Pick-up time.

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Vince’s school is so funny, so Singapore-ian. I’m not really allowed inside so I’ve never seen Vince in class. This picture is from outside in the hallway where all the parents wait for their kids to put on their shoes and come outside. Vince likes his school now, although every morning, he still says he doesn’t like the Chinese class, he goes to school cheerfully and happily, which is a relief for me.

Self Service IT Support.

Sometimes I just have to laugh. Stanford is obviously not an organization that has a lot of highly paid worker bees like most engineering firms.

My motherboard on my Dell desktop has bulging capacitors. Basically my computer will randomly shutdown every 2-3 hours. Apparently this is a known issue with the GX270’s that we all have.

The quaint thing is that I’m the one that has to call Dell Customer Support to get it serviced. Nobody thinks that wasting my time with this stuff is pretty inefficient. sigh. Tho I have to say that Dell’s Customer Service isn’t bad. They are mailing me the part tomorrow.

Last week I also had to go down to the campus bookstore and return a malfunctioning Apple Wireless Keyboard.

It’s just funny.

Halfway to my Olympic dreams!

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One mitten down, one mitten to go. Well, I thought I’d never be able to say this, but I think I may be able to have my very own Olympic glory, hmmm, maybe I’ll have to sing the Star-Spangled-Banner on Sunday to myself. I was pretty much thinking that I wouldn’t be able to make this silly goal that I’ve set for myself, but I might be able to do it! I have 3 days to finish the 2nd mitten, including 2 weekend days and now that I’ve finished the first one, the second should be a breeze. (I think).

We took Edda to school today and she did OK. There was a bit of screaming, but we did enjoy a bit of speech therapy, a bit of music lesson, snack time and then also occupational therapy time with Faye. They are very welcoming and say we can come and go whenever we’d like to.

Vince had a nice day too, I have to admit that since I’ve been so stressed, that we’ve used the computer as a Bob the Builder and Wiggles platform and we’ve all been well entertained and I’ve had a few small breaks to knit a mitten.

95 Miles for a Loaf of Bread

Here’s my post delayed a bit. Monday I biked from my house in San Jose, all the way out to Pescadero to this small bakery called the Archangeli Bakery. They always have some yummy artichoke bread like this one. This was the pesto artichoke bread that was partially cooked. I bought it and stuffed it into my jersey and rode all the way back home with a hump on my back.

I was pretty damn beat, but I popped it into the oven and it was nice, warm, crispy. Heavenly! I ate the whole thing.

I haven’t biked since. ha

Randomly, Doris, did I ever leave a 50mm F1.4 lens with you guys? I find I’m missing it from my collection! doh!

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A school for Edda.

Today we visited the Genesis School. There are about 100 students there with varying degrees of disablilties, some have autism, some Down’s syndrome, some cerebal palsy, most of the kids have a mish-mash of diagnoses and some kids are probably undiagnosed and have unnamed developmental delays. Before I had Edda, I know walking into a special eduacation school would have made me quite uncomfortable, but today as I looked at all these kids struggling with their own challenges, I felt a wave of relief come over me and a feeling of belonging. Finally! A place where Edda can hang out! A place where it seems happy, cheerful and sunny even though the kids are flapping their arms or not looking at you when you talk or signing words or whatever. The school is not too fancy or too plain and there is a sense of community there. There are support groups and they know all the places that cater to special-needs kids, dentists, doctors, hair-cuts, etc, etc.

We almost didn’t go check this school out because their website says that they won’t take Edda until she’s 2.5, but the principal was very accomodating and is willing to work with us and basically we can hang out at the school as much as we’d like. We didn’t take Edda with us today, but we are bringing her back tomorrow and the principal said that she’d be willing to work with us to slowly bring Edda into the school’s program. Yah!

Also, speaking about schools, Vince is speaking in full sentences in Chinese now. He can say “I have eyes” and “I love my body” in Chinese (they are doing a unit on “myself” this term). I’m amazed at how quickly he can pick these things up, it’s only been 7 weeks of school, only 1 hour a day of Chinese and he’s got full sentences coming out of his mouth with good pronounciation. I know that all this focus on Edda is stressing him out, I hope that this period of intense emotion will pass soon and that we’ll be “just regular folks” again soon…

My daughter doesn’t sleep anymore.

Ever since Edda started therapy, her total sleep time has dropped like a rock. Yesterday – no naps, went to bed at 8:30pm, got up at 1am for 2 hours, then got up for good at 6am. Today, I coaxed out of her 2 measly 10-minute naps and now it’s 8 pm, no bedtime in sight. As a contrast, Vince now sleeps soundly from 8pm to 7am and at Edda’s age, he slept from 10 pm to 8 am and had a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. I’m not sure if it is just a coincience, if it is a good sign (maybe she’s keen on staying awake because she’s noticing more around her) or if it is a bad sign (maybe it’s just part of the progression her development and that she will soon be sleeping zero hours). I guess if she can make it through the day without sleeping at all, we could distill her essence and try to sell it as No-Doze. Anyways, I spend a good deal of my day trying to make Edda take a nap by nursing her every half-hour for 10 minutes or so because she seems so exhausted, but I think if my payback for nursing is a 10 minute nap, we may be ready for a weaning (which will be a relief for me, but will stress every one else more, because who knows how we’ll put Edda to bed now.)

So she’s zonkered which makes me a bit zonkered.

Edda at therapy.

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Here’s Edda swinging in a chair at her therapy session. Her therapist Yao-chi is next to her. Edda is really, really pissed off in this picture, she wants to be asleep and not doing therapy exercises. Edda’s more pissed off these days in general, which all the therapists say is a good, positive reaction to therapy and hightened stimulation, but boy, it’s pretty draining for the household.

Augusta & Atlanta

Yesterday, we went to our friend’s place at Augusta to look around the housing and land in the northern part of Augusta. They told us that during the Masters tournament, a lot of houses with extra rooms are rented out for the golf fans. It can fetch $1,000.00 per night per small family. The duration is about 3-5 days. The landlords can also provide meals with additional charges. But, the landlords should pay the golf organizers 7% of their income plus three pre-game inspections. Not bad.

After that, we drove to Atlanta to buy a lot of oriental groceries from a huge Korean store on Buford Road, just north of Atlanta beltway. Then we went to see our colleague’s Mom, Joyce, who was my landlord while I was in Atlanta. She lives in a small retirement apartment complex. It is pretty good but expensive. Well, Mom and Dad need to be prepared. We invited her whole immediately family members to have dinner with us, just like the one 2 years ago. She picked a nearby local restaurant where she frequently visited. It wasn’t fancy but the food was good. After dinner, a guy hold the door for us asking me whether there was food left. I joked there were some left over food on our table and he was welcome to have. Afterward, Joyce and her family told us he is a famous TV reporter in Atlanta. We did not know. But, he was nice, at least.

Around 9:30 PM, we left and drove back to Aiken. We arrived around 1:00 AM and Mom is still sleeping.

Well, I believe I got my webcam setup and ready for the show 🙂

At the zoo.

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Sally and Darcy Krasne were in town for a conference (they are good friends of Bob and Katherine from LA). We met them for breakfast at the zoo and hung out with them for the morning. We didn’t see a huge number of animals, but we did enjoy a bit of ice cream.

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A snake! Vince doesn’t seem too excited.

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Edda doesn’t seem enthralled by the orangatangs.