Taiwan 2012

Two years, that's how long it has been since the last time we went back to Taiwan and Joy has been longing to go back to visit her families, friends and enjoying all the delicious food that Taiwan has to offer. So it was decided months ago that we, including my parents, would fly back on 4/12 and stay there for two weeks.

Since this is the first time that we are taking both Cadi and Cody on a long trip together, we didn't know what to expect.

Cadi and Cody both loved the airport. It's got so much room for them to run around and so many things to see. For the plane rides, even though Cadi has experienced it once, but she she was only a couple months old back then and we weren't sure how she would handle it this time. Fortunately, Cadi and Cody handled it pretty well. In fact, Cadi didn't cry at all on the plane; I was definitely surprised by that. Cody gave us a little bit more trouble but that was mostly due to us restraining him from running on the plane, lying on the floor and kicking the back of other passengers' seats. There's the difference between a boy and a girl.

After we landed at Taiwan, since my parents weren't staying at the same place as we were, Cadi and Cody were left with just Joy and myself. Because our arrival time was pretty late, the originally plan was to call taxi to take us to Taipei. But Joy's friend, 林燕芳, her husband and son, made a surprise appearance. (Thank you guys so much.)

When we arrived at Joy's parents' place, as expected, Cadi and Cody went into defensive mode. For the next two weeks, Cadi pretty much will only stick to her mommy and as a result, I had to take Cody.

The weather of Taiwan's April felt warm and humid to me and it got warmer and more humid the further south we went. I'm glad it wasn't the hottest month in Taiwan and I was able to have 75% of my appetite intact. However, since I was the one taking care of Cody, it meant I could not have eaten as much as I could have without the children. :)

At this time, I would like to thank a couple more of Joy's friends. First up, 李俊宏 and his wife. They drove us around the town to have lots and lots of good eats...several times throughout the two weeks. Without them, our taste buds would have suffered greatly. Second, 吳美鈴 and her husband 顏永文 for arranging and taking us on a two day sight-seeing road trip of Kaohsiung. While we were still in NY, when Joy told me that we would be going to Kaohsiung to sight-seeing, I was like "What? Where can we go and what can we do in Kaohsiung for two days?" Well, that road trip turned out to be a very good one. Since I grew up in Kaohsiung, the Kaohsiung as I know it has definitely changed a lot. Ever since I came to NY 20+ years ago, I've never really gone back to visit Kaohsiung (other than the "Love River"), so I should have expected it.

Another road trip we took this time was to Tainan. We were planning to go somewhere else previously but Joy's mom thought it would be a good idea to visit Joy's grandparent in Tainan, that's how this came about. Joy's brother was the one who drove us there and back to Taipei. He took a couple days off from his work in China and went back to Taiwan to see us. Thank you, Ray.

Because my parents take care of Cadi in NY, so Cadi's pretty good with them. However, when we visited my grandparent's (mother's side) house in Kaohsiung and met up with my mom, Cadi would still cling to Joy and would cry/scream if my mom tried to do certain things with her such as giving Cadi a bath. However, when we got to my parent's house at Pingtung the next day along with my mom, Cadi became at ease once again with my parents. So I'm not sure what happened to Cadi when we were at Kaohsiung.

So, did Cadi ever open up herself to Joy's parents or sister? She did, on the day prior to the one we leave Taiwan, to Joy's mom and sister. That was only an illusion though. After only a couple hours of sleep that night and being waken up to go to the airport early in the morning, Cadi seemed to have forgotten all about it the next day.

Cadi's almost 3 and before the trip, Joy was thinking of potty train Cadi this year when summer arrives. After we come back to NY, a couple of days later, Cadi became 90% potty trained all of a sudden pretty much on her own. And as of 5/28/2012, Cadi is mostly without diapers except at night when she sleeps and when we are going out. She doesn't speak English yet but we are hoping to start teaching her soon. Not really sure what's the best way though.

And for Cody, he's going to be 2 in four more months. I believe he has finally got his drooling under control. He still doesn't speak too much and still can't seem to speak two different Chinese words together. He really likes to follow his sister around nowadays. Wherever Cadi goes, Cody wants to go too. And if you don't let him, he'll start complain by crying.

Since my Nikon D70 was already broken before we went back to Taiwan, the only camera that we have left is the Canon S95 point-and-shoot and that's what I used for the entire trip. At times, I really missed having a DSLR as it was very difficult to capture low-light and action photos using the point-and-shoot.


When we were near Tainan, we stopped by a bird watching place by chance. And next to the main road is a ditch with lots of small crabs. Here, Joy's father is looking for one to show Cadi and Cody. And yes, he did catch one.


