Influence

I know kids start to absorb and copy what they see on TV, but I guess I didn't realize how early that started.

- Penny makes Curious George noises. Not the noticeably monkey noises like, "ooh ooh aah aah," but the uniquely George ones like his nasal "eh heh." If you watch the show, you probably know which noise I'm talking about. Or if you hang out with Penny, you'll learn what Curious George sounds like.

- We were watching "Chuck" the other night, and this ninja girl gets in a fight with the blond girl on the show. They duke it out for a while. Then Penny crawls on my lap and starts flailing her arms in my face. I was too busy protecting my face and moving my child to notice, but Kevin pointed out, "Hey, she's fighting just like on TV!"

She did it again today at playgroup.

No more "Chuck" while Penny's around. And Kevin, DEFINITELY no more UFC.

-Tonight I followed along with my Bollywood Dance Workout video (yes, laugh. Chuckle. Get it all out. I got a Bollywood workout video from the library- ha ha ha) for a few minutes. Penny was standing right beside me bopping her knees to the music-- and lifting up her shirt. Well yes, then I noticed the dancers on TV were wearing belly shirts.

Man, now I have to really start watching better entertainment. Ugh! And there's so little of it on!

Edit: Also, the other day on my Pandora station, "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse came on. You know, the one that goes, "They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no.... I won't go, go, go." Penny started dancing to the catchy little beat, and then out of the blue (never done this before) started singing along: "go, go, go."

Um.... I guess it's true that all the evils of the world come from Pandora's box.... or station.

Penny's mei mei

I haven't written much about being pregnant this time around. This is partially because I have felt fantastic; if it weren't for the stretchy waistbands, I may have forgotten I'm pregnant. And it's partially because I know not everyone wants to read about another pregnant lady and her various thrills and complaints.

Consider yourself warned. :)

I love it when the baby kicks. I felt it MUCH earlier this time-- probably at about 17 weeks (a month ago). And this time I haven't been pestering Kevin to come feel the kicks. I did once, and he said he felt the kick. I'm not sure if that's true or if he just knew it was the right answer. ;) Right about when I'll start getting sick of the kicking, Kevin will need to start getting excited about it. But for now it's just my cute little indigestion. :)

Penny has no clue. I'm pretty sure she'll have no clue until I come home with the new little one and don't come running every time she calls. It will be a transition for her, I'm sure. And for me. I can't believe I'm going to have twice as many children as I do now. Eek! But in a few years, they'll be able to play with each other and keep each other company. I keep telling myself this.

I went in the other day to have an ultrasound done. Kevin came in with me and took care of Penny, which is much more convenient than trying to wrestle her on my face while the doctor and technician work the ultrasound machine on my belly. I'm very happy Kevin came, because we got to find out the gender of the baby, and also it took a pretty long time to do the exam.

The doctor who came in was fairly young (probably younger than me), and he measured and took screen shots and generally did his job. At one point the machine suddenly turned off completely, and a technician had to come in and help. Then at the end, he had the technician come in again to do a couple measurements that he hadn't been able to get. The technician basically came in and did all the same measurements again, telling the doctor he hadn't entered them correctly on the data screen. Then after the technician left, the attending physician came in and taught the doctor how to angle the ultrasound thing to get the right views to get the measurements he'd missed. I thought it was really interesting. I'm glad I had a student doctor, because I'm happy that they have the opportunity to have practice and training on real people, not just textbooks and cadavers, before they set off into the real world on their own. Plus Kevin had taken Penny out to the waiting room to watch TV, and I had nowhere to rush off to.

They did give us a CD of pictures. We got a pretty good profile shot-- not one of those amazing ones where you can practically see the baby smiling and waving at the camera-- but one where you can see the baby's face and cute little body parts. And nasal bone, in case you were wondering.

Rosslyn Oakwood

When Kevin learned when he'd be starting training for the Foreign Service, we were faced with the decision of where to live. The Foreign Service provides temporary housing for its employees, who are constantly moving in and out of the DC area. They have contracts with some apartments in Virginia, and if you're staying for less than a year, they let you stay here for the duration of your stay-- especially if it's your first tour.

