Our berry merry Christmas

Chloe & Hobbes

Nap time with her new friend from Uncle Mike :)

That hair, those colors

Where can I get myself a great yellow balloon?

So much to tell you

Counting down!!

Wahoo!!!!!

The first of many list posts

How can I explain how dismayed I feel after I wash my hands and there isn't a hand towel to dry them with. Hand towels are among the things that up my happiness in life. Here are some others:

-Pre-washed salad, but only the first 2/3 of it where the leaves are still fresh. The remaining 1/3 on the bottom is always unfortunately soggy.

-Be nice to your toosh. Get Charmin ultra soft/ultra strong toilet paper, maximum sheets per roll. 

-Windex

-Glue sticks (not those dinky small ones, but the 36g monsters) and (the smell of) Elmer's glue

-Coasters!

Bear rug coasters

Toast coasters

Happy birthday, Kristen

Dearest Kristen, 

Today is your birthday. I want to share something with you: 

Every time I sing at church, I feel replenished. The last time I went to church was December 4, 2011. On that day as I told everyone that Chloe was due in one day, I felt a flurry of things. Excited, scared, doubtful that she'd really be here anytime soon, wishing to remain pregnant for a bit longer so that I could continue to enjoy having her in my belly, yet also anxious to see her asap. As I sang worship song after worship song, I started tearing up. Usually I'm not sure why I cry at church, where it comes from. But this time I knew.

It was because in the middle of all those emotions, I suddenly thought of you. And as soon as I thought of you, everything became so calm inside. I kept imagining you wrapped in the Christmas blanket that your mom made for you several Christmasses ago. And how, when you were praying for me after reading my first message about my pregnancy, God had allowed you to feel the peace that He wanted to give me. 

I felt this overwhelming peace coupled with a tenderness -- like a beautiful, beautiful ache because my heart was just filled with so much love. "Honor" is a big word, sort of grandiose I think, but that's how I feel when I think of me being the one who you've opened up your heart to. Honored is what I feel when I think of my place in your life and your place in mine. 

Thank you for lifting me up, for sending up prayers for Chloe with each beat of your heart. Prayers that look like this scene of floating lanterns, so bright and full of the fire of hope that they can't possibly be missed. 

Her initials are CKN.
Her first name is Chloe, middle name is Kristen, last name is Ng. 

Chloe Kristen Ng, because I hope that all her life she will carry a part of you with her. I am so, so proud to name my daughter after you. 

Chloe's Five Days Old

At home with Chloe 

Buuurp. She burps like her daddy, huhu.

Sporting her strawbelly outfit from Auntie Kristen.
She wore this on her first walk around the neighborhood, and visit to the pediatrician,
who said she's berry healthy. 

Her expression while her diaper was being changed.

Chloe sporting Mom Pants. 

Chillin' in the crib, catching some zzz's. 

She'll have a while to fill up the crib :) 

Candy comic

The other day I said to Drew, "You know what's been missing in my diet for the past couple days???" 

"Candy," he said. Huhuhu, he knows me too well. 

This explains my love for candy perfectly. Click on the "Pleated Jeans" (bottom) link enlarge. 

from Pleated Jeans

A kid's list of romantic things

from Pleated Jeans

Oates

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” 

Oops

So cute. Thanks Gess for sending this. Wish you were here!!!

Smug rabbit

Happy 22nd Month

- - - 

From 2010, 9:56 p.m.

"As I write this, my eyes keep trailing to the dried and spiky cuticles along my fingers. They form a stubborn fringe at the base of each nail. It's so tempting to pick at them. But then I can almost hear him say, 'Baby stop,' and just that alone makes me miss him so much. I don't have anyone else in New York who cares about the scratchy state of my finger flesh. A concern like that, though little, is so specific -- so particular to us -- that I find it all the more dear."

- - - 

It's just past Thanksgiving now. I've been unpacking for the last hour and in a folder marked with a big green "B," I came across the following letter from Drew around the same time that I had journaled the snippet above. 

I am thankful for the 22 months we've spent together. 

Happy anniversary, from P. to Bear!

Grey's

Man I'm really missing the days when I'd get all blue and teary over Grey's Anatomy. The drama of Derek Shepard and Meredith Grey, and Cristina and Burke.

