Six-Years Old!

My baby girl turns six today. Six! At six years old, am I still allowed to call her my baby??

Happy birthday to a little girl...

...Whose imagination and ingenuity always brings a smile to my face. Here is her solution to battling the wind on a particularly blustery day: a mask fashioned out of an old colander and a pair of work goggles. A bit Friday the 13th-ish, but my little Jason is adorable all the same.
 

  
...Who has a strong (read: stubborn) sense of style. Did you notice that in the above two photos she is wearing the same sort of outfit? I assure you that we buy her plenty of clothes, most of which she will have none of. Here's a rundown of her daily "uniform":

• T-shirt. It's always a t-shirt. If it's cold, she will wear a long sleeve shirt with a t-shirt on top. If she wants to shake things up a bit, she will wear a zip up fleece over her t-shirt. But, it's always a t-shirt.
• Jeans. This girl is forever in blue jeans. ("Because they look cool")
• No buttons, ever. Unless it's on a pair of jeans. She has a serious fear of buttons. Kinda odd.

   ....Who is turning out to be quite the little artist.

  

...Who doesn't quite get the art of a good punchline yet.

Her most recent joke went something like this:
 EB: "What did the cat say to the mouse?"
 Me: "Not sure. What?"
 EB: "I'm going to chase you!  And then, the mouse says, 'No, please don't chase me!' And he runs away from him, across the street!" Uproarious laughter ensues.


 Happy Birthday, EB! I love you!

Beans, beans, the magical fruit...

...the more you eat, the more you toot. Tooting aside, they say black beans provide a wealth of health benefits, including cancer prevention and cardiovascular health. So you'll be happy to know that now, you can enjoy them not only in savory dishes, but in your cake, too! Say what? Yes, you heard me right. And not just in any old cake, but chocolate cake.

I got this black bean chocolate cake recipe from a book club acquaintance. Those of you who know me well can attest to the fact that I'm not much of a cake fan, but the idea of chocolate cake made out of black beans was so intriguing that I just had to give this recipe a whirl. That's what happens when you grow up in an Asian family--your taste buds are conditioned to accept red bean cake and sesame paste as delectable treats. Picture me as a five year old, running around and beaming that I get to have a red bean pastry for dessert. So, given a choice between chocolate cake and red bean cake, for me the red bean cake wins hands down. But with this recipe, I don't need to choose; I get two yummy flavors into one. And, did I mention that this is far healthier than the flour version?

I was a bit nervous about how it would taste. But after just one bite, I knew that this one was a winner. It was moist, slightly sweet, and most of all, I did not have to feel guilty about eating it, because beans are good for you, y'all! This picture doesn't do the recipe much justice since the beautiful sprinkling of confectioner's sugar kind of melted away, but it was especially good with a dollop of home-made whipped cream. Even K, who is more of a traditionalist when it comes to desserts, asked for seconds and thirds. EB gobbled it up as well.

Here is the recipe, in case you are interested. For all of you calorie counters, I also put together nutritional content as well.

I will most likely try a version sweetened with stevia or Splenda. Let me know if you end up trying the recipe, and how you like it!

*****
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
5 large eggs
1 tbs vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbs butter
3/4 cup demerera sugar
6 tbs cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbs water

Preheat the oven to 350º and grease a 9″ cake pan.
Mix together the cocoa, baking powder and baking soda in a small bowl.
In a larger bowl, beat the butter until it’s soft and fluffy. Add 2 of the eggs and beat well after each one. Put the beans, 3 of the eggs, vanilla, sugar and salt into a blender or food processor and blend/process until the mixture is smooth. Add this mixture to the butter/egg mixture, further mix to combine. Stir in the remaining dry ingredients and the water and beat on high for 1 minute until smooth. Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 30-35 mins. The top of the cake should be rounded and firm to the touch, and the cake should be pulling away from the sides of the pan.

