My Little Bride

One of our family goals for 2010 is to watch less tv…and more movies! E usually goes to bed by 7:30 and N and I like to unwind and watch shows together afterward. But we’re cutting the cord on some of the shows we used to watch like Hell’s Kitchen, 24, and American Idol and resolving to watch more movies from our Netflix queue.

So far it’s been going well and we’ve been watching some fun movies. We just finished a streak of Korean movies that I had added to the queue. One of them was My Little Bride (어린 신부) (2004).

My Little Bride is a romantic comedy about an arranged marriage between a high school student, Boeun, and a young teacher, Sangmin. Boeun’s dying grandfather and their families pressure them to marry in order fulfill a family promise. But Boeun just wants to keep her new husband a secret and finish up high school like a normal kid…and hijinks ensue.

I really enjoyed the movie. It started out a little slow but quickly grew on me. The lead actors give charming performances and Moon Geun Youn (who plays Boeun) has great comedic timing and a talent for slapstick. To be honest, it was a lot funnier that I thought it would be. Even N liked it and he has a lower tolerance for corny Asian comedies than I do. I guess there’s a reason why it was such a big hit in Korea when it came out.

Check it out if you get the chance. If you have some time to kill, you can even watch the whole thing on Youtube. Here’s the first part (of twelve).

Better late than never

I meant to post about this, oh, two months ago but I kept missing the chance to take a photo of it in the daylight. And then the holidays and such happened.

I’ve been lucky enough to win two things online. The first thing was this fancy Breville grill from Citymama. And the second thing was this cute picture drawn by Natalie’s sister.


Isn’t it cute? I got to specify a theme and I suggested balloons which E loves and this is what Natalie’s sister came up with. I’m going to hang it up in E’s room.

The style reminds me a lot of Exploding Dog, a site that N and I used to look at when we were dating (coincidentally, Exploding Dog turns ten this year which makes me feel old). Anyway, at Exploding Dog people submit captions and then Sam draws pictures interpreting the captions. It may not seem that special now but back in the day it was pretty cool.

Soup’s On!

N came home from work last night with an hankering to make some soup. He wanted to use of the last of a ham we had to make a bean soup but we didn’t have any beans so he made an Indian red lentil soup with ham instead.


Recipe: N’s Red Lentil Soup

  • In a large pot chop and sweat one yellow onion in oil
  • Add 2 cups red lentils (masoor dal), washed and picked clean and three diced red potatoes
  • 3 cups water and Indian seasonings to taste (N used garam masala and Madras curry powder).
  • Simmer over low heat for half an hour or until lentils soften and thicken, adding additional water as necessary.
  • Add one cup diced ham (or other protein) and one can diced tomatoes and more water if necessary, simmer some more.
  • Immediately before removing from heat add two handfuls of washed spinach leaves and serve with a dollop of plain yogurt.

Weekend Highs and Lows

This weekend was somewhat of a mixed bag. I had planned to get together with my friend Erica on Saturday and check out the Overstock.com store and grab some lunch but when I went to get E out of his crib I discovered that he thrown up and wasn’t feeling well. I gave E a bath and he seemed to be feeling better but then he spit up some apple juice he drank. I considered canceling my outing but N assured me that he could handle it so I ended up going.

It was a lot of fun to hang out with Erica and catch up. We were college roommates but don’t get the chance to see each that often. I’m always a little nervous to drag people all the way up to the Overstock store but it was a lot of fun to chat in the car and Erica scored a nice down comforter and a board game.

I found some cute bronze leather Nine West flats and this London Fog trench in red. I’ve always wanted a trench and it was a good deal ($27). My other big find was a copy of Famouz, this book of photographs by Anton Corbijn, a photographer noted for his portraits of musicians. It’s a gorgeous book and printed on really lovely paper. It didn’t have a price tag on it; and I really didn’t need it so I told myself I would only buy it if they asked $10 or less for it. Happily the workers asked only $10 so it came home with me too. Not too shabby considering that the list price is $70.

On the way home I called to check on E who, as it turns out, had thrown up three more times–poor N and poor E! But N was a sweetie and gallantly insisted that Erica and I stop for lunch as planned. When I got home I found E cuddled up with N watching kids’ shows. For the rest of the day E spent most of his time draping himself over us or the couch and whimpering. He woke up at 3:30am on Sunday morning and threw up again so we stayed home from church. E was so wiped out that he lay down on the floor of the family room and fell asleep there. It was pretty pitiful but cute.

I think E’s stomach is feeling better: he ate some animal crackers and drank some juice this morning which so far have not made a second appearance (knock on wood). But he’s still feeling pretty puny so it looks like we’re going to have another stay-at-home day.

