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This journal is about raising identical twins.The Twenty Second Month
Previous entries
Thursday, May 6, 1999 (21m+0d)
The twins are 21 months old today.When the twins did something bad, we would say NO to them in a firm voice with an angry face. If they did something really really bad, we would say no and snap their hands. They understand that as a punishment because sometimes they will snap their own hands when they see the angry look on our faces.
Saturday, May 8, 1999 (21m+2d)
We went to Oakland to visit mommy's friend Connie. She just had a baby girl 9 days ago. Cynthia was at 8 lb. 1 oz. at her first check up. She looks exactly like Connie. The twins were very curious of the tiny baby but they just looked from a distance.We went to Japantown in San Francisco afterward. We watched a toy cars race outside a toy store there. There were like 30 to 40 adults and kids waiting to take part in the tournament.
We tried to make a dinner reservation at the Equinox restaurant, but failed. Instead, we later had dinner at Benihana, the tappanyaki restaurant. The chef prepared the meal at the table on the "tappan" literally means "iron plate", yaki means grill. He played with the food while he was cooking. For example, he stacked up the orion rings with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top to form a hollow cone. He then dropped some water inside the cone and let it cook, the steam came out of the cone and made it look like a volcano. He also throws the shrimps around with his spectula. He hit the spectula on the cooking plate to draw attention before each of his trick. Joanne was scared of the loud noise made by the chef, she tried to hide under my armpit. I hugged her trying to comfort her, she ended up sitting on my lap and rested her head on my chest with her face turned away during the entire performance. She didn't cry but she was dead silent and grabbed my clothing really tight. I could tell she was withdrawing from the fear. When the chef left the table, I asked Joanne to see his departure, she then recovered her normal self. Jasmine was unaffected at all, she just kept eating everything that was sent to her plate.
Saturday, May 9, 1999 (21m+3d)
When we were out to lunch we bumped into Poon and family in the parking lot, we went separate way for lunch. Their family was having an early dinner to celebrate the Mothers' Day. After lunch, we went to where they had lunch and we chatted for a while. We found out that they are moving to Saratoga soon. Their daughter Claire is over 5 months old now and she weighs 15 lb. Sharleen's two nieces were happy to see our twins again, and they gathered around to play with the twins.We went out for the Mothers' Day dinner in the evening. We went to ABC seafood restaurant first, it was packed with people and the expected wait was over an hour. We decided to go to another one next door. We ended up having Shanghaiese cuisine for the evening.
Monday, May 10, 1999 (21m+4d)
Jasmine got two more teeth, the two upper cuspids. Joanne got her lower right cuspid.The score: Joanne 13, Jasmine 15.
Friday, May 14, 1999 (21m+8d)
Mommy was quite active this week, she took the twin to different places almost everyday.
Saturday, May 15, 1999 (21m+9d)
We went shopping for vertical blinds in the morning. After the twins took their nap, we then went to Jane's baby shower in the afternoon. The house was packed with guests. The twins behaved quite well among the crowd with no incident at all.After the party, we went to Stanford Shopping Center and later have dinner at Kioku Sushi.
Sunday, May 16, 1999 (21m+10d)
We had lunch with mommy's big uncle, Jennifer, Tina, Natalie and great-grandma at Mayflower in the Great Mall. After lunch, I went to the office to work overtime, while the "women" went shopping at the Great Mall.Mommy and the twins had dinner at Tina's and they brought me some leftover to my office.
Monday, May 17, 1999 (21m+11d)
Jasmine got a runny nose. She cries often especially during the hypnagogic state in bed.
Wednesday, May 19, 1999 (21m+13d)
Joanne got a runny nose. She also cries often because of her discomfort.
Wednesday, May 19, 1999 (21m+13d)
The twins are very noisy these days in addition to the recent crying. Jasmine babbles a lot, she makes a lot of vocalization, but we just don't know what she says. Joanne also babbles, but not as much.
Thursday, May 20, 1999 (21m+14d)
Because the twins each has a runny nose, mommy decided to let them rest at home the whole week.
Saturday, May 22, 1999 (21m+16d)
The twins have all recovered from the runny noses. We took them to the park to play on the slides and run on the lawn. When they saw the dandelions on the lawn, they picked them up and blew off the seeds. They remembered because we showed them how to do that once.In the evening, we went to CW's home for dinner. The twins ran around the house and played with Deanna and Addison. After dinner, we put the twins in beds in the guest room so that we could watch couple of movies on Laser disc. Jasmine fell asleep without problem. Joanne cried and refused to let us leave the room. We let her play on the sofa and finally she fell asleep next to us despite the noise from the TV. We left very late(past midnight) after the movies.
Sunday, May 23, 1999 (21m+17d)
We went to Stow Lake in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for a boat ride. Uncle Ivan, Aunt Tina and Cousin Natalie went with us and we rented two boats. The twins were enthusiastic to feed the water fowls with some crackers.We had dinner at Grandma Ling's place. Grandma and great-grandma were happy to see the twins, because we had not visited them for weeks.
Wednesday, May 26, 1999 (21m+20d)
The twins added a set of bedtime ritual recently. The twins each has a tiny (about 5 inch tall) plush baby doll. They call them "Babies" with accurate pronunciation. Joanne wants the green one while Jasmine keeps the pink doll. (we usually assign all the green stuffs to Jasmine because, both her names Jasmine & Jade implies green, so this one is an exception.) Every night before they lie down on their bed, they will put the dolls on the pillow, pull the blanket over the dolls' body and give their own doll a kiss. They basically repeat what we do to them every night. Jasmine will be unhappy and utter "uuh!" if we forget to kiss her doll good night. Joanne, on the other hand, doesn't complain as long as she got her own kisses.If daddy asks for a kiss from Jasmine, she will go out of her way to kiss mommy too (or vice versa.) She is fair.
