hawaii – Baby Wong (Caleb Wong & Caris Wong & Chloe Wong)

April 25, 2008April 26, 2008

The End of Our Hawaii Trip

Yes, yes… I know… we really are behind in our blogging. We still haven’t finished blogging about our Hawaii trip.

Our Hawaii Alarm Clock
I forgot to blog about one story while we on the Big Island with Stan, Bel, & baby Noah. It’s memorable. While we were in Hawaii, Caleb was our 6:30AM alarm clock. No matter how late we put him to bed, no matter how many times he would wake up at night, he ALWAYS woke up at 6:30. On our last Big Island day, Caleb woke up at 7:30AM. When we saw the clock, Chris & I cheerfully got out of bed and praised our boy for sleeping in. The pool opens at 7:30AM, so we decided to go swimming. On our way to the pool, I pointed out to Chris that it’s a gloomy/cloudy day since it was still a bit dark for 7:30. We get to the pool. It’s locked, but somebody’s inside cleaning. He tells us to come back when the pool is open. We tell him that the pool is supposed to open at 7:30. He looks at us and says something like, “It’s 7:30 already? Oh no!! I’m running late.” Then he looks at a pool clock and tells us that it’s only 6:45. What?!!! We still have no idea how our bedside clock got changed. It was right when we put Caleb to bed. Oh well.

Our Flight Home
We were running really late to the airport, so Stan & Bel came to help us return our rental car and get checked in quickly. Our flight was with ATA. Stan knew one of the ATA worker guys. He was one of Stan’s high school friends. Stan tried pulling some strings to get us ahead in this long, long slow line (since we were already late). He found out from his friend that our flight was canceled (though nobody else in the line knew that yet as the flight was only announced as being delayed). We got pulled out of the line with our luggage. His friend got us onto the next American Airlines flight back to LAX. Yay! Go Stan. It’s nice to have our Hawaiian connection. Only a few were given tickets onto this AA flight. Most had to wait until the next departing ATA flight (I think that was in the middle of the night or the next day). And out of the ones who received AA tickets, we were the only ones who had our luggage. You know why? Because the Wong family was running really late and hadn’t checked in to our original flight like everyone else already had.

Yes, Caleb and I got chosen to be personally security checked. I guess we just look that dangerous.

Caleb slept for only 30 minutes on this plane ride home. He really had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. We tried to make him as comfy as we could, but it was one fussy plane ride home.

Daddy even tried to help Caleb with his ear pressure by enticing him with a pacifier.

We got back from Hawaii on Friday, 3/14/08. We needed that whole weekend to unpack and decompress from our vacation before Chris went back to work on Monday. Here’s Caleb helping us unpack.

Yesterday, I discovered that ATA filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 3rd and ended all of their passenger services to Hawaii. Good thing this happened after our trip to Hawaii. We probably couldn’t have afforded to pay for another set of airline tickets.

April 18, 2008April 18, 2008

clarification of april fools

for those of you who read the last couple blogs, i need to clarify. i’ve had a few people ask me questions, obviously confused by the blogs. no, i’m not pregnant. and, yes that was my hubby trying to be humorous for april fools day. the funny thing is that some of it is part truth. a few months ago, if you had asked me if we would have any more children, i would have told you, “we had never wanted just one, but now one just might be enough.” Life post-Caleb has been physically and emotionally challenging for me (despite my lovely son). But, once again, God is at work in my heart. He is far bigger than even my own fears of being unable to handle postpartum again. God, the almighty and holy Creator of all, can certainly take care of me and my family. So, chris and i actually have been talking about when we want more munchkins. Not right now, but we do want our children to be close in age…. all in God’s timing obviously.

have a look at our cute family (Dole Plantation & Hanauma Bay):

March 12, 2008

Big Island Travels

We just spent the last 3 days on the Big Island with Bel, Stan, & baby Noah. Here are some highlights and funny moments.

