Foreshadowing

Judging by Shea's expression in this photo, we're totally hosed once she becomes a teenager.

Making Gyoza/Potstickers

After Mom prepares the pork filling, gently spread water around the edge of the wrappers using your fingertips:

Scoop a teaspoon or so of filling into the center of the prepared wrapper:

Fold wrapper in half and pinch to seal:

Continue to pinch all across top seam and place on plate to be fried and steamed by Mom:

Dip in sauce and eat until your little tummy hurts:

Ice Cream Antisocial

Instead of throwing a loud, messy party this year to celebrate Shea's third birthday, we decided to downshift into low gear and get her a nice gift and take her out for fancy ice cream. With cherries on top. Because she's only three and we can still get away with those type of path-of-least-resistance shenanigans.

Here she is on the morning of her birthday, admiring the big pink card that her brother made for her while checking out her kickin' new playhouse -- complete with functioning yet gratefully muted doorbell, interior sink, seating for two and a mail slot! -- her hair still disheveled from the kind of sleep only a two year old turning three can muster.

And here she is reminding us once again that for kids the box never fails to be the best part of any oversized gift item.

On the Saturday after her birthday the four of us drove to Kaneohe to visit Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour -- a place I can guarantee John and I were about a thousand times more excited to visit than the kids were, if only because as children he and I both secretly dreamed of taking up permanent residence in its ice cream storage freezers and never ever going home again to the land of pot roasts and Brussels sprouts, yet somehow a place neither of us had ever had chance to visit.

As with most things built up over a lifetime of anticipation, it was really a huge bust -- more a diner than a parlour; the food was tepid, overpriced, and way too salty; and the decor looked mired in the late 1980s instead of the early 1900s -- and we were both hugely disappointed. But the kids dug it, and managed to show off some nice smiles in between squabbling over whose crayons were whose.

Everything was nice and festive until the birthday girl realized, after a ship's bell near our table was rung loudly enough to silence the entire restaurant, that the pinstriped wait staff was about to serenade her. In person. While looking at her.

Below, you can witness the delicious misery unfold.

Um, is this really happening right now?

"It's your B-I-R-T-H-day, let's all celebrate..."

Um, where's Alan Funt*?

Seriously, though -- so not cool...

"We'll sing a second verse, and then a third, to prolong your agony..."

No, really, you need to go away now.

Just leave this nice pink ice cream here and we'll call it even.

Shea managed to keep herself together long enough for the singers to disperse so she could get to the business at hand of quickly devouring her entire clown sundae, and now even speaks fondly of that day when we took her for fancy ice cream.

Especially the part about the cherries on top.

*Not that she'd know who this is (was), or anything...

Peter Parker Eat Your Heart Out

Everyone's A Critic

This was Shea's adorably coy reaction to being serenaded with the "Happy Birthday To You" song by her grandparents over the Webcam yesterday.



Immediately after this she opened the gifts they had sent her, one by one, in front of the camera.

Then, perhaps distracted by the surfeit of new toys at her disposal or just preparing to fully embrace the bipolar nightmare that is being three years old, she received their second round of birthday singing a little less graciously when, instead of folding her hands gently over her mouth again, she cupped them over her ears and shouted:

"This is hurting my ears!"

Her Last Day Of Being Two

American Graffiti

So...

Anyone out there have any magical tips for getting ball point pen and colored markers out of wood?

Peekaboo

A Long Way From Los Angeles

Earlier this month, we welcomed my longtime friend (no, really -- we went to junior high, high school and even college together; she's totally my people), Carolynn, and her daughter, Alyssa.

In what has quickly become a hosting tradition here, the kids ushered our youngest guest to the backyard and directly into the sprinklers within moments of her stepping through the front door.

As Carolynn was raised on a pretty steady diet of trips to Maui throughout her teens and young adulthood but had only been to Oahu as a young child, she has a deep love for Hawaii but we were able to show her "our island" for pretty much her first time.

So we filled the girls' brief trip with some of the Oahu classics: visits to a placid Hanauma Bay and balmy Lanikai Beach, a drive through Waikiki, a local hike, and lots of time relaxing at home (mostly poring over old yearbooks and Radar magazines while snacking on apples and bagel chips). Good times.

Although we've been able to participate in most of each other's Big Life Events over the previous decade or so, the last time Carolynn and I had a chance to spend this much time together we were both working toward our undergraduate degrees at UCLA, sharing a criminally overpriced apartment overlooking the peaceful Los Angeles National Cemetery, negotiating the intricacies and landmines of our respective college relationships, and trying to resist making too many trips to Diddy Riese Cookies in Westwood Village.

(I'm going to see if I can dig up a halfway decent photo from that era for you. I warn you now: there may be BIG hair involved.)

So I was very excited to be able to share our new Hawaii life with her -- and to show her that, among other things, I finally know how to make my bed every morning. (OK, at least most mornings.)

What a treat to be able to spend so much concentrated time giggling and reconnecting with an old friend...

...while watching a new generation of friendships blossom.

A Tale Of Two Weeks

We are finally approaching the sunset of a more than two-week spring break from school (cruel, I know), and for the better part of the last week the kids looked mostly like this:

Sick couch potatoes with hot, molten lava fevers. For all their whininess and generally poor humor I christened them the stars of "The Clingy & Cranky Show" -- the show I was forced to watch for a week straight with little to no funny commercials. Worse than "Big Brother" and "Rock of Love" combined.

The only upshot of the week, really, was that for the first time in years, Finn actually napped. Every day. Sometimes even at the same time as Shea, which produced an eerie, surreal daytime silence in the house, the likes of which I haven't heard (not heard?) since before we had children.

And speaking of befores...

Before we were stricken with the Plague of a Thousand VHS Tapes, we had a fun week exploring Honolulu, including our very first ascent of perhaps the state's most iconic peak: Diamond Head.

And yes, Shea -- a month shy of her third birthday -- made the trip with us too! It took about two hours up and back and she did most of the journey on her own two feet.

Halfway up the mountain I was able to get a friend to take this quick snapshot of the three of us -- a millisecond after which Finn and his buddy practically ran the entire rest of the way up the mountain without breaking a sweat, making every one of my 37 years flash before my eyes.

These tourists made the journey in their wedge heels. Wow.

The views from the crater's peak were magnificent.

This is Waikiki and downtown Honolulu, behind that. That pink splotch there in the middle? That's the famous Royal Hawaiian hotel and it's faaaaabulous. Especially its beachfront Mai Tai Bar.

And here are a couple local urchins happy to be standing at the top of what was once a real live volcano with hot, molten lava and everything.

Come to think of it, maybe that was what inspired their fevers....