Saturday, May 29, 1999 (21m+23d)
We got up at 4:30am in the morning, and left home at 5:30am for a trip to Southern California for the Memorial Day holiday. We didn't wake up the twins and let them continue their sleep in the car seats. We stopped on the way for breakfast near Bakersfield at around 8am when the twin woke up. After breakfast, we hit the road again. The twins got back to sleep for the rest of the journey.We arrived at Monterey Park in LA at 11:30am. We stopped by my Cousin Allen's place. It had been over a year since the twins last met Uncle Allen. The twins met Aunt Ivy and their cousins Amanda and Andrie for the first time. The twins seemed to remember Uncle Allen because they let him hold them, but were reluctant initially when Aunt Ivy approached them. Uncle Alex (Allen's brother) returned from Hong Kong just three months ago, his wife and kids stay in Hong Kong until the end of the school term. Uncle Alex bought us lunch at a nearby restaurant. We chatted a little more after lunch while the kids played together. Aunt Ivy gave the twins a rider toy car before we departed.
We left LA after 3pm heading towards Irvine. We arrived at UC Irvine 45 minutes later. We stayed with Ricky's family for the rest of the trip. Rick's family visited us about 10 months ago, the twins remembered them. We tried our best to separate the twins from Rick's dog, a pug whom they call E.T. because her face really looks like E.T. in the movie (DVD|VHS). At one point, E.T. sneaked near the twins and scared them big time. For the rest of the stay, the twins never got over the fear to get near the dog despite seeing the dog for several days.
Today is Rick's son Ray's 16th birthday. We had dinner at a nearby Szechuan restaurant and we had the birthday cake later in the evening.
Sunday, May 30, 1999 (21m+24d)
We went shopping at the Desert Hills Factory Outlet near Palm Spring. It is a huge shopping mall that looks like the one in Gilroy, except it seems to be bigger. It was an hour drive each way.After we got back, we had a buffet dinner at Todai seafood restaurant. My wife had three plates of sashimi, while I preferred the lobster tails.
Joanne tripped on the carpet and hit her cheek on the coffee table. She cried for about half a minute and returned to normal activity. She got a red bruise, which turned blue the next day. Her bruise still showed a light yellowish discoloration a week later.
Monday, May 31, 1999 (21m+25d)
We tried to visit the historic Irvine Regional Park after lunch, but we found the park was packed with people and the parking was full because today is the Memorial Day Holiday. People had to park their cars outside and walk half a mile to the park entrance. We decided to gave up the plan and went to the nearby Tustin Market Place instead. We visited couple of furniture stores including the famous chain store IKEA. Their furniture looks very nice with good design, though the material is not very sturdy or of top quality. The sale prices were cut below 50% in many items for the Memorial Day, we didn't buy any because we didn't want to carry the furniture back to North California.Rick bought us dinner at a vietnamese seafood restaurant in Little Saigon (WestMinster?). The restaurant is famous for their huge lobsters served at $11 per pounds. I bet the one we had was at least three pounds. We also had many other dishes including the softshell crabs.
Tuesday, Jun 1, 1999 (21m+26d)
Rick's kids went to school early in the morning. After we got the twins ready, we packed up and said good bye to Kathy and Rick. Before we headed back to North California, we stopped by the Irvine Regional Park and let the twins rode on the miniature railroad. We also went shopping at Yaohan and the famous South Coast Plaza. We indulged in the shopping mall until 4:30pm. We grabbed a bite at McDonald's and headed for the highway. We were stuck in stop and go traffic on highway I-405 for an hour just to get pass LA on its outskirts. I thought if I were to take I-710, which goes through the heart of LA, we would be stuck there for hours more. We reached I-5 at around 7pm and the road was all clear once we left LA. We arrived home at half past midnight. The twins were asleep the entire trip.This trip was relaxing and we spent most of the time eating and shopping. The twins enjoyed it too and they got good sleep on the road. We thought about going to LEGOLAND just a bit south of Irvine, but the twins are still too young for that so we decided not to waste the admission fee.
Thursday, Jun 3, 1999 (21m+28d)
The twins are 666 days old. Nothing bad happened despite the number.
Friday, Jun 4, 1999 (21m+29d)
Remember the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Tien-an-mon square in Beijing.
Saturday, Jun 5, 1999 (21m+30d)
We went to Cynthia Connie H.'s "one month birthday" party in Alameda. While her proud parents Ming and Connie were busy entertaining a large group of guests, mommy spent much time chatting with her old friends from her church group. Daddy was busy feeding himself and the twins. Anita's kids, Wayland and Lori were happy to play with the twins again.We took the twins to walk around Mervyn's after lunch. Then we visited Marianne and Ken. Marianne is expecting a baby by the end of the year.
We had dinner at Grandma Ling's place. We left the twins with grandma and went to see Star Wars: Episode I (DVD|VHS). When we were back at 10:30pm, Jasmine was already asleep. Joanne cried for pity when she saw us because she fell earlier and hit her nose and bleed. The bleeding had already stopped when we saw her, we helped her clean up the dried blood in her nostril. The twins refused to take the bottle from grandma because they ate quite a lot during dinner, so we force fed a bottle of milk to the twins before heading home.
Sunday, Jun 6, 1999 (22m+0d)
The twins are 22 months old today.
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started on Jun 14, 1999