We decided to stay at the Oakwood in Rosslyn for several reasons, all of which can be boiled down into one word: location. We've done a long commute before and hated it, and this location is perfect for Kevin getting to work, whether it's at the Foreign Service Institute or occasionally in DC itself. We're a short walk (5 minutes) from the metro, and the FSI shuttle stops there about 18 times an hour or something. Anyway, it's often.

The building is really nice-- probably the nicest place we've ever lived as just our little family. True, we're just coming out of college and fairly dinky apartments, but the apartment here suits our needs just perfectly. Talking to friends who just had a 3-story house at their last post, it is a step down from that. :) But the 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, and large living room are everything we could ask for. (Note: the 1-bedroom apartments are significantly smaller.)

I think if we had more kids, we'd stay in the Oakwood in Falls Church. In our building, there are about 3 or 4 families home during the day who have kids. We sometimes get together, but our weekly Kiddie Corner usually flops. Whenever I've gone, I've been the only one there, and that's true of most of our experiences. Now, if we could ever coordinate and all show up.... I continue to try.

And here is a house tour. I may continue this on another post, since I haven't taken all the pictures I'd like, and I haven't liked all the pictures I've taken. I want you to notice how neat my house is and how nicely I've made the beds. This may have something to do with our housekeeper just finishing her weekly visit, but you'll just have to guess.

Here is our living room. We bought the additional lamp for more light, and the bookshelf is our addition as well. Otherwise the furniture is what comes with the place.Eventually, we asked for another desk so I could have one, and they promptly obliged. A friend told me she asked for another set of drawers for her kids' room, and they told her no. So it seems like the furniture is subject to availability (if you want something beyond what's already provided).

Here is our eating area. Exciting.

And our lovely kitchen. It comes with basic kitchen supplies, which are very basic. I wish I'd packed more of my own cooking equipment, but I've made do without buying much additional stuff. For anyone who's interested, it comes with a set of 6 dinner plates, salad plates, bowls, medium tumblers, large tumblers, coffee mugs, wine glasses, and silverware. There is a knife block with several knives in varying states of whet. Microwave, toaster, coffee maker, dishwasher, disposal, all provided. We have stainless steel pots and pans: 1 small saucepan, one medium, and one large, one stainless steel frying pan, and I was lucky enough to get a non-stick frying pan. Apparently that is unusual. There is a set of 3 tupperware bowls, 3 pyrex mixing bowls, a 8x11 pyrex pan, a pyrex casserole dish (maybe 2 quarts) and a colander. Slotted spoons (2), spatula, kitchen tongs, rubber scraper, pasta server, measuring spoons, corkscrew, pizza cutter, can opener, cheese grater, whisk, vegetable peeler, and-- my personal favorite-- a pastry brush. Now, most of these things are really basic, but if I were outfitting a basic kitchen, I'd put a blender in waaayyy before I'd put in a pastry brush (I mean, I make milkshakes much more often than I make baklava... but to each his own.

And Penny's room. It's hard to view all of it, but on the very far left, you can see glow from the window, and on the far right, you can see her chest of drawers (6 large drawers).

Originally, there was a TV on the dresser in here and in our room, but we asked the management to just take them, which they did a few days later. Now we have that much more room!

Penny's closet is a weird, triangular shape, but it's very spacious.I may never make it as a professional organizer, but this is how I stash stuff in my kids' closet. And I'm happy with it.
This is our laundry room. In our floorplan, there is some storage space in the laundry room, which we have been happy to use. The washer and dryer are half-sized, which means half as much laundry per load. But we're just really happy to have them in our own apartment, so we'll take it!

And I park the stroller in here, right beside Penny's doll stroller.
This is our large, walk-through closet. It connects our bedroom to the bathroom. It comes with an iron and ironing board, and yes, Kevin has more clothes than I do. ;) I his defense, I'm wearing my maternity clothes, which are minimal.

All I've really left out are pictures of our master bedroom, and our awesome view from the balcony. I might post pictures of that in the future, but don't hold your breath.

And that, whether you like it or not, was the grand tour of my casita.

Sleeping in

Last night Kevin stayed up coughing except for about two hours. I felt bad for him, but I'm not empathetic enough to join him. So I slept in Penny's room in the other twin bed.

