movie stars in the making

i just lost a ton of minutes of my life trying to upload videos to this post. in fact, it's still uploading now. this better work or i am going to be UPSET. apparently my 'settings' were on the 'new version', which doesn't include the 'filmstrip icon' needed to upload videos. some geek named 'peter' from the 'internet' helped me out with this. thanks 'peter'!

it's 9:42pm. chris was supposed to get off of work at 5pm today... i am wondering what is going to break down and need major repairs since chris has been pulling a lot of overtime this week. c'mon criminals! take a break! my kids want to hang out with their dad and i just want to eat a warm meal with my husband! is that too much to ask??!?

now it's 1:17pm. two days after i started the beginning of this post. chris actually ended up coming home soon after i started complaining to the world about his fantastic job that he happens to love and that puts bread, rice, meat, and mangoes on the table. it's been a really slow posting week. sorry. but mostly cause the kids and i have been really busy having a great time together. tey've both been in pretty great moods this week, which is great for me since i have spent a LOT of time with them. it is hotter than hades here in arizona so we have been doing more-than-usual hanging out at home. this means we are watching more movies (the kids just watched 'The Lion King' and LOVED it. they didn't even notice that i skipped about 3 major scenes that had blood and fighting.) and making our own movies. or i guess you could call them videos. whatever.

i've been taking tons of videos of the kids since we got our FlipShare video camera in march, but i am a disgustingly lazy and not-techy bum, so it's taken me this long to figure out how to upload the videos to my computer, and to post them to this blog. better late than never.

so here are my kids, singing two of their favorite songs. lily knows 75-90% of the words in "Jesus Loves Me", depending on how distracted she is. in her video debut, she knows about 76% of the words, and gets caught in two 'loops'. kinda like rousseau and her message on the island in LOST. topher is singing his favorite song/line: "Happy Birthday". it's really just one line of the 'Happy Birthday' song, sung over and over again. the lines 'Happy birthday dear whoever' never comes up, so don't hold your breath for it. at the end of the 'song', he 'blows out the candles.' usually, if you 'blow out the candles' with him, he gets upset and starts the song all over again. chris loves to 'blow out the candles' with topher and can get his son to sing the song for about five minutes straight. it's amazing. i have not been able to capture it on film yet though.

anyway, i definitely feel like one of those 'american idol moms' who think their kids are the most talented and most beautiful things in the world. i used to laugh at those moms, until i realized there's nothing wrong with being your kids' biggest fans. would i be their biggest fan to the point of embarrassing them and myself on national tv? i'm not sure. we'll have to see in 13 years when lily will be old enough to audtion... (don't get me wrong folks, i am hoping and praying that show is not still on in 13 years. in fact, after this last season, i think they should pack it up and call it a day.)

hope you enjoy our home-movies as much as i do! stay cool arizonites

terrible twos? kinda... terrific threes? yes!

tonight, i was putting the kids down and we were going through our regular bedtime routine of stories and songs and lots of 'sit down, stop doing that, no jumping on the bed, sit down, quit it's in between. lily was in the middle of singing 'Jesus loves me' and got her foot stuck in topher's bed. these kids cannot sit still! so i was comforting lily, a very very tired lily, and so i held her in my arms and sang the rest of "Jesus loves me", my lullabye of choice when she was a baby (and i couldn't remember any other kids' songs). my heart just melted as she started to drift off to sleep in my arms as i rocked her and topher sat on the floor and sang along. bliss. pure.

anyway, the last few days i have been meaning to write a post of encouragement to parents who may be having a hard time with the 'two and under' crowd. cause a hard time i did have with my little lilster! but she is blossoming! too fast now.

here are some 'big' issues we have had and have recently overcome, and i am just hoping it brings you some hope if you are in the midst of some of the same:

- picky eater: when lily was a baby, she loved to eat. and she would eat anything. and it showed. in her thunder thighs :) she started getting trimmer and slimmer when she started crawling, and life changed when she turned one- she was walking, she was a big sister, and she was suddenly too cool for food. so from the age of one to three, she was picky and therefore hungry. i am an absolute believer that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink. i've seen it! even if the horse is thirsty! sometimes it just won't drink! a rule in our house is that you just have to taste what's on your plate. just a little lick. don't reject it til you've tried it. she wouldn't eat vegetables, or meat, or certain fruits, or anything that didn't have ketchup smeared on it. it was a source of much stress and many battles at the dinner table. as some of my friends have noticed, my love language is FOOD. yes i am fond of words of affirmation and all that, but i speak love through food. i feed those i love. whether that's me cooking or buying food. you reject my food, you reject me. i say that kinda jokingly and kinda not at all. lily has been so good about eating almost everything we put in front of her lately- curry, hot dogs, cooked carrots, ribs, etc. i could not be happier that this portion of our lives is behind us.

