How to Entertain a Three-Year-Old in the Bay Area

1. Take him to the California Academy of Sciences.
I took Noah to the Cal Academy once before when we went back home last October but he was just as excited about it this time around. Unfortunately, so were the hundreds upon hundreds of other children who were there for a Spring Break trip with their families or on class field trips. Fortunately the building is so well-designed that there were very few places where we actually felt crowded and we got to see pretty much everything that we wanted to. Like…

Giant Hissing Cockroaches,

Jackass Penguins (always a favorite with Noah),

Geckos,

and Butterflies at the rainforest exhibit:

And as an added bonus, after a few hours at the Academy you get to ride home in peace and quiet because this is what happens to your family afterward:

2. Take him to an Oakland A’s game on Dollar Wednesdays.
Ok, so actually Dollar Wednesdays is probably not the best day to go. If you take $2 tickets, $1 hot dogs, a beautiful day, add in Spring Break week and the Red Sox as the visiting team…well, you get a lot of waiting in lines and sold out stuff. It took Mark an hour just to get out of the parking lot…just in time for Bay Area rush hour traffic. Wheee! Luckily for me, I bowed out of the game, opting to get a haircut and do a little shopping on Solano Avenue instead (ha ha suckas). Otherwise, nothing better than supporting your local home team:

3. Take him to the East Bay Vivarium in Berkeley.
Actually, the vivarium is really just a store that sells reptiles. But really, really cool reptiles. Like monitor lizards, albino constrictors, geckos, turtles, and some other things I’ve never seen before. It’s a relatively small store but we still spent an hour there just looking at all the animals. Plus it’s located just a block away from all the awesome shopping on Fourth Street in Berkeley, so win-win for everyone.

4. Get an hour’s worth of good behavior out of him by bribing him with an ice cream sundae from Fenton’s Creamery in Oakland.
Ah, Fenton’s. It was a required stop on my Bay Area nostalgia tour. I’ve only been back maybe once or twice since it burned down (arson) and reopened in 2003, and let me tell you, the vibe there is much different when you go during the day with your three-year-old as opposed to going late at night with your college friends after stuffing yourselves silly at Zachary’s. And as luck would have it, I would go when I couldn’t eat any sundaes because of my crappy glucose tolerance. Oh well. But the point in going was to take Noah for a sundae. The fact that Piedmont Avenue is home to some awesome shopping (yes, there seems to be a theme forming here) was just coincidence.

Noah with his child-sized sundae:

5. Take him to Picnic Day at the UC Davis campus.
I guess technically UC Davis is not really part of the Bay Area, but my brother and sister-in-law live in Davis so we just happened to be in the area. When my brother first brought up Picnic Day, I thought it would be a cute, small, laid-back thang…more like one of the awesome farmer’s markets that Davis hosts. When we got there, I discovered it was a Really Big Thing. Like, with parades and petting zoos and bands (oh my!). Not to mention plenty of drunk frat guys running around. We got there towards the end of the event but there were still plenty of things for us to take Noah to. They had a Multicultural Children’s Faire set up for the kiddos so we spent a couple of hours taking him around to the different tables and exhibits.

Noah rolling his own pot…

and adding clover seeds

This is the face of a child who does not like face painting:

After making his own Hawaiian lei:

Sitting down and drinking his first root beer float

6. Take him on a nature walk in Muir Woods.
In all honesty, Noah didn’t really care all that much for Muir Woods. He is, after all, only three and primarily interested in running around, yelling and catching bugs. Not taking a walk through some peaceful woods admiring the beauty and majesty of redwood and sequoia trees and being one with nature. Still, Mark and I had a nice time and this is one of my favorite places in the Bay Area.

Mark teaching Noah the significance of tree rings

Lots of tall trees

And clovers

7. Let him run around on Stinson Beach.
As a reward for being relatively quiet and letting us enjoy our walk in the woods, we took Noah to Stinson Beach afterward. The beach is only 9 miles away but because the road is along the coastline and so twisty and turny, it still took a good 30 minutes to get there. We were on the tail end of a three day heat wave in the Bay Area so it was a perfect day to go. Noah took off immediately for the water as soon as we put him down on the sand and he spent the next hour running in and out of the water, making new friends and making sand castles.