Letter: Month Twenty-Six

Dear E,

December was an eventful month. Your eimo had a baby boy and so you gained another cousin. While you adore your big boy cousins A and J and follow them around like a little puppy you haven’t been too impressed with baby P yet. While we were visiting Jan’s house over the holidays I took a turn holding baby P and we called you over to take a look at him. You leaned in real close to P’s sleeping little face and everyone thought you were going to plant a kiss on him but instead you took a big breath and yelled “Wake up!” Helpful as always!

Over Christmas you came down with one of the worst colds you’ve had in a long time. You were a pretty pitiful sight; coughing and whining about everything and nothing in particular. The only thing you wanted to do was sit on our laps and cuddle and watch NickJr. It was pretty hard to deal with but at the same time I relished the chance to hold you close; you’re not usually one for cuddling.

Despite being sick you really enjoyed Christmas. The concept of presents finally clicked with you and you were so excited to see the presents stacked by the tree. On Christmas morning you giddily took turns handing us our presents and opening your own. And now whenever you see a wrapped gift you’re fascinated and ask if it’s for you by asking “present? present?”

But December had its downside too. Your dad and I have been thinking about adding to our family for a while now and around Christmas I ended up having an early pregnancy loss. It was sad and disappointing but it motivated me to make some positive changes in my life and so hopefully I’m utilizing the situation for personal growth.

You know, you’re the reason I can see us having more children. You taught us (and continue to teach us) how to be parents. Before you were born I had known that I wanted to be a mother but I didn’t know how fulfilling it would be. While you sometimes have your trying moments (you are two after all!) having you here fills our house with more joy and laughter than it’s ever held before.

Love,

Mama

My first attempt

My sister-in-law Miranda is hosting a baby shower for a friend and she asked me to try my hand at an invitation for the event. She’s having a chocolate fountain at the party and so requested a pink and brown scheme.

I didn’t really know what I was doing and there are still things I’d like to change about it, but I had a lot of fun mucking around in Illustrator to put this together. If anyone has any good Illustrator/Photoshop training books or websites to recommend I’d love to hear about them.

Click! Click! Click!

Except for E having a nasty cold and the miscarriage, our Christmas was very nice. N. received an unexpected Christmas bonus and generously used it to spoil me which was very sweet of him.

On Christmas morning I was shocked to unwrap this amazing camera lens. It’s the 35mm f/1.4 L series lens which means that it’s great for closer shots, excels in low light situations, and is basically professional grade. There’s a Flickr group devoted to it if you want to see what type of shots it can take.
I was also thrilled to unwrap these: Adobe’s Web Premium creative suite and Adobe Premiere.

And no, we’re not crazy posh. While the web suite is super pricey, N didn’t pay near full price. We’re fortunate to have a member of the family who works for an Adobe company and he has a small number of software licenses he can purchase at a steep discount. He was kind enough to donate some of his licenses and help N get these for me (Thanks, J!).

I took a couple classes in college in Photoshop and Illustrator and really enjoyed working with them. I don’t really have much formal training in it but I like graphic design in addition to photography so I’m excited to be able to muck around with this software.

Hopefully these gifts will help me kick my photography up a notch in 2010.

Perspective on the coming year

Happy New Year! It was nice to take a little break from the blog and just focus on spending time with family, playing with Christmas presents, and just generally loafing around the house. But I really missed posting and I’m glad to back.

I know it’s trite and probably more than a little naive, but I’m full of enthusiasm for the coming year. While 2009 was a sucky year for a lot of the world, we were pretty fortunate. Despite the recession N and I both kept our jobs and we also got to spend a lot of time with E and watch him grow from a baby into a little boy, which was and continues to be a blast.

We decided that it was time to work on adding another child to our family and so we started pursuing adoption while also being open to getting pregnant. Adoption has always been part of our plan for creating our family; both of us have siblings who were adopted from Korea and we feel that we would be able to offer a lot to a baby relinquished for adoption.

Our plan is to simultaneously persue pregnancy and adoption and see which route we make more progress on. If we’re not pregnant once we reach a certain point in the adoption process we’ll go on birth control and focus on adoption. If we get pregnant in the next few months we’ll still proceed with the adoption but with a more delayed timeline so baby #2 will be over a year when we adopt.

I have no idea if we’ll be able to have a successful pregnancy. It took us a few years to have E and so who knows. The week after Christmas I was surprised to find out I was pregnant but unfortunately I had a very early miscarriage, my first. So we shall see. I was disappointed but am now using it as motivation for self-improvement.

In the few days between finding out I was pregnant and finding out it wasn’t viable I felt 1) cautious but crazy excitement and 2) disappointed that I hadn’t lost some weight and/or set up my home office and got to use it before we had another baby and it takes over the room (I know, they’re kind of lame bourgeois regrets but whatever.) But now that I’m no longer pregnant I’m viewing this as a opportune time to get into better shape and organize my house. I figure it’s better than moping around at home and eating nothing but chocolate chip cookies and milk for days and days (which I also considered).

So now I’m heading out to hit the gym.