Total number of calories per serving (assuming you feed 8 people): 232 calories

Foot Fetish

Warning: this posting may be a bit TMI about my feet. Feel free to read or not read. But if you do, be prepared. Nighmares may ensue.

..................

I have decided to train for the Little Rock half-marathon. But before I subject my feet to another round of pavement-pounding punishment, I decided to go see a podiatrist to help mitigate my foot problems. And a whole lot of problems there are--my feet are flat as pancakes and wide as a Winnebago. Worst of all, I've got bunions so large that K is convinced that they've got heartbeats of their own.

So, there I was at the podiatrist's office, sitting with my shoes and socks off when the doctor walked in. After he shook my hand and introduced himself, he looked over my feet and promptly exclaimed, "WOW! Look at these bunions! Goodness, they're huge! Do they hurt?"

Me: "Umm...not really."
Doc: "Well those are really something else. They look like they should hurt."

Jeeze, thanks, Doc. Without bunions, you wouldn't be in business, buddy.

As the doctor started pulling my feet this way and that,  I noticed that he was not wearing any gloves. How gross. I can't imagine having to touch other people's sweaty, stinky feet all day long. And that's when I remembered that I had just shaken his hand, which meant that unless he had washed his hands before seeing me, I probably now had a half-a-dozen sets of foot funk doing the happy dance on my right palm.

And then the good doctor does something unimaginable. He gets an itch, and the fingers that had moments before kneaded my feet started inching towards his left eye.

Holy crap. Don't do it, man.

Yet his hand continued to move up, until it reached under his glasses and there he was, scratching and rubbing his foot-funked fingers across his eyelids.

Sweet Baby Jesus. I am simultaneously fascinated and skeeved out.

The rest of the visit was uneventful. After I was measured for my orthotics, I went off on my merry little way to the nearby bathroom, where I fervently scrubbed the funk off of my hands.

Happy Birthday to My Little Man!

My little guy celebrated his one year birthday yesterday. Since we are still up to our elbows with moving boxes, we kept it very low key--a couple of hats, balloons, and a nice ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery (P.S. -- no hat in this picture, because as it turns out, he hates hats).

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

We've learned so much about you since when you came out kicking and screaming a year ago.

Like how you absolutely adore and idolize you sister, even when she is tormenting you or when she does the silliest things...

...or how you will put just about anything and everything in your mouth...

...or what a happy little guy you would become and how much you love to giggle and laugh!

We love you, B! We are so very grateful that you came into our lives a year ago, and look forward to watching your personality develop!

Desperately seeking normal

I traveled back to Little Rock this week to transition my old job to the new guy that they just hired to replace me. Despite the fact that I have not been in the Little Rock office for almost three months, I slipped right back into the environment, joking around with my old colleagues and clients. I walked to the same old bathroom that I had been walking to for years, got my lunch at the same old cafeteria. It was as if I had never left. The only difference, though, is that instead of driving back to Maumelle at the end of the day, I kept going north towards Bentonville back to my new "home." I put this in quotes because this is a place where everything still feels utterly unfamiliar, where we are living in a temporary apartment, literally out of our suitcases and paper boxes.

In the past few months, I've felt like I've been straddling a familiar world and an unfamiliar world. Like, despite the fact that I'm still with my company and understand how to navigate it (familiar world), I'm serving a new client and still trying to understand their MO (unfamiliar world). Or, when I met up with a bunch of girlfriends that I knew from Little Rock (the familiar world), for a girl's weekend in California (the unfamiliar world).

Plus, I've been traveling a lot these past few months, for both work and personal reasons. There have been times, while in midst of my morning grog, I've wondered where the heck I was--is this Atlanta? Michigan? Am I back in Little Rock or Bentonville? It has been very disorienting. There has been no pattern, no routine, no predictability in my life. I've felt off. Like when, in a dream, you find yourself in a big fancy ball and you are wearing nothing but a pair of old underwear. You feel out of sorts and out of place, but  for some reason, no one notices it. You feel off, yet everything is normal.