We explored a lava tube and lots of lava rocks. The volcano here is currently active, so we were trying to go visit the site where you can see lava going into the ocean. Well, let’s just say the boys were navigating and we found ourselves at a totally different spot. But I must say, where we went was nice too… and probably heaps safer for the babies. We saw the area of the last most recent lava activity (about 5 years ago). Caleb was so fussy after not getting any naps and being in a car all day. He wouldn’t be soothed in our arms. Finally I had to nurse him while we walked to the lava site. It was like carrying a sack of potatoes on a hike. And, baby Caleb decided to have another poop explosion… this time all over mommy’s shirt and pants and the Ergo baby carrier. It was quite impressive.

On our trip, Caleb found himself a new toy… baby Noah who lays there like non-moving target. Poor Noah. Just wait ’til Noah can roll and crawl well. He’ll be chasing after you, Caleb.

Caleb fell asleep on the beach. I put him down in his tent… and he stayed asleep!!! well, it was for only 25 minutes, but it’s a first for him to go to sleep with lights and sounds without much of a fight.

We wanted to visit a macadamia nut farm. Stan found one on the internet. We went there and found this house on a farm. Very interesting. Nobody else was there. We got a nice personal tour of the mac nut trees, kona coffee beans, & avocado & banana trees. We learned that bananas were originally eaten on the Island by only males. Females would be killed if they ate this food associated with male fertility. We found big spiders there. Chris liked them a lot! He wanted to take one home with us.

Chris looks mighty cute taking care of 2 munchkins.

March 7, 2008March 7, 2008

Poopy Poop

So, Chris takes Caleb to our local grocery store here (Tamura’s) by himself. He wants to give me some time to rest since I haven’t been feeling well since yesterday. All we really need is some water, and maybe a little bit of something for lunch.

I wake up from a nap wondering where my hubby and baby are. I call them. Chris starts laughing on the phone and tells me that Caleb had a poop explosion… a diarrhea one. Caleb has been having diarrhea since starting antibiotics last week (he had been sick for over 3 weeks).

Chris comes home carrying baby Caleb in only a diaper. His purchases = diapers + baby food (peas and prunes). Chris’ white Bucks t-shirt is spotted with brown liquid poop. I couldn’t stop laughing. Chris forgot to take the diaper bag with him, so he had to buy diapers there. He carried dripping poopy Caleb thru the supermarket to buy diapers. He didn’t have the hands to carry a big jug of water, but he could hold peas and prunes baby food jars. Hahaaa. So, are we really going to be feeding prunes to Caleb after he’s just had a diarrhea explosion? Hahaha.

Caleb came home with a big smile on his face. He had fun with his daddy.

Awh, too bad I didn’t take any pictures of Caleb’s poopy clothes or Chris in his poopy shirt. You’d be laughing too. Here’s a cute pic of Caleb in his sunnies, hat, & New Zealand swimwear.

March 7, 2008March 7, 2008

Hawaii Update

I’ve gotten too lazy to come up with a good name, so it will just be this.

Caleb is starting to hate the car again. We don’t know if it’s the car itself, or if he’s not feeling well, or he simple chose to be whiny and cry-y, but he is. It doesn’t help that we live out in the boonies, where everything is at least 30 minutes away. It’s hit or miss with this boy now in the car. And it’s usually a miss. We now have to both sit in the front just so that he won’t think that we will take him out of the seat. If his crying were only softer, maybe we wouldn’t mind it so much. But boy, does Caleb have one good set of lungs. Must get it from mommy.

Caleb had his first dip in the pool the other day. And he had his first swim in the ocean yesterday. That’s his pale chubby father holding him.

On that same day we went swimming, we saw a couple of humpback whales just outside our place. You can see in the distance the whale blowing out air.

Here’s the beautiful sunset from our place.

Daddy got a little ambitious on our rest day and wanted to take a short stroll to L&L for a plate lunch. That stroll turned out to be much further when you’re actually walking. We stopped at McD’s instead. Great idea. You see this half-eaten apple pie…

Yes, it’s fried. And I thought these things only existed China now. The only other thing I could notice different about McD’s in Hawaii is that they serve saimin. Saimin? No Taro pie? No pineapple pie?

I can post pictures of my sexy wife in her swimsuit, but I won’t. That’s for me and me alone!

