Musical Lapsits

M & I try to stop by the library on Saturday mornings for Musical Lapsit. We usually don't make it, due to me moving very slowly on a weekend morning, and/or her nap/eating schedule. We went for the first time many months ago when she was much younger and didn't seem to understand or enjoy it. Then we tried it again, today and last Saturday, and she clearly had more fun. They sing songs and read books. M alternates between watching Ann (the librarian) and looking at all the other people/kids in the audience. She isn't quite doing the interactive sing/move-along parts of Musical Lapsit, but I think she'll join in soon enough.

They had a Halloween themed Musical Lapsit today. Ann read a couple of Halloween themed books, and we sang some Halloween themed songs. Some of the kids came in their Halloween costumes, very cute.

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Vertigo

I was reading a discussion about the stuff we collect, and lots of things came up like pens and watches. Well, I'm not a watch collector, and I wouldn't call myself a fountain pen collector, but I do love fountain pens and have several. Although I can't say that I have used many of them lately. I need to be careful not to use the fountain pens around my little girl because she's in that phase where she goes stab! stab! with pens & crayons. Eeks! That would be instant death to my fountain pen nibs.

I love writing with fountain pens -- I think it's because I have a "lazy" hand -- and my favorite daily pen is an ST Dupont in a beautiful red lacquer with squares pattern. You can see what it looks like on the rollerball version:
http://www.pensinasia.com/olympio_l...o_rb-dupont.htm
They have a newer pen that is similar which has a diamond pattern (instead of the squares). Have had other pens, Mont Blanc, Waterman, Parker, & Cartier, but seem to return to the Dupont for some reason.

Now if only I can improve on my handwriting. It has deteriorated over the years with my increased typing. I think the only thing I really write these days are a few checks now and then, scribbling knitting paterns, jotting down M's feeding & diaper changes (yes, we still do this out of habit), and shopping lists. I have to make lists for everything, otherwise I'll forget. Oftentimes I think of something to put on a list, but forget before I get around to actually writing it down. This is why I still haven't gotten around to picking up more olive oil... it's just not something I think about when I'm shopping.

M likes to "write" with pens and crayons. We try to encourage her to write ON paper, but she has also written on DVD covers, on books (covers & inside pages!), on the coffee table, on boxes, on her chair, on the ottoman, and I'm sure there are other places I just can't think of right now or haven't yet discovered. Sigh. Our poor coffee table is showing signs of M wear, she has stabbed the thing with pens and other hard objects, and there seem to be a lot more scratches & pock marks. You can sort of see this in my knitting photos, where the earlier photos show a more pristine table, and the later photos show how much the table has been abused since. We are not getting new furniture until she is much older.

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Bad bench! Bad bad bench!

We had a bit of a scare on Wednesday when we went to Target at Serramonte. M was fussy when I took her out of the car and as we walked from the car to Target. So I set her down on the bench outside Target so I could grab some water or snack from my backpack. While I was getting into the backpack, I heard a cry from her and found her on the ground behind the bench!! The bench had a big gap in the lower back part, and the bottom of the bench was short in that it didn't really go all the way back either. So M had wiggled enough to fall through that big gap and landed on the concrete floor behind/under the bench. Oooooh, she was NOT happy about that. She must have bumped her lip/mouth on the way down because she ended up with a bruise under her lip, plus a cut on the inner side of her lip where it was bleeding. She was lying down when I saw her, but it looked like her head was OK. So I held her, calmed her down, wiped off the blood, gave her some water. After a while I think she was OK. Treated her to a nice cool refreshing Strawberry & Creme Frappuchino from Starbucks, and then she was walking around the mall. Yep, she seems OK. I was worried about her sleeping through the night, but she slept ok.

I will have to remember to avoid benches and chairs with big gaps in the back. They're so dangerous!!!

M has quite a lot to say these days, she's turning out to be quite the chatterbox. She tries to repeat what we say. We have to really be careful of what we say around her. Was changing her diaper the other day and referred to Desitin diaper rash cream as "butt paste", which she tried to repeat, "buh buh." She says, "wah wah," with the correct intonation for flower (which has a much different demanding tone from her, "wah! wah!" or, "wah wah?" which means, "where are you," or, "where are you going?". She says, "dah doon," with the correct intonation for thank you. She can say things like ball and door. I think the one and maybe two syllable words are easier for her. She still hasn't quite gotten banana right; she says, "nanana," or "ba!", but even combining the two different syllables. Yet she has her own language too. Lately she has been saying, "mabu mabu. ga ga? doe doe doe." No idea what that means. She's been saying, "mabu mabu," for a while now and we think it's usually when things are going well, she's happy, etc. She sometimes says, "ga ga?" while we are watching The Wiggles, particularly during the Quack Quack song, so we always thought she was trying to say, "quack quack." And then later on she added, "doe doe doe," which we thougth was her attempt to sing along with the Knead Some Dough song.

The Wiggles is still her favorite thing to watch on TV. Now she will try to let us know that she wants to watch it by waving her hands/arms in a certain way and/or waving her hands with pointed fingers (can you point your fingers and do the twist?). If she had it her way, she'd be watching The Wiggles all day long. Of course we won't let her do that.

Right now I am sipping a cup of Lupicia 8506 Tokio green tea which is described as, "green tea delicately flavored with sweet berries." It's not bad, but I think I prefer the 8223 Grapefruit Green a little more. They're both very good flavored green teas. Their teas come in inverted pyramid shaped tea bags which give the tea plenty of room. And the tea bags still smell so aromatic even after you are done with it.

