Random Things

I didn't realize how much work it would be keeping up a blog. I find it difficult keeping it interesting. So whether you find it interesting or not I'm going to tell you 15 random things about Noah. I'm sure everyone is familiar with the note going around Facebook. I did mine a couple of days ago (which is listed under Noah's) and thought it would be fun doing one for Noah.

Noah's 15 Random Things
1. He fell out of bed this morning which explains why I'm up at this ungodly hour. Then an hour later while half asleep, he crawled to the end of the bed and looked at where he fell off and went back to sleep.
2. He has 4 teeth on top and 4 on the bottom. They're pretty screwed up. I've never seen such teeth on a child but I'm pretty sure he gets it from me.
3. He doesn't like his feet covered when he sleeps. Everytime I put the covers over him while he's sleeping he'll keep pulling until they're off.
4. He doesn't like fruits or fruit juices. What kid doesn't like sweet juice??
5. His favorite toys are sticks and balls. When we go out shopping I'll give him an orange or spatula to keep him happy.
6. During mealtimes I have Elmo and Mickey videos to keep him distracted. I got the Mickey videos to get him psyched for out upcoming Disneyland trip :)
7. In addition to videos during mealtimes he needs to have something in his hands or he'll get restless. Remote controls, utensils, baby magazines, toys - you name it.
8. He picked nose for the first time yesterday. It was very cute. Since he's sick he got some mucus out and then tried to put it in his mouth! Why do kids do that? Is it instinct??
9. Even though we speak mostly Chinese/Cantonese at home Noah's first words are all English. He hasn't said anything consistently yet but he attempts to say "Open, Bubble and Baby".
10. He falls asleep easily for naps but it takes him 40 minutes to and hour to go to sleep for the night.
11. He started walking on Bryan's birthday.
12. He loves his pacifier. He would suck it all day if he could but we only give it to him when it's time to sleep.
13. He has a problem with constipation. His last poop was the size of a baseball and the consistency of Play-Doh. Poor boy :(
14. He is at 55% for height but less than 10% for weight compared to boys at his age. He doesn't have much fat on him except for a little fat line on his inner thighs. I love that fat line but it's fading a little everyday...sigh
15. When he hears music he'll flap hand up and down. It started when I used to have music on in the house and I would jump around while holding him. That made his free hand flap up and down :)

Jessica's 25 Random Things
1. I generally dislike eating Chinese food when I go out to eat. I eat it all day at home so why would I eat it when I go out too?
2. I broke my left arm, right ankle (where the bone came out of my skin) and fractured my eye orbital when I flipped my mom's car when I was 20 yrs old. I was in a wheelchair for 6 months.
3. I gained 20lbs since high school, 10 of which were leftover from the pregnancy. I think they're here to stay...sigh
4. I sleep with Noah every chance I get which sometimes adds up to 16 hours in one day!
5. After 5 years of marriage we just got our first home phone last year. Before that we just used our cells.
6. I flunked out of CSUF before graduating from UCI.
7. I was on hospitalized bedrest for 7 weeks for preterm labor, shot up with drugs to prevent contractions, given steroids so that Noah would grow faster and gave myself 2 insulin injections daily in my belly because of gestational diabetes.
8. I avoided going to places like Disneyland, Sea World and Zoos for the past 10 years in fear that once I have children I'd be really sick of those places. On a side note, we are taking Noah to Disneyland for my bday this year :)
9. I've had 6 full-time jobs in a span of 8 years. In addition, I also worked part-time for 2 wedding planners on weekends.
10. I am thinking about going back to school for to become an Ultrasound Technician. I found out that my BA is useless in finding a good paying part-time job.
11. I told my friend Jeanine I was pregnant before I told Bryan :) He was on a plane coming back from Kuwait, I couldn't help myself!
12. Bryan and I have been out 3 times without Noah since he was born 15 months ago.
13. I didn't realize that I love cheese until I met someone who hates cheese.
14. I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was 10 years old and I haven't riden one again since I was 13 years old. I didn't gain much confidence in my riding skills so whenever I passed by pedestrians on the sidewalk I'd start to freak out and weave from side to side.
15. I watch all my tv shows on the internet after Noah goes to sleep. My current favorites are Top Chef, Top Design, Project Runway, Hell's Kitchen, Rachel Zoe, America's Best Dance Crew and How I Met Your Mother.
16. I the past 30 years I've lived in 8 different homes within a 5 mile radius.
17. I cannot sing, drink or dance. But with a little alcohol in me I'll dance a bit :)
18. I had a fear of cats and dogs. Now I like little dogs and I tolerate cats but I still fear big dogs.
19. I don't like being in individual competitions because there's always a winner and a loser, and I'm usually the loser.
20. I have a hard time making new friends. I think it's from an irrational fear of rejection.
21. I also have a hard time making "small talk", I feel very fake when I do it and I don't like that feeling at all. See #20.
22. I am proud of the second place ribbon I won for the bean bag throw in the first grade and the Presidential Award in the 6th grade. I also won 3rd place trophies for Poetry in 7th and 8th grade.
23. I won the grand prize laptop at the China Airlines Xmas party. Haven't won anything since.
24. I've never rollerbladed before in my life.
25. I left work without telling my boss so that I could get Aaron Kwok's autograph. I got a photo with him too :) I'm too lazy to scan the photo so you'll just have to believe me on that one.

