Megan with the turkey leg - from a long legged and small breasted bird we purchased from a local farm.

So what happened last week and what about this bug?

Megan had her 15 month well child checkup this past Wednesday. Everything checked out and she got 4 shots that day. She cried for all of maybe 30 seconds. She's pretty good with shots... the pain part at least. She was a bit cranky that afternoon but we attributed that to the shots (one of which was a flu vaccination). Pretty normal... until that night. She spiked a fever and woke up crying around 9:30 PM. I (Kevin) went and picked her up as she was crying pretty darn hard. Within 20 minutes she spit up all over me. With in a few minutes she did it again but this time dad was smart enough to have moved to the bathroom. She hit the sink from about 4 feet away. Daddy and Megan have good aim I guess. We had given her beets for dinner that night so it was bit of a scary sight. Sorry - no pics.

This was the beginning of a few rough days for Megan. She had a fever, appeared to be repeatedly nauseous, wasn't eating etc... We suspected the shots or perhaps an unrelated stomach problem/bug. In hind sight, it was probably the latter. By Friday she appeared to be turning the corner and was eating a bit better. After dinner though, while eating a small cracker, she vomited again in the kitchen. She must have felt better because she looked at the mess for a second or two and then went back to eating her cracker. Very matter of fact about the whole situation, leaning over occasionally to take another look at the floor. We put her to bed with a few ounces of water that night.

The next morning she was very listless and lethargic. We couldn't get her to sit up steadily so we could dress her and she would not stay awake for more than 45 minutes. We figured she was exhausted but called the nurse (and my mom) anyways. Because there was no obvious reason for the lethargy, they recommended taking her into the ER. So Megan had her first trip to the ER. Sorry - we forgot to grab a camera so no pics of that either.

While in ER, she had an X-ray (set of 3 with her swim suit issue-ly skinny body - amazing how fast that baby tummy disappeared) and two finger pokes for blood sugar tests. She was very cooperative and didn't cry for either, the nurses were all very impressed.

It turned out her blood sugar was very low (all that not eating and not keeping stuff down) and they gave us some Gatorade to feed her in small doses to get her blood sugar up. She loved the stuff. We didn't have to push the syringe they gave us to give her the controlled amounts (5 ml and then 10 ml). She actually sucked the plunger in. Sooooo hungry and soooo thirsty. It was a bit of a torture to give her clear liquids in such small amounts... and no food.

After a 4 hour visit at the ER (mostly waiting), we walked out into the first snow of the year! Everything was covered with white fluffy snow - very pretty. Poor Megan was pretty tired from the ordeal and fell asleep in the car - no reaction to her first snow storm. Oh well, there will be more for her later.

A few after pics - hospital bracelet and band-aids from the finger pokes:

It was a long few days of feeding Megan mini-and bland meals - small amounts of bread, cheerios, crackers, Gatorade every hour or so.. She really missed that big bottle of soy or a big meal. Her tummy is so flat right now but she really starting eating normally this past Monday. It's already starting to make a comeback.

In other news - she doesn't mind gloves even though they make it hard to type and blog (sorry for the long delay between posts)

Fetch!

2007-11-09T12:53:00.000-08:00

Megan discovered a super-sized tennis ball in the house a few weeks ago. This is a toy we bought for Rufus, (our Newfoundland Labrador retriever tennis ball addict), that he never really played with. Megan got a kick out of rolling it around and rolling it back and forth to us in her version of catch. We discovered that Rufus will play along as well for a few throws. Now whenever Megan gets a hold of that ball, she looks for Rufus...

As you can see in the video, she's still learning and Rufus is still trying to figure out why we keep telling hom to drop the ball after Megan clearly tosses it to him. What the heck guys? DO you want me to "get-it" or "leave it"? I think this is why the games only last a few minutes. He gets tired of us not making our minds up so calls it quits.

That's it for Friday. Have a good weekend!