- won't poop on the potty: lily has been using the potty since january, and she has been amazing. she even stopped needing a pull-up to sleep in about a month into the whole thing. she's got a huge bladder! she has not had any accidents on the peeing front, but pooping has not been her forte. what she makes up in huge bladderness, she loses in having a very very sensitive toosh. she was not the most regular girl, and admittedly she probably did not have the most balanced diet. she drank a lot of milk (a natural constipator. unless you're lactose intolerant like me. then it's a natural get-out-of-my-way-before-i-poop-me-pants.) did not eat hardly any vegetables and was even pretty picky about the fruit she would consume. i had fiber gummies, fiber bars, and we tried to eat lots of strawberries that i think have a lot of fiber in em. per our pediatricians recommendations we had her on a 'healthy' dose of miralax everyday. that helped. if lily had a painful bowel movement, she would be scared to poo, and therefore wouldn't. for a while she dropped her deuces in pull-ups, sometimes in her undies. it was very very very frustrating for all of us, but lots of websites we read just told us to be patient and not push the issue. so we bit our tongues and waited and waited. chris really took the reins on this pooping on the potty situation. he read articles on it, and told lily stories about how the poops in her belly needed to go to their mommy and daddy poopoos that lived in the potty. "let your baby poopoos go to their mommy and daddy!" he would tell her. now when lily excretes into the toilet, she looks in and 'names' the poops: "baby, mommy, daddy." she waves, and says good bye as she flushes them home. the miralax definitely helped her to get to where she needed to be- a comfortable place. now with it being summer and us swimming almost every day and consuming insane amounts of mango and watermelon and other wonderful summer fruit and drinking tons and tons of water, we are all regularly waving bye to the poopoo families in the toilet. this can, and will be you and your toddler!!!!

-won't talk. i remember i used to freak out due to lily's silence. it didn't help that some people commented on it. she was not really saying a whole lot even after she turned two. she knew plenty of words and would obey two  to three step commands. but words were not her forte. and that's so crazy to think of, since she is such a chatty cathy now! she counts in english, korean, and spanish. she doesn't speak much korean (geez, whose fault is that...) but she understands what i tell her when i remember to speak it to her. she runs around the house singing, whispering, blubbering, talking. she has a secret language that is decipherable only to topher, and that is precious. i don't even care what they are saying, it's so cute that they are saying it to each other. but when she talks to the rest of us- it's english! and it's clear (ok, really clear to chris and i, clear to others if you really pay attention.) and i am so ashamed that i lost so much sleep and felt so much angst about the fact that she wasn't speaking when i 'thought she was supposed to be' talking. that is one of my main struggles- making sure my kids are keepin up with the joneses. and i work daily to let that crap go. cause it doesn't matter! my kids (your kids!) will do what they need to do when they are good and ready to do it!

you may be judging me for admitting that lily's 'twos' were kinda terrible. lily was not terrible. the stage we found ourselves in was not easy though! and NO ONE ever said parenting was going to be easy. so i don't know why i thought it might be... lily really made me 'work' and kept me on my toes. and i love her for it! she is so special. so unique. so stubborn. :) i am no 'professional parent', you gotta take my stories with a grain of salt. everyone's stories are different. lily's stories are different than topher's stories, and they have the exact same messed up mom! but these are the tunnels that we have come through, and we are basking in the light! i just want to give you hope, if hope is what you need, that one day you will bask too.

be a superstar korean chef

i guess from the sounds of my title, i am saying that i am a superstar chef and that i can teach you how to become like me. sorry if that's the impression you got. i am no superstar chef, especially not a korean one. ( i do have the awesome caucasian people i cook for fooled though.)  BUT i do hold the most basic of all korean recipes, from which millions of korean dishes are born.

the picture up top is your secret to korean cooking success. it's red pepper paste. every korean family has one of these in their fridge. my little tub is 1kg. (2.2 lbs) and i'm pretty sure the one in my mom's fridge is 5kg. that's a lot of fermented soybean, rice, and mashed up red peppers. this can be bought at any asian/international food store. for those in the east valley: pretty much anywhere along dobson rd.

also to be found in every korean household are the following ingredients:

sesame oil, soy sauce, crushed garlic, and of course the red pepper paste. and some sugar (the brown stuff int he middle.) these are the 5 ingredients you need to make the sauce for the million aformentioned korean dishes.

all you have to do is scoop and pour out as you please. i usually do about 1-2 heaping tablespoons of the paste. a teaspoon of garlic. a tablespoon of sugar (white suage is fine). a good drizzle of the soy sauce and sesame oil. mix it all together and give it a taste. it should kinda look like this:

you can add a bit of water to make the sauce spread out more. and add more sugar or other ingrdient that you feel is kinda lacking. more paste if you need more bite. more sugar if you have too much bite. more soy sauce if you need a bit more tartness. you get the picture. you kinda can't go wrong with these five ingredients.