Probably feeling this way 'cause I'm listening to Scratch by Kendall Payne. Good song, btw.

Are you ready

for the best pasta in the world?

Babes

"Oh man you know what’s really good? Babes. I love babes. And by that I don’t just mean good-looking people, but also those with good hearts and sexy brains because that’s usually way more impressive. Babe love.

babes are my favourite thing in the whole entire world, even more than shiny things."

(unicornology)

Lol

Infographic

What are the odds? (Click to enlarge)

Angela sent me the link above the other day and her subject line was "Blessed."

Fitting.

Rollo Martins

"I never meant to fall in love, not with Harry’s girl… It was very cold and I got up to close the window curtains. I only noticed my hand was on hers when I took it away. 

As I stood up I looked down at her face and she was looking up. It wasn’t a beautiful face – that was the trouble. It was a face to live with, day in, day out. A face for wear. I felt as though I’d come into a new country where I couldn’t speak the language. I had always thought it was beauty one loved in a woman. 

I stood there at the curtains, waiting to pull them, looking out. I couldn’t see anything but my own face, looking back into the room, looking for her.” 

-The Third Man by Graham Greene

Holden

"I'm not too crazy about describing rooms and houses anyway. So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat."

From Kristen

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.

We know that we live in Him and He in us, because He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in her and she in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in her. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him.
There is no fear in love.
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because He first loved us."
1 John 4:10 to 19

Homesick

Always a way to fit books

Wish my weekend could look like this

Susan Sontag

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ”

Jack Gilbert

“It’s not a business with me . . . I’m not a professional of poetry, I’m a farmer of poetry.”

Together

On Monday, October 24th, B. had udon for lunch and I had the pork 'n egg fried rice, cooked cabbage and broccoli, and soup vegetables that he'd made for me.

That day he wore polka dot socks. I wore his ankle socks, which were too big for me so I had to fold them down in the front, but for a while now I have been wearing his socks more than mine and it's not that I don't like my socks, it's just that I like wearing his.

On that evening as we sat in his living room, me doing homework and he on his laptop, he asked me a very special question. Then I rose up from the rug to the big grey couch where he was so that I could kiss him after answering Yes.

It was our 21st month anniversary that day, a very very happy day.

This is why

van Gogh at 13

Gasp

Dreamy hair

Too bad 1) I've got black hair 2) it's incurably straight 3) the insufficient real estate on my forehead does not allow for any sort of bangs or side-swept coverage.

Although I take back the "too bad" on number 1.
Black hair rawks.

Let's have Christmas lights

like this year-round.

On that frame

Woody

Hugs are better this way

Charles Bane, Jr.

"Isn't it amusing that they think
we're too old for... and don't see
when our passion stirs?
They don't notice your hand
reaching over to arrange my letters
in the middle of the game.
Do you know I love those hands
most tenderly when they're making
tea? You know, I think making love to you
starts in the music of steps in snow
or your look into your purse for a lozenge
when my mouth is dry. Yes, that's the flag,
that's the pointing daystar."

Pen Clip

Carey Mulligan

Can't wait to watch The Great Gatsby, starring her and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Oh, and Gemma Ward... that should be interesting.

Moms texting

Uncontainable

Psalm 55:22 "Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you."

Philippians 4:4 "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, Rejoice!

Dried mangoes

are my new favorite.

I always looked forward to these dried mangoes from the Philippines whenever I stepped into a 7-11 in Taiwan. I wouldn't always buy them though... in fact I rarely ever did. Usually I was lured to the chips aisle (garlic pea crackers! star-shaped potato chips! squid chips! seaweed flavored Lays! chips made to taste like fried chicken!)... but once in a while I'd opt for these dried mangoes and then feel smug about my healthier choice.

Breakfast essential #1

"Let me tell you a story while you're still in love with me. My mother had a son who died on the day he was born. They buried him at the door of my father's church. I was born one year later to the day. I used to read his gravestone every Sunday.

His name was the same as mine. 'Vincent van Gogh, died March 30th, 1852.' I'd stand and read until they pulled me in to hear my father preach the sermon. Then I'd think about the amazing fact that I'd been born, and buried, and born all over again. That God had given me all my second chances rolled into one."