Practicing his Karate Kid moves

A Spring Break Recap — Part One

So about a week ago, I promised recaps on how our three weeks back in the US went. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I was totally lying. Ok, not totally lying, but I’ve just been really lazy. What I’ve been attributing to jet lag this past week, I now think is a more long-lasting version of all-around tiredness called “being in my third trimester.”  Anyway, with that caveat aside, here is a long-promised update using the least amount of brain cells as possible…

For our big vacation this year we decided to visit both of our families in the US, which meant spending a week on the East Coast followed by two weeks on the West. Of course it all sounds nice and clean on paper but in real life it translated to a buttload of traveling. Thankfully, Noah was a huge trooper. Despite having only slept 4 hours on the 14 hour flight to Toronto, he was in high spirits during our 8 hour layover:

Naturally he crashed as soon as we checked into our hotel room in DC:

DC was a blast. Mark’s younger brother lives there so we got to spend quite a bit of time with him while he toured us around and took us to some of his favorite restaurants. Noah also got some nice bonding time with his Uncle Eric, whom he is totally enamored with.

Eric, Noah and Mark in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool:

One completely exhausted toddler:

Noah was suffering from a little bit of jet lag so we tried to keep our days pretty low key — limiting ourselves to one museum a day rather than doing huge day-long outings. Then again, when you decide to visit DC during Spring Break week and additionally decide you want to go to the more popular of the Smithsonian museums, any outing is pretty much guaranteed to be an arduous one. Still, we managed to take him to the Air & Space Museum and being only three-and-a-half, Noah didn’t care too much about how crowded it was as long as he got to see the planes and the rockets. Here he is fondling a moon rock:

My friend Cristina also happened to be in town with her family and some friends so on Tuesday we decided to meet up and hit the Natural History Museum together. We like to joke that we’re going to make Noah and her younger daughter, Arden, marry each other (because Noah likes blond girls) so it was really cute to see them together. Noah kept trying to hold Arden’s hand — which she adamantly refused to hold — and inviting her and her sister to our hotel room. But her biggest endorsement came shortly after lunch when Noah told me, “I like Arden. I want to take her back to my hotel room and I want her to meet my Uncle Eric.” Ahhhh, young love.

Arden, Noah and Lily checking out the fish tank at the Natural History Museum:

Cristina and Mike rocking out in their 3-D glasses:

Me and Cristina:

Later that evening Mark’s parents flew into town from Texas. We went out for dinner:

and the next morning we all set out for Pennsylvania to visit Mark’s older brother and his family. Noah was totally excited to see his cousin Gabey again. He’d been talking nonstop about Gabe for weeks, saying things like, “My cousin Gabey is a silly guy” and “Cousin Gabey is my favorite” and “Can I share my toys with my cousin Gabey?” Obviously he’d forgotten that the last time they’d met, back when the boys were just shy of 2 years old, they’d fought like crazy. Of course they say time heals all wounds and sure enough, when we finally arrived at their house, Noah and Gabe ran off together and were pretty much inseparable for the rest of the day:

Mariannette had planned on having the boys dye Easter eggs the next day, but Noah and Gabe had found the little dye tablets Wednesday evening and eaten them (hooray for non-toxic dyes that turn your mouth and fingers blue for hours) so Thursday morning the boys painted suncatchers together instead:

After that, it was almost like they suddenly recognized each other as long-lost enemies and they spent the rest of our time there fighting like crazy. And when I say “fighting like crazy” I’m talking about scratches, pushing, hitting, and arguing over the most inane things. Like…

Noah: I can fly
Gabe: Me too. I can fly too.
Noah: No you can’t.
Gabe: Yes I can.
Noah: No you can’t.
Gabe: Yes I can.
Me: You guys! Neither of you can fly so cut it out!

Or when Gabe opened the front door on Friday to find Eric, newly arrived from DC…
Gabe: It’s Uncle Snapper!
Noah: No! That’s my Uncle Eric!
Gabe: No! He’s my Uncle Snapper!
(fist fight promptly ensues)

So, it was interesting to say the least. And prompted Mark to turn to me at one point and say, “Cat, I don’t know if I can handle having two kids.” Luckily for us, one of our kids won’t be able to talk for about a year so that should hopefully cut down on the arguing. Despite the two boys’ fighting it was still a fun week, especially since — being so geographically spread out — it’s pretty rare for Mark’s family to get together all in one place like this. Mariannette had arranged an awesome Easter egg hunt for the boys before we had to leave on Saturday so the boys parted on a high note. And sure enough, before we had even gotten onto the freeway, I heard this from the backseat, “(sigh) I miss my cousin Gabey so very much.” The stinker.

By the way, I know there are a ton of pictures in this post, but you can see even more pictures here:

Spring Break — East Coast

New Year’s Eve — Looking Back (ridiculously photo heavy)

Every year around New Year’s Eve, without fail I always hear someone saying how the year has just flown by (ok, I will admit that half the time it’s me saying it, but that doesn’t change things).  When I look back at 2008, while parts of it dragged by and parts of it flew, mostly I’m amazed at how much we were able to cram in one year.  Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever had a busier year.  So please excuse this rehashed highlights episode, but I’m going to take this moment to get all sappy and look back on what our year was like.

