Epiphanies

What leads one to suddenly talk to people that one sees all the time but have never spoken to before?

L pulled up beside me as C, J and I were walking home after dropping B off.  She seemed enamored with babies, including J.  She then proceeded to extol the virtues of breastfeeding (having breastfed her son for 4 years and being a former lactation consultant).  Although I find breastfeeding easy and convenient and I do get the health benefits of nursing, I just don’t envision nursing once J gets teeth.  She claims the teeth thing is only because the baby is moving his head.  Well yeah.  She says you can train your baby not to bite but I really don’t want to suffer through any training.  J bites me now with only his gums and it hurts like hell.  I swear tears come to my eyes when he does it.  I shudder to think how much more painful it will be when his teeth grow in.  No thanks.

I also had a dental appointment with D today.  He really is a great dentist.  He made the impression for my crown today.  I really don’t fear dentists as much as I did before.  We chatted a lot and he told me that he and C are both Catholics and pretty religious.  He doesn’t necessarily agree with the strictness of the Catholic faith nor the celibacy but his heart is there.  I told him the reason I didn’t really go with Catholicism was because the sermons never connected with me.  I never understood how to apply the biblical stories to my life in a constructive way and that’s why I turned to Christianity.  It made more sense to me.  I don’t need all the rituals and in fact, it’s the rituals that turn me most off of religion.  I rather be inspired on how to be a good person, not be told to do this, this, and this and you will be saved.

Then I took C to swim class.  I finally spoke to Beth.  We’ve seen each other many times but never really spoke to each other.  She usually hangs out with another mom, who incidentally approached me last week to tell me how cute J was.  I usually hang out with other moms I know.  Today, the other moms weren’t around for whatever reason.  Anyway, apparently she’s from Connecticut, an easterner like me.  We discussed how Irvine seemed to have a heavy amount of Asians, something she said she wasn’t used to.  I’m not crazy about it either but it’s better than the alternative where there’s no diversity at all.  She’s Korean but grew up in a more diverse neighborhood, not so heavily “asian” as this part of Irvine is.  It was an interesting talk.  I also found out the real reason our first swim instructor Justin left.  It wasn’t because he got another job as Dh and I surmised, but because of a disagreement with the owner.  Too bad.  I really really liked him.  Don was a waste of time.  I regret wasting so much money on the lessons with him.  Jamie is great though.  She’s leaving soon but it’s just as well since I’m going to halt C’s lessons.  Beth is going to also for pretty much the same reason I had – that it was too chaotic and crowded during the summer.  Great minds think alike!

ROOT CANALS

Yesterday was the continuation of my root canal on my lower right side. It didn’t feel as bad this time, probably because Duc used a thing to keep my jaw open. Doing that helped me “doze” off instead of concentrating on keeping my mouth open. He also put my permanent crown on my upper left tooth. It was disturbing hearing Duc talk with his assistant Stephanie about dentisrty. He’s been coaching her, a good guy imo to talk her through everything he’s doing although it makes me a little too conscious of what he’s doing. I feel more comfortable with him as my dentist than I have ever felt in my life. He really puts me at ease. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a friend and I feel more trust in him or just his bedside manner. She spoke about how easy root canals were and he told her all the procedures in dentistry are easy on paper but a lot of factors can make it trickier, i.e. placement of teeth, patient reaction, how far back the teeth are, how many canals there are, how many roots there are, etc. Fun stuff

MOVIES AND GROWING UP

C had swimming as usual yesterday. I saw P there again. I remarked on how damn cold it was and that it was probably due to global warming. She suggested I watch “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Maybe we should sign up for Netflix. I seem to be spending more and more time in front of the tv. J has a sixth sense for when I’m on the computer these days and wakes up as soon as I get online now. He’s growing such a personality too. Yesterday, when I wanted him to nurse, he wasn’t having it and pushed me away. He’s never refused milk before. He also refused the bottle at my mil. He also has started batting toys on his swing. I’m not ready for him to grow up yet. Ahhhhh…

B has to do a computer timeline at school now. We had to submit two photos. One of when he was a baby. One more recent. I used a photo I took of him at the Corona Del Mar Castle building contest. He looks so happy at the beach. I looked through the baby photos and since Easter was coming up, I asked him if I could submit the one of him in his spring outfit, sitting in the easter basket wearing bunny ears. Think he was 5-6 months old. Soooo cute. His answer was, “No way, that’s so embarrassing.” I asked him again 5 minutes later. He said, “MO-OOOOOM-MMM.” Oh well, it was worth a try.

ACTIVITIES TO DO WITH THE KIDS

I met this woman Sulan at the park today. I met her last time as well. She had a few good suggestions for occupying kids during the summer. I told her I didn’t want them to spend all their time playing video games. She has theme days i.e. making a movie day, arts and crafts day (draw a flower in the garden day) , math/worksheet day, write an article day and science day (google cool science projects). She has a website which she runs where she programmed cool free educational software – free math/chemistry games (sort of like teaching tools) for kids to play and along the side are google ads where she gets $/click. I may try to find it.

EASTER BASKETS

I popped by Target this morning. It was great. They open at 8am so after I dropped B and C at school, I swung by there via Irvine Center Drive. I wanted to get all the goodies for their Easter Baskets or in this case bucket (bought that at Big Lots in Laguna Woods). I didn’t want to concentrate on just easter wrapped candy (i.e. candy that just has a different wrapper) but candy that they don’t often have or at leaast has some significance with the “Easter Basket” tradition. I bought jellybeans, malted choco balls, bunny-shaped chocolate, easter animal pez dispensers and also some egg shaped gum because C seems to have a thing for gum. I also bought some goodies like hot wheels truck combo that has a car inside, pokemon card packs, some crayola goodies for C. I also bought some clothes for a portrait sitting later on. I want the kids to have a photo taken together professionally, maybe at Kiddie Kandids since that seems to be the place to go by all my friends.

