ryantimes

facetimes

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As you can imagine, a first and only grandchild several thousand miles away from his first-timer aunts/uncles/grandparents is sort of a tragedy. But then again, not as much as it would be without FaceTime. We do a lot of it around here. Cohen loves it. When he's not tired and he already ate and his diaper is changed but he is still fussy, I pretty much give up and turn to FaceTime to help me parent. Cohen's mood instantly changes once a familiar face comes on screen with a hearty "Hi, Baby!" And then he can go {almost} forever—showing off his cars, playing peek-a-boo, babbling away, mimicking, or simply staring at all the faces giving him such undivided attention.

The other nice hero is the screenshots, which my family frequently uses to capture the moments—like the one on the right, where he's pointing to the birds he hears out the window. Or the one on bottom where he is completely enthralled with laughing "hard" with my mom (it may look like he's screaming or something, but that's just his cheesy laugh).

There are a slew of these shots waiting to be shared (as my brother will attest, who frequently comes home to a desktop full of them), so this will likely become a common theme, probably documented on the Baby Ks blog. The url finally makes sense now that there is more than one Baby K. Though it would have been more proper to call it 'Babies K' I think. Ah, well.

(Oh, and if anyone else likes to get they're FaceTime on, you can reach us through my email. Same with iChat or Skype or Gmail Video Chat. Or even Google+ Hangouts. We are sort of experts in this genre. Drop us a line.)

valentimes

♥♡♥♡♥
It's been a week, but HusBen kept asking if I was going to post about it, which I consider rare enough to oblige—despite the grainy photos. I'm a big fan of love, so it is fun to celebrate. I laughed when Ben came home a few days before V-day, admitting his ponderings that we should know each other's expectations for this holiday. "Are we going to boycott the commercialization or. . . get super into it?" This is certainly not our first Valentine's Day together, so I'm not sure why it came up now, but I took advantage to let him know I didn't expect to watch a Jazz game. ;)

When the day came, it was the final kick in the pants I needed to get that tidy house I lied about! I thought it would be the best surprise for Ben, and considered it a near-miracle to finish all I did (the miracle included Cohen napping well) before he walked in the door that evening. I fed Cohen dinner as Ben began prepping our dinner of fresh spring rolls with the ingredients he stopped for on the way home. He brought me home a bunch of tulips-to-be and my 2 bottles of my favorite treat (Odwalla Superfood)! Hiding behind the love note I forgot to remove is my other favorite lately—CHOCOLATE. Cliché, I know, but I can't help it. Ben went straight to the top with a bag of Ghirardelli "Intense Dark Twilight Delight 72% Cacao" squares. I couldn't have asked for more.

I'm glad he found his own favorite treat as well, being that my only offering was the tidy surroundings. He loves big buckets of lychee jellies! He treated us to a plethora of asian beverages too. My favorite was the white (green?) grape juice with whole grapes in it. We topped off our night watching Adam, having remembered that our last Valentine's Day movie was Temple Grandin. It was a good day of love.

P.S. Before the tulips arrived, there was a bright red camellia adorning the table, which fell to its death just as we set the table. I felt extra romantic spreading the petals across the table, but get this—they were greasy! Weird.
P.P.S. I missed taking a photo of the 'budding' stage, when we were guessing the blooms would be white, but by Monday, we had a bunch of precious pastel pink in the window!

3 truths and a lie

I had a dream last night that I was standing in for someone at one of those events where they toss a bad person/hero into a cave and onlookers watch as a hideous monster battles the victim. In my case, the hideous monster was a very distinct, shiny black bird—the size of an ostrich, with colored rings around its eyes and a long, sharp serrated beak used for killing its prey. Like the victims in the movies or the Bible, I too escaped, but only by waking up, and not before witnessing a few of these tenacious avifauna overcome other victims. Note: My impression above is cartoon-y, but in the dream it was very real—like CG effects real. Yes, I just used virtual terms to describe real.

One of the awesome things about pregnancy is remembering details from dreams, though they are not very often coherent to a story line. I feel like a bad mother for not documenting more about this pregnancy. It could be related to the fact that I have hardly felt pregnant at all. (Thank you thank you knock on wood thank you). But this next Baby K deserves better. So I am announcing that I am actually going to try to go update that baby blog some more. I've thought about it a lot, but telling you (whoever you are) might make me more accountable. And that goes for updates on Cohen too. He's 1 now, you know. It was on the docket to do a birthday tribute for him, but I already know there's no way to express anything through just words. Yeah, yeah, "anything's better than nothing," I know. I'll get on that too.

I have been dancing around the idea of somehow earning money with my talents. There is a healthy debt looming behind Ben's schooling and I feel there's got to be something I can do about it. I get really fired up to do it about every other month, but after 18 months-ish, I have nothing to show for it. I guess I could name several excuses why it hasn't happened, but I don't know which is the real stumbling block. If you know me like my mother does, you know there's some dumb stubbornness about me that wants to to it right and well the first time. Start out small and learn slowly by mistakes until I get better and better? Ha! This principle applies to too much in my life, but I'm hoping the accountability principle will help me out here too. If you are reading this, please keep an eye out for something whereby you might help dollars be delivered to yours truly. I promise to exchange for something authentic. Probably done with my hands.

My house is so immaculate lately. I just feel motivated every day and it's no big deal. Everything is decorated the way I want and I really feel like I've made this house a home. I was always the messy one growing up, but I don't know, something's changed and I just live the good life of tidiness now. We never watch spiders make webs in the corner, we haven't caught 7 mice this year (compared to last year's 8), and we never hear raccoons wrestling above us nor do we ever see them peering in on us against our window. We never leave dirty dishes out, dirty clothes never touch the floor, everything is in its right place and I just feel so uplifted by it.

Post Edit: I guess I'm a better liar than I thought. I know they're really long, but these paragraphs are indeed part of the get-to-know-you game of 3 truths and a lie. Sorry for misleading you. Wanna play?