That's it. I hope you found it "interesting". If not, I'm sorry I wasted your time. That was one long post!

Innocent Flirtation?

What do you do when the love of your life flirts with someone right in front of you? What I did was grinned and bore it and came home to vent in my blog. I know what you're thinking, "Bryan? He doesn't seem like the type to do something like that!" Well, you're absolutely right! It was Noah!! Tonight we were at my parents house and Noah was playing ball with his cousins. Aunt Lydia (names have been changed to protect the innocent) came downstairs and sat next to me on the couch while I held her cute little baby. Noah approached us and at first we thought he was a little jealous until I noticed he was actually approaching Aunt Lydia. He proceeded to walk back and forth between playing ball and Aunt Lydia and at times even presented her the ball he had so difficultly acquired from his older cousins. While at play he would also sneak glances over at Aunt Lydia as if to see if she was watching his great athletic prowess. When Aunt Lydia brought her sleepy baby upstairs, he stopped playing ball and tried to follow her upstairs. Noah is 14.5 months old! How could this start so early?!? I thought I would have a few more years as the apple of his eyes as he is mine. I spend day and night catering to his every want and he has fallen in love with another woman. Sigh...all I can say is my heart is broken into a million pieces and can never be mended.

USA vs. China

January 12, 2009 marks 30 years since I first step foot in America. I immigrated here at the age of 3 so I have no memories of Taiwan before that. Though I visited every 2 years or so I didn't really have a deep connection with the country. That is until I was in Taiwan during the big earthquake on 9/21/99. Buildings collapsed, people trapped, thousands died, rescuers arrived from all over the world and everywhere on the streets people were banded together helping and supporting one another. That's when I had an overwhelming feeling of "Wow, these are my people". Corny eh? Well, since then, tragedy over, people healed, life went on and Taiwan is thousands of ocean miles away. The connection slowly fades away. Bryan on the other hand came to America when he was 16 years old. He tells me that he could never live in Hong Kong again. He's used to living in larger homes, driving to work and non-humid weather. But that doesn't change his deep connection to his roots. It was never so prevalent until we watched the Olympics together and I realized we were rooting for different teams! That brings on a slew of introspective questions of why I consider myself first a Chinese and second an American, but I still hope that the Chinese gymnastics team gets eliminated for having underaged athletes. Could it be because I was conditioned at an early age to pledge my allegience to the American flag every day at school? Too many questions to be discussed in this blog. But it does make me wonder, "At what age do you become connected to your country?"

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A new strategy...

I just figured out how to check how much money I made so far from Adsense. A whole $1.31! That's 4 total clicks! Adsense pays every time you reach $100 in earnings. At this point, I won't be paid until Noah graduates from college! Come on people, Bryan's about to shut down my blog. He didn't like me talking about my small and saggies in the last post. Click if you like the post, click if you're bored, click if "you threw up a little in your mouth". Doesn't matter, just CLICK! By the way, I'm not allowed to "encourage" anyone to do this under their terms and conditions so I'm not encouraging you. I'm TELLING you. GO DO IT!