Penny woke up in the wee hours of the morning and cried for a while. I have no idea what time it was, but it was pitch black outside, making it earlier than 6:30 or 7 when she usually wakes up. I crawled into bed with Penny, and after several minutes of tossing and turning, she was back to sleep.

I've done this a few times, and I love the magical powers I have! Once she goes back to sleep, she snuggles up against me and sleeps soundly and deeply-- for a long time. I love the extra hour or so I get to sleep.

So this morning I finally awoke to sunshine and a happy baby, or at least until she started insisting I get up and make her breakfast. Begrudgingly, I rolled out of bed to stumble in for breakfast.

Mid-stumble, I realized the clock said 8:20. 8:20?!?! On Sunday morning?!?! I have choir practice at 8:30-- and I am the accompanist!!! (Halfway through rehearsal last week, our real accompanist said she'd be out of town, so I was asked to play. I got to run through it twice with the choir, and after a week in my piano-less apartment, I was really needing this morning's rehearsal!)

I woke Kevin up from his precious hour of sleep and hefted a hungry child his direction. I got ready in record time, packed clothes for Penny (in hindsight, a hairbrush would have been a nice touch), and zoomed to church just in time to hear the last half of the final run-through. Great! My first time through the song in a week would be while we performed it in Sacrament Meeting!

The song actually went beautifully. I was feeling incredibly stressed out and uneasy, but as the song progressed, I was able to relax and just enjoy playing a beautiful song with a talented choir.

I played pretty well, even for my own standards. I think I'll have to credit that to an extra hour of sleep I got this morning.

Penny's vocabulary

Penny talks a lot. Sometimes she just has a running commentary going as she plays. That doesn't mean we understand much (any) of it, but she is starting to say a lot of words:

Thank you (da-doo) (she says this when you hand her something or hold the door open for her)

Bye bye

See you (I didn't realize we said this very much, but apparently we do)

See you (meaning cereal)

Okay!

Shoes (she sticks her lips out all the way for this word)

No

Daddy

Ball

Mao (Chinese for cat)

Hi

Hello (on the phone)

Xi xi (this means xi shou (wash hands), shua ya (brush teeth), and xi zao (take a shower))

Nine! (ding, especially when the elevator arrives)

Maine, as in, Maine Maine Maine (boing boing boing)

Dee dee (tickle tickle)

Ya ya (duckie in Chinese) This one is new today.

When football is on TV, she yells and cheers, no matter what the score or who's playing

She also laughs at the wrong times during movies. If someone gets injured or the world ends, Penny decides to laugh then.

And she can identify a lot of things when you ask her to point at them:

yazi (duck)

bizi (nose)

shetou (tongue) (although she gets this confused with toufa, which means hair. We're working on that one.)

zuiba (mouth)

duqi (bellybutton)

She's starting to obey commands:

Put your shoes in the box.

Go get your dolly/doggy and the stroller.

Ba ______ na gei Mama. (That means "Get______ and give it to Mama.")

She doesn't answer to her name or come when I ask her to. I could holler all day for her, but she doesn't even acknowledge hearing me.

She's really good at responding to questions, especially if the answer is no.

"Are you sleeping?" No

"Do you want some more Cheerios?" No

Good thing she always means it when she says it.

Breakfast of champions

Penny's half birthday

Penny turned 1 1/2 the other day. I started this list of cute things she did, and here it is in its entirety:

1. When we moved here in November, Penny just slept in a twin bed because we didn't have a crib. She still sleeps in it, and she doesn't know she could get out. Actually, she climbs on things like chairs and couches and hasn't figured how to get down from those either. It's pretty funny to rescue her from being stuck 2 inches above the ground. But it's great that she stays in bed!

2. Kevin is sick, so last night I slept in the other twin bed in Penny's room. As I was falling asleep, I heard Penny start to talk in her sleep. "Noooooo!" she said and then turned over, grunted something else, and went back to sleep.

3. I just gave Penny a handful of Goldfish on a chair. She walked over to them, stuck her face on the chair, and just ate them with her mouth. Silly girl!

4. Penny sometimes pretends a little. She got some wooden fruit for Christmas, and she picked up a piece and pretended to eat it: Nam nam nam! And just recently, she likes me to spread out a blanket so she or her dolly can pretend to go to sleep. She even squints her eyes shut.

