Happy Halloween!

20lbs of pure joy

Austen turned six months, jumped up to 12 month clothing and weighed in at 20lbs and 27" at his last Dr's Appointment. His new skills are crawling, pulling himself up to standing and doing some of his favourite yoga moves like downward dog. 

We have been going to new mom groups to meet other little ones. Austen loves his baby play-groups. It's hard to describe the level of glee when he arrives and sees all the babies. He starts to squeal and giggle and doesn't stop his joyful trill till we leave. 

A few days ago we took him to see The Bills concert in Oakland and he sat with his gaze fixed on his uncle Adrian until he was finally lulled off to sleep in the second half. This kid loves concerts!

That's about all our news right now. Hope everyone is having a really great Autumn. xo

The hashtag

I started a thing on twitter where I number my thoughts that I feel are related to reverse culture shock in our move from Singapore to LA. I'm up to 54 now and thought it would be fun to archive them here. It was particularly fun to read the first ones again.

Culture shock #54: smiling! When you smile as you pass someone on the street here they smile back. #reversecultureshock
— Stacey (@singaporestacey) September 2, 2013

53) I've been hit-on more in the past 24 hours than in my past three years in Singapore combined. #reversecultureshock
— Stacey (@singaporestacey) July 21, 2013

52) I had to watch Adventure Time to understand current pop culture references. #lumpies #reversecultureshock
— Stacey (@singaporestacey) July 21, 2013

Summer vacation in BC

The Olsen farm at sunset. Hornby Is.

Our Canada trip is coming to an end tomorrow. It's been a completely packed schedule of family visits. Austen met most of his uncles and aunts and spent lots of time with his grandparents. We've had some great visits with friends we haven't seen in years.

Aside from the thrill of seeing our loved ones we have been really enjoying music on this trip. We saw the Good Lovelies, the Foggy Hogtown Boys, H'Sao, Marie-Josée Lord and Anton Kuerti at the Hornby Festival and Bruce Cockburn and The Bills at the Butchart Gardens concert series. Live outdoor concerts were one of those things we rarely had access to in Singapore so we've been on a bit of a music binge. We're lucky our little guy is still pretty zen even while teething. He's happy to be dragged along to just about anything any time of day or night.

Dance at the Hornby festival 2013

Good Lovlies at the Hornby Festival 2013

A family that travels together

Austen is four and a half months old now. He's over 26", 17.1lbs and comfortably sitting in the 90th percentile range for his age. I'm buying 9-12 month clothes for him! Ahhh, that tiny baby stage was really over in just a few weeks for us. I miss it already.

So a lot has happened since the last post. Joel flew back to Singapore to be a keynote speaker at a big UX conference. It went well and he was "Twitter famous" for a few hours. He caught up with our friends back there and flew back home after a whirlwind three days. He was there for the tail end of the awful haze that made international news and due to the hoarding and up-selling of masks going on in SG he brought with him a whole suitcase of N95 masks for our friends. We have even more appreciation now for our hill-top place here with the crisp clean ocean breeze blowing.

We did our first road trip with Austen and he was really quite cool about it considering how much he loathes the car. We just split our day up into two hour chunks of driving followed by stops for eating and stretching. Definitely a healthier way to travel for the adults in the car too.

A low point of the month was the disappearance of Kopi-o. Folks on Twitter and Facebook probably saw our posts about it. Really it was one of the worst days of my life. We made a huge effort in our search, leafleting and walking the nearby areas and calling him over and over. Joel was the hero in the end. He crawled under a rundown house and saved Kopi-o from a possum fight and ran home with him under his hoodie. Joel was badly scratched up but Kopi-o was thrilled to magically appear back in his safe home.

We're heading up to Canada for our first trip back there together in two years. This will be Austen's 5th plane trip and a first introduction to most of his extended family and a chance for some more concentrated grandparent time. Joel and I will be arriving already exhausted from this past week of me solo parenting and him at another conference. I'm hoping we can finally catch up on some sleep. Ha! Famous last words. Cheers everyone, we hope you're having a great Summer.