At the "Salt Mountain", the place was selling lots of food with salt added. Egg, coffe, popsicle, etc. We let Cadi have a popsicle all on her own since it was so hot in Tainan.


Cadi helping Cody wiping ice-cream off his face.


Joy's grandpa had a store selling Chinese herbal medicines. Now it's Joy's cousin that runs it from day to day. When Joy's cousin took out dried goji berries to put in medicine packs, Cadi and Cody tried them and liked them immediately. When Joy's father heard about it, he got a bag full of the dried goji and gave to the grandchildren as snacks.


Garlics. I'm guessing this is the stage before they are sold on the market?


The room that we slept at while in Joy's parents' house. The children and Joy sleep on the mattress and I sleep on the wooden bed surface. The sacrifice a father makes. :)


My first time at this night market called Snake Alley (華西街夜市). If you know the Taiwanese film, Monga, this is one of the many places that the film took place. It's certainly different than other night markets because it's got a few expensive full restaurants.


As I mentioned, Cadi would not let most people hug her during this trip, this is one of those rare exceptions.


Joy's friend took us to this place that only sells pork sausages (shown in the photo) and one type of noodle. When we got there, I think there were only 4 pork sausages left. We bought them all. They were good...but I'm not sure how good if compared to other places.


I think some one promised Cadi to buy her an umbrella and Cadi would not stop asking about it until she actually got one. She picked out a yellow SpongeBob.


We went to Taoyuan for a day and stayed at Joy's friend's house. This was around 6 am, and we were preparing to take Taiwan high speed rail to go to Kaohsiung.


The boy behind us is the son of Joy's friends. While his parents are next to us, he liked tagging along with our family instead. On the high speed rail, he constantly wanted to sit with us and you'll notice that he showed up in quite a few of our family photos. So, naturally, we called him our "older son".


When his parents told him to sit down next to them, he wasn't too happy about it.


I like this photo. The wall says Kaohsiung Museum of Labor but that's only for that building. I don't remember the name of that area but it was a nice location. Seemed to have to lots of interesting stuff to look at and lots of photo opportunities.


Unlike Cadi, Cody weren't as resistent to letting strangers hug him. It was a good thing because that meant I get to relax a bit.


Everyone on the Kaohsiung trip except Cody and I. I was holding the passed out Cody in my arms when I took this photo.


And another early am photo taken in the hotel in Kaohsiung. We didn't come back to our room until close to 11pm the night before. :)


This seemingly simple food is really tasty (at least to me). it was from Pingtung.


Got to see Han, Ophelia and their new born daughter. Can you tell that they are a family from this photo?


When the children were still rather afraid of their grandpa after a couple of few days, grandpa decided to use his secret weapon, balloons. They worked wonders.



Cody willing to let his grandma giving him a bath.


And Cody strike a happy pose after the bath.


Not sure what got into Cadi. On the night before we leave Taiwan, this is what Cadi did to feed her aunt.

2011 Cancer Walk @ Central Park

It's been a few years since we've gone to a cancer walk with the NYYAD. Now that Cadi is able to walk by herself, we thought it would be fun to take Cadi to go for a walk. If Cody goes too, it would be too much "fun" for us, so we decided to leave him at home.

Because we woke up late in the morning, we met up with the members of NYYAD about half way of the cancer walk route. So for the actual cancer walk, we actually didnt do that much. However, we did do a lot of walking afterward.


Cadi preparing to leave the house.


Cadi enjoying some snack and drink after she crossed the goal line.


Cadi and a few members of the NYYAD.




During lunch, Cadi pretending Karin isn't around her.

 

2012-01-02: Random Cadi & Cody photos...from 5 months ago

Just eight more photos of Cadi & Cody from 5 months ago. LOL. Two months ago, I said I would be able to process photos faster but that has not been the case.

Cadi loves to go down to our basement nowadays. Not really sure what's so interesting down there but today, for the very first time, she chose to go down to the basement instead of going grocery shopping with us. That's amazing. What's Cadi learning nowadays? Her grandfather is teaching her to memorize multiplication tables and some ancient Chinese poems or something of that sort that even my sister, my wife and I don't know.

Cody loves his sister and will pretty much follow Cadi around the house. If he sees Cadi going somewhere and he is prevented from following, he may start screaming at a higher pitch than his sister did. Cody also likes to imitate Cadi. After Cody learned how to walk, he pretty much stopped crawling altogether. But not too long ago, Cadi was crawling on the ground and after Cody saw that, he started crawling with her sister too.

Comparing the personality of Cody to Cadi, Cody is definitely more outgoing. When outside, Cody will get acquainted with people and his surrounding fairly quickly and start wondering off on his own (a bit troublesome in my opinion).

Now, some photos.


Grandma sawing something back to Cadi's dress.