Earlier this week I tried their 5223 Sakuranbo black tea. It is described as, "black tea with fresh Japanese cherry flavor. Its sour-sweet aroma is taste-catching and its cute topping with the image of red ripened cherries is also eye-catching. It's good, but I seem to be more into green teas lately.

Am currently trying to decide whether to make another 3AM Cable Hat, or do a simple rollbrim hat in mostly stockinette. I could use the "mindless" knitting of the latter cuz I'm having a hard time concentrating on knitting right now. Yes, we're still using the car as a "prop" to get M to sleep, but she has become increasingly resistant to the car, and I there have been times where she is clearly tired, yet she managed to stay awake while I'm driving around for an hour! So I'm not getting as much knitting as I would hope while she is napping in the car.

On Tuesday we had a power outage around 12:30pm. I was about to give M her lunch, and then maybe go for a little car ride. Then the power went out and my next thought was, "omigosh, how am I going to get the car out of the garage??" Well the power came back on in about an hour, and we left the house after that.

Don't forget to set your clocks back one hour this weekend...

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House hunting again

We're starting to look at Open Houses again. Two Sundays ago we looked at 8 to 10 houses in Sunnyvale, and saw one we kinda liked. It had a comfortable sensible layout, the only two downsides is being located at the outer corner of at "L" shaped turn on the street and a possibly busy 4 lane road on the otherside of the backyard fence. Well, we were thinking of going to see the house again last Sunday, assuming there would be another open house, but we discovered that somebody had already made an offer on the house and it is now sale pending. Geez, and I thought the housing market was slowing down???

Didn't see too many houses last Sunday. There weren't that many open in Sunnyvale that we were interested in. Instead, we went to look at 2 houses in San Mateo, one of which we had already seen 2 years ago. That house is selling for $50k more than the asking price from 2 years ago. Still didn't like the house this time around either.

Still looking....

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Lupicia

Have been sampling a few of the teas from Lupicia, a new tea shop at Stonestown. They have 2 shops in San Francisco, one at Stonestown, and the other is downtown at the San Francisco Center. Their 3rd US shop is in Hawaii, a bit far for me to go to pick up a few packages of tea. They have a wonderful setup in their store. A long counter displays all their teas in tiny tins which you can pick up, open, & sniff as much as you like. It's very user friendly. They have A LOT of teas to choose from. It will take me a while to work through all of them since I can only pick up as much tea as I can consume over a short period of time.

Two days ago I tried their 5202 Breakfast Earl Grey, which I liked. It was very aromatic. Yesterday I tried their 5110 La Belle Epoque, a darjeeling/black tea blend. I haven't really explored darjeeling and don't think it's for me right now. Perhaps it would have tasted better if I poured a bit of milk into my cup. Today I am drinking 8223 Grapefruit Green, which I like very much. It's kinda like the Pink Grapefruit tea from The Republic of Tea.

Their tea bags are pyramid shaped which gives the tea room to expand as you brew it. Very nicely done. The string is a bit on the short side. They gave me a clip to hold the string, you just put the clip over your cup.

I also have some loose tea of theirs. I'm exploring their Oolongs. Their Ming Jian Jin Xuan is a pretty decent tea for daily drinking. I also like their 5224 Lichee Black and their 8231 Momo Oolong Super Grade (a peach flavored tea).

I usually make a pot of tea on weekends, and use tea bags on weekdays. It's just easier that way.


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Clothes, Clothes, Clothes

M has way more clothes than I do. I'm sure of it. She's currently wearing 18 month size clothes. I recently did an inventory of all her clothes in the next size up, viz. 24 months, size 2, and size 2T. What's the difference between "2" and "2T" anyways??

Well, here's an enumeration of what I have in size 24mos/2/2T. I guess I should stop shopping for that size...

Sleeveless/short sleeve tops : 14

Long sleeve tops : 14

Long sleeve bodysuits : 9

Short sleeve bodysuits : 3

Pants : 17

Shorts : 5

Skirts : 3

Dress, short sleeve : 2

PJ's :
4 long sleeve, long leg
2 short sleeve, long leg; 1 of them with shorts

Sweaters :
1 pullover knit
1 pullover fleece
1 drape

Jackets :
1 light spring outdoors
1 medium outdoors
2 light indoor/outdoor all purpose

Hat : 1 summer, 1 winter

A Birthday Lunch

We visited the inlaws today to celebrate my MIL's birthday (which was last week) by having dim sum lunch at Royal Garden Seafood Restaurant in Newark, CA. It is so much easier to go to restaurants with M now that she is 18 months, sitting in a high chair pretty well (or in a booster, which we tried once at a restaurant which didn't have any highchairs), and can eat most solid foods as long as they're cut up into small enough pieces for her. This is the first time we went out to a restaurant with the inlaws where M could eat the same foods we were eating. Lunch was a blur though, as my attention was on M most of the time while trying to feed her. The restaurant is good for babies/toddlers. Like many Chinese restaurants, they tend to be noisy! I don't know what it is about Chinese people, but they tend to be extra loud. My family is like that. DH's family is like that. We must be weird, DH & I can appreciate peace & quiet...

Funny thing about the bathroom at this restaurant. I walked in and heard something. Thought it was music. No, that wasn't it. Someone was speaking. Thought it might be Chinese, but then I realized that it was the football game (San Diego Chargers vs Baltimore Ravens) that was on TV at the time; they had a TV near the front of the restaurant showing the game (on mute). No baby changing station in the bathroom though...

I really need to work harder on updating my blog more frequently...

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