Boxes and boxes

We are FINALLY moved in. The moving truck from Canada came first. That shipment was like a time capsule from three years ago. Our life back in Fairfax perfectly preserved. Even the flyers on the fridge were folded neatly in a box as if they were precious documents. We purged and filled a storage locker and sent loads of things off to charities. What we kept completely filled our little apartment here. It took a week to finally get everything put away.

The first moving truck arrived!

Then the Singapore shipment arrived with 99 more boxes and our Balinese four 4 poster bed, dining set and coffee table. Possibly the largest furniture our movers had ever carried into an apartment.

The Singapore stuff was held for nearly three weeks at customs for inspection. This is the first time we've ever had a delay and apparently this is the "new normal." Just out of curiosity I looked at the contents of all the boxes they had chosen to inspect at customs to see if there was some reason for their selection. Each one contained "liquids" in the description on the manifest (perfume, body wash, cleaning supplies etc). You are allowed to bring these things in to the states but it seems that it may be a red flag for customs. Had I known this I would have thrown out those four boxes that were probably worth very little compared to the hassle and expense of three extra weeks of being in a serviced suite.

Boxes examined by US Border Protection

So all of this stuff now lives in our tiny apartment. We've been selling things on Craigslist and have even rented a second storage locker. I'm pretty sure this place is only temporary (perhaps a year, maybe two) so we aren't quite ready to get rid of EVERYTHING.

So our new hood is pretty great. We are so close to the beach, shops, restaurants and farmers markets. We had a great time with Joel's parents checking out all the amenities and now my Dad is here continuing the settling in time with us. Austen has only had one week of his entire life where he didn't have a grandparent staying with him and that week he had his Auntie Nan. It's going to seem pretty dull when all his favourite relatives go home. We are so lucky to have had all this help with him right now.

If you want more photos of Austen I'm only posting them Facebook and  Flickr in a "friends and family only" album of baby photos. Drop me a line if you need help logging in to be able to see that set.

The trouble with moving

Whenever we move customs has to clear our container at the border and our relocation company spends a lot of hours preparing the manifest and paperwork for this. During the last two moves this was a breeze. This time they pulled our shipment for secondary inspection at the port of Los Angeles and then updated our container's status to "undergoing extensive search." For what? I have no idea. The folks who packed it were the best moving team we've ever had and each and every detail was taken care of. There's not a single thing in there that could possible be a problem. We have to assume it's a random selection.

Looking for a place to stay

The reason this really sucks is our temporary housing check out date is Tuesday (yes, THIS Tuesday) and this place is overbooked so they can't extend us. Our new apartment is empty save Austen's new crib in his bedroom and our enormous fridge. So all of a sudden here we are, four adults, a baby and a cat looking for a place to stay for another week while we wait to move in. It's high season for this area and I have ONE day to somehow find a place with that kind of space and availability. Everyone pray to the apartment gods, or call your long lost cousin at US customs. We're going to need all the help we can get.

Glimpses of California

California May-June, 2013, a set on Flickr.

Click on the images to go to Flickr and see what we've been doing. Log-in if you are a contact to reveal all the fun family shots that aren't public.

Settling in again

First of all, we found a place to live! We looked high and low (mostly high though... have you seen west side real estate lately?) and from Hermosa beach to the Palisades. We viewed tiny places in corporate plasticy condo buildings and some total dives. The process was pretty frustrating and unfortunately we had quite a list of must-haves to try to satisfy. In the end we got location and character and took a hit on in-suite laundry and 18 stairs. I know... as a new Mom I'm probably blissfully unaware of what a pain in the ass it's going to be to haul Austen upstairs and haul laundry downstairs but I'm pretty excited about the rest of the perks. We have a little ocean view, our windows let in fresh cool salt air and every room gets sunlight. We're a few blocks from the beach, Main St (Joel's office) and all the shops and restaurants of the shopping district in Santa Monica. We're also by a library and a short walk from Whole Foods. There's no reason to drive anywhere at all. Lots of things are going into storage as our place is a little smaller than the last two places we've had but there's something kinda fun about curating your collection of crap and putting some of it away for some other time.

At 11 weeks Austen's almost rolling over. Every day I'm packing away another outfit he's grown out of. That makes me sad but I'm equally happy to see the bright chirpy boy who appears a little more each day from this tiny infant.