then you add your meat.

here i used chicken leg quarters. you can add ANYTHING. i really love ribs in this sauce. you can do pork, beef, squid, or octopus. (i know i lost some of you land-locked arizonites just now. but that's what we korean-surrounded-by-water folk like to eat. and it's cause it's DELICIOUS!) you can also add 'rice cakes' (not the 'Quaker' kind you buy at the store. i mean korean sticky rice 'cakes'), potatoes, carrots, zucchini, even some old kimchi if you got it (which i had so i did.) 

cook your meat till it's done. with my chicken i did about 15 minutes on one side and 10-15 on the other. covered. but my chicken pieces were pretty big and not completely thawed out.

when you're done, get your rice, throw your meat on top, and voila! a korean meal! 

i make mine pretty not-too-spicy cause the kids eat it too. i'm so proud of my little half-korean babies and their ever-expanding palette for different foods!

this may have seemed like a complicated recipe but i assure you it's not! otherwise i wouldn't use it. ever. the sauce takes one minute to make if you have all the ingredients on the counter with you. the only thing that is time consuming is the cooking of the meat itself. this is sersiously so very easy. try it. and love it. and tell your friends you are a superstar korean chef.

great dads all around

today is father's day. and i am seriously surrounded, innundated in fact, by amazing dads. my own father, living in toronto, is awesome. we don't have the most conventional relationship- i see him once a year and we speak on the phone every few weeks- mostly so the kids can say 'hi' to him and make his day. we are not superclose, but it's not from a lack of effort on his part. when i was a little kid he thought being a 'great dad' was being the most involved dad in the world. and involved he was! he was at every parent-teacher meeting, every school function, he signed us up for everything from swimming lessons to self-defense classes to piano lessons to girl scouts to korean language classes. we were busy kids, but that's cause he wanted us to be the best kids we could be. he tried so hard. and only now, in my old age am i thankful for his efforts. kids- so ungrateful and unaware... sheesh! sorry dad!

i now have the honor of having two awesome father-in-laws. they are so special to my heart for different reasons. wes, chris' dad, is hilarious, just like his son. hanging out with him is always great fun. the man is talented in a plethora of ways. i got chris a laptop for father's day (he needed it. and would have bought it himself eventually. but he was very happy to unwrap it this morning! boys and their gadgets) anyway, before i made the purchase, wes was the first person i asked for advice. he is a bonafide geek. and proud of it. he is a musical genius, arizona sports fanatic, and a really great grandfather. he LOVES his grandbabies. his idea of love is sharing. he NEEDS to share his favorite shows (LOST!) with the people he loves so they can have even more common ground, and more time to hang out together. big games, big events, small events, everyday, his home is open and he loves to hang out. he is a life-share-er and love-giver.

jerry is a wonderful father-in-law as well. so chill, so hospitable, so loving. he is also a man of many many talents. he works hard at everything he does, whether mowing the lawn every other day (you have to see this man's yard. it is beyond absurd. only lawn that has green grass every day of the year here in the desert. no small feat people.) or fixing a bargain-basement steal of a deal toy for his grandbabies (like their fully operational battery-powered cadillac escalade) or working hard at his job or just loving the little people who bring him so much joy. jerry loves well. you can see it in his wife's countenance, and in my kids' squeals of joy when we pull up to his house and the kids scream out for "nana and papa!!!!" we had the pleasure of going out for dinner with jerry and barb today and we LOVE to hang out with these people. not only are they our family, but they are some of our closest friends. oh love. how great it is.

it is crazy to be surrounded by so many men who show love and speak love as openly as all these men. 

they are such great examples for my kids to be around!

but there is no greater example of love and great daddy-ness than my dear husband (c'mon, you all saw this coming.) oh the love he has for his children! and the love he so freely displays! the kids are never in doubt of his love and affection for them. which is why they favor him so heavily when we are all hanging out together. sometimes it is really hard/impossible for chris to eat a meal cause the kids both want to sit on his lap. they love their daddy!

and every day chris is striving to love his kids better. today he told me that he wanted to make sure that he is aware of who his kids are and to celebrate that. it is too easy to make the kids a portal of all our missed opportunities- to push them to become everything we wanted to be and never became. this is chris' beautiful illustration: he doesn't want to wish for lily to be a rose but then look at her shortcomings in being a rose, because she is in fact a sunflower. instead of focusing on what an ugly rose she is, to recognize that she is a sunflower, and a beautiful one at that. 