5. We started taking Penny to nursery at church a few weeks early, and that's where she learned "Do As I'm Doing." At home, we sang it with her, clapping our hands for the action. She clapped her hands with us, but then halfway through the song, she started rolling her fists. Come on, Mom and Dad, time for the next verse!

6. Penny likes to pray. Sort of. Before we eat or while we're playing, she'll suddenly fold her arms and grunt at me that it's time to pray. It's a good reminder and we usually do stop and pray. Penny's most consistent about her naptime and bedtime prayers, though. I'll stand up to leave after reading a story, and she promptly folds her arms and looks at me with those big, brown eyes. So we pray.

7. Penny likes to eat mao dou (edamame). She hasn't figured out how to pop the beans out of the shells yet, but she just sticks the shell in her mouth and chomps it until the bean either pops out or gets munched into a million pieces. Then she throws the shell on the floor. It's a little messy sometimes, but this will keep her occupied as long as there are still beans to be eaten. I love to remember this when we go grocery shopping.

8. At church, Penny sings along with us when we do. This also means that whenever she opens a book with music in it, she'll start singing to it.

9. When we go into the elevator, Penny heads right to the side opposite me and leans against the wall like I'm doing. Then when we reach the parking garage level, she reaches out for my hand, and we get out of the elevator together. We have to go through a couple doors (she says thank you for each one I hold open for her), and then we're out with the cars. And that's where she REFUSES to hold my hand. Ugh! So I either grab and drag or just pick her up.

10. When I sit on the ground and sew, Penny sits beside me and takes the pins from my pincushion and sticks them into the blanket I'm sewing. Or she rolls around in the blanket. Sometimes she does the one and then the other, and I'm amazed she still hasn't learned about the poky ends of the pins.

Pregnancy updates, a la China

In my Chinese studies the last few weeks, I've read a few articles from a pregnancy website. I figured if I'm reading these little weekly updates anyway, I might as well read them in Chinese and learn something I don't already know.

Like how to say "sensory organs," "kidneys," and "vernix." Somehow my college courses, thorough as they were, never covered this.

My favorite part this week is that the Chinese pregnancy updates also compare your unborn baby's size to that of a fruit or vegetable. In the English articles, you start at a grain of rice, move up through a pea, strawberry, avacado, and up through the larger vegetables. This week, according to the Chinese article, my baby is the size of a 番瓜 (fanggua). Since I don't know what a fanggua is, I consulted a google image search. Turns out, a fanggua is this:

Or this:

Or maybe this, poor child:

Or hopefully not this:

Or perhaps a naked woman (which, now that I think about it, might be the most accurate representation).

So I have no idea how big my baby is this week. Thank you, google images.

But I did read another article telling me not to endanger my health by following old wives' tales and superstitions. For example, I shouldn't go overboard postpartum with Chinese medicine containing ginger. Apparently ginger has a "warming" effect and is used to counteract something cold happening in your body (I didn't read it very carefully), but if you eat ginger in everything and wash it down with strong ginger tea, and basically spend most of your day munching ginger, it actually causes you to bleed more. But ginger in a normal diet is fine.

I'd never have known that if I stuck to all-English pregnancy websites.

Groceries!

I kind of get excited when I find a new, cool grocery store. Every time I move to a new place (which is often), I love finding that community's grocery jewel.

I'll be continuing in the same vein for a few paragraphs. If this post already bores you, please skip to something else more interesting.

Anyway... a friend I met here (who actually turns out to have been a neighbor of mine in college) told me about a great thrift shop in Falls Church called Unique. I went and found it to be, indeed, a great thrift shop. Penny has that many more cute outfits to prove it.

But more than the thrift shop, I was absolutely thrilled with the shopping center. Before you enter the thrift shop, you leave America for a couple minutes and walk through a mercado you might find in Mexico or China. There were stalls of boots, bras, jewelry, chips and soda, sparkly costumes, and practically everything else under the sun. So cool!

The jackpot of that shopping center, though, was the Chinese grocery store across the parking lot! Someone asked me the name of it, and I honestly couldn't remember. That's because the name in Chinese is Da Zhong Hua Chaoji Shichang, which means (basically) Big China Supermarket. In English, it's called The Great Wall. It's rare that the Chinese characters mean the same thing as the English name of a store. But that's another story.