We've had great company in our transition. My mother arrived with us and her departure was chased with the arrival of Auntie Nan and then there was a short overlap as she departed and Joel's parents arrived.

We have yet to actually move into our place as our stuff has not yet reached the port here and then we have customs to clear. I'm hoping we'll finally be in on the weekend of the 8th. After that move-on we can begin to plan a road trip up to SF and Marin. We are aching for that but it has to wait just a little longer. If anyone needs the new address, send me a message or fill on the contact form on this blog here.

First week back in Cali

Here we are, day five back in California. Joel keeps turning to me and saying "can you believe we're back here? I feel like we're on vacation or something." It's true. This has been the easiest landing we've done yet. Due, I expect in equal parts, to knowing the area and being really prepared.

Joel did his first two days of work last week from the Venice office and the studios in Manhattan Beach. The commute to Manhattan Beach is a bit of a pain but the office in Venice is walking distance from where we are staying. 

My mother headed home on Thursday and I had my first ever solo parenting day on Friday. It was fine! Really I was nervous for nothing. Then we had our first ever weekend just the three of us. 

We bought a car! Well almost. We still are in the process of transferring the ownership but we are soon to be the owners of a marvelous road trip vehicle. I can't wait to hit the open road and see the golden state unfurl ahead of us as we blast out of town. 

Austen ready to go to the bank with us in his collared shirt and cardigan

What else have we been doing? Well I hit up a farmers market that popped up across the street from our building last week. It was amazing to get produce that fresh again. We've been eating a ton of Mexican food and I've been out for cheap awesome brunches nearly every day. For our first shopping binge we hit Whole Foods, Anthropologie and Petco all in one night. We followed that up with Target the next day. It's just insane how cheap everything is. We have this urge to shop a lot as if we were just passing through. I have to keep reminding myself that these stores are still going to be there later. 

Wild roses along the Venice canals

Lilies everywhere

On mother's day I just wanted to walk. We put Austen in the stroller and did the Venice boardwalk, 3rd St Promenade and all the way back again along Main Street and Abbott Kinney. The whole way we were treated to clear blue skies, a breeze and clean fresh air. It's hard to describe how it's been to live without clean, cool air for as long as we have. You do get used to the humidity but damn! When you get a fresh lung-ful of this ocean breeze it's euphoric. 

Overheard in our household this week

"I can't sleep, it's too quiet"

"Let Kopi-o under the duvet, his ears are cold"

"Hey, a package of diapers is $11, weren't we paying $35 in Singapore?"

"LA drivers are so skilled and... polite" 

"I keep handing people my credit card with two hands"

"Look at all this food! You could fit a whole Cold Storage just in the produce section"

"Look a crane! Just ONE construction crane on the entire skyline"

"Hear that? No jackhammers"

"Oh yeah. Socks"

Our move from Singapore to LA

I know you’re curious. How did three adults, a cat and an eight week old baby do on this 24 hour odyssey? Overall I’m going to say, it went well. Here’s the story as I remember it in my jetlagged state.

Three packers from Altair Global came on May 6^th and spent 7 hours in our place meticulously making custom boxes to fit all the furniture and bubble wrapping delicate things. The din of all that packing tape was deafening and to add to that our neighbours were jackhammering at the same time. Austen loved it. Our helper arrived in the afternoon to clean and by dinner time all the big stuff was done. To celebrate we headed down to My Thai in Holland Village to spend one last night in our hood.

The next day the 20’ container arrived to take our boxes away. The landlord and agent came by to take the keys and officially transfer the remaining year and a half of our lease to our friend, Stefan. We were extremely lucky to have a really nice landlord and a good friend who was willing to move at just the right time to help up out.

Our final night was spent staying with friends and having a BBQ in the humidity we’d soon find hard to be able to comprehend. 

The travel day began at 1:45am. We left for the airport at 2:15 and were at the check-in desk at 3am. Here we are with three baggage carts, the baby in the stroller and Kopi-o in a carrier at my feet.

Even after checking our bags we still had four pieces of carry-on luggage, the stroller and the cat carrier. Walking through the airports was a gongshow. Kopi-o and Austen were quiet and well behaved except for one time that Austen decided in the middle of the Narita airport that he needed to eat RIGHT NOW and made a wail that pretty much confirmed to passersby that we were actually torturing him. 

Kopi-o at my feet

Austen in his carseat on the plane

Between feeding and changing Austen we also had to try to get Kopi-o to eat and use the litter. We did this by taking him in his carrier into various bathrooms and producing a small tray of his litter and a little travel bowl of food. The whole way there he refused to pee and only ate one bite of his food. It was very frustrating but I can’t say we didn’t try. I think he fared ok though. He never panicked and was very happy when a hand came into his carrier to cuddle up to.

One really funny difference I noted passing from Asia into America is that in Asia people think pets are icky and are all goo-goo eyed over the baby. In the US people think babies are icky and are goo-goo eyed over the cat. Kopi-o is now the number one most celebrated member of our travel party.

So we finally landed in LA and cleared customs. Our first stop was for coffee and then burritos before checking into our serviced apartment. Everyone crashed for five hours while Kopi-o conducted a thorough parameter sweep. After a late dinner out we are now stretched out on the bed playing white noise because it’s too quiet to sleep. We’re also freezing! I somehow never got a chance to finish pulling my winter clothes out to pack so all I have are a few silk sundresses and one thin sweater and it’s 16 degrees at night! Good thing we’ve got plenty of duvets to huddle under tonight. 

That's all for now. We're going to attempt to sleep again and will update the blog as we settle in this new home.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

See the album on Flickr.

We just returned from a 5 day trip to Cambodia. My first trip since New Zealand in November. It was about time! 6 week old Austen was his usual "zen baby" self just cruising along with us.

Pictures are up on Flickr. As always the pics of us are viewable to "friends and family" so make sure you log in and have added me as a friend.

Night Safari

One of our favourite attractions in Singapore is the Night Safari. We took my parents and brother here just a few days before Austen was born. Joel went back yesterday with his co-workers as a team building activity and took our camera to capture some of the wildlife.

The first three weeks

Austen is 21 days days old and growing and changing faster than we could have imagined. He's a strong little guy and can turn himself over and can almost hold his head up already. He's a pretty good sleeper, often passing out for 4-5 hour stretches at night (yay!). Here are a few more pictures from his first weeks.

Week three

Week two

Week one

Moving on

With a mixture of excitement and sadness we are officially announcing our next relocation. Arriving and being an alien in a new land is a big part of the expat experience but so is coping with these bittersweet endings to great adventures. More than anything it's the people we will miss the most. We've built such great friendships in our two years here.

Without further ado, I'll reveal our new location...



Venice Beach, CA!

We used to spend a few months of each year there and feel comfortable with the area. Our families are only going to be a 3 hour little flight away. We're happy to say this is a career centre that works much better for both of us and it will also give us both a chance to get back to working on some side projects that were put on hold while in Singapore.

We think baby Austen is going to be thrilled with his beachside playgrounds and more frequent visits with the grandparents. Kopi-o will eventually forgive us and will hopefully get to play outdoors and hunt something more exciting than tiny ants.

Many of you may have heard through the grapevine that this was in the works but it's taken a very long time to finalize all the details so I'm only getting to announce this 4 and a half weeks before our move! Timing-wise we're right down to the wire. Our visas should be ready in three weeks and Austen should have his passport and Singapore dependent's pass within the next two weeks. He had to get a passport photo when he was four days old! I'm sad that he won't get to have any memory of his life here but he does have a pretty cool birth certificate.

Speaking of Austen, he's been getting some really exciting mail these days and I'm a little worried about anyone mailing stuff beyond this point (mail is very slow getting here). Please contact us for a forwarding address if you are doing any mailing.

It's a boy!

Austen

was born at home in Singapore

on March 14th at 7:03 am

7 pounds 15 ounces, 22 inches

The waiting game continues

I know the hits on our blog right now are primarily to look for baby news so I'll update here. We're sitting comfy at 40 weeks, 4 days and trying not to be insanely anxious to meet this little one.

