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Wednesday me and Sienna had dim sum with my parents, my grandmother, my 2 aunts and uncle. They came into Brooklyn and we went to the same place we had gone to on my birthday. I think the name is East River? Or something like that, I forgot to take notice. I remember it because it’s in the old Saturn dealership building. Sienna had been cranky earlier in the week with not wanting to go down for naps and her molars coming in. She was her usual self at dim sum. The food tasted a little better than when we first went and seemed to be more variety. The place was totally packed, which is so surprising for a Wednesday!

Dim Sum with Grandma from Lisa on Vimeo.

I think it is totally cool that Sienna gets to meet her great grandmother! She was acting her usual shy self when Great Grandma came up to her. It’s a shame that I am not as close to my grandma and aunts as we could be. When I was younger, I want to say around 11 or 12 although I could be wrong on the age, my mother stopped associating with her parents and brother and sisters. The reason is still unknown to me to this day. No one would tell me why all ties were cut off. They did not start speaking again until maybe around 2000? It was right before me and Yves got married (as my aunts invited themselves to our Vegas wedding.) Our first dinner back into the family was held in Queens and pretty awkward. Some hellos and idle chit chat with my aunts and I’m not even sure I got hellos from my cousins. But whatever. I figured as more get togethers were held, the awkwardness would go away, I mean I’m not surprised. It had been years! They don’t know me and I don’t know them. I confess that I envisioned being able to finally have aunts to go shopping with or just to grab some food or just to bitch to about my mother. That never happened. And the awkwardness never went away. For the most part, dinners consisted of idle chit chat and then they would just converse amongst themselves. After awhile it seemed pointless to even attend these functions. We started turning them down more and more and accept just once in awhile to show ourselves. Which is such a shame really. I realize that my family is very private and that’s fine, it’s just too bad I’m not part of the family.

Hmph, well I don’t mean to be debbie downer, I kinda went off on a tangent a bit. Happy fun times will continue in the next post! HA!

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Last week I had a couple of hours of alone time, well, time without Sienna. Monday night was craft night at Etsy Labs and I was interested in going because it was a recipe slam where participants send in their favorite recipes and we make a little booklet out of it AND Sweet Tooth of the Tiger were co-sponsoring it. You know what a sweet tooth I have! I couldn’t resist their mini strawberry cupcake and peanut butter cupcake. Very rich (I was warned), a little too rich for even my sweet tooth. And since I did not have dinner yet, I ended up with a little tummy ache! Danielle taught us how to put the booklet together and I’m pretty sure I did this before but a refresher didn’t hurt. Everyone was nice and into their project and it went so quickly. They had another project afterwards (stenciling onto a tote bag) since it was so quick but my stomach demanded some food! And I knew there was a Golden Krust by the train! Yves was surprised I was home as early as I was and was jealous I had some patties but was glad I brought him some Ting!

Danielle showing us how to make our booklet as well as a live webcam (which of course I end up sitting right in front of so everyone in internet land got to see my pretty face! HA!)

My booklet!

Then Wednesday afternoon my parents watched Sienna while I went to have some lunch and browse Barnes and Noble on Court Street. I ended up having lunch at Layla Jones and got a chicken and goat cheese press sandwich. YUM! It was quite filling! After checking out the magazines and craft books, I decided to check out the newly opened Yogo Monster on Court Street. They had a grand opening special of free toppings! I was good and got fresh fruit with my blueberry and original flavor yogurt. It was good, better than pinkberry, which is a bit too bitter for me.

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August marks the 4 year anniversary of the CD mix of the month group and we celebrated it in the daylight at Coney Island this past Saturday. What fun! Me, Robyn, Brenda, Alison, Carrie, Nuno, Alan and Gio were the attendees. Me and Robyn were the only ones brave enough to ride the Cyclone (Nuno was running late so he rode later). The Wonder Wheel was super (swingy) fun, the Freak show was goofy and not really so freaky (or maybe I’m just jaded?), the bumper cars were fun but I was disappointed Nuno couldn’t get on (the car he was in didn’t work and then all the cars filled up). There are more pics in my flickr here as I am too lazy to repost them here. I admit I was feeling a bit achy on the home later that afternoon but I would still do it again!

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Today and Monday Sienna had a playdate with Nico. No pictures from today so these are from Monday.

This sequence cracked me up. There was an Elmo doll on the bench and we put them on the bench so we can take pictures of them. Top left: Sienna finds Elmo. Top right: Sienna shares Elmo with Nico. Bottom left: Sienna is chagrined, why did she give up Elmo? Bottom right: Oh Elmo, I’m sorry I left you! Nico: I’m outta here!

Sienna goes into the sprinklers. She never went into the sprinklers before, she usually would stand right outside the sprinklers and look at it. This time she went in. Starr said that Nico normally doesn’t get as wet as he did on Monday. We think they influenced each other. Notice in the next pictures that Sienna is wearing different bottoms. I thought she was done getting wet when I changed her. Clearly she wasn’t! At least I put her in water shoes.

