Last month my little sister Caroline visited with her baby girl Emily. Max had so much fun having her around. He was very gentle and cute with her. Picking up her toys if she dropped them, playing peek a boo with her to make her laugh. Although it was still pretty cold when they visited, we made sure that we took Caroline and Emily out to see some of the sights.
My older sister Elizabeth also came up for a visit which was amazing. Having my sisters around is always the best. We don’t get to see each other often, so the time we do get to spend together is really special.
Max started going to pre-school back in January. He goes two days a week and from the very first day he has loved going to “school-time”. After every session he comes home with new words, new experiences and new stories to share with us. His teacher, Leyna, says that he’s a well mannered and kind boy. Here are some of the photos Leyna has taken during class.
So I thought I would start documenting the dinners in our house since we love to cook and dinner is when we all get to sit down together. It’s also a way of not copping out and buying fast food, and a way for me to get creative with what we have in our fridge and pantry. The only problem is, only 2 out of the 3 of us eat what I prepare… It’s becoming more of a struggle to get Max to eat a healthy and balanced diet – he used to eat everything! But we’re now stuck with only a few foods that he’ll eat. He’ll eat pasta (any kind but only if it’s got a “mountain” of Parmesan cheese on top or with pesto). He’ll eat plain rice sushi, chicken (sometimes), turkey meatballs, yoghurt, eggs, bread, bacon, and fruit. This kid loves his fruit! He’ll also eat any and all kinds of treats, but he won’t eat vegetables. I’ve added pureed spinach into our pesto which he’ll eat, and I’ve tried sneaking carrots, zucchini and other types of squash into muffins, but he won’t eat them; and the more I think about it, I don’t want to sneak anything into his food. I want him to WANT to eat vegetables and meat and a variety of foods. If anyone has suggestions, I’d love to hear them! But until then, here were our dinners from a few weeks ago with a loaf of banana crunch bread that Max and I made together.
Top row from left:
Field greens salad with berries, shaved Parmesan cheese and a raspberry vinaigrette.
Eggs over medium with bacon, field greens salad and home-made sourdough bread.
Turkey meatballs with fingerling potatoes and a field greens salad with avocado.
Middle row from left:
Plank BBQ salmon with dill over a bed of field greens, avocado and tomatoes.
Carrot and potato soup with a cream drizzle with home-made sourdough bread.
7-cheese tortellini topped with a tomato sauce with Proscuitto and Parmesan.
..and this is going to have to be a quick one! We left LA and we now live in Seattle – well, just outside of Seattle near Redmond. It’s been absolutely amazing so far and we are loving our home. It’s our first ever home we’ve bought and so far, there is nothing to complain about. Max is getting bigger and smarter every day. He’s such a pleasure to be around and everyone we meet adores him too. Here are some recent photos:
Watering the plants in the garden:
Sticker Max:
With frog at the playground:
Making art:
At the lake:
On the carousel at the zoo:
I’ll post soon (hopefully) about our home and some of the adventures we’ve been on in the past 2 months here in Waashington. And I’ll try to post about all the fun stuff we got up to prior to leaving LA – fingers crossed!
Happy 2011! One thing I’ve told myself is that I will blog at least once a month this year. Hopefully I’ll even manage once a week, but who knows if that will really happen…
Nonetheless, we are all doing great. Max is getting so big and surprising us everyday with all the things he’s learning. I can hardly believe he will be 2 in April. He is such a little boy. He loves playing with his cars, trucks and trains. He also enjoys playing in the garden with the pebbles (peee-bbles), rocks (ro-caks) and mud. He’s so curious and wants to know about everything. It’s just so fantastic.
Here are some recent photos of Max, and here’s to 2011 and more blogging!
Max helping me bake a cake:
On his way to see the chickens at Mimi and Doc’s house:
Almost 5 whole months without a single post. Awful… Although I do think about blogging everyday, I don’t have much time to and right now it’s only going to be a few iPhone photos until I can properly sit down and blog.
Max in boots while on holiday in Escalante, Utah after his first birthday:
Check out these teeth:
His first painting:
With Mummy:
I’ll post more about his birthday, his walking (now running!!), his signs – we’ve been teaching him baby sign language and all his words! Stay tuned.
Max can say Mama and Dada now, and he seems to understand what they mean. He’ll crawl up to me going “dadadadadadadada” and then crawl back to George saying “mamamamamamama.”
Last weekend when the rain starting pouring, Max quickly crawled over to the window that looks over the pool to see what was going on. He’s such a curious kid and growing so fast!
Never in a million years would I have imagined myself writing about peanut butter cookies! But today, here I am – about to share with you my new found addiction to Uncle Eddie’s VEGAN (!) peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Growing up in Hong Kong and England, we were never exposed to peanut butter sweets, let alone peanut butter cookies. When I moved to America, I didn’t understand why people were so addicted to Reese’s, Butterfinger, or peanut butter coated in any type of chocolate. It pretty much grossed me out. The taste to me seemed very fake – probably because I wasn’t used to it.
But last week, my friend Melissa and I met up for coffee and she turned me onto these cookies. She and I shared one and as I took a bite, I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, absolutely delighted! It was so delicious! The peanut flavor wasn’t over-powering and even though they are vegan, you wouldn’t think so! The chocolate chips were super chocolatey and the texture of the cookie itself was very pleasing. After each bite, I wanted another. Since then, I looked up their website and noticed the “Retail” portion of their site wasn’t updated yet. So I got pretty sad and realized the only way for me to get these cookies was to go back to where Melissa and I met or order them through Amazon — until I stumbled across them at Whole Foods. I wasn’t even looking for cookies! But as I walked into the store there was a display of all of the Uncle Eddie’s baked goods. Someone knew I was coming! Anyway, I grabbed a bag and I’m going to indulge later today with a lovely cup of steaming hot tea. Can’t wait!
(Yes – this logo is super lo res – this is also what it looks like on their website.)
A few weeks ago we finally got to hang out with our friends Junko and Jason and their baby girl, Emily. It was the first time we’d seen them since Emily was born and we had been wanting to get together for a while. The reason it took almost 3 months to see each other was because Max got sick, then I got sick, then we were off to Hong Kong so the timing really sucked. We didn’t want to expose our germs to the baby either, but we finally saw each other for a lovely lunch. Max was fascinated by Emily – wanting to touch her and kept smiling at her. Max also kept smiling a lot at Junko. It was pretty adorable. Here are some photos of the outing:
