happy birthday daddy!

May 2nd, 2010

J turned 28 today! Maya and I tried to spoil him as much as possible! He started his birthday with breakfast in bed. Maya and I got up early so we could both get ready for the day in time to make breakfast for him. If he was a sweets fan I would've made some scrumptious french toast or pancakes, but I know my husband and he would prefer to have his "regular" eggs: sunny-side up with a runny yolk, made with two whites and two whole eggs. He ALWAYS makes himself eggs in the morning. He loves to have them with a myriad of toppings but his favorite to date is crystal's hot sauce with basalmic vinegar. (I know, doesn't sound very appetizing to me either! ;) And upon a recent trip back to Iowa when visiting mom and dad silber's house he exclaimed "you have worchestershire sauce!" So, on special occasions he will treat himself to a little worchestershire sauce as well. I told him we could buy this sauce too and he told me he never has because it is too expensive...so when I went to the store the other day I found a bottle for less than $5. So, we now have this special sauce as well! :)

During breakfast in bed he got a birthday call from mom silber and miss josie, a birthday girl herself. It was her sweet 16! They get to share birthdays! J got his birthday present a little early this year...a toshiba notebook computer with a flip-down screen so he can do digital paintings/drawings. Since he is still job searching we decided to go ahead and buy his present early (back in February) so he could get some use out of it before starting work somewhere, and also to start building his concepts portfolio. But, even though he got his present from me early, Maya still had a gift to give. If anyone knows J, he HAS to have a cup of coffee in the morning, like right away, the first thing he does when he wakes up. So, we made his a special coffee cup with one of his favorite pictures of Maya on it!

Next up on the agenda....Kyle and Brandy came to visit. J decided he wanted to go on a nice afternoon walk through Golden Gate Park with everyone. So, when they came over we were off to the park! When we got back I immediately started his birthday dinner. I made chicken parmigiana from scratch! I got the recipe from here. It was my second time making it, so I got smart and prepared as much as I could ahead of time. Initially I thought to myself...ok I don't HAVE to make the sauce from scratch as well, I can just buy the stuff that comes in the jar....but then the other part of me thought, but if I am going to really give this cooking thing a try, I better make it all fom scratch! The first time I made it, J LOVED it! So, it was his request to have it again for his birthday. I also made this super scrumptious olive-cheese bread: recipe here.  And of course for dessert the famous chocolate pie from Jason's great grandma Norton. And the third time was a charm for me! I tried to make this said chocolate pie last year for his birthday and it didn't set all the way so we had a runny chocolate pie. Then, when mom and dad silber were out to visit, I had mom silber teach me how to make it, but it turned out runny that time as well. ***note we had switched from drinking cow's milk to drinking soy milk and we only had soy milk on hand when mom silber was teaching me how to make the pie. So, the third time I bought some skim cow's milk since my dad was going to be visiting soon and voila! it turned out perfectly!

so the children's place was selling little baby sunglasses, 2 for $5...I don't know what is more hilarious...J's facial expression or maya sporting her new shades....I just can't take her serious in her new glasses! makes me giggle everytime I see this picture! but, they do really help!

We all settled in and watched Sherlock Holmes.

It was a fabulous day! Thank you so much mom and dad Silber for giving me the LOVE OF MY LIFE!

finger-on-the-cob anyone???

April 29th, 2010

Happy Happy Birthday to Mom Luneburg this day! :) I know she is off traveling with my dad and grandpa down to Kentucky to visit Uncle Larry & Jo. Meanwhile, this is what we were doing at the Silber apartment in San Fran! Maya continues to LOVE her hands and fingers and gains a little more control and fine motor movement by the day! She has recently found our faces and will reach out and touch them with her tiny little hands....it is one of our favorite things she is doing right now. She also loves holding onto our fingers and will very readily bring them to her mouth for a taste!

so we coined a new term for her....she prefers a finger-on-the-cob vs. a pacifier. giver her your finger and she is super content...

give her a pacifier and this is what she does...like it is the grossest (is that a word??) thing she has ever tasted

and she has refused each and every one of these....soothie, soothie "gum drop", nuk, avent, 3-6m soothie

but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if she prefers fingers over a pacifier because she gives us the biggest smiles that just fill our hearts right up. and even though she is long and lean and still fits into a lot of her newborn clothes, she still sports a tiny double chin.

do we have a chef in training on our hands?

April 26th, 2010
I think Maya's eyebrows grew in over night! All of a sudden they were there! She looks like she may be a little strawberry blondie girl by the looks of the color of her hair these days. Somehow she has managed to achieve the infamous baby bald spot on her little head. The crazy thing is that I am totally guilty of holding her A LOT so I am thinking she may be rubbing her head in her bassinet at night. She tolerates her tummy time these days but still is not a huge fan and definitely is not getting 4 hours of it each day! She hasn't rolled totally over yet but she is getting really close, she can make it up onto her sides without a problem. Sometimes she is really content to just sit in our laps, and we are trying to enjoy this as much as possible because we know these days are limited! We were able to watch the movie The Hurt Locker with minimal interruptions! I would have never considered renting this movie before it won so many occars...but since it did I figured it must be pretty good! J was super skeptical because he isn't really a fan of the "shoot 'em up" movies, but this was totally different! I would definitely recommend you see it!

P.S. her little outfit was a gift from kylie! :) maya can make any outfit look super duper cute! she is at this in-between stage where she is too long for her 0-3 month clothes but her 3-6 months clothes totally dwarf her. she is so long and lean, just like her daddy! so glad she got those genes! ;)

little miss got a new toy! she loved my parent's bouncer when we were visiting in Iowa so I thought I would check out craigslist to see what I could find...and sure enough I scored another sweet deal! She LOVES this bouncer...it vibrates and bounces depending on how active she is. She just kicks and kicks her little legs when she is in it! She reaches for her little "friends" and concentrates so intently and will eventually get ahold of them, and then gets to excited that she finally did that she starts kicking and loses her hold on them! It is such an adorable little cycle she goes through!

April 27th, 2010

We are thinking she may become some kind of a chef in her day...she loves to be in the kitchen! She just hangs out in her bumbo chair while we are cooking or doing the dishes. She is so content just to watch us, and we just step her through what we are doing. She just has so many facial expressions I just couldn't stop clicking away.

The trek to Ocean Beach

April 25th, 2010

So the other day we were out on one of our walks and we started walking west towards Ocean Beach. About 40 minutes into our walk I asked J how far we were from the beach and he figured we had to be pretty close. Now, the funny thing about this is that he sometimes rollerblades to the beach and then runs back home for a good workout. I have asked him on other occasions how far away the beach was when out on our walks in golden gate park and he would gasp and say "It would take us ALL day to walk to the beach from here." So, I never really gave it much thought after that. Fast-forward to the other day when he said we had to be pretty close and we were only about 40 minutes into our walk! hmmm....so maybe it wouldn't take all day to walk there! ;) We made it to the beach and back home in about 2 hours round-trip. It was definitely a trek! I was interested to see how far we had walkd and was shocked to discover that Ocean Beach is at least 3 miles from our apartment...so we walked a little more than 6 miles! So we decided it was a fun new walk, and the scenery on the way is gorgeous....you can take a wooded trail almost all the way there! This time around Maya was a lot more alert and decided she needed a little snack on the way, so we went off path to a hidden area of fallen tree trunks and we took a mini snack break for her!

as you can see Ocean Beach is quite a bit different than Baker Beach. Ocean Beach has higher tides that roll in so there is a larger area of sand, and that sand is a lot more hardened from the waves. It is also right next to the famous highway "one" so that generates A LOT of traffic. If you look close you can see that there is quite a bit of graffiti on the cement barrier between the beach and the highway. And all of the green in the distance is Golden Gate Park!

and as always you can see the fog hovering over the ocean. I didn't realize how foggy this city was until I was actually living here. Jreminded me that san fran's nickname is Fog City! I know you all may be jealous that we live so close to these wonderful beaches, but what you may not be jealous of is that it never really gets above 70 degrees here! You can see that most of the people are fully clothed at the beach! :) I had to snap a picture of these surfers because I totally wish I new how to surf! This was a Saturday or Sunday I believe and it was a high of 70 so the beach was totally packed that day! Either way, I love the ocean breeze, the sound of the waves crashing in, the seagulls swooping into the water and the warm sand between my toes.

double date night... location...our apartment!

April 23rd, 2010

We have been dying to get together with Mandy and Luke on a double date ever since we discovered that the guys have so many similarities! lLuke is just a few years older than us and is working on finishing his Bachelor of Fine Arts just like Jason did. I believe his major is in graphic design so he is an artist just like J and Mandy and I are both nurses that work in the PICU! So it just works for so many different reasons! :)We FINALLY had them over for a mini double date. Thankfully they were cool with coming over since it is way easier than hauling Maya out and about. They brought the appetizers: some cheese (Boursin garlic and herb=super scrumptious) and crackers and the drinks. And I made this AWESOME taco soup that I found on this blog here. It is so super easy...you just pour everything into your crock pot and it is ready in no time! I have made this many many times now and I think it is one of our favorites because the leftovers still taste awesome!

she totally fell asleep with her hands in her mouth...it was so ADORABLE I just couldn't help myself from docuementing it! she normally fusses for five minutes or less before she puts herself to sleep in her swing, but not this time, she was just sucking away on all four of her tiny little digits and poof she was out!

back to our double date night....remember when Maya was born and Mandy and Luke came to visit us in the hospital and we told you how smitten Luke was with Maya....well he still is! He is going to be such a fabulous daddy some day! He just picked her right up like a natural! He played with her and she LOVED it!

She does this thing where when you play "airplane" with her she opens her mouth so so wide....so we coined the name "little birdy" for her when she does this neat expression!

and a night wouldn't be complete without a little MAD GAB! Thanks to mom Silber for giving me this for Christmas last year! This has been a staple in our double date nights at our place! If you haven't ever played you NEED to! It is so hilarious to listen to everyone trying to sound out the phrases! First we played J & J vs. Mandy & Luke and then we played girls vs. boys and I was on the winning team BOTH times! :) But then we changed it up and played a game that they brought (Taboo) and they totally smeared us! We need to work on our gaming skills! J got a little frustrated with me during the last game...he was trying to describe something to me without using the main "easy" clues and I just couldn't figure it out. So as I was thinking about writing this in our blog today it sparked a conversation about what games are our favorite. He readily let me know that he is not really a fan of board games or cards but prefers to play games like pool or darts or croquet. So then I said, "oh so you like to play solo" and he replied, "no I just like the more physical games" to which I replied, "oh you don't like the thinking games" and he disagreed. But, I think that is how you would categorize them! :)

It was a super fun night, and it was totally doable with Maya. I just had to sneak out a few times to nurse her.

Then on Monday I got to have lunch with these pretty ladies! Kylie and Mandy! We ate lunch at Pacific Catch which is just a hop skip and a jump away from where we live. I was able to put little miss in her carseat holder/stroller and walk to the restaraunt. It is really kid-friendly which helps a lot! Maya was a happy camper for most of the visit and ended up taking a tiny cat nap in my arms after we were done eating. We were able to recap about our night on Wednesday night for Jillian's birthday. And very soon we will get together to celebrate Mandy's birthday! Can't wait!

dear jillian's birthday...mommy's night out

April 21, 2010

About a year ago Mandy introduced me to these ladies...they are all Labor and Delivery nurses at UCSF. Both Jillian and Brittany were my nurses during my hospitalization when I had Maya. Jillian was both my ante and post-partum nurse and Brittany was the nurse that discharged us! These girls are a BLAST! They try to get together for each one's birthday to celebrate and I was lucky enough to be invited to Jillian's this year!

Miss Jillian's 29th birthday celebration started at Bossa Nova downtown San Fran. It was such a scrumptious dinner! We just ordered a bunch of dinner entrees and appetizers and shared them ALL! It is a restaraunt based off of traditional brazilian cuisine and I tried a bunch of new things like tuna tar tar, coconut rice, Pao de Queijo (cheese bread), Coxinha (chicken and cheese yumminess), Croquete de Camarão (shrimp something), Picanha Appetizer (steak), and goat cheese! I don't think there was one thing I ate that I didn't like! We went out on a Wednesday night and since all of us are either married with kids or almost-engaged the focus was to have the most fabulous girl's night ever! After dinner we headed out to do a little karaoke! Jillian had the most amazing voice...she should definitely try out for AMERICAN IDOL! She was SO good!

Front: Brittany, Mandy, Jillian

Back: Trinh, J, Kylie and Sarah

my dear mandy-totally my best friend in san fran-we both work in the PICU