Monday was also the 2nd day we tried the one nap a day schedule. It seemed to work out ok. After being at the playground almost 2 hours, Sienna was tired and fell asleep on the way home. Once home, we had lunch and then I put her down where she proceeded to stay awake for an hour before finally falling asleep and slept for 2 hours. Tuesday she surprised me by basically telling me she wanted a nap a little before 10am (she motioned up and then put her head on my shoulder, pointed and said go) Wednesday was also a 2 nap day. Today was a one nap day and showed signs of weariness by noon. I put her down after lunch around 12:45, checked on her half an hour later to see she was still awake (but quiet!) I told her nap time and I guess she fell asleep shortly after. So I guess I’ll just take each day as it comes.

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I wanted to make sure I wrote about the lunch me and Tammy had with our babies to celebrate our birthdays in July. We met up in Queens (!) at Just Like Mother’s, a Polish place in Flushing on Queens Boulevard. I was certainly glad Tammy had her appetite back because we went all out!

We got a sort of sampler plate with pierogies, stuffed cabbage, bratwurst, boiled potato, sauerkraut/cabbage salad type thing. Then we also got an order of potato pancakes and the meat blintze that I read about here. For dessert we got the small order of apple fritters (although I would like to try the blueberry blintzes next time-that’s right, I said it, I would go back.) The stuffed cabbage and meat blintze were the true standouts. I prefer the pierogies and apple fritters from Raymund’s in Williamsburg but everything was quite tasty considering it is Queens. 🙂 (In case you didn’t know, we have a running joke that everything in Queens is inferior to anything in Brooklyn and recently stated that I don’t mind visiting Queens but I wouldn’t want to live there and that’s no joke. HA!)

Sienna was perfectly happy eating plain bread with her fork and Zack was asleep the whole time! Tammy gave me the Real Simple Meals Made Simple cookbook for my birthday and I already made the super sized meatballs in it! I gave Tammy lavendar and geranium organic soap and hemp lotion as I was thinking about her rash and hives from the pregnancy. Of course I gave it to her 2 weeks later at the BBQ!

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What time is it? It’s BBQ time!

Last Saturday we had another BBQ and what a lovely day for it! (Sunday turned out to be rain and thunderstorms!) It was also Zack’s first social outing and his first time to Brooklyn (I don’t think he wanted to leave!) Baby brain be damned, Tammy and Mark brought over 7 layer Mexican dip (YUM!) and Pete made deviled eggs brought over in the nifty carrier (need I say YUM?) and Nate got delicious lemonade in cool bottles! (Poor Mari had to work!) Joy managed to come by at a decent time and brought delicious donuts from our place and Italian cheesecake from her hood. Since Richard couldn’t make it with his dog Casey, Skippy was on good behavior, as good as he usually is anyway! Joy laughed at me for going all the way to Dyker Heights to pick up stuff for the BBQ. I don’t care, I’ll be going back, especially for their Orange Italian soda! All in all it was a nice relaxing day, filling our tummies and chillin’ with our friends!

(taken by Tammy)

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We had our first official family beach vacation earlier this week on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Overall it was a nice time, great to get away and not be sucked in by my computer. There were some trying moments and general things we learned from the trip but I am glad we went. Originally, we were looking to rent a house for a week but it didn’t work out so we found a room at the Sea Spray Motel. It turned out to be more money but with the heated pool option, it was worth it.

We got there around 2:30ish and after a few minute wait, our room was ready. Once Sienna woke up from her afternoon nap, we jumped into the pool! It was nice to be able to get in right away without shivering from the cold water. For dinner, we went to Fred’s Beach Haven and while the food wasn’t terrible, we didn’t have a desire to get back there again. The evening was a little bit challenging as we were not used to being all together in one small room. Her pack and play fit nicely next to the bed and it took her about half an hour before she finally fell asleep while we quietly read our books on the bed. (I noticed that each night, she fell asleep at 8:30 no matter what time we put her down.)


Monday morning was the beach! (Of course, after having a delicious breakfast at The Chicken or the Egg where our faith in good dining on LBI has been restored) Besides a quick toe dip in the sands of Coney Island, this is Sienna’s first time on the beach. At first it seemed she did not like the sand but quickly took a liking to it. The water was COLD!!! I did not expect it to be so cold! So Yves and Sienna developed a quick game of “run away from the water” in between making sandcastles.

Beach Fun at LBI from Lisa on Vimeo.

So one of the things we learned not to do on vacation next time is change up Sienna’s routine. There were a few days before vacation where it was hard for us to get her to take her morning nap. I knew the time was going to come where her morning nap was going to end and thought it was now. So we decided to forego her morning nap and just put her down right after lunch a little earlier. It seemed to work out ok at first but then she just seemed to be more irritable later in the day. Another thing we learned is not to do too much. Monday and Tuesday we’d go to the beach in the morning and then the pool in the afternoon. I think that might be too much for her especially since we usually only have one outing on a regular day.