• If there was a defining theme for 2008 for me, it was Travel.  And we set the tone for the year early on in January with a quick trip to Singapore.  One of the highlights for me?  Taking Noah to the Singapore Zoo, which although it was unbelievably hot and humid, also gave me this moment where he got the crap scared out of him by a cheetah.  Mean, yes, but also totally funny:

San Slip not 50%

I’m happy to fulfill Cathy’s request to blog about my travels to Vietnam.

I landed Sunday morning. I was feeling guilty leaving Cathy and Noah by themselves. Given that I travel often I have a rule never to fly on a weekend let alone a holiday. Unfortunately it couldn’t be avoided this time.

Within an hour of landing I met up with two colleagues for lunch. Of all places to go my first meal was at a fusion place called Jaspas. Uneventful to say the least (there is one in HK that I’ve avoided in the past), but the kicker came at the end. We ate. We drank. We ate some more and drank a lot more. We were there for 3 hours. Our TOTAL bill was USD $30! We then hired a car service to tour us around the city for four hours. Total cost-$15.

The bargains kept coming…Vietnam is known for its clothing and textile exports. North Face manufactures most of their clothes not far from Saigon. My brothers will soon receive winter jackets straight from the factory…or straight from a box that fell off a shipping truck. The jackets retail in the US from $175 – $300+. I was able to snag one for myself for $22.

I’m not one to shop, especially on business trips. I never have the time or prefer to see some sites, but these deals were hard to pass up. Plus, it was a Sunday and we wouldn’t have any other time to take advantages of these deals. I managed to find something for Cathy. I won’t detail what is because it will ruin the surprise. See you soon Cat!

Our contact in Vietnam is Mr. Quan. He introduced us to his coffee export buddies. One of his friends, Mr Tran, owns a large state owned export company. I would say that we all went to dinner, but it wasn’t so much a dinner as it was our own personal beer garden in the middle of a very nice resturuant. After many san slips I informed Mr. Tran that Cathy wanted me to bring back coffee. Our conversation went something like this…

Me: Where can I buy coffee?

Tran: I sell you coffee.

Me: Thank you. How much?

Tran: How much do you want?

Me: Enough to make a couple of pots?

Tran: 1 metric ton. Ok. Roasted or plain?

Me: Oh. Roasted. Is it organic?

Tran: What is organic?

Our conversation went down hill quickly. He told me he will contact me with a delivery date. Later that evening after many more san slips I asked him…

Me: How much for the coffee?

Tran: We don’t talk money. I get you coffee. Will call you with delivery date.

Sans slip.

Our host poured Heineken in small glasses accompanied by a large piece of ice. A toast was given in Vietnamese..1,2,3 Yo!. As we raised our glasses I was told “san slip not 50%”. This means down the entire beer at once. Don’t drink just a sip. Drink it all. We did this for each person in our group – 16 san slips. Now do you see how I could purchase a ton of coffee?

The next day when I was checking out of the hotel I was told to call Mr. Tran about my coffee purchase.

I like Vietnam. I hope to return soon and go to Hanoi and other places. Perhaps even going to the beaches for a holiday, but I am thankful that I’m in Tokyo enjoying a more relaxed environment.

Outside the new airport. The City was filled with scooters. They would line up 10 across and 10+ rows deep during rush hour.

Hai Ahn Restaurant – Entertainment during a nice dinner

Outerspace Language School – Ode to Cathy

Part Three: Last Resort (lots o’ pictures)

…the Club Med Resort, that is. Pun (unfortunately) intended (and now I’m thoroughly embarrassed about it).

For the Great Barrier Reef leg of our trip, Mark and I ended up booking a week at the Club Med Lindeman Island. Partly it was out of ignorance: the Great Barrier Reef stretches over 1400 miles along Australia’s eastern coast and neither of the two guidebooks we bought had very clear sections on the area so we weren’t sure where to go or how to get there. And partly it was out of laziness and convenience: our Club Med package included transportation to/from the airport, accommodations, all of our meals, all of our drinks (including wine and beer!), childcare and free access to most of the resort’s amenities and activities. Of course, they had us at “childcare” — we imagined ourselves drinking on the beach or snorkeling together instead of having to take turns and we were sold.

