A Summer Treat

Summer in Taipei is here. Yes, it's been here for a while and it will stay for a while longer, so you gotta get creative. What have we come up with? Homemade fudge pops!! The Costco ad came a few weeks ago and as I was looking through it, I stumbled upon a coupon for fudge pops. YUM! Unfortunately, we a) don't have the room for a huge box in the freezer, b) don't have the extra money to spend on said huge box, and c) don't need the calories that said huge box would provide. BUT...I just couldn't shake the though of yummy fudge pops so I got online and googled a recipe for homemade fudge pops. Here it is and man are they yummy!!

A quick update

There is no way to fully update you about your life over the last 5 months. So I'll just give you the brief highlights. 1) Elliot had jaundice and was admitted to the hospital for 3 1/2 days after he was originally released. It was hard, especially for me (Ali) because Nick had to go back to work and the hospital was allowing me to feed/pump for Elliot. Therefore, less than a week after Elliot was born, I was sitting at the hospital almost all day by myself waiting to feed or pump for Elliot. It was nice to have good, uninterrupted nights of sleep, but life actually became easier once he was home! 2) Maternity was a great time to get to know Elliot. There were a lot of hard times because he wasn't taking naps during the day, but instead cried a lot. We figured that maybe he was dairy intolerant, so I stopped eating/drinking all dairy products. 3) When my mat leave was over, Papa and Mimi (Ali's parents) came for babysitting detail. They loved it, Elliot loved it and we love it. We miss you, Papa and Mimi! Elliot also met a-gong (Nick's dad). 4) We finished the last 2 months of school.

A Valentine Day's never to be forgotten

Sunday, February 12th, I started to have a weird feeling during church. After church, I told Nick, I think I had a few contractions during church, but I'm not sure. As we ate dinner and watched TV that night, I noticed a few more. By the time we went to bed that night, I told Nick, "we might have a baby tomorrow." All night, we tried to sleep, but I didn't sleep long enough between contractions which were coming every 5 minutes for about 45-60 seconds each. In our birthing classes, the doula told us to go to the hospital when contractions were 4 minutes apart, 1 minute long, for 1 hour. She also said if they started during the night, try to take a bath to relax your body so you can sleep. So into the bath I went. And nothing happened. So at 5am, I got up and took a shower (because I wasn't going to have a baby with dirty hair--I know, I know but I wanted the hospital pictures to look decent). Finally, the hot shower was helping the contractions/back labor and so I stayed there for about 45 minutes. Well...the doula never told me not to take a LONG shower! When I got out of the shower, I called school and told them the baby was coming and we weren't coming in. But...contractions had stopped. We spent the next 19 hours trying to get consistent contractions again. We watched TV, we went for 2 one hour long walks and I climbed 11 flights of stairs twice. Still, my contractions were anywhere from 20-45 minutes apart! By 10pm, we were contemplating going to work the next day because we didn't want to just sit around the house for nothing. But as we got ready for bed that night, the contractions began to intensify. I knew that we needed to sleep because the night before we didn't really sleep. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to have a baby if I didn't sleep for 2 nights. So, we decided to go to the hospital to get an epidural so I could sleep (and thus allowing Nick to sleep also.) When we got to the hospital, I was hopefully that I was at least a few cm dilated. Unfortunately, I was only 2cm dilated. By 4am, I was 3 cm and they agreed to give me an epidural. After that, we slept until 7am. The rest of the story goes like this...I was slow to dilate, they tried to induce, that was even slower. Finally at 4pm, my doctor came and broke my water and by 5:30, I was in the delivery room getting ready for this baby. FINALLY, at 6:11pm, Elliot Joshua Su came into this world. And just like that, it was all over...YET, something NEW and WONDERFUL was just beginning.

The NEW Su family!

The hospital had a little baby photo shoot for Elliot. This is just one of many costume/prop changes. So funny!

Doesn't he just look so tiny?

Still with us!? Hope so!