FINANCIAL ADVICE

The pokemon cards rang up at $13.99 but on the rack they were $9.99. Normally, I would never have noticed because I don’t really pay attention when cashiers ring up things but it just so happened that yesterday I read Common Billing Errors that can Cause You Money – most notably “With the computer age, many people assume the bill is automatically correct and don’t review what the actual charges are. While computers can make errors in calculations less likely, they are far from foolproof. The result is that consumers lose billions of dollars by making unnecessary overpayments each year.” It stuck in my head and I had resolved to be more proactive when it comes to finances since budgeting may play a bigger role in the near future. It’s good to make it a habit of being aware of your money and where it is going.

Id theft is a scary thing too. I think I may do 1-888-5-OPT-OUT and buy a cross shredder. I’ve always wondered what would happen if you submitted a taped up cc application and now I know.

Although we live pretty hectic lives, A feels we don’t do enough outside of OC.  So today was our attempt to alleviate the sameness of our everyday life in that bubble we live in called “the OC”.   Our jaunt today was to The Getty Museum.  We figured we’d hook up with S and J while we were in L.A.  We met up with them in the Mitsuwa  in Torrance first for lunch.   The area it was in looked kind of skeevy imo but J assured me it was because we were too used to the newness of Irvine.  The inside was much bigger than the one in Costa Mesa and parking was pretty easy also.  It’s a bit of a pain to find parking at the one in Costa Mesa.  I had chicken egg rice bowl and udon (very salty).  Not as good as I remembered.  I think I’ll try something else next time.  It was good to see them. Nothing really beats seeing friends that you feel like you’ve known all your life.  It’s just not the same as new friends.

I find it a bit odd though that people feel the need to pinpoint exactly which parent a child resembles.  Why is it really necessary?  I’ve had equal amounts of people telling me that J resembles me and that J resembles A.  It’s quite a stupid social  ritual.  It ought to be banned.

We then went on to the museum.  So many people were arriving and it was already 2:30pm.  We had to wait on a long line to get onto the tram (3 minute tram ride).  If I were younger I would probably walk.  The view was breathtaking.  Definitely worth going just to take it all in.  We didn’t check out much of the art work.  They had a little “Family Room” for the kids which was quite small but the kids got a kick out of it.  Then they ran around a fountain several times.  I bet A that one of our kids was going to fall into the water.  He laughed and disagreed.  Ice cream was on the line.  Naturally, I was the one enjoying the ice cream later on.  It was inevitable.  B fell in and was in a bit of a sour mood after that.

I slept on the ride home while the kids watched veggie tales on our minivan dvd player.  Sweet nap.  We picked up some micky d’s.  I tried out their new mushroom and swiss burger.  Was edible.

The kids were really hyped up for Family Fun night.  We played the Game of Life Pirates of the Carribean style.  I won this time but by a very slim margin.  B almost beat me.  It’s fun playing with the kids.

“If we are not willing to fail, we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure.” -Madeleine L’Engle

I read somewhere that you should always praise your child for working hard at achieving something rather than for “being smart”. “Being smart” creates an idea of perfectionism and causes a child to have a fear of failure and not being “smart” anymore. If you create the idea that if you work hard at anything you can achieve anything, the child learns that anything is possible and won’t be afraid of trying. I’ve done both but now that I know the consequences of both, I’m going to try hard to praise for working hard. This option is much better than the other. I don’t want my kids to be afraid of failure. I think sometimes that is my handicap. My father always told me I was stupid and although it had the opposite effect of making me try harder to prove him wrong, it did affect my self-esteem at times and made me cognizant of “failing to be perfect”.

We worked on B’s school project called “Fantasy Island” today. I sketched out his vision of “Pokemon Island” which consisted of Pikachu and Skitty. We then painted the ocean, lakes and rivers blue. Then he mixed a recipe of dough, salt, and water to make the landforms. We used food coloring to make the grasslands and mountains. I printed out a key on a Pokemon card and a compass rose on a pokeball. We then made labels for all the different landforms – they were all pokemon names. It was fun. C also made his own landforms which consisted of a volcano and whatnot. He managed to put all the toothpick labels correctly on the corresponding landforms without any guidance. Sheer luck or sheer genius? The jury is still out on that.

We went to Spectrum food court for a quick bite to eat at Wasabi. Then we went over to Barnes and Noble to check out the kid’s section while C went on the Merry go round. We tried looking for the rest of the Deltora Quest books by Emily Rodda but they didn’t have it. They had some other series by her. B only has 1-5. Later on, we bumped into P & Austin. They just came back from Taipei (his grandfather’s 80th bday). Chatted a bit – seems like I wants to become a flipper instead of a Pilates instructor. He told her that she had to become a realtor first if she wanted to do that since the profit margin is slim after realtor commissions. Might as well earn the commissions herself. He seemed to think Socal is immune from the RE market. Is he the only one? Possibly.

Watched “Little Miss Sunshine” with A after the kids went to bed. Was quirky and amusing although not the Oscar type movie I thought it would be. I think people are just ready for a happy light hearted movie with meaning. *goes to write the script for the next big thing*

While B and I were waiting for the elevator he mentions to me that this was a different kind of elevator. I stare at him blankly wondering what on earth he could mean. The elevator seemed like a typical elevator to me, nothing special about it at all. I ask him to explain. He said that there was only one door that slid open to one side instead of the two doors opening up. Wow – he boggles my mind sometimes. I can’t help but be proud of him.