The really cool news is my parents are now in Bali actually staying in our favourite little Inn and exploring one of the most magical areas of the planet. I'm not sure what date they will fly here but it will likely be next week. If you are Facebook friends with my Dad you can see what they are up to!

My brother is also SE Asia bound and should be flying somewhere over the North Pacific right now en route to Hong Kong where he's staying over for a night and then arriving in Singapore in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

A neighbourhood walk

We sometimes forget we live next to this bustling HDB area with all kinds of hidden local culture. This past week we've been wandering down there for meals. There are some excellent cafes and food stalls we never knew were there. It's also one of the oldest HDBs and the vintage bits and pieces are fun to see. Joel loves the old arcade games and derelict kids rides. There are more from our day of wandering on flickr here.

Lion Dance

Lion Dance a video by coach_stacey on Flickr.

This is just a small door-to-door Lion dance that briefly interrupted our lunch this afternoon at The Prata cafe.

Year of the snake

New Years Pineapple Tarts (much like the ones we've been eating)
-photo from Hungrygowhere

Our meringue snake from Da Paolo eaten on NYE

We're on day three on the Lunar New Years festivities celebrating the year of the snake. We've honestly kept pretty close to home the past few days because during New Years everyone in Singapore likes to go out visiting AND the taxi drivers take holidays. On top of those two factors, there have been torrential monsoon rains through every afternoon. A deadly combination.

We have celebrated in our own way. We're had friends visit for meals and have been out for some nice walks and today we finally ventured into the Orchard Rd for some last minute baby things and found that it wasn't that busy down there (I mean yes, it was shoulder to shoulder but one could still draw breath). We also managed to somehow get a table at Din Tai Fung for lunch.

Decor inside Paragon

Video of Thaipusam procession

Video of procession a video by coach_stacey on Flickr.

Thaipusam in Singapore

"Thaipusam is a highly symbolic Hindu festival celebrated by Singapore’s Tamil community. It is an annual procession by Hindu devotees seeking blessings, fulfilling vows and offering thanks. Celebrated in honour of Lord Subrahmanya (also known as Lord Murugan), who represents virtue, youth and power to Hindus and is the destroyer of evil, it is held during the full moon in the 10th Tamil month, called Thai, which falls in mid-January each year."
Source: http://www.yoursingapore.com/content/traveller/en/browse/whats-on/festivals-and-events/thaipusam.html

Sounds pretty tame doesn't it? Well it's a little more than just a procession. Devotees to the faith walk to the temple with elaborate and symbolic things attached to their bodies with temporary piercing. It's a walk of pain and totally fascinating to see. This year Joel went down to little India to photograph the colourful procession.

Warning: The photos do show a lot of skin piercing  If you are faint of heart this might be a good time to go look at something else.

See all our photos here

Onesies and tiny socks

36 Weeks

Well here we are! It's mid-January. We had a beautiful baby shower thrown for us by our dear friends here and a virtual shower thrown online for everyone who couldn't physically be here. Our little change table is filled with the essentials and there's the cutest little row of onesies hanging in the closet. Pristine new swaddles are hanging on the clothesline waving in the breeze reminding me that really it's just a few more weeks now. Our families have all purchased their plane tickets and phonecalls and emails are now focused on last details of a much anticipated family reunion.

And how are we doing? We're doing great! Really, I'm not exaggerating at all. I'm off bed rest and have more energy than I've had since last June. I may have had an unbelievably crappy first trimester followed by an equally awful second and there may be a number of close friends now who might be strongly considering adoption. BUT I am telling the absolute solemn truth that the third trimester has been a total breeze so far and guess what? I'm 8 months this weekend and it's almost all over.

I've never been one to use tickers to count things down on our blog before but in the top of our side bar on the blog right now you can see there's a little count-down going on for anyone who's checking in to see how much longer... Don't be a stranger. Say hi, ping us on Skype, we really love all the fun emails and calls we've been getting as we wait out the proverbial waiting game.

A bowl of orchids at our flower-filled baby shower

One more milestone... our fur-baby, Kopi-o is about to turn one year old

Jurong Refinery at Sunset

A time-lapse photography project by Joel