February 11th (one day before Baby Su started the long 46 hour process to come to the world), I apologized for not keeping up with the blog. Well...5 months later...I'm apologizing again because of a long, though well-desired, break from blogging. As a new stay-at-home mom, I have deemed Tuesday's as BLOG DAY! I'm going to try to put different kinds of blog entries on here so that you don't get bored with a weekly overview of the Sus. I'll do Su life updates, Elliot updates and cooking updates. Hopefully, you'll find something that interests you!

Have a Little Faith, please...

We hope that you have not lost hope in our seemingly pathetic attempt at a blog. I think about it often and unfortunately it is, yet another thing, that causes shame because thus far, I've been soo bad at keeping up with it. Unfortunately, weekends are busy and week nights are spent going to bed early in an attempt to keep this pregnancy a positive experience for both myself, my husband and my students!!

With that being said, I'm going to take a break from the cleaning I started 10 minutes ago and finish a post that has been in my drafts half-finished, for more than a month...

Christmas Adventures

I know Christmas was a while ago...so I might not be great at blogging yet!!


Shortly after I got married, an older woman told me I should always ask Nick for help in the kitchen, especially to open things up. She also jokingly added that her marriage greatly improved when she gently loosened the jar lid first.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I don't need to loosen anything for my husband because he's "strong as bull."



This is what happened on the FIRST day of Christmas vacation! Not a great start, especially because we (Nick, Ali and Adrienne) had big plans to be productive in NeiHu (about 30 minutes drive from our house). We had just parked...preggo Ali ran into the bathroom as Nick realized he left his phone in the car. "Perfect! You go get the phone, I'll go to the bathroom!" By the time we found the bathroom, Nick was waving us back. I just kept mouthing "I haven't gone to the bathroom yet! Just a minute!" But his persistent waving made me (temporarily) forget about going to the bathroom.

When he told us what happened, we quickly began to brainstorm. 'Where is a locksmith? Where are the spare keys? Should Nick taxi back home to get the keys? Who would be sitting at home, possibly contemplating a spur-of-the-moment trip to NeiHu?' We decided that, being the first day of vacation and all, someone might be willing to bail us out and taxi over. But, where should we start? So...we started calling people. Second on our list were the Bowden's. The conversation went like this...
Erin: Hello?
Ali: Hey, Erin. Whatca doing?
E: Kev and I are deciding what we should do for lunch?
A: What about Carrefore food court? They have a good selection of restaurants.
E: Umm...let me ask Kev.
A: Okay...but first I should probably tell you that's it's the NeiHu Carrefore and we are stuck here and would really love your help.
E: Oh, okay. We can do it.

SWEET!!! After explaining where our spare house keys were and which set of keys were the spare car keys, the Bowden's started the hour long process of bailing us out/taxiing to NeiHu.

Nick, Adrienne and I then got a snack and started shopping, because what else could we do! In the end, the Bowden's made it to NeiHu, we all had lunch together and then we all continued shopping. Our 3-4 hour planned trip turned into a 7 hour adventure...but in the end, we all had a good laugh.

The Baby Shower

We have amazing friends...this we already knew. BUT, our amazing friends went above and beyond to throw Erin (another Bethany preggo) and I a baby shower. Words cannot express how awesome it was, so instead, I'll just share some pictures.

What a cute baby shower theme!



The 2012 Bethany preggos. It has been so fun being on this journey with Elisa (due Jan. 17th) and Erin (due Jan. 11th).



All the attendees! What a party!




We were blessed with lots of gifts to get Baby Su started off.



Nevada and Adrienne did a wonderful job creatively creating the food to match the Dr. Suess theme. So CUTE!



Auntie Audrey made this amazing cookies and brought them all the way from Taichung.



More cookies...



Baby Su got lots of music related things...hopefully he'll get the message that Daddy wants him to be musical...and athletic of course!!!



Now, I know newborns are tiny, but will Baby Su be this tiny!?!?!



Baby Su...these are your AMAZING aunties...they LOVE, LOVE, LOVE you