more dale chihuly

geez, this guy is everywhere around here. poppa kwong started work yesterday, but luckily, they are easing him in with a couple days of "training." he got off work early, and we headed into golden gate park, where amelia admired this rendering of "saffron."

raising a tree hugger

now that we're in san francisco...

tourists

we're slowly getting to know our new city by taking little touristy excursions everyday. today was an especially heavy touristy day, as we were taking advantage of the gorgeous weather. the locals keep telling us that the fog will be descending soon, but until then, we'll try to stay as much outdoors as we can.

here we are at top of the famed lombard hill: here's amelia trying to negotiate the steep steps of said hill. check out the cable car in the background. nice timing, right?
coit tower:
the palace of legion of honor, with a fabulous dale chihuly glass tree (though the title says "sun"):
and dining at a local chinese restaurant, the mayflower. amelia here is practicing her "smile" for the camera, which now entails tilting her head to the side and looking demure.

doing homework

outfit of the month

hand, foot, mouth disease

so we escaped the park slope stomach flu of winter '08 to catch a little hand, foot, mouth disease here. poor amelia was miserable for a couple days; fever, no appetite, mouth sores that made it hurt to even drink water. thank goodness for popsicles. a side effect of the illness is that she's become a little drug addict--she LOVES tylenol. even yesterday when she was mostly recovered, she kept asking for "medicine" and claiming that her tongue hurts. she hasn't asked for any today though. phew.

future jobs

architect?
weight loss consultant?

making pizza with poppa

here's a better picture of the aforementioned activity. this is amelia "tasting" the pizza sauce. but really, this was just an excuse to show off the super cute shirt that amelia was wearing. the same shirt that she promptly sullied while eating black bean noodles from san tung:

moving up in the world

to the big kid swing!

we're here, we're here, we're finally here!

what do you see from the back window of our car? yes, it's the golden gate bridge! just in case you don't believe me:
first of all, props to poppa kwong for getting the house ready while amelia and i lounged around LA. for three days straight, he did 80-90% of the unpacking, and we are eternally grateful.

but check out the size of amelia's new room! she can actually move around in it without running into the walls. here she is making "pizza" with poppa using her nightstand as an oven, an ingenious suggestion on poppa kwong's part. (yes, we are very pleased with poppa right now.)

compare with her old room in new york. and this is our real estate agent's photo--after we cleared out all amelia's toys. yes, the standard of living is better out here, i'd say.

speaking of standard of living, the weather was gorgeous this weekend--80s, breezy but warm. amelia was reunited with her friends ian and helen at the discovery museum in sausalito. don't they look like a band of street urchins?

backlog

10 days without my computer and boy do i have a backlog of photos! although i have about several hundred (no exaggeration) from our stay in LA, here are a couple of the highlights:

enjoying the view with annie yi-yi, from her big bear house, where amelia learned the word "mountain": meeting baby james (who amelia promptly decided to call "jimmy") at the arboreteum:
having a serious heart to heart discussion with ben, james' poppa (i just love the so small, so tall contrast!):

introduction to water guns

thanks to cousins andrew and ryan!

post-apocalyptic wonderland

we finally have some decent weather, so we took a short trip to seattle this morning. we were on our way to discovery park, when we passed by gasworks park, and denny assured me that there were great views and crazy looking pipes. he sure was right on both.

playing at the shop

we've been visiting haemoni and harabiji at their shop every morning. amelia has discovered the little corner changing room, and has a grand time "climbing" the little step, admiring herself in the mirror, and then "jumping" down.