Happy 20 months with Bear

He tells me that I'm stubborn, like when it's raining and he tells me to wear my rain boots instead of my hole-y converse sneakers. but i look down at my feet and shake my head no, no I won't wear my rain boots, i don't need to. Then after sitting in a three hour class wriggling my toes inside my squishy-squashy socks, I think: I should've worn my rain boots.

When I tell him this, he smiles and says, "So what does that tell you?"
That Bear was right, I say. And inside I'm thinking how lucky a stubborn P. like me is
to be with a Bear who knows best.

Happy 1 year 8 months, hunny! <3

Always an adventure

From Summer 2007, right after we made a stop at 7-11 after a movie night at Tiger City. That same summer, we went bike-riding at Metropolitan Park with Kellen and ate "frog balls." Once Harry hid in a giant cardboard box upstairs (one of the boxes used as luggage) and waited for Tina. When she climbed up the stairs, he bursted out of the box and screamed "SURPRISE!!!!!!!"
She nearly shat her pants.

Really miss hanging out with you, Harry. Happy birthday!!!!

From, A Beautiful Mind

Nash: Alicia, does our relationship warrant long-term commitment? I need some kind of proof, some kind of verifiable, empirical data.

Alicia: I'm sorry, just give me a moment to redefine my girlish notions of romance.

Her face

was as broad and innocent as a cabbage.

-Flannery O'Connor

Favorite pizza

is without a doubt, Papa John's. and Dominoes when I'm in Taiwan. Here are three things about my preferred pizza:

-jalepenos should be on there
-the cheese should not look like elmer's glue (i.e. it should not be ALL OVER THE PLACE, runny and undercooked)
-the crust should be a nice balance of crunchy + chewy, but that's only if it's a regular. thin crust is always awesome when i'm in a crunchy-only kind of mood.

p.s. I hate when a slice wasn't separated thoroughly enough from another slice, and i have to pull it apart, and when i do, a glorious glob of cheese/pepperoni slides off the tip of MY slice while staying on its neighbor slice (or in the worst case, remaining on the damn cardboard). I think of it like a wishbone-pulling kind of deal, except with pizzas.

Do the flying move again

I had a super wonderful weekend with Bear
who likes me even when I'm whiny
And from whose plate I get to eat bright red tomatoes
as well as little cartoon-like mushrooms.
From whose body I get to hold onto as I sit on the back of his motorbike thinking
nothing gives quite the same feeling as this.
Which is a thought I often have when I'm doing any sort of anythings with B.

Seneca

"I ask you, wouldn't you say that anyone who took the view that a lamp was worse off when it was put out than it was before it was lit was an utter idiot? We, too, are lit and put out. We suffer somewhat in the intervening period, but at either end of it there is a deep tranquility.

We are wrong in holding that death follows after, when in fact it precedes as well as succeeds. Death is all that was before us. If there is any torment in the later state, there must also have been torment in the period before we saw the light of day; yet we never felt conscious of any distress then. It will be the same after me as it was before me."

-Seneca, "Asthma"

What's your issue

Think outside the lunchbox

One day when Drew and I go on an outing, we will pack the following for lunch:

His: A Beary Cute Meal!

• BabyBel cheese with a beach umbrella cupcake pick
• Carrot sticks with dip in a plastic shot glass and
a bucket cupcake pick
• Drink
• Teddy Bear Cookies
• A bear sandwich dressing in a swim suit
made from Air Heads Sour Belts, sprinkles and icing eyes
• Red-seedless grapes with a beach ball cupcake pick

Mine: Kisses for Piggy!

• A piggy shaped sandwich with an icing eye
• Hershey Kisses in a heart shaped silicone cup
• Heart shaped carrots in heart shaped silicone cup
• Pretzel snaps
• Strawberry slices with a pink kiss lip pick

...And I'm throwing in this last one just because.

Octopus Lunch!

• Sun chips
• Octopus sandwich with icing eye & sprinkles for the mouth
• Cheese cubes with starfish pick
• Blue m&m's
• Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries
• Cucumber slices with an octopus pick