Anyway, the first time I went there, I was so excited to find it smelling like durian, bustling with black-haired customers, and offering live fish for sale. I rushed to the refrigerator aisle to find the Zongzi. I could eat zongzi forever!

After we'd eaten all the zongzi (2 days later) I therefore needed to go back. This week, I loaded up my cart, and we've been eating nothing but good, homemade Chinese food for the last week or so. We had friends over and cooked a real, authentic, 4-dish Chinese meal. We had jiaozi for lunch and egg-drop soup for dinner. I still need to find a good sauce for our Chinese broccoli, and I was delighted to finally try cooking with garlic stems (amazing! very similar to green onions but don't turn to limp goo when stir-fried). I'm so excited to have found this place! I'll definitely be going back regularly the whole time we're living here in Arlington!

On a similar note: I have no idea what we might put in a consumables shipment when we go to China. I'm just so excited to be able to go buy real Chinese food, I can't even imagine much American food that I COULDN'T go without for a couple years.

Christmas... was last month

I think there's a rule somewhere that you have to blog about your Christmas morning, mandatory especially when all the grandparents live out of state.

This was Penny's first Christmas that she had any idea what was going on, although that was still debatable. It was definitely the first Christmas that we spent just as our little family. It was quiet, but still fun making cookies, pretzels, fudge, and setting up our own tree. We still need to work on stockings, though.

Here Kevin is helping Penny open up her stocking:

And not only was she happy to play with her own presents, but she enjoyed everyone else's, too!
As excited as she was to open her presents all week (I had to tape like 3 or 4 of them shut after she ripped into them), Penny had to have help opening her presents on THE morning. But she was happy to find what was inside of them. New boots from Ah-Ma!
She, of course, wanted to put them on right away:
Some of Penny's other favorites were her fru-fru frilly skirt. She's on her way to becoming a professional ballroom dancer (which was probably the intent). Then there is a new dog puppet that really enjoys riding around in the new doll-sized stroller.
Merry Christmas, everyone!

This week's outing

Today's high is supposed to be 45 degrees, and tomorrow's 48. After a couple weeks in the 20's, this is practically balmy!! In celebration, I formulated an elaborate plan to invite everyone I know (all three of them) to go walk on Roosevelt Island.

See, I love living in the city and all. Well, "love" may be a strong word. I kind of like aspects of it. I like eating at good restaurants, which there are hundreds of. I like all the concerts. I like the little swath of trees I can see from my 8th story window (past the Mary Poppins rooftop landscape). But I really miss nature.

In between Virginia and Washington DC is this river called the Potomac. Somewhere in this river quite close to my house is a nature reserve called Roosevelt Island. I've been aching to leave the city and see some unpaved, uncultivated, un-urbanized land, and it's finally warm enough to go to this beautiful island like a mile from my house. Or so I thought.

My plan was to invite everyone for tomorrow morning. We'd all meet in the parking lot with our strollers and then take on the island. But somewhere in my past experiences, I've learned that inviting everyone you know to somewhere you've never been isn't always the best idea.

Penny and I went to scope out the place this morning. It looked a bit like this, plus ice covering the river left of the bridge, and minus the leaves and any color:
I'm glad I scoped it out first.

- The only way to drive there is to first drive to DC, then take the other bridge BACK to Virginia and then stop at the side of the road only accessible in one direction. Let's just say I did this several times due to some missed turns and failure to listen to the sat-nav.

- Just because the day's high is going to be 45 degrees, it doesn't say anything about 10:00 AM's temperature. Penny was plenty prepared, but I could have done without forgetting my hat, gloves, sweater, and extra layer of pants.

- Nature trail does not equal stroller path. I did get a good workout hefting the stroller over some fallen trees and some landslides into the frozen river below, but my hiking backpack would have been the better option.

- A nature reserve in the middle of a metropolis isn't exactly tranquil. Along the entire path, we could see and hear the highway across the water. The airplanes and helicopters still zoomed overhead, and if birds were chirping or leaves rustling, I must have missed them.

- As much as I love being cold, I think I'll just enjoy my little swath of trees from the comfort of my living room this winter.