Which is why I am looking so forward to closing on our home tomorrow, for the movers to come on Friday, and for us to finally move out of our ghetto temporary apartment and settle down. I used to believe that I would have no problem living out of apartments and hotels, but now I'm desperately seeking a bit of normalcy in my life.

My Catch-Up Blog

I'm back! Hope you didn't miss me too much. The last three months have passed by in a frenzy of activities--relocating from Little Rock to Bentonville, a week trip to the Dominican Republic to celebrate our ten-year anniversary (I know, rough life...some pictures to come), and a trip to Michigan to see Grandma K. I have quickly acclimated to my new role at work and even was able to slip away for a girl's weekend in California in July. On top of that, we have managed to sell a house, buy a house and survive an apartment flood in the temporary ghetto-style living space that we've fashioned for ourselves. There have been some tears and tantrums in-between, but mostly, we've had lots of the fun and craziness that's typically central to our somewhat disorganized life.

For the most part, the kids have been a couple of troopers, rolling with the punches. They have been going through lots of changes as well.

EB . . .

...has been a bit moody and whiney lately. I can blame it on the TV show "Caillou"--I can't stand that little brat; that kid whines more than anyone I know. But mostly, we think it may be her way of acting out her insecurities with the move, entering Kindergarten and her jealousy at the amount of attention BBoy gets from strangers and family.

...is starting to take after Mommy with her love of making lists. Here is the list that she made prior to her road trip to Michigan:

...is, despite her whininess, an all-around good egg. Nothing makes her beam more than when she makes Mommy and Daddy happy.

BBoy . . .

...uttered his first words--"Mama!"

...has an adorably mischievous smile, crawls around everywhere, gets into everything and won't take no for an answer

...has already learned to use his little instrument. The other day I had him pinned down to change his diaper. He knew he was no match for my She-Ra strengths, so what did the little bugger do? He made like an Old Geyser and peed on my face. Guess it's a good thing that urine is antiseptic.

School Program and the Renegade Country

Another school year has flown by! EB’s school holds an annual year-end program, and this year’s theme was “countries of the world.” It was quite cute, if a bit corny in a “let’s-all-hold-hands-because-we-are-unique-but-all-the-same” sort of way. Each student whose parent(s) were born in a foreign country dressed up in the country’s traditional garb and counted to ten in their respective languages. Here’s a picture of EB, dressed up in her Chinese chipao. She looks like she's about to go crouching tiger/hidden dragon on you, no? Next to her is her classmate, looking absolutely adorable in her kimono.


To add to the international flair, EB’s teacher wanted each student to hold the flag of the country that they were representing. Little did she know that this would invite a lesson in Chinese history from K. A few weeks back, she sent us a note letting us know that she was going to order a Chinese flag for EB. This prompted K to tell her that he would really rather not have her daughter wave around a flag that symbolized the Communist Party. When he saw a blank look on her face, he proceeded to explain to her how the flag came to be—the history of Communist vs the Nationalist Party, the fact that it was adopted in 1949 when the Communist Party took over, so on and so forth.

In the end, she ordered EB a Taiwanese flag, which was probably fitting anyway since that’s where I was born. We wondered if it would raise ruckus from other Chinese parents who may be "One China" proponents, what with all of the ongoing political storm going on. But thankfully all was calm, and we were able to avert an ugly international incident right here in Little Rock.

In other news: we are moving to Bentonville! I got a promotion at work and will be working on a large retail account whose icon used to be very smiley and whose name rhymes with “Bart.” It’s bittersweet for me-- Little Rock has been great to us, but work-wise it’s a great opportunity. Since I anticipate lots of craziness in preparation for the move, this will probably be my last blog entry for the next couple of months. I know that there will be many disappointed readers out there (*snort*) but fret not. I will be back after all the dust settles. Ta-ta for now.