Author: Faith

Let’s Make Cute Stuff!

I received this book, Aranzi Aronzo Cute Dolls (Let’s Make Cute Stuff), for my birthday from Gwyn, N.’s sister. It is SO much fun. I have a habit (which drives N. crazy) of collecting project or how-to books which I seldom actually make anything out. But this is one of the few books I have that I wouldn’t feel guilty about owning even if I never make anything out of it because it is that much fun to read. The translator did an excellent job translating the instructions and descriptions from the original Japanese and the whole book is a pleasure to read as a result. The book has that super cute, whimsical, Engrishy Japanese vibe that I’m a sucker for. Besides being fun to read, there’s a helpful tutorial at the front on the basics of doll construction. The tutorial is narrated by White Rabbit and Brown Bunny.

Argh, the cuteness! The text is entertaining on its own but the patterns are also great. There are about 20 patterns for adorable stuffies in the book and out of those there are at least 6 that I really want to make. N. was flipping through the book and declared that I had to make E. one of these:

Yes, that’s right: a kidnapper doll! Every child’s dream toy! If you can’t read the text, it says “Kidnapper is tall and trim. He’s always wearing a tight black suit. It’s so tight that it’s like a part of his body now. Kidnapper is always wearing a black hat. He doesn’t have hair underneath his hat. Kidnapper is always holding a white bag. That’s because his job is to kidnap kids. He’s off to work again today!”

I love that he comes with he comes with a white sack to stuff his victims in! So creepy. E. doesn’t really have a ‘lovey’ yet so how funny would it be if I made him a Kidnapper doll and it became his favorite childhood toy?

So yeah, if you like cute Japanese-style stuffies or know a child whose life is simply incomplete without a Kidnapper doll, I recommend this book.

Pike Place Market

I know it’s a major tourist trap, but I still like going to Pike Place Market when I’m in Seattle. I enjoy checking out the produce/flowers and admiring the hand painted market signs. (I’m a total sucker for nice signage.)





And with that, I promise I’m finally finished milking my Seattle trip for posts. After today, it’s back to our regularly schedule programing…whatever that is.

Letter: Month Eleven

Dear E,

Your eleventh month was full of some pretty dramatic changes. Before this month you weren’t really crawling; you would roll around sideways to get where you wanted or scoot on your tummy. But when I took you to Washington to visit family it was like a light turned on and you figured it out. You also figured out that you could pull yourself up into a standing position and now it’s one of your favorite things to do. Now when I go to get you up from your crib, this is the site that greets me most of the time:

It cracks me up because you’re obviously so pleased with yourself. And frankly, why shouldn’t you be?

I mentioned that I took you to Washington to visit family. I was a little nervous beforehand how you would react to everything and everyone since you had been having some stranger anxiety before we left. But trip seemed to pull you out of it right away. You were such a trooper and shamelessly flirted with everyone you saw. My mother showered you with attention and you loved it.

You also seem to be more interested in eating table foods. Your food allergies make it a little difficult to find foods that are okay to eat but I’m going to get serious about cooking meals that you can eat too. I have to admit that since I’ve cut eggs, dairy, and nuts from my diet that our dinners have really suffered. A lot of the time I’ll just end up eating a bagel with vegan margarine on it or cereal with soy milk and leave your dad to fend for himself. Your dad is a great cook (last night he made a yummy red curry) but I need to do better. I normally struggle with coming up with dinner ideas and these food restrictions just make it harder to get motivated. But I think you’re on the way to outgrowing baby food and so I need to get my game together. So yeah, this last month was pretty crazy. The main event was the trip to Washington. After we got home you all of a sudden seemed so much older. I can see more of the little boy in you and less of the baby. I know your dad was surprised at how much you had grown in the week we were away.

Even though I was right there with you I was surprised at how much you had grown too. It is so much fun to watch you become your own person.


Love,

Mama

All’s Well that Ends Well

So my birthday yesterday started out pretty lame. By lame I mean that we discovered that the basement, which had finally dried out Monday night, had flooded again. AND that it was worse than ever. Um, so there was that. N. used the wetvac to suck up 45 or so gallons of water, but then he had to go to work. So I had to flit between sucking up the water in the basement and pumping it down the drain, playing with E. who was freaked out by the loud wetvac noise and would cry heart brokenly every time I would leave the room, and trying to get some work down on my slides for work which were due last night.