Cadi feeling happy on a lovely bench found outside a store near Union Square.

Just a little update on what's going on

I'm pretty behind in terms of getting the photos up to date...at least 6 albums behind. Main reason being that I have been spending time working on a version of this web site that works well on mobile devices like the iPad and iPhones. I have an iPad and it pains me to see this site not working well on it.

I do not have an album update this time but I wanted to have some updates on Cadi and Cody. Cadi celebrated her 2 year birthday a couple months ago and Cody celebrated his 1 year birthday just a couple days ago. Cadi is now speaking Chinese sentences and she's able to combine different words that she knows to form a sentence. She's a bit more willing to listen to what we tell her to do now although still doing things she shouldn't do occasionally, like throwing soaps into the toilet. Still, this is good because it's Cody turn expressing his curiosity in the house and it would be extremely difficult if we have to watch those two carefully at all times.

Cody has learned to crawl a while ago but now that he knows how to walk, he prefers that. We are supposed to reduce his formula intake to around 500 ml a day but since he doesn't suck on pacifiers and needs the bottle nipples (non-empty bottles to add) to fall asleep, we don't know how we're going to reduce the intake. Use water instead of formula maybe? Cody also has more face expression now. Not as many as his sister but at least it's not the similar look that he always had when he was younger. :)

No albums but here are 4 photos of Cadi and Cody.





Didn't want Cody to feel left out because of the girls were wearing these skirts made by Joy for Cadi's mini birthday party. So, I put one on Cody too.

Passport to Taiwan Festival 2011

Posting an end of May album in the beginning of August, yap, I know I'm fast.

So, we heard about this "Passport to Taiwan Festival" event at Union Square, since we've never been to one and it's supposed to have vendors selling traditional Taiwanese food, we decided to take the children to go check it out. We arrived there before the food vendors began selling, so the crowd at that time was not too bad. When the selling started however, in a very short amount of time (around 30 minutes), the place became packed.

Maybe it's because we go back to Taiwan every once in a while, we didn't find the Taiwanese food there that special. I was certainly disappointed in the lack of varieties to really represent Taiwan. Besides food, there were performances and many other booths that presented things, in someway, relate to Taiwan. While I didn't find the event to be a great one, it was still nice to see that many Taiwanese gathered in one place and hear some really traditional Taiwanese being spoken. :)


We were there for mostly the food but this is the ONLY photo that remotely relates to it. Why? Because there were simply too many people gathered around the food vendors and it was extremely difficult for me to get close to them especially with a stroller (Joy did all the food buying). What you see in this photo are not even real cakes. They are towels made to look like cakes, quite nice. I think these "cakes" can make some interesting wedding favors.


Cadi drinking winter melon tea. It may not sound good, but I love it. Cadi too but children will drink anything sweet. :)




Love what Vivian is doing here to Cody and love Cody looking at Vivian curiously, thinking "What a weird aunty".


There are certain shots that I just can't say why I sort of like them. This is an example. I just don't know why. :)


Looking at this, I guess it can be classified as "food related" as well. "Union Square Cafe" is supposedly a pretty nice (and not cheap) restaurant located around, well, Union Square. Because of it's price, we've never entered it and so can't confirm how good it's food is.




Wanted Cadi to stand still. She didn't want to cooperate.

小小's 1 year old birthday party

This is the first birthday party that Cadi and Cody attended.  Since I didn't want to bring my big camera, I used Joy's Canon S95 digital point and shoot.  This little camera has gotten good reviews but since I have been using a DSLR for so long, I just didn't feel very comfortable using it.  My gripe with digital point and shoot cameras has always been that they are slow to shoot, the Canon S95 is of no exception.   But really, it isn't fair to compare a digital P&S to a DSLR.  Besides, having never really used any other digital P&S and having just started using this camera, I'm not in a position to judge this camera...yet.  :)


This is the birthday girl, nicknamed 小小 (Little Little).  I don't remember the real reason for her nickname but she really is very small compared to other children of her age so this nickname suits her perfectly.  :)  As you can see from the decors on the wall, 小小 turned 1.


We did not have an elaborate birthday party for Cadi when she turned 1.  So I took this photo.  When Cadi asks in the future, I can say "Yes, mommy and daddy gave you a very nice birthday party when you reached the age one.  See this photo for proof."  =D


All these kids are sort of close in age.  Cadi is the oldest.  Second oldest is the girl on the left side of the table.  Third is "Little Little".  Fourth is the boy, Thomas, on the right side and Cody is the youngest here.  Even though Thomas is the second youngest, he is bigger than all but Cadi.  He's a 100 percentile baby.  Finishes drinking his formula in one shot.  I wish Cody can do that.