Keep-It-Clean

A while back Phil and I had received a "Keep-It-Clean" pacifier for Calvin. It's basically a pacifier with a cover over it that snaps closed when it falls out of the baby's mouth so it won't get dirty. In concept it sounded like a great idea, and it looked cute too with the little airplane smiley face...


Here you can see the plastic cover that's snapped closed around the nibble part of the pacifier.

But there's one small flaw to their design...if the baby sucks hard enough you end up with a nice little clown ring around the baby's mouth...poor Calvin.

Mini-CMU Reunion

This weekend we got together with some of our friends from Carnegie Mellon. It was their first time to meet Calvin. After they took a look around and the house and we got Calvin all bundled up we headed out to Penang's for lunch - a Malaysian/Thai restaurant. This was Calvin's first time out to a restaurant in a long time. He looks all grown up in his shirt and pants.


We ordered a lot of food, including the Roti Telur (a scallion pancake type of dish), and I think that's curry chicken...

Mango Chicken, Beef Rendang, some fried noodle, Tofu Nyonya (tofu with minced pork, and red peppers), a vegetable in Belacan sauce, and chicken and coconut rice. It was kind of hard to tell the difference between the chicken rice and the coconut rice, but they were both good.

After lunch we headed back to our house to hang out. Calvin and Vickie had a nice heart-to-heart on the couch.

Then he spent some time showing Vickie and Mingi how high he could bounce in his jumper.

For dinner we headed to the Korean Edison Noodle place in Edison. We had Mingi with us, so we actually made it into the back part of the restaurant! I guess you have to be with someone that speaks the language. Mingi and Vickie posed for a quick picture before we ordered. Not sure what Alan is doing in the back though...

Mingi ordered a lot of good food off the menu. For appetizers we had the Hae-Mool-Pah Jun (seafood pancake).

I think this dish was the Tang Soo Yook (fried beef with a sweet and sour sauce). I wasn't able to eat any of the beef because of Calvin's beef protein allergy, but the fried dough around the beef was good ^__^

And I think this was the Ggan Poong Gi (a fried chicken dish).

Everyone also shared their Ja Jang Myun (noodle in black bean sauce with pork). Phil and I got to try a lot of dishes we might not normally have tried before, and they were all really good. We definitely need to come back her with Mingi again some time.

Linda's Baby Shower

This weekend I actually spent the whole afternoon without Calvin. One of my sister's high school friends, Linda, was having her baby shower today. I think it was probably the longest time I've spent away from him since he was born.


I prepared a couple of gifts for the shower. First, there was the more traditional diaper cake. It was a wicker basket filled with diapers and wipes, covered with a receiving blanket, topped with more diapers, and decorated with some baby mittens, socks and teether toys.


Next, was a little baby carriage. This one I made out of 2 small baskets and a crib sheet, filled it with diapers and put in a little toy lamb wearing a baby Halo Sleep sack and holding some toy keys.

I had a bunch of diapers left over, so I put together a diaper bouquet. At least I tried to make it look like a bouquet. And it was topped with a gift card to the spa, because with all the gifts you get for the baby at a baby shower, sometimes it's nice to have something for the mom too.

It kind of looks like a flower, right?

The baby shower was at a restaurant in New Brunswick called Panicos. Mandy and some of her other friends were already at the restaurant when I arrived getting everything setup before Linda arrived. The theme for the shower was "Candy Land", so all of the tables were decorated with candy centerpieces.

They served chicken with capers, salmon and a cheese and pasta dish.

The gift table was piled high with gifts.

They had tied balloons to some of the chairs so the room looked very festive. Can you tell from all the pink that Linda is having a girl?

For dessert they had cannolis and cheesecake. They served it on top of a mirror, which I'd never seen done before. It was a really nice presentatin.

While people were eating we played some baby shower games, including the yarn game where everybody cuts a piece of string to try and guess the size of the mommy-to-be's baby belly. We took a group picture of the people who got the closest. I actually had the closest guess - I was only off by less than half an inch!

After all the games and the gift opening there was cake too. The cake was huge and it was so nicely decorated.

I spent a lot of the baby shower taking pictures for Linda with her camera. Then I realized I didn't really get many pictures of the mommy-to-be on my camera (-__-)

We did take a group "Prep" picture - all alumni from the same high school.

(Nicole, Archana, Linda - mommy-to-be, Aisha, Liz, Mandy, me and George)

New Year's Day in NY

On New Year's Day we headed into the city to spend some time with Phil's family. First we had lunch with his Aunt Chan and cousin Lucia. They took us to a new Asian restaurant on Bowery Street in Chinatown called Full House Cafe. The decor inside was very modern looking and not like most of the restaurants you see in the Chinatown area. Even the seats have their own lighting. You can tell they are trying to appeal to the younger crowd.


Luckily it wasn't too cold outside. I kept Calvin nice and warm in his carrier.

He was pretty happy when we first arrived. I think it was because there were multiple flat screen TVs on every wall that he could watch. He's probalby staring at one right now!

Unforunately, he didn't stay happy for much longer. I think he got overwhelmed by all of the bright lights and the noise. Aw, poor baby.

We tried a bunch of different dishes - the congee and scallion pancake were pretty good.

We also had some flat noodles, rice cake noodles and a couple of dim sum dishes (chicken feet and some kind of steamed tofu). The food was OK, but the management needs work...

Our next stop was Phil's parents' house to celebrate New Years with his mom's side of the family. Dinner was similar to what we had for Christmas dinner - squid, chicken, cha siu, veggies, turnips and beef...

And the overflow table...

While Phil and I took turns eating, Calvin made his rounds amongst the various family members. Here's Calvin and Roxy.

Calvin with his great-grandmother.

Calvin and Grandma.

Calvin and Phil's cousin, Hen Ying.

And of course we can't forget dessert. The Wegman's fruit tarts made a special appearance again, and someone brought a red velvet cake.