We drove out to PCC today. Not Pasadena Community College (Caleb was confused as well since he goes there every week), but Polynesian Cultural Center. It’s a long drive. For those of you who don’t know, Hawaii doesn’t have a lot of roads. There’s one main road that goes around. You can check out the map. So we’re staying out in Waianae on the west coast. If you look, North shore isn’t very far from us. True. We learned in geometry (or maybe even earlier) that the closest distance between two points is a line. If you look even more closely, you can see that there are no roads from the west coast going anywhere but south. So you must head south, get on the 1, then go back up north up the 2 in order to get to the north shore. PCC is over in Laie, which is even further away. So it’s quite a drive. We had to time it so that 90 minute drive coincided with Caleb’s nap. Remember earlier how we said he wasn’t liking the car and it was hit or miss? Today it was a hit, baby!

(You notice the interstate highways as well? That’s the first thing I noticed when I saw a map too. Interstate freeways in Hawaii? What other state can I drive to? Oregon?)

Driving along the road to PCC was quite nice. We were driving along the north shore, and during the winters the waves can be nasty. This picture doesn’t do it justice from what we really saw.

PCC was fun. It was tiring with a baby though. And the place is run by Mormons, so that’s not so fun. But it was pretty entertaining. I do enjoy learning about other cultures (although I didn’t learn that much today). And it’s fun watching Yvonne participate in things like hula…

twirling pois…

And Caleb playing with sticks…

Enough of that. It’s time to sleep. Yvonne isn’t not feeling well, so pray for all of us! We’re going to need it if you want to see more of us doing silly things. Or if you only want to watch Caleb playing on the ground in our apartment, then don’t pray. We would certainly appreciate the prayer though.

March 3, 2008March 3, 2008

All Messed Up

[Video updated in last post. Go watch it]

For those of you who don’t know, we’re in Hawaii now. Before we came on the trip, we decided that we’re not going to have Caleb on his set sleeping schedule, seeing how it’s 2 hours earlier here, and if we ever want to do anything at night, he has to break his sleep routine. And I must say it has not been as bad as I expected. Still it hasn’t been good.

The plane ride was good. Caleb slept for a little over an hour during the 5+ hour flight. He played most of the time. We made sure to bring lots of toys.

Caleb usually goes to sleep around 6-7pm and wakes up around 6am at home. So here in Hawaii, that means he wants to sleep at 4-5 and wake up at 4am. Not so good for him. Not so good for us. Since we’re changing his sleeping pattern anyways, we decided to keep him up the first night. He went to sleep at 8:30pm local time the first night (that’s 10:30pm for him at home). He was dead tired, and slept pretty well… He only woke up once, but of course he woke up for good at 4:45am. That’s a little tad early for us. Again he slept at 8:30pm tonight. (He just woke up crying now at 10:52pm). Hopefully he’ll have a good night the rest of the night. Please God. We like sleep. We really do.

Even though Caleb still isn’t sleeping well, he’s trying. He’s getting sleep wherever he can and without our help. Much better than we thought he would do.

Even when he’s not getting enough sleep, Caleb has been good for much of the last 2 days. He’s usually terribly grumpy. But he can just sit in the stroller for long periods and not say much at all. What a trooper.

Of course, Caleb’s schedule isn’t the only one that is messed up. Today we ate lunch at 3pm, not cause we weren’t hungry. I wanted Hawaiian food. But I couldn’t find any place that would be satisfactory for me. What kept us from dying was eating sundaes and fruit and yogurt parfaits and McDs. And of course our favorite, Peeps.

We did drove a lot today. I, of course, was navigating, so that never turns out well, hence the 3pm lunch. We finally found some authentic Hawaiian food at Wolf Gang Pucks. Well not so much authentic, but it was still good nonetheless.

We spent much of the day in Waikiki. I finally got my Hawaiian food for dinner at 9:30pm. Yum.

Other than that, we haven’t done too much. Our condo is right next to the ocean. We’re at the non-touristy side of the island. The view is beautiful.

Must sleep now. So tired. Yawn.