So when Amy called me yesterday morning and asked how I was doing…well, I told her. Amy’s the president of the Relief Society (the women’s auxiliary) at church. Anyway, when she heard about the basement and my deadline for work, she offered to watch E. for a while so I could focus on those things. I usually don’t ask for help with things; I pride myself on being pretty self-sufficient. But things were so crazy and I could tell her offer was sincere, so I accepted. So I packed E. off to her house where he crawled around and was fascinated by her 2 year-old and preschooler. And then I dashed home and worked on the basement and my slides. It was only for an hour and a half, but I felt like I had made some real progress by the time I picked up E.

A couple hours after I picked up E. from Amy’s house the doorbell rang. It was Amy and her preschooler holding a tasty-looking, still warm vegan chocolate cake! I could not get over how thoughtful it was of her. And there was also a package of cookies from another friend on the porch. AND another neighbor swung by with a little present. I felt very lucky to know such thoughtful people.

So after that things kept getting better. E. took a nap which allowed me to tend to the basement and work some more on my slides. N. came home early from work bearing gorgeous flowers and we went out to dinner at a steakhouse (I ‘heart’ prime rib!) where E. proceeded to charm everyone within a ten foot radius. After dinner we put E. to bed and N. took over pumping out the basement so I could finish up my slides. Then we had slices of Amy’s delicious cake with scoops of coconut-milk-based ice cream (actually pretty good) on the side and I opened presents from N.

N. totally blew me away with his thoughtfulness. He got me a few cds and books I had wanted and one that I didn’t know I wanted but actually did. And he got me this print, Ninjas All Over the Place, by one of my favorite artists, Scott Campbell.

I am so, SO excited about it. I’m going to get it framed and it’s going to hang in my sewing room/office and it is going to be AWESOME. Here’s a detail of it.


So yeah, pretty much everything was lovely thanks to the kindness of others and the thoughtfulness of N. Now I’ve got to hustle and pack up E. and drop him off at my sister Jan’s house (speaking of kindness) so I can attend a two-hour meeting in the office to go over my slides.

Pick up your beans and keep rolling!

So…my weekend was kind of crazy and it looks like my week will be more of the same. We discovered early Sunday morning that our basement had flooded, AGAIN. So for 36 hours we’ve been sucking up the water with a wet vac and dumping it down a shower drain. It looks like it has finally slowed, but all day yesterday it just kept coming up and up. So discouraging! So today I called and scheduled repairs to our basement that are going to cost almost as much as we paid for N.’s (decent) used car. (Yikes.)

Work is also insane, made worse by the fact that I totally procrastinated over the weekend and didn’t get any work done at all. It’s so busy that I had to beg off getting together with my office friends tomorrow for lunch. They wanted to get together because tomorrow’s my birthday, but I just can’t spare the time because of the deadlines I’m working with. I felt like such a heel on the phone, “Why yes, it is so nice of you to want to get together to celebrate my birthday…but, um, I’m simply too busy to see you.” (Awkward!) I am hoping they will still want to get together in a week (or two) when I can actually get away.

Also, I tried giving E. that special baby formula he can have over the weekend. He hasn’t been too into nursing lately (perhaps due to teething?) and I figured that maybe I could wean him onto it for the month and a half we have before our follow-up with the allergist. But he wasn’t haven’t ANY of it. I don’t blame him, the stuff smells pretty nasty so I can imagine how awful it tastes. So it looks like I’m still on the no-dairy, no-egg, no-nut diet for a while which I have to admit, puts a bit of a damper on birthday celebrations. I guess I could make that tasty dairy-and-egg-free cake my friend Emily brought over once but just can’t muster up the enthusiasm to actually get it done. I’d rather just go buy something, but there seems to be an inconvenient dearth of vegan bakeries in my neighborhood.

Anyway, enough complaining from me…if I get caught up with work today and tomorrow I’ll be able to finish E.’s 11-month letter and post some more pictures from our Washington trip.

Back to work I go!

Oh Paldo World, you’re so dreamy!