PS. The video below is still flaky. Please let me know in the comments section if this one does the same

Cuisine Under Pressure

2007-11-06T11:52:00.000-08:00

Yes, the blog updates are coming fast. Hope y'all are keeping up...

Over the course of the summer, Megan started doing this "squeeze" thing. It ranged from a whole body clench and head shake to a squeeze what was in her hand. I pulled together an assortment of those videos. The earliest clip was probably from late July/early August. You can really see how tall she is getting by comparing the drinking from the glass clip to the last clip. Maybe she's just sitting up straighter but she sure does look taller...

Not sure why but the video seems to be available only intermittently... Maybe I'll host it somewhere else...

OK, here's the same video uploaded to another sharing site. I'm leaving the above up so I can troubleshoot what's wrong (if anything)

*Song is John Pizzarelli's version of "Come on a My House". Megan seems to like his CDs

We Actually Have A Fall

2007-11-04T17:53:00.000-08:00

It's been pretty nice around here. Cool and clear(ish)... almost fall-like. That's unusual for Seattle. Most years it seems that we go from Summer to "Gray and Drizzly Season" before anyone has a chance to notice that it was fall. We've gotten out in the color and cool with Megan this weekend and snapped a few photos. Megan did some time in the backpack today at St. Edwards State Park. For some reason she loves it when I run, uphill and get real winded. I even caught her mimicking me ("fake out of breath panting") after we climbed up steep trail. Here's a selection of the photos we took (remember to click the photos for a larger view)....

Sorting the leaves at Greenlake last Friday. I thought the leaves would reflect some warm fall color onto her cheeks but the sun was too bright and washed things out.
Trying to catch some leaves I tossed up in the air:
Here's what I mean by washed out color:
I took a swipe at warming it up in Nikon NX (photo editing software). A little better I think:
Here are the trails we were on by Lake Washington at St Edward's Park. All those big leaf maple leaves on the path give it a real autumnal feel:
Standing tall in the backpack. Mommy sure is getting a steady hand and a good eye with the camera:
Rufus came along as well:
Here we are on our way through a tunnel at the playground at St Edwards. Yes, I fit through there as well:
We walked through, not crawled, in proper toddler fashion:
Hold on a sec, stop traffic in the tunnel! These wood chips need to be inspected:
Hooray for (sturdy) slides that can hold 2:
Yay, this is cool! It makes noise when you bang on it:
I wonder when she's going to ask for a pony:

...and one last stretch before heading home to a big lunch and 2 hour nap:

Megan was in a great giggly and goofy mood today. She slept through the night (mostly) last for the first time in a while. For the last few weeks, she'd be waking up at 3 AM (almost to the minute) every night... and staying awake for 1.5 to 2 hours. No idea why. Just wanted to be awake and hang out with us. Last night we "took" that awake hour from 3AM and put it at the beginning of the night (i.e. we kept her up up a bit later) and she managed to get a better night sleep. That's not what that book I'm reading about sleep said we should do.. but it was what my sister (mother of twins who didn't always sleep through the night) suggested. We'll see if it works again tonight....

I-Chwen is pretty good with the camera, no?

Sandra Dee, Rooperdog Rufus and a Purple Dinosaur

2007-11-01T12:17:00.001-07:00

Megan's first Halloween was fun. We headed down to U.Village (an outdoor shopping center/mall) down by the U of W for trick-or-treating. It's an annual event where everyone brings their little ones and themselves in costumes and goes store to store getting candy and checking out the hundreds of other kids in costume. Some stores were handing out stuff for adults as well. My take this year was a packet of Avocado Eye Cream from Kiehls. As you can see, Megan went as a purple Dinosaur (Thanks Vakula for the great costume!)

Our friend Chiung-I instigated the visit. I think she just wanted to try out the "good" Sandra Dee (from Grease) wig she scored at the costume store. She even put together a costume for Rufus - it was a cape with Ruperman "R" on it. All the kids called him Superdog. Rufus, who never barks, was so excited by the whole event and all the people that he'd howl when he'd get a group of kids around him. He even got asked to pose for a photo with some kids.