Pregnancy - Small & Saggy

Some people think that being pregnant is beautiful. I was NOT one of the beautiful ones. In fact, every time my grandma saw me when I was pregnant she said "You're uglier, you must be having a boy". She was right. She knew before the doctors knew. Perhaps one of the most surprising physical change was the changes to my boobs. Almost immediately after I got pregnant they got bigger. They got so heavy that it was painful so I had to wear a sports bra 24/7. And now that Noah has stopped breastfeeding I noticed that they shrunk! Yes, they're smaller than what I started with!!! Now smaller is not all that bad, but small AND saggy! Come on now, give me a break! Now tell me, what's so beautiful about that?

Unhappy New Years Deja Vu

Bryan woke up today with dizziness and the chills and went straight back to bed only to wake up with a bad case of the runs. Noah has been fussy and clingy all day and even threw up part of his lunch. I was OK until this evening when I started feeling nauseous and had a little diarrhea as well. I went to bed early and woke up at 3am trying to rid myself of some of this unpleasantness, i.e., toilet time. While I was on the toilet I thought of the last time I felt like this was when I went to Hong Kong with my dad about 15 years ago for some holiday shopping. It was New Year's Eve and we headed out on Tsim Sha Tsui to join the festivities. Were we in for a big surprise. New Years Eve in Tsim Sha Tsui consists of tens of thousands of people packed like sardines in the streets. I heard one year that 20+ people were trampled to death during New Year's Eve in Hong Kong. As we ventured out into the night I suddenly felt ill. Cold sweat and chills. I felt so sick that I asked my dad if we could take a taxi back to the hotel (bear in mind that I could see the hotel from where I was standing). But the motor traffic in the streets were at a standstill. So we headed by foot among the endless crowd back to the hotel. As we inched our way to the hotel, my dad decided that I should have some dinner - Pei Tan Pork Porridge - to help me feel better. When we got back to the room my dad drew a nice hot bath for me. I went to the bathroom, had some diarrhea and was feeling a little better. So I stepped into the tub and as the water reached my chest I felt a sudden urge to puke. I jumped out, headed for the sink and the porridge shot out of my mouth so forcefully that it came out through my nose as well. To this day I can remember the oily smell of porridge in my nostrils. When I woke up the next morning I wasn't feeling up to go shopping again. (Yes! I felt that sick!) But my dad insisted because he's such a wonderful dad and wanted me to spend my time in Hong Kong acquiring as many material things as possible! As we started shopping the illness completely subsided and by the end of the day it was as if nothing had happened. The culprit to all this unhappiness during the New Years? I suspect food poisoning. Lessons learned? Don't take a hot bath if you feel like puking and shopping cures all ailments. I think I'll tell Bryan when he wakes up that we NEED to go shopping today.

Making Money

Since I became a full time mother, I spend my days taking care of Noah and my nights surfing the web while he sleeps next to me. I shop over the Internet, keep up on friends' blogs, check email, Facebook and YouTube. Bryan seems to disapprove of these activities especially what he considers wasting my time on YouTube. I tried to explain to him that I don't get to do any of these things in the daytime and it's practically the only connection I have to the outside world. Well today he came into my room and asked me what I was doing. I told him that I started a blog yesterday and I discovered by adding AdSense I can make some money whenever someone clicks on an ad on my blog. He actually said "Good Job". I guess writing a blog is better than being on YouTube and making money while I'm doing it makes it worthwhile. When I had a job I would sometimes think of money making opportunities during my commute. Like everyone else, I would like to retire early and still have money coming in. One great idea is making money off of royalties. That means I can do something once and continue to get paid for the rest of my life!!! How great is that?!?! The first thing that comes to mind is writing a book but I am NOT a good writer. I'm not eloquent or imaginative enough to do a job like that. I could take photos and sell them as postcards or greeting cards but that means I need to have some photography skills. I could write travel guides but I think that would require too much research and thought that it would take the fun out of travelling for me. You see my problem? So for now, being a full time mother and not financially contributing to the family, please click on an ad to the right if it appeals to you when you visit my blog. That being said, please come visit my blog often so that Bryan will get off my back about being on the internet.

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Baby needs some diapers!!