I had her pool seat on the side of the crib on top of the luggage rack and found her sleeping on it!

Lunch on Monday, we just walked over to the local deli, Black Dog Cafe where Yves got a delicious sandwich (we went back there again on Wednesday). Dinner, we decided to try “LBI’s best thin crust pizza” at O’Malley’s Pizza and Grille although I was skeptical about how good an Irish person can make a pizza. HAHA It was not bad! Yves thought it was okay but he has such high thin crust pizza standards!

Tuesday afternoon, we checked out the playground that was a block away from the hotel. They had some nice slides and there was no one there! It was nice to be able to go down the slide and not have to wait for the other kids to use it. Although Sienna did have to wait for her daddy to finish using the slide. HAHA

Too bad the sun was blinding when you come out of the slide! And of course we got some ice cream afterwards!

For dinner Tuesday night we went to Panzone’s for some pasta and discovered Sienna’s like for spaghetti! The food was pretty good even though the waiter screwed up my order.

Spaghetti! from Lisa on Vimeo.

Wednesday we had breakfast at Uncle Will’s pancake house. It was yummy! You can see what we got by the pictures and this time we learned not to order Sienna her own dish since she only takes a couple of bites from it!

After giving her her morning nap this time (!) we went back into the pool for the last time where we encountered admirers of Sienna. They were totally enamored by her and would not stop following her around the pool! It was cute at first but they were totally violating personal space and it was getting annoying. Their dad finally told them to ease off after we had to tell the girls to give us our space!

We decided to head back home after the pool on Wednesday instead of Thursday morning. We did feel a little cramped in the room but mostly because we haven’t gotten a good nights sleep since the bed was just horrible. For some reason, the mattress was higher in the middle so the sides were kind of sloped down. So we figured there wasn’t any point in staying another night since we were leaving early in the morning anyway.

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gocco1, originally uploaded by luluvision.

On the 9th, I took a Gocco class at Etsy labs with Carrie. Gocco is a little screenprinting machine from Japan and I’ve wanted one since college. Somehow I managed to always talk myself out of getting one. Then Gocco seemed to be all around me! Tammy’s friend Stephanie got one and made Tammy’s baby shower invites and Carrie had e-mailed me someone’s blog of gocco’d wedding invites (and it looks like lots of people do this!) Then I saw that Etsy labs were holding Gocco classes, I thought it would be fun to take a craft class and I’ve been meaning to check out Etsy labs for awhile.

Of course I started preparing my image earlier that morning. I had in mind to make ‘mom’ cards to give out to other moms to contact me for playdates. I definitely wanted an image of Sienna on it! Since Yves did not have access to a laser printer at the time, I had to get a photo copy because the image had to contain carbon.

The class was only 1.5 hours and it flew by! What fun it was!!! Had I given myself more time to prepare the image, I might have been more happy with it. But I noticed some tweaks I would have liked to make. Every Monday, Etsy has craft night and if you bring your own supplies (bulbs, screens, inks), you can use their gocco machine!

gocco2, originally uploaded by luluvision.

gocco3, originally uploaded by luluvision.

gocco4, originally uploaded by luluvision.

gocco5, originally uploaded by luluvision.

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Last Monday was an overcast and muggy day so I decided we should go check out the new Ikea in Red Hook! It would give Sienna a chance to run around a little bit and have lunch in the same place! I also wanted to check out some table and chairs for her. The children’s furniture is so colorful! My only issue is that I would prefer to be able to get in and out of a chair on her own so she doesn’t end up toppling over like she does with the beach chair we got for her. I guess she is still a bit on the small side as all the chairs were a little too high for her. I know I just need to wait a couple of months and she’ll probably fit them fine! We had lunch at the Ikea restaurant and this is actually the first time that I’ve had their meatballs! They were quite tasty and such a bargain! Sienna’s kid’s meal was just $1.99! The fries were so yummy that I ended up eating all her fries but gave her some of my mashed potatoes. I also ended up buying the colorful plastic utensils and small bowls.


It was funny to have her eating a meatball on her own and see her people watching. It was really kid friendly there with some play areas all around the store and family bathrooms and stuff. Ikea Red Hook was a bit of a pain to get to only because they are doing construction on Hamilton Avenue right under the overpass. So I don’t know how often we would go.

People Watching in Ikea from Lisa on Vimeo.

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For Independence Day, we decided to go into Chinatown for a dumpling lunch since it has been awhile. We went to our usual place right next door to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory on Bayard Street and I can’t remember the name! The food wasn’t as good as it used to be but still tasty nonetheless. The train ride over was a bit of an adventure since Sienna wanted to explore the train but we didn’t really let her, much to her dismay!

We went to J&R first so Yves can pick up new headphones and walked through City Hall Park. Sienna liked the fountain.

After lunch we got ice cream next door (pretty expensive especially since it’s Chinatown!) and went over to the park.

Walking Down the Slide from Lisa on Vimeo.

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