We be Parents

Today Hazel passed the major 12 month milestone – we’ve got ourselves a one year old! It’s amazing how fast time flies. Yenari and I spent much of the day yesterday recounting everything about Yenari’s labor and the hours that led up to it – definitely didn’t seem like something that happened a whole year ago.

Hazel has changed a lot in the last few months. She’s standing – both pulling herself up on everything around her and standing up without holding onto things. She’s also started learning things really fast and has become particularly good at copying us – she’s clapping, waving hello/goodbye, blowing kisses, imitating hand motions, trying to say the words that we’re saying, and generally acting a lot more like a kid. She definitely understands a lot more now – if we say hi/bye she waves and if we say jusaeyo (Korean for ‘please give it to me’) she politely hands over whatever she is holding. It seems like she’s coming into a bit of a renaissance period now and changing so much each day.

Here are a couple photos of her today at the park:

This Saturday we had Hazel’s first birthday party. We had it at the same park where we took the photos above and had about 30 people. Korean’s take their first birthday’s very seriously and we didn’t have the time to do all of the decorations for Hazel’s Dol, so we hired a couple people who do it for a living. They did an awesome job setting everything up:

Hazel was a bit quiet and cautious because of all the people, but she seemed to have a good time. Here she is picking from an assortment of toys – a stethoscope, golf club, microphone, money bag, pencil, and thread:

Hazel ended up picking the golf club – so it’ll be a career of professional sports for her…don’t quite know which gene’s will help out with that, but the Dol doesn’t lie, so a professional athlete she will be. So spent more time picking runners up – the stethoscope and money bag…maybe a lucrative career in sports medicine?

and then…cake!

Hazel enjoyed a couple bites of her cake…strawberries and all. And then she returned to playing with her guests:

Thanks to everyone who came to the party to help us celebrate Hazel’s first 12 months and to give her their best wishes for the next 12 months and beyond.

The last 12 months have definitely been a major learning experience for all of us, but life with Hazel is just getting more and more fun everyday.

Catching up on this trip over a month late!  After that series of posts on our Korea trip I had to take a breather, but I’m back now.

Right after our Korea trip, meaning the day we arrived back in San Fransisco, we all hopped on a plane to fly out to Boston so that I could make it to some meetings in in Southborough, MA.  Considering that we had already flown for 12+ hours that day, Hazel handled the 6 hour redeye flight east really well.  We arrived in Boston, got our rental car, drove to Southborough, and I ran straight to my meeting while Yenari and Hazel slept for most of the day.  Because they slept almost the whole day they were wide wide wide awake when it was time for me to get some sleep that night.  We had a couple rough days of sleeping and catching up from the difficult 12 hour time difference.

On our second night in Southborough we went to see Alden, Katie, Violet – this was the week of baby Field’s arrivial, but he hadn’t quite arrived yet.  We hadn’t seen Alden and Katie in over a year, so this was the first time they had seen Hazel.  It was great seeing them after so long – we had hoped to see a little baby, but we were a couple days early for that.  It the excitement of it all I didn’t manage to take any pictures though – booo.

On Friday afternoon we picked up Liza at the train station and then drove down to Connecticut to my mom’s house for a weekend of fun.  We spent just about all of our time in the house, but had many visitors to keep us busy and check in on Hazel.  Here’s Hazel with her grandmother and great grandmother:

and here she is with Yenari and her Aunt Kathleen:

all of the excitement definitely tired her out:

On Sunday, right before we left, Joe and Sophia came for a visit with their little one, Vera. Hazel was kind of afraid of Vera and got really jealous when Yenari picked her up. We snuck the two of them close enough together so I could take a picture, but they definitely weren’t doing much playing together on this trip:

Finally, on our way back to the airport on Sunday afternoon, we stopped by Yenari’s high school friend Jungeun’s place in Boston. Jungeun and her husband have a little baby boy, so we wanted to have a meeting of the babes. Hazel did a repeat of her jealousy act when Yenari picked up their baby and seemed afraid of him – just like he was with Vera earlier in the day.

And with that…our trip was over and back to California we went – this time for more than 12 hours!

Don’t worry, this is part five of five…last of the Korea trip posts, and only three weeks after our return!

In Korean culture, a baby’s first birthday is a major event.  Not only do people host parties with their friends to celebrate, but they also mark the occasion with a ceremony called a ‘Dol’, where the baby dresses in traditional Korean clothes and is placed in front of a table full of food, decorations, and series of items for the baby to choose from.  The item that the baby picks up first is supposed to indicate the profession or future of the baby later in life.  When Yenari was a baby she chose a pen and a book – foreshadowing the fact that she would spend a lot of time studying…a fortune that came true!

Even though our area of California has a very high population of Koreans, there aren’t really many places where you can buy Korean traditional clothes, and especially not many where you can buy traditional baby clothes.  So, one of our goals on our trip was to find clothes for Hazel for her upcoming birthday (just one month away!).  Yenari’s grandmother said that she wanted to buy the clothes for Hazel and knew just the place for it – an open market in the middle of Seoul – a wild place filled with thousands of tiny shops, food sellers, and lots of commotion.

We made our way through the market, slowly following Yenari’s grandmother who was weaving in through the tight corridors as only someone could who had walked the market thousands of times.  We eventually made it a set of shops dedicated to baby hanboks.  Here’s a small slice of the wall:

We spent a while there with Yenari, her mother, and her grandmother talking to the women behind the counter and seeing what they had to offer. After serious debate on exactly how hot the hot pink of the dress should be, and after holding up many different hanboks to see how they’d look on Hazel we made our choice and followed Yenari’s grandmother out of the maze.

On way back home, Yenari’s grandmother and mother were both feeling a bit sad that they wouldn’t actually get to see Hazel wear her fancy new clothes at her Dol, so we suggested that we have an early birthday party for Hazel (2 months early) so that all the family in Korea and Yenari’s friends could be a part of it. Everyone was excited about the idea and we planned the party for the weekend before we were to leave. Yenari’s grandmother started all of the cooking and decorating preparations just about as soon as she got home.

Fast forward a couple days to Saturday and the preparations. Yenari’s father was the boss of the preparations, making a trip to the Korean equivalent of Toys R Us to pick out some stuff for her to choose from at the table. The table itself was his other main job, decorating it with fresh fruit, handmade rice cake, handmade carved dried squid, and about twenty stuffed animals. Here’s a shot of Yenari’s father preparing the table, and following that the squid and rice cakes that Yenari’s grandmother worked so hard on:

Up next, the arrival of the guests and the dressing of Hazel in her hanbok:

Once dressed, Hazel had fun with the family before the event got going:

and then it was time to start the festivities – Hazel was put down in front of the table, quickly grew tired of her hat, and then started checking out all the things in front of her:

her first pick was a stethoscope – a total setup by Yenari, placed well in front of all of the other items. The stethoscope was followed by a princess wand, which was followed by a gold ring. Yenari’s father tried to have to her pick up money, a sign of wealth, but she immediately threw it on the ground…uh oh. We all had a great time watching it and then took some group photos:

and a not so happy photo of Hazel with her grandparents!

quickly turning back to happiness seconds later:

We were all so happy that we decided to have this fake birthday party and celebrate Hazel’s Dol. While this was the fake one it’ll definitely be much more authentic than the one we’ll do here in a few weeks. A huge thanks to Yenari’s grandmother for both buying the hanbok and for preparing all of the rice cakes and decorations, thanks to Yenari’s parents for for hosting the party and preparing the table, and thanks to everyone who make the trip out to celebrate with us and who got Hazel such nice presents.

We had another three days in Korea, but I’ll spare you all and not go into extreme detail on each and every minute. We visited Yenari’s grandfather’s grave in the countryside, we met Yenari’s father’s extended family (who Yenari hadn’t seen in about 10 years), had some last visits with Yenari’s buddies DoYoung and Eulji, and spent more time with Yenari’s family. It was a great trip and it was so nice to see Hazel get to know Yenari’s family and to have her spoiled with all of the attention. She changed a lot in this trip and started to look a lot more like a kid and a lot less like a baby (looks can be deceiving sometimes though!).

So it was back to reality…a long flight home with an almost immediate hop back on to a plane for all of us to go to Boston (for my work) and Connecticut (to see my family)…but I’ll leave that for another post…

After our first week in Korea it was time for a vacation within a vacation – a four day weekend trip to Jeju Island – Jeju is a volcanic island off the southern coast of Korea that is a popular travel spot for Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese…it’s kind of like the Hawaii of Korea. We headed to Jeju with Yenari’s parents and grandmother on a short 50 minute flight from Seoul.

We got our rental car, a three row mini-van, and Yenari’s father assumed the role of tour guide for the duration of our trip. On the way out of the main town we stopped at a supermarket to pickup some food, and then at the public market – a crazy place – to pick up some abalone. Check out the massive scallops next to the abalone:

On the way to our hotel on a drive through the center of the island we stopped at big volcanic crater to take a look. Yenari’s parents and grandmother watched Hazel (which they did at countless spots in the trip) while we made our way to look around. The area was covered with magma everything – from the rocks lining the stairs up to the crater to the roofs of the surrounding buildings:

We continued onto Royalville – our hotel that was a modern condo-like setting right on the ocean with 3 bedrooms, and living room, and kitchen:

That night Yenari’s father prepared the abalone three ways: sashimi, pan-fried, and as a part of a rice porridge – all were excellent. This trip was the first extended period of time that Hazel had with her great grandmother…and they became great friends. Here’s Hazel sitting between her great grandmother and her grandfather at breakfast the next morning:

The next day we spent primarily driving around the island and checkout out the shoreline and the waterfalls pouring local streams and rivers into the ocean:

At the end of the day we headed to the Jeju airport to pickup Yenari’s friend Eulji who joined us for just over 24 hours – but an action-packed 24 hours – on Jeju. In those 24 hours we did a lot of eating, climbing, fishing, swimming, and sight seeing. A couple photos:

We made a number of trips to that swimming pool at our hotel and Hazel started to enjoy it quite a bit at the end. She was a bit scared in the beginning and definitely didn’t like any water getting on her face, but she had fun with everyone carrying her around the pool, splashing water, and playing in an inner-tube:

It was a great trip – so many beautiful things to see, great things to eat, but more importantly we had such a good time with Yenari’s parents, grandmother, and Eulji. Hazel formed a real bond with both her great grandmother and her grandfather and everyone took their turns in playing with her. She was so excited and pumped that she wouldn’t nap or sleep well…so she just partied until she crashed:

Our first week in Korea was mostly spent meeting up with Yenari’s friends from middle school and high school, spending time with family, and eating!

We started off the week on Monday picking up Yenari’s grandfather who was set to leave for Thailand the next day – he lives part-time in Korea, part-time in Thailand, so it was great to see him again (after the wedding the previous day).  We all headed to Yenari’s father’s office and met up with him to go to a nearby sushi restaurant for lunch. He are a couple of us eating the feast:

and Yenari’s father keeping Hazel occupied – but Hazel did the reverse – she kept him so occupied he didn’t really get a chance to eat anything:

Next we headed up to Yenari’s father’s office at the Korean Creative Content Agency, a government agency that promotes Korean culture overseas, with a focus of Korean music, movies, tv, animation, and video games – they do both promotion overseas and give grants to Korean content producers to allow them to finance their efforts. Up in his office, Hazel spent her time pretending that she was the boss:

His office was great for kids and much more fun that the average office since it was filled with stuffed animals, action figures, and posters from various things he’s worked on. The bottom floor even had a full Pucca Exhibition – here a couple shots from our visit:

It was a great little excursion of spending time with Yenari’s family, eating great food, and seeing a cool exhibit. On the way back to Yenari’s parents apartment we stopped so that both of u could get new glasses, and while waiting Hazel read the paper with her grandmother:

The next day was a busy day – we first went to lunch with Jooyoung, one of Yenari’s high school buddies, at an American themed restaurant (though it wasn’t actually so American!). Yenari had a great time catching up with her, but Hazel was a bit cranky so I was busy walking her around the restaurant and getting her to sleep – in all the excitement was forgot to get a picture with Jooyoung. After spending a couple hours with her at the restaurant Jooyoung gave us a ride to Doyoung’s house so we could spend more time with her.

It was a nice day so we went out on a walk with Doyoung and her almost two year old boy Daehyun. As we were walking Doyoung spotted one of her son’s favorite places – a mini amusement park / restaurant aimed at 2-4 year olds called Chiro & Friends (who are cartoon characters in Korea). Hazel was a bit too young to fully enjoy all that they had to offer, but that didn’t stop her from having an awesome time – here are some photos:

The kids weren’t the only ones playing – here are Yenari and Doyoung showing off their architectural work:

We ate some good food there and then paid the extra fees for spending more than the two hours that came with the price of admission. The three hours we spent there were a blast!

The next night we met up with another of Yenari’s high school friends, Sanghee. Sanghee went to school in San Francisco a couple years ago, so I know her too. Here are the girls, catching up at an Italian restaurant in the middle of downtown Ilsan:

And…last, on the list for this week was Daehyun’s 2nd birthday on Thursday. We met up with Doyoung and Daehyun for some lunch and then headed back to their place to help prepare the decorations for the party. Hazel had fun with all of the people giving her attention, and Yenari had fun spending more time with Doyoung and seeing Jiyoung, another high school buddy. Somewhere in the midst of decorating Hazel caught on to crawling – not a traditional crawl yet, but she can make her way across a room to where she wants to get, so she’s dangerous now! Here are some photos from the party:

All in all, a great first week in Korea!