father's day is a special one in our household cause there are so many great dads in our lives to celebrate. and don't even get me started on all the great dads, and uncles, that my brothers james, justin, and robert are! we had a great father's day today, we hope you and your family did as well.

summer photo funtimes!

last week, or maybe two weeks ago, my friend jenny kidnapped my kids and took ridiculously cute pictures of them doing their favorite thing in the whole wide world- playing in water! seriously, the first words out of lily and topher's mouths, every morning is: "bathing suit". we sing songs about their bathing suits (happy birthday bathing suit, the itsy botsy spider climbed up the bathing suit, etc)  this morning, i heard the pitter patter of their feet, at 6am, going to the potty, and then over to the laundry 'room' and opening the dryer to see if their suits were there. which they usually are, but weren't this morning. so i had to get out of bed to help them out. if their suits had been in the dryer, i could have bought myself about 15 more minutes of sleep. i think. i will try it tomorrow and let you know.

i digress, so we met jenny at the splash pad right behind liberty market (one of my favoritest restaurants) at 6:30pm. apparently this is good light for pictures. i just trust jenny when she tells me these things. this ended up being the perfect time cause not too many people were out and it was still SO HOT. 110 degrees (40+ celsius) at 6:30. that's not right. anyhoo, the kids had tons of fun and jenny did a great job capturing my kids in all their crazy glory.

check out her website: jennybishopphotography.com for more details about this awesome summer promo she is running. and you may be so lucky as to get pictures of your kids like this:

and here is the artist at work:

(look jenny! i caught sunflare!)

salads!

we are not the healthiest eaters in the world. i am a big fan of food in boxes- like rice a roni, and hamburger helper, kraft macaroni and cheese, etc.  but lately i have a been a big fan of salads, so here is a quick look (sans pictures. sorry) at some salads we've been eating lately as i have been seriously lazy from this horrendous heat.

southwest salad-
-chicken, get the rotisserie one that they make for you at the store and shred it up. so easy! or grill, roast your own
-vegetables of your choice, bag salads are also a lazy favorite of mine
-crushed tortilla chips
-shredded cheese
-southwest ranch dressing (either mix some salsa or taco sauce with some ranch dressing)

some variations:
-brown ground beef with taco seasoning
-chicken marinaded in buffalo wing sauce mixed with dry ranch dressing. put this in the crock pot until chicken is cooked through. change dressing to blue cheese (if that's your thing. it's not mine.)

if you are not a big 'bagged salad' fan- give it a shot! they have a couple of different options- caesar, asian sesame, southwest, and once you try one and like it, you can just copy all the things that you find in their kit. (which is what i did with the above salad recipe)

especially for you moms out there- do what you have to do to feed your family and make it as easy as possible for yourself. ready-to-make meals are all around!

the sauce lady commeth

lately i have heard lots of grief, sighs, complaints about the same thing: cooking. and women- i hear ya! sometimes i love to cook, and sometimes i loathe it. but when you're on a tight budget- you gotta do what you gotta do. so i am going to try to post some supereasy recipes to hopefully inspire you, whether from my own ideas or cause you think you can do much better than me. and i bet you could.

the secret to my success in the kitchen is to have a lot of different sauces and marinades. it makes the exact same meal (say chicken and rice) so different, depending on the 'sauce' you use.
here's what i'm talking about:
one day- chicken in cream of mushroom soup, with cubed potatoes and carrots, and rice
another day- chicken in terriyaki sauce (i like 'yoshidas'), with added cabbage and onions, and rice
another day- chicken curry (i get these packages from the asian food store. so easy and seriously delicous. try vermonts, or... the one that i always buy and cannot remember the name of...) with frozen veggies, and rice
yet another day- chicken in spicy korean sauce (i will have a seperate post on this later), with mushrooms, zucchini, and rice
another day still- bread and fry chicken pieces, buy or make sweet and sour sauce, eat with rice

that's 5 days of meals, using the same two basic staples, and adding vegetables as you/if you please. and these meals do not require any sweat or tears or time. start your rice, do up the chicken so there's no pink (cause no one likes salmonella), and dinner is done!

and then here's the twist- you switch out the chicken for beef, or pork, and you've got ten more meals. switch out the rice for pasta, or even fix different kinds of rice (most of the time i use korean rice, but i have a big place in my heart for Rice-a-roni long grain rice) and you have EVEN MORE meal choices!

cans of soup are pretty cheap, and if you buy a couple bottles of marinaes that you really like, those will last you a good 4-8 meals, depending on how many people you are feeding and how much marinade you use every time. stock up your pantry with these supereasy meal boosters and you will be good to go!

be on the look our for more detailed recipes over the next few days.

happy cooking, and more importantly- happy eating!!!