We went out to dinner at a Korean BBQ Plus! in Concord and Simon dug right in to the chap jae appetizer.
Delicious ban chan (side dishes).
Steaming hot kalbi.
Simon ate a lot of rice with some of the soup from the soon tofu jigae. We were pretty amazed that he didn’t mind the spiciness.
Then tasting some seaweed.
He ate quite a bit. He especially liked the rice mixed with the soup broth. Their tofu soup was the best thing we had. Their side dishes were delicious too and aplenty. Next door is their grocery store where we’ve bought the marinated meat and side dishes. We plan on going back again when we’re out that way (it’s on the way to Costco and where I fuel my NGV).
I love this picture Ron took this morning of Simon right after he finished drinking his milk. Looks like he is meditating… OHM…
Simon went to visit grandma since she just got back from a trip. He’s turning around to check her out.
Simon makes attempts to crawl but prefers to move about by moving on his butt. Well, actually he prefers us carrying him around but he can sort of move forward but getting on his hands and knees, pivoting a little, then landing on his bottom again in a different location. Here he is showing you he can move from crawling position to sitting and reverse.
Simon naps in the car with daddy while waiting for me until I get off work since we were going out for dinner tonight.
Simon looks uninterested in mommy… instead he is checking out what is inside his diaper bag.
Waiting in the car while waiting for Auntie Vicki and Uncle Alan to meet us for dinner. So Simon took some time to learn how to drive from daddy.
We had dinner at Han Il Kwan, a Korean restaurant. There is a tour bus parking zone right in front and two groups of Korean tourists came in to eat after us so it was good we came before the rush. We hoped for pretty good food since if Koreans eat here, it must be pretty good.
Here is Simon with Auntie Vicki.
Our side dishes for the pork belly. We had the kitchen cook our meats since we didn’t feel like cooking and smelling like BBQ and the waiter suggested it since the chefs probably do it better than us since it is what they do.
Complimentary steamed egg.
Side dish of pancakes, just green onion.
The duk bok kee, chewy rice cakes.
Soft tofu stew, piping hot!
Seafood pajun (pancake). A huge portion.
Kalbi.
Needless to say, everything was really good and we were super stuffed!
Simon had poor sleep this morning and as a result, so did we. He woke up at 2am, 4:30am, 5:30am, then 6am. Reminds me of his newborn days… I hope this doesn’t become a habit. He was doing so well with sleeping 4-5 hour durations… we will try to get him back on track tonight. He didn’t have a bath last night nor the night before so maybe he is a bit confused on his bedtime routine.
Oh well, even with lack of sleep, we had lots of plans today, well relatively “lots” since almost everywhere we go takes more time to get ready than it used to.
For lunch, we headed out to lunch in Oakland to meet up with our apartment-mate Justine from Singapore. Simon had not napped much in the morning so fell asleep in the car ride on the way there but soon woke up when we sat down at our table. He had only napped about 25 minutes. We took him out to have Justine hold him and take a photo… we had lunch at Sam Won BBQ House.
Does he look kind of upset? Well, he kind of was… soon after this photo, Simon started to wail really loudly. He wanted to go back to sleep. Ron took him outside to calm him down and took about 15-20 minutes to rock him back to sleep. After that, he slept for a good 2.5 hours. So while he slept, we had a nice long lunch. The restaurant serves lunch specials Monday through Friday which are a pretty good deal for Korean food, only about $10 and it comes with rice and plenty of side dishes. Also, they do all the cooking in the kitchen so you don’t leave the restaurant smelling like BBQ smoke. The portion size of the meat for the lunch specials are just enough for one person but my favorite thing for lunch is the bibimbap.
My parents are recently back from vacation and hadn’t seen Simon in a few weeks so we went to visit them in San Ramon. It was a beautiful day there so Ron took Simon out to their backyard to play for a bit. At times, Simon is starting to put his feet flat onto the ground (although you can kind of see that his toes are still curled up a bit).
A cute photo of daddy and baby.
Simon with Grandma and Grandpa Tam.
So tonight we are trying to get him back on track with his sleeping so we gave him a bath as soon as we got home, put on bedtime clothes, fed him, and put him to sleep. It’s a later than normal, about 10pm so we’ll see how he does tonight.
Day 32 – Banana Island, Grandpa Chung, New buddy Derek, and Todam Tofu House
Today we spent the afternoon out and about in Daly City, South San Francisco, Burlingame, and San Bruno.
He fell asleep in the car seat on our way out. I dressed him up in his UC Berkeley gear, a onesie and his navy blue sweatshirt. He’s almost growing out of the sweatshirt so I wanted him to wear it at least one more time before he does. Unfortunately I did not get a really good picture of it as he is all bundled up.
We had lunch at Banana Island in Daly City since I had a craving for roti served with a curry dipping sauce. The roti is made by the cook at a open view kitchen area in the middle of the restaurant. It’s pretty interesting to watch them stretch out the dough very thinly by throwing it in the air.
We also had beef rendang. The meat was tender but not that spicy. The cucumbers were also a bit dry looking.
Hokkien Mee which is a thick yellow noodle with some squid, shrimp, some meat, some veggies, topped with fried onions.
After lunch, we headed to see Grandpa Chung. As soon as we got there, Simon woke up and was hungry. We had Grandpa feed him his bottle. Simon doesn’t usually drink everything in one sitting but this time he must have been really hungry as he drank about 100ml (3+ ounces) at one time, needed a diaper change and burping before drinking another 30ml (1 ounce).
We then went to visit Al and Derek in Burlingame. We hung out for a while and Ron and I learned about what to expect when Simon is 7 months old (Derek’s age). We decided to go out for dinner so went to Todam Tofu House in San Bruno. We had the bulgogi and kimchi tofu soup. I love their purple rice, so yummy!
Simon was sleeping during out dinnertime but I wanted to get one picture with his new buddy Derek before leaving the restaurant.
Simon had a long day out and about and konked out again after eating and changing his clothes. His outfit matches his blanket!
We spent Valentine’s Day at Babies R Us checking out the new baby strollers and adding last minute things onto our baby registry. Afterwards we decided to have lunch at the restaurant inside Kukje Market. We heard the tofu soup was really good.
Of the appetizers, the seaweed and squid/cuttlefish was really good. They kindly refilled all of them too.
We ordered the kalbi, meat was very tender. On weekends, the serving size is the “dinner” size even for lunch so a bit more expensive.
The seafood tofu soup. Ron is putting the egg in it. You can choose how spicy and we chose hot. Lots of clams and a few shrimps. The heat was just right, we love spicy food.
We picked up some supplies at the market to last us for a week or two but will have to do some more shopping before the baby comes because I’m not sure how often we’ll be going out once he’s here.