Maybe it was a bit close to her bedtime but Megan started out a bit overwhelmed. I think it took her a while to take it all in.

Pretty soon she was stretching her legs (right out of her costume) as she warmed up to the idea eventually.

She really got into the holiday spirit a bit early though. Check out the shoes:

Before you know it, she scored her first Halloween treat. She didn't get past the wax paper but seemed to enjoyed it anyways.

Looking forward to next year.

Nice Tree (follow up to last post)

2007-10-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

When we were filling out the autobiography, parenting etc... questionnaires for the home study, we found we needed to get out of the house so we could focus. In the springtime, as we were driving to get those things done, we had several weeks of good weather and decided to sit outside at Greenlake Park. We found a great spot in the shade next to the lake. As a bonus, it was only a block from a Pete's Coffee. I think we really did most of the work on those questionnaires while sitting there.

Anyhoo, during a break, I took the above photo of I-Chwen sitting there with Rufus. Rufus sat quietly between us for the hours we sat there. That spot really helped us finish.

Fast (really fast) forward a year... This past summer, after running around Greenlake with Megan and Rufus, I decided to stop there and hang out for a bit. We sat there, watching people, pulling up grass, eating that grass and/or Teddy Puffs and enjoying the outside. I also took a picture but had forgotten about it till I-Chwen wrote the one year post. Thought I'd share these two little moments of the journey. Kinda neat.

I went back to Greenlake this past week with Megan and noticed that a family of ducks had decided that the tree would be a great place to hang out as well. I neglected to take a picture... but you know what ducks sitting under a tree look like. I took these instead.

We got a bit of color on the trees this year:

..but Megan, who was still recovering from a cold (round two with another virus her pediatrician thinks), missed the scenery and conked out halfway 'round the lake.

A year ago this month....

2007-10-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

Our adoptive parent friends Amy and Bethany (see links in the sidebar) both posted on their 1 year anniversary of the referral. I was inspired to follow suit!

Looking back at our journey of adoption, it was a pretty long process... so, I will do a short version. We first started looking into agencies and countries in 2005. By October we had signed on with a local agency that offered Taiwan programs and we started the homestudy process. People who know us know not to give us FIVE questionnaires each with 10-15 pointed personal questions. We took pain and eventually joy to write our *thesis* whole heartedly. While we encountered other unrelated obstacles and speed bumps along the way, we finally finished our writing in May of 2006. A few days after we submitted our final drafts of those questionnaires, we received a letter in the mail saying our agency was closing its operations and would not complete adoptions unless a referral had already been given. Not expecting a 30 year old agency to just disppear, it took us several weeks to absorb the shock! Eventually we switched to a new agency with the some of the same personnel and programs. The first home in-house visit finally took place in late August. We were told the time we took to write our homestudy really paid off, as it helped our social worker put together the final report rather quickly. Then VIOLA on October 10th, when I called to confirm if the homestudy was received at the agency office, I was told we got a referral!!!!
There I (I-Chwen) was in my office, the case worker asked if we should wait to get a hold of Kevin. The answer was easy, the wait to track down Kevin was NOT. :-) Four long hours later, Kevin made it home from Redmond. I found an empty conference room to sit down. It was a gray and windowless room, as impersonal as conference rooms can be. I nervously got on the phone with pen and pad in hand, sitting at the edge of the chair... I was jotting down what I heard on the pad. As the case worker continued to tell the story, I started to sob.. So much sorrow surrounded this little girl we were just meeting. I was trying hard to understand things like medical history while the sadness clouded my mind. It was a heavy phone call, I had little to say or ask. I was supposed to be happy (and I was), but I just couldn't celebrate at that moment.

Her pictures weren't ready until the next day. Another suspense. But a good chance to let the news precipitate.
When we finally got her pictures the next day, the news had sunk in and it started to feel more real. She was tiny and very cute. A little bit of sadness seemed to squeeze in between her eyebrows - she looked curious and unsure. She may have just cried when the picture was taken. She was a little over a month old in those picture. BTW, she was very happy and animated in all the update pictures we got later.

It was very surreal to 'meet' our daughter the first time from a picture and get to know her through stories written on paper. But there she was, staring right back at us! I started to feel the connection, slowly. I wanted to hold her, but part of me didn't want to get too excited because she was not legally our daughter until the ruling was issued. The other part of me couldn't wait to fly out and bring her home so I get to know her in person.

Six months later, after waiting five months for a hearing date, we couldn't wait and flew over before we had our final ruling. We were told it would happen 'any day now', so we decided to just go and hang out at my parents if we had to wait. Well, the final ruling arrived the day after we landed in Taiwan! And on April 12 2007, we finally held her in our arms......

Life hasn't been the same since!

Braised Chicken Legs (滷雞腿)

2007-10-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

That's right - a post about chicken. It does say "Adoption and more..." up above there.

Months ago, pre-Megan when I had something akin to free time, I made some "braised/simmered chicken legs" and documented the process with the intention of sharing here. Megan is napping now so let's see if I can knock this one out...

Ever have Chicken Adobo? This is kind of a Chinese version of that and is a recipe I learned from I-Chwen who learned it from her Mom.. so you know it's good.

Ingredients
The amounts are very approximate and hard to really get wrong. For example, the rice wine and soy are just ballpark. Keep the ratio about 1:1... if it taste bad to you that way - change it the next time.

2 lbs of chicken (legs, thighs, wings - you decide) - enough to form a single layer in your pan. If you have to start piling up, you have too much (or you need to do 2 batches)
4-5 cloves Garlic
1/2 cup Soy sauce
1/2 cup Rice wine
1 T.Chili Paste - to taste
1 T. Hoisin Sauce (甜麵醬) - to taste
1-2 T. Sugar
1/2 inch of Cinnamon stick
2-3 Star anise
Water (to cover)
1 - 2 T. Vegetable oil

Here's what some of the ingredients look like. There's star anise:

I use a "rock candy" kind of sugar. Sure, you could use regular sugar but I'm told that's "not how it's done".

Soy sauce and rice wine. You can definitely use dry sherry for the rice wine part.

Roughly chopped garlic you should recognize:

Here are the chili paste and hoisin sauce. That brand you see there (Lan Chi) is the best I've found but seems to be hard to find these days. It is a "chili garlic sauce" so has a bit of garlic in it. Here's another brand that isn't bad: Huey Fong ...and is probably more widely available.

Putting it Together
First, brown your chicken in a bit of oil. Don't worry about cooking it through, it will be braised for an hour or so later. Just get a little color on the outside.

Take the chicken out and start adding the other ingredients into the hot oil. First the chili paste and hoisin. Make sure your exhaust fan is on at this point. The air can get a bit spicy.

...then the garlic and sweat it for a minute or so..

Then you can just start adding the star anise, cinnamon, sugar, soy sauce, rice wine put the chicken back in.

And for some reason I stopped taking pictures and/or can't find the final pics. Close your eyes and image a bunch of brown chicken legs. Mmmmmm.... After the chicken is back in, if the liquid seems low, you can add a bit of water. Maybe so it's 1/2 way up the side of the chicken. Let that simmer on low heat for an hour or so. Turn the chicken over a few times during that hour.

More Stuff You Can Do
After taking the chicken out at the end, save the liquid. You aren't done yet! There is a ton of flavor in that cooking liquid that you can use. You can slice up a hunk of tofu into 1/2 thick squares and simmer that in the liquid. You can simmer some hard boiled eggs in there for an hour or so (see the choir concert post below for a picture of what those look like). Got more chicken, brown it and simmer it in the "old liquid". Cook up some plain noodles and toss them with a few tablespoons of that liquid and some finely chopped cilantro or scallions...

Let me know if you have any questions.

Food Related Afterthought
PS. When Jeff and Abbey (blog link off on the right of the page) were in Taiwan picking up Reed I was encouraging them to make sure they had some local food on a stick while they were there. Well, I found a picture among my photos that adds a bit of context for that advice:

So, all you folks heading off to Taiwan in the next few weeks (and there seems to be a wave of you!), keep an eye out for this lady but choose carefully.... I'm not sure she has too many corn dogs on that cart.

New Perspective

2007-10-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

We're just standing on our heads trying to come up with new things to blog about...

Megan has been having some trouble going to sleep at night. Not sure why - maybe she's not tired or maybe she just doesn't want to. One of the things she does to keep herself awake (or to get comfy, maybe)... is head stands. When on a mattress, she even does them with no hands. Today she started to do them around the house. She's had a stuffy head (and runny nose and a low grade fever and cough...), so maybe it feels good.

And she's still crazy about the swing in the park:

Four Season's Concert

2007-10-09T14:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I-Chwen's choir held a concert here in Seattle. The preparations for this concert began months and months ago and entailed a lot of work pulling it all together. There were countless practices, prepping food for the post-concert reception, coordinating with a second choir that they invited and managing the day of the event. They filled the church to standing room only and delivered a fantastic performance. You could tell they had been practicing. Four Seasons invited another local Chinese choir - "Sound of May" - to perform with them. This was their inaugural performance for the choir. They solidly delivered 4 Chinese folk songs.

I-Chwen has been a member of the Four Seasons Choir since the early 90s. This choir is made up of folks mainly from Taiwan but they perform music from all over - Taiwan, China, western sacred music and (this time) even a song from Kenya.

The set list (and some samples) for this concert included:

Dona Nobis Pacem
Carry Me Home
西風的話 Whispers of the West Wind (Mandarin)
二水的月娘 The Moon from Ji Dui (Taiwanese)
火金姑叼位去 Where Have All the Fireflies Gone? (Taiwanese)
Canticle of Mary
For the Beauty of the Earth
Grace
Wana Baraka
西風的故鄉 West Wind at Homeland (Mandarin)

They asked me to take some photos so I took Megan to the church to check out one of their final practices and to get an idea of the space. She enjoyed the pews, the hymnal and all its pages and even managed a bit of applause for them during a break from exploring under the pews.

Megan wasn't able to make it to the concert so we arranged for friends of ours, Lolo ai-yi and Mark shu-shu, to keep an eye on her for a few hours. Megan seemed to enjoy their visit immensely. We went out to dinner with them afterwards to Jack's Tapas (小同小吃) - a strangely named Chinese restaurant that we like. Megan flirted with Mark, enjoyed some "scallion and sesame pancake", played with her toys and was one tired and goofy baby come bedtime.

It sounds like it's break time for the choir for a bit but they seemed very upbeat about their performance and the future.

More photos from the concert:

DJ Megan

2007-09-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

Time to move the electronics up a shelf. Megan has discovered the buttons on the receiver. The mute button appears to be her favorite. Here she is DJ-ing a little dance party. Sorry about the singing...

The song is "Five Little Monkeys" by John Bregar.

Here are some pics from a recent trip down to the neighborhood park

A happy time on the swing:

We are seeing more nuanced and adult expressions everyday...

These I thought were just cute:

We also got Megan some time in a backpack for a short walk at St Edward's State Park.

It's fun to ride in the backpack:

Lots to see:

...but ultimately very tiring

TTFN

Megan Rocks

2007-09-13T13:51:00.001-07:00

Here's a video we took back in July, just never got around to posting it. We had taken a quick trip down to Carkeek Park in Seattle so we could hang out by the ocean. The tide was out and my sister's kids played in the surf looking for crabs or interesting shells. Megan went back to cave-man basics and picked up a few rocks and started banging them together. Note the little scientific experiment in the middle with a slightly smaller rock... I wonder if I should start the paperwork for a MacArthur genius grant? She also tried chewing on them...

ps. I'm not sure why the video look squashed. Must have been something I did while compressing it.