There’s a great Koreatown about 40 minutes from my parents’ house. Along South Tacoma Way there are blocks and blocks of Korean restaurants, businesses, stores, and churches. It’s pretty awesome, especially since there are only a few Korean stores and restaurants here in the Salt Lake area.

My mom took us to the new Paldo World grocery store when we were there. It was a lot of fun.

They had a huge selection of items including fresh-made dduk and dumplings (Yum!) I loved looking at the aisle signs; some of them cracked me up.

A whole aisle devoted to rice and all kind of ramen boxes!

No trip to the store is complete without Europeans food!

This was the best aisle in the whole place. Yay for junk food!

I was charmed by the Nagelesque illustration on this tea.

Grocery shopping was fun, but I have to say that my favorite part of the store was the food court. It SO good. It had three separate restaurants. There was so much tasty food: ddukbokki, jajangmyeon, tonkatsu, soups, etc… And everything was very affordable. So we went a little, um, overboard.

One of the restaurants, Chicky Pub, specialized in spicy fried chicken. I loved their Engrish slogan and signage.

At first I was mystified by this sign…

I couldn’t figure out why they put an old-timey western cathouse on the sign.
I mean, check out the women’s expressions! And why are there children with balloons at this cathouse? But then I realized that it was only an illustration of an old-timey western pub where townfolk gathered to enjoy delicious cajun-style fried chicken.

You know, just like they used to have in the old days.

Family Snaps

It was really great to be able to spend time with family when E. and I were in Washington. Before we went on the trip E. was displaying some signs of stranger anxiety and so I was a little concerned that he would be fussy for people. But E. was very charming and liked hanging out with everyone.

E. with his cousin D. This is one of my favorite photos.

E. with Mindy and Ken (N’s brother) and their daughter C. at the Fremont troll. I think it’s funny how much E. looks like Mindy in this shot.

C. sitting on the troll’s hand.

E. with my mom. He loved spending time with her. The feeling was definitely mutual.

My dad and E. with his cousins J. and A.

My brother Steven in front of the state capital.

On the Town

Well, we’re finally home! Luckily, E. was a trooper on the flight home. He didn’t throw up, or even cry. Yay!

When we were in Washington my sister and I took her boys and my brother up to Seattle to see the sites. (My mom watched E. at home). It was a lot of fun to play tourist. My nephews wanted to go on the ‘duck bus’ tour, so we did.

A tour company bought a bunch of WWII amphibious vehicles and turned them into tourist buses. First you drive around downtown and the guide points out attractions like the Space Needle, Safeco Field, the piers, the Olympic Sculpture Park, etc… and then you drive to (and into Lake Union). The bus drives down the boat launch and into the water and then you cruise (pretty slowly) around Lake Union looking at houseboats and bridges and whatnot. The entire time the guide keeps up a steady pratter of facts and bad jokes and plays fairly obnoxious music.

The tour is an hour and a half long, but is still shockingly pricey: $25 for adults and $15 for kids. But it’s a great deal if your sister pays for your ticket like mine did (thanks, Jan!) The kids really enjoyed it and once I surrendered to the corniness I thought it was pretty fun too. I was surprised at how friendly the Seattlites were. Tons of people smiled and waved when they saw/heard the bus. Maybe they were touched by the gleeful smiles on the children’s faces, or maybe they were just happy to be reminded of the millions of dollars tourist pump into their economy. Who knows?

Here are some photos from the tour:

Lake Union and Gasworks Park.

Gasworks park up close.

One of my favorite signs downtown. I remember it from field trips to Seattle as a kid.


The E.M.P. museum designed by Frank Gehry.


After the tour, Jan and I took everyone up to the top of the Space Needle.

I’m still going through the photos I took and will post some of E. with family later this week.

Wish Us Luck


It has been really fun visiting family and friends here in Washington this last week. But yesterday, E. seemed to come down with a bug. He threw up twice: once at Mindy’s house and once at the lovely Mediterranean restaurant Ken and Mindy had taken us for dinner (good times!).

So yeah, I am pretty nervous about the flight home this afternoon, short as it is. My sister Jan flew home on Sunday, so I’m going to flying by myself with E., a first.

I’m trying to tell myself that it’s not a big deal. It’s only two hours, right? All the same, I am definitely packing some extra changes of clothes for both E. and me. Wish us luck.