Fake Food.

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Yi-Ling had her monthly sunday night themed dinner yesterday. This month’s theme – “food that looks like other food” – in honor of April Fool’s Day. I must say it’s the strangest and most perplexing theme yet.

I ended up making “Pie a la Mode” which was really just a chicken pot pie with an ice cream scoop of garlic mashed potatoes. It turned out really well, tho I used 1 quart (yes a whole _quart_) of heavy cream for the filling.

Some other favorite of the night, was “Apple Turnover/Eggrolls” and Ronnie’s strange “Meatloaf with Ketchup”. Really it was kinda disgusting honestly. It was made out of walnuts and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And the ketchup was made from strawberry syrup. It amazingly looked like meatloaf tho when you put it on your plate.

Also of import was that it’s definitely funny how many of my friends read this blog. Everyone is impressed by you, Doris, cause you post, with pictures, every day. It’s something people aspire to. Of course, all my friends know everything about your life, but you don’t know anything about their’s. 😛

Getting out of the house.

I don’t like exploring new places with the two kids when Jeremy’s not around. I don’t know about parking, the bathroom situation and I get easily flustered with the two kids in tow. But I was determined to get out of the house today, so we drove 40 minutes to Saratoga Springs to the Children’s Museum there. I could be reasonably certain of easy parking and bathroom access and of course, the kids can touch everything and anything.

Vince spent the whole drive up telling me what a bad idea this was and how I never do anything that was his idea and how this new place was going to be terrible. Of course, as soon as we parked, he was gung ho about the place and spent 2 hours playing happily with all the kids (he is getting a bit old for children’s museums, I think he was the oldest one there.)

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Edda had a good time too, just wandering around and I helped her with a few exhibits. She likes being where there are other people, she’s just not that into playing with other kids.

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Edda did have a meltdown at 11 am when she usually gets hungry, I had to take her out of the exhibit area to feed her some Cheerios. I left Vince to his own devices. I know the proper etiquette of parenthood at these places is to kind of hover around the kids and be within about 2 feet of them, but I left Vince in the room by himself and I could hear through the closed door his kind of loud, authoritative voice above all the other noises in the room. I hope the other moms didn’t think him too obnoxious. He has a bit to learn about interacting with American kids and the playground politics.

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Common name: Forsythia
Scientific name: Forsythia
Location: Saratoga, NY

Thank you! And the week is over.

It has been a stressful week. I do love change and thrive on the activity that it creates, but it does make for a bit more snappish behavior at home – especially now that I have the kids at home with me all day. Also, I’m trying to make an extra effort to lose the 10 pounds I gained last year in Singapore (mainly by reducing intake of pizza from 4 slices to 2 slices for dinner and not pouring ranch dressing all over my broccoli and switching my drinks to all water) and as a result I’m actually hungry for every meal, but it makes the hour before mealtime a very (ahem) sensitive time in family relations.

As I came home from the dog walk tonight, I found a package from my secret pal! Nothing is sweeter than a little surprise package, especially when it’s been a long week!

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It is all so beautiful – I do so rarely splurge on such nice things, it’s clear how much thought you put into this package. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

So it’s been a productive week – we found Vince a nursery school, he’ll go half-days starting on Monday, ramping up to full time as I find a job and he gets used to it. We spent about an hour there today and he didn’t want to leave. They have a kitchen that provides lunch and breakfast if we get there early enough and they are really flexible with the hours and there are a ton of kids.

The school district is going to take Edda’s paperwork from Singapore and accept it as a transfer student, so we don’t have to wait for another evaluation and approval, we can start as soon as possible. They are qualifying her for a full-day inclusion program which means that she’ll be in school from approx 9am-2pm with other typical kids her age as well as special needs kids. I just have to find a spot for her somewhere and I have just found out that the most coveted preschool in the area is already full for next fall. I guess that’s no surprise and I feel a bit bad because perhaps I could have called a month earlier or something. I just have to tell myself that there are other programs out there that have dedicated teachers, etc. etc, be optimistic that I can find something good for her.

I’ve had a couple of meetings with the school district all of which I’ve had to bring both kids with me. During one meeting, Edda went unnoticed out into the hall and fell down half a flight of stairs (she’s OK! we saw the school nurse already) and then Vince disappeared on me and I had the whole school office staff looking for him – he had run out to the parking lot and was standing by the car. Apparently he had had enough of the meeting.

In the meantime, as I’ve been dealing with setting up the schools and figuring out Medicaid waivers, Jeremy’s been working on bringing our cars back from Washington DC where they’ve been stored in my parents’ garage for 2 years on jacks.

(I know – this is really exciting – hold your horses)

Jeremy in line at the DMV to get new license plates.

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Jeremy in line at Southwest to fly to Washington DC.

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Apparently, Jeremy made friends with his seat mate on the plane and found out that he lives in the same neighborhood as my parents so instead of taking SuperShuttle, the nice guy gave him a ride home. I’m super impressed with Jeremy – he usually hates talking to strangers on a plane. And last I heard from Jeremy he said that he reconnected the battery on my car and after 2 years of inactivity, it started right up! Hooray!

Oh, and on a little side note, I’m bummed that Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at MIT, resigned, although I concede that there really was no way she could have held on to her job. She recently got a lot of press about how the stress of getting into elite colleges was turning into some sort of weird neurotic frenzy and that there needed to be a way to turn the stress levels down. And she was known as an energetic and dynamic presence, bringing more women into the institute and making admissions at MIT a clearer process than many other schools.

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Common name: Norway maple
Scientific name: Acer platanoides
Location: New York
(apparently an invasive species)

The Trouble with Love…

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Well apparently the stars are aligned, or something…

Pei-Yean left for home about a week ago, but before she left, she gave me these 7 pink stones and told me to arrange them in a star pattern. Apparently they are supposed to enhance my Peach Blossom Luck, and send romance my way. It’s supposed to be some Feng Shui thing. Don’t keep it in the toilet or the kitchen, she says.

Also, Karen, my ex-gf from college, IMed me today, telling me that she had a dream about me meeting a girl soon. So she just wanted to warn me to be open to her.

I’m not overly superstitious, but somehow I’m taking this all somwhat seriously. More than I would have expected myself to. Maybe Mom will chime in with some advice here.

Light.

The light is so different here in New York, so sharp and bright and clear.

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I’ve been trying to find some schools for Vince – actually day care and then something they call wrap-around-care for after kindergarten lets out. We went and toured two programs today and I was pleasantly surprised and delighted to find out that they’d be willing to care for Edda as well. I assumed that they would take one look at her and turn her away, but both programs said “no problem!”. Totally cool. We found ourselves at the Jewish Community Center which runs a nice program. I’ve been on a Jewish jag recently, trying to play up the 25% Jewishness of the kids, thinking about Passover (not this year, maybe next!) Things are in the works for Edda’s school as well, but it involves a lot more paperwork, appointments and evaluations.

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We still hate going grocery shopping with the kids. Ugh. Never again.

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