Our Aussie Adventure, Part One: Sydney

PROLOGUE

Mark, Noah and I are back in Hong Kong after spending the last 9 days in Australia — three in Sydney, six on Lindeman Island. And after an 18 hour return journey that began on a boat, continued onto a plane, followed by a train, another plane and an automobile, we are finally back at home. Which means we are sleeping in a comfortable bed again, staying cool in the subtropical weather and have ready access to a computer with an internet connection. Ahhh. Now let the blogging begin…

Re-Adjusting

So Mark, Noah and I made it back to Hong Kong late last night. We arrived at 11:30 pm back at our apartment but I could feel an instant mood shift as soon as I stepped off the plane. People were just more annoying at the airport than I could remember. I was tempted to “accidentally” ram a few people with my luggage cart on the way to the car. And when I got home, I was instantly annoyed at how hot and musty it was. Clarita doesn’t like to run the AC when it’s just her. Admirable, yes, but unnecessary suffering in my opinion — we like to crank that sucker up high.

Noah, being Noah, was fine. Although I suspect that the traveling is starting to get harder on him. He is less tolerant of our waiting in lines, more prone to misbehaving, easily bored. Of course, it could also just be a function of his being 2 1/2. He picked up a weird habit in Tokyo. In Tokyo, most of the doors we came across were automatic sliding doors. He got into the habit of running up to a door and having it magically slide its doors open for him. So now, whenever he encounters a glass door, he runs up to about 5 inches away from it and yells, “Open!”

The weird Tokyo habit that I managed to bring back with me was bowing. I noticed it as we were getting into the car from the airport. The driver opened my door for me and I bowed in appreciation. Not just a little head nod either, but a shallow from-the-waist bow. It got me thinking how many people I had unknowingly bowed to on the way to the car…flight attendants, the customs officer, the airport smoothie lady…

Nihon e Yokoso

Welcome to Japan!

Well, not so much you…but me.

Mark, Noah and I left Hong Kong on Friday, March 21st for Japan, where we will be staying for the next 22 days. We had a relatively uneventful trip (which is considered a good thing these days). We’ve been trying, with moderate success, to prepare Noah for the trip for weeks now by letting him know that we were going to Tokyo. But so far his idea of Tokyo is of a land of food and lost items. Such as:

Photo Challenge: The Indian Edition

I managed to miss every single photo challenge journal this week — partly because I was traveling and partly because I’m a spaz. So now here’s one week’s worth of challenges in one convenient journal entry.

Photo Challenge: Sky

Mumbai’s skyline as seen along Chowpatty Beach.

Photo Challenge: Hearts

Not a heart, per se, but where you need lots of it. The building is the Haji Ali Dargah, Mumbai’s most important Muslim shrine and the stone causeway leading up to it is lined with beggars. It is truly a heartbreaking sight to pass the dozens of desperately poor families — made up of women, children, babies, the old and the lame — sitting on this causeway and to know that there is very little that you can do about it.

Photo Challenge: My Moment Wednesday

A quote by Mahatma Gandhi hanging at the Mani Bhavan — a small museum dedicated to Gandhi, housed in the building where he stayed whenever he visited Mumbai. In case you can’t read it, it says,

“To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman… If by strength is meant moral power then woman is immeasurably man’s superior… If non-violence is the law of our being the future is with women.”

Photo Challenge: Love Thursday — Valentine

Me and Mark at dinner. Some things of note…my arm is red because I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. And the photo was taken by Mark’s colleague, Catherine, who joined us on our romantic Valentine’s dinner. Mark felt bad that she was spending Valentine’s Day on a business trip in India so he asked her to join us.

Photo Challenge: Weekend Fun

I couldn’t decide so I’m using two pictures. This first picture is of Mark and Noah at the SpiceKing — a stall at Crawford Market devoted solely to spices. Mark is smelling the different curry blends while Noah looks on. We ended up buying 3 different curry blends, 3 masalas spice blends and a buttload of masala chai.

This next one is Noah playing on some very expensive persian rugs. I don’t like persian rugs — they remind me of my parent’s fussy decorating and they’re just not my thing. So naturally we ended up buying two because we couldn’t decide which one we loved more. Noah was our quality control guy. Thank goodness they love kiddos in India.

For Jess, Who Hates Laundry

It could be worse. Seriously. Like, you could be in India and have to do laundry for a living. Kinda like these guys:

These are Mumbai’s traditional washerfolk — or dhobis — at the Dhobi Ghat, the world’s largest outdoor laundry, next to Mahalaxmi train station. There are some 5,000 dhobis here who spend their days collecting the city’s dirty laundry, washing it, and returning it neatly pressed.

According to my Lonely Planet guide:
“Laundry is an art form in India and dhobi-wallahs employ a secret system of ‘dhobi marks’ to identify the washing from individual addresses…Dhobi marks continue to play an important role in Indian forensics — many crimes are said to have been solved solely from the dhobi marks on victims’ clothing.”

And if the sight of the washing pens (each with its own flogging stone) isn’t enough to make you hug your washing machine, then maybe these will do it: