Jasmine van Zoest

Photo by Kit Knotts

All was well with our flight back to San Diego. The only hiccup we encountered was that Jasmine got jet lagged again. Towards the end of our trip, Jasmine visited the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) , Hortus Botanicus of Leiden, and the Huis van Sinterklaas (house of Santa Claus).

The Rijksmuseum was more of an interest to Mama than it was to Jasmine. Mama was able to keep Jasmine entertained with the touch screen and statues, so she did not have to be bored.

Jasmine preferred the Hortus Bontanicus -- which means "Botanical Garden" in Latin. The Hortus Botanticus is an oasis within the city of Leiden and was not very vast. Understandable, since it is managed by the university with a limited space and budget. The green house had plants growing side-by-side and vines draping over top. Jasmine walked through rows and rows of tropical plants, including large carnivorous species. When she grew tired, Mama and Jasmine relaxed on a bench in the Victoria Amazonica room. This aquatic plant room was complete with tropical plants and exuberant undergrowth, but also features an enormous philodendron that is well over a century old and twines its way towards the roof. Jasmine blossoms hung above our bench and provided our little girl a closer interaction with her namesake plant. Overgrown grass gave a narrow view of the large Victoria Amazonica pool that is shared by tropical water lilies during the summer, and currently, covered with macrophytes. This is a great place to visit during the summer because the Victoria Amazonica is then in bloom.

Het huis van de Sinterklaas, "The house of Santa Claus", was big and resembled a typical family home. There was a bedroom, a living room, a dinning, a toy room, and the main hall. Jubilant children can be found in Santa’s entire home. Jasmine sat on Santa's bed and played in his studied room. She then hung out briefly with the children in Santa living room. The house was full of children of all ages. It was difficult to let Jasmine alone to wander on her own. In the main hall, Zwarte Piet and the children sang Saint Nicholas songs. Jasmine observed that at end of the line sat Saint Nicholas waiting to greet the next child in line. Next time, Jasmine may meet Saint Nicholas, but for now she was content with exploring his home and getting Kruidnoten on the way out.

It was a great trip for Jasmine and Mom. We both discovered the Netherlands together. Papa was always very supportive of us and gave us enormous encouragement that we both very much appreciated. "We love you very much Papa." Thank you for giving Jasmine the opportunity to experience Europe and its culture.

Mama and Papa hope Jasmine does not miss Europe too much. She did have a lot of fun there even if we did not do anything in particular, but chase the birds on Haarlemmerstraat (shopping street).

Christmas is rapidly approaching and so is Jasmine’s first birthday. We have not decided what we will be doing for her birthday. So we just focus on the present for now.

Last Saturday, Jasmine went to Benjamin’s 1st birthday party. She had a lot of fun with the children in the backyard. When she could not play with the children anymore, Jasmine took rides on the outdoor teal rocking horse that sat next to the fire pit. She pointed to it and said, "Rody". Since we have been home, she has been asking for Rody. She calls out for Rody and points to the study room but Mama and Papa left Rody in the Netherlands. Luckily for Mama & Papa we are able to distract Jasmine from Rody by giving her our cell phone to play with.

Jasmine loves to talk on the cell phone. She actually converses with the caller these days unlike in the past where she just smiled and remained speechless through out the conversation. Besides talking on the cell phone, she loves to play with her little car. She’ll push it around and makes vroom sounds. And when asked, “Where’s your tongue Jasmine? , she will stick it out. She is also able to identify one other body part -- Papa's nose.

Jasmine is getting to be more responsive and her vocabulary is getting stronger. She can speak at least 6 words (mostly English) and babbles everything else. It is enough for us to understand her needs.

After Christmas, it will be the New Year and then Jasmine's birthday. Wow, time flies when you are busy. So we are still waiting for her next major development. Will she be walking by then? We are not sure. She is walking steadier each day. Almost everyone that has seen her said she would be walking by her first birthday... We will find out very soon when she is ready.

She is not feeling well today. Mama finds different amusements to entertain Jasmine all day long.

Pushing a toy car through a cardboard tunnel. (Click on image to access the gallery)

Jasmine started to walk by herself (all alone). Yesterday she has been walking between Mama and Papa almost all day long. Well, it was more like she was running towards us each time. Jasmine is not physically strong enough to run. She can only take small steps alone before falling. Still that did not deter her. Mama and Papa think her mental development far exceeds her physical development. For instance, she understood the concept of walking up stairs and downstairs. Although she cannot do it on her own, she takes steps up and down the stairs each day. When she reaches the top, she looks back at where she started and smiles proudly. She is so much like her Papa. She always tries her best to tackle obstacles no matter how tough it is.

Other development that was not mentioned previously – Jasmine has six teeth. Three at the top and three at the bottom and she teethed last month, we are expecting at least two more top teeth soon. It seems as though she may have 9 to 10 teeth by her first birthday since last time she teethed, she got three teeth all at once. It is not a whole lot but it does allow her to chew her food easier.

Anything else we missed in our previous entries? Have we mentioned that she likes to hum songs as well as sing them? She does it now and then to amuse herself. While walking around with Mama, she would hum songs. I guess Mama does that very often when she is with Jasmine. Mama also likes to put things away to its proper place too because that makes Jasmine practice putting her toys away. And you can always tell whether she is about to do something clever or has done it. She laughs sinisterly.

And more? She loves reading books. She reads (babbles) books on her own and with us. She enjoys looking at books and leafing through the pages at playtime.

Healthy wise, Jasmine is recovering from a stomach flu. She is able to eat more solid food and is able to keep it down too. We hope she will recover fully by the end of this week.

A few faces of Jasmine. (Click on the image to access the gallery)

When at University Towne Centre today, Jasmine and Mama spent countless hours at Pottery Barn Kids. Jasmine was really excited to be there as she could play with many of the toys in the store that we don’t have at home. She played in the pink retro kitchen area. She puts the plastic play dishes in the sink to wash, and then puts the bowls and plates away separately on the cabinet. She stacked the bowls together and laid the single plate on the bottom shelf. She did this over and over again. She did such a fine job, that a customer who was looking for a kitchen set gift for her daughter started to observe her and finally asked Mama for Jasmine’s age. When Mama replied that Jasmine was only 11 months old, she was surprised. She said, “I thought she was at least 14 months old but just really small… She is very well coordinated. I remember the first time when my daughter took her first step at her first birthday…” Mama smiled and said, she did not think that Jasmine was coordinated. In which, she replied and said, “Oh no, she has a coordination of a 14 months old. So, she is doing very well!” Then she walked away to look at other things in the store. Jasmine stayed with Mama in the kitchen area until Jasmine got bored with washing the dishes and decided to relocate the little teacups, that were on the table behind us, to the middle of the store. She took the first teacup and placed it in the middle of the store and then walked back and brought the next teacup and stacked it on top of the first one. She continues this until the teacups grew too tall and fell over…. A very interesting experience for Mama to see how Jasmine has changed.

Changing phase -- our main topic, Jasmine going through phases and she is very whining lately. It just started recently – a couple days ago. To help Mama and Papa cope with Jasmine’s whining, we looked up the information on the Internet and we found descriptions that match Jasmine’s but are for much older infant. Well, we do have a clue as to why she has started to whine. We believe she may find it frustrating that she cannot completely get up and walk around like us. Her mind wants to walk like it is second nature although her legs are not able to do it.

Poor Jasmine (and Mama / Papa), but it will not be long until her legs are strong enough to allow her to run around without falling.

(La Jolla Cove - Click on the image to access the gallery)

Jasmine, Mama, and Papa spend countless hours at the beach this morning. Although the beach was overcast, it was still very beautiful and enjoyable for us. Jasmine loves listening to the symphony of crashing waves recede from the cove. She loves watching the pelicans gliding along the breaking surf, with wing tips just barely skimming the tops of the wave. The pelicans were having a lot of fun as they did it over and over again. The fun is not just for the pelicans; the sea gulls were doing the same as well. Jasmine loves watching them and there were so many of them at the beach today. Some of them flew really close to her as well. Although this is not her first time seeing them close up and personal, since last Wednesday Mama and Jasmine visited the San Diego Zoo.

Jasmine loves the zoo. We walked everywhere and left no animals unseen. Jasmine loves birds, the primates, elephants, the lions, tigers, and other mammals as well the some of the colorful fishes in the aquarium. Through out our entire stay at the zoo, Jasmine kept on pointing out animal after animal to Mama. She pointed and said, “there!”, "there!", and "there!". She was inmensely fascinated by the animals at the zoo. Although she liked the birds best, the gorillas, and lions were her second favorite. We can always tell that Jasmine loves being at the zoo because eventhough we are home, she never forgets her trip to it. Everytime we say the word

lion

raar!

Well, she has been nothing but fun lately (but also a handful at times). These days she refuses to be fed and grabs the spoon and wants to feed herself with it. She swings it around looking for her mouth, but usually lands somewhere on her face, her hair, her shirt or the floor. Hopefully she will get the hang of it more, because as adorable it looks it adds a whole new cycle of cleaning up after every meal. The good thing she does manages to eat at least some of the food by scooping it into her mouth.

Tawny Blumhagen was called to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah today. Jasmine was honored to be a witness at Tawny's Bat Mitzvah. We do not have any pictures to show, but she loved every moment of it. Jasmine cried much on the way home because she did not want to leave the excitement behind despite her tiredness.

The early morning ceremony took place at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla. At the synagogue, she enjoyed looking at the stain glass windows and observing everything else about it. When she was done studying the stain glass windows, she would ask Mama to pick her up so she could look at the audience and everything within the synagogue from a upside down view. Jasmine also made a few friends as well. She loved the little boys and girls whom shared their toys and food with her. Mama and Papa cannot be more thankful to the children and their generous parents.

Following the ceremony, Jasmine attending the celebration at the Sheraton Harbor Island West. Jasmine enjoyed dancing and listening to the songs and being involved in the Father and Daughter dances. The celebration room has other eye-catching elements to offer to Jasmine too. It was beautifully adored with big windows and dazzling chandeliers. The big window allows Jasmine to see airplanes taking off, sea gulls gliding on the breaking wind, and shipper men readying their sails.

The Bat Mitzvah was definitely an unforgettable experience for us. We wish Tawny the best on her grandiose day. Thank you Randy and Debbie for allowing us to share this joy with your daughter.

Her Papa announced proudly

Today she officially walks without guidance or stumbling

And he added

She is an 11 month old walker!

She tooks steps between Mama and Papa before but today she did it without Mama or Papa with her. She just got up and walked to her toys and areas of interestes. She took many steps without stumbling and that is because she manages to catch her balance when she felt she was about to fall. Along with walking, Jasmine has started to scribble with a crayon or pen. We have Jasmine's first artwork on paper now, yay!

Christmas spirit, Jasmine cannot wait for Papa to be done with his work for the day. He promised to take Jasmine Christmas shopping. Mama thinks he might be getting Jasmine something small and warm. This year Jasmine will not be experiencing the full spirit of Christmas. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Merry Christman and Happy Holidays everyone!

Even before Jasmine's birth, our life has had multicultural influences as both me and Thanh are multilingual, albeit our only language in common has been English. When we first started dating we both found our cultural differences an attraction that always ensured we had things to talk about and explore. I had always had an interest in understanding eastern cultures, which was heightened by the move to California where there is a large population of Asians and my fondness of a World Literature by Mr. Pastor that I took my junior year at Rancho Bernardo High School. Thanh seemed to have a similar affection to learning different cultures as she was actively involved with the International Student Center in College when I met her.

When we decided to get married, we wanted to make sure that both sides of the family would be able to attend and therefore ended up having two ceremonies: a chinese ceremony in Los Angeles and a ceremony in the Netherlands.

We always figured, we may have kids some day, but were in no hurry as we had too much fun living our busy lives as they were. The moment reality set in and we found out that Thanh was pregnant we both wanted to make sure that our child would be able to experience a multi-cultural world and therefore choose her own path based on those experiences. Part of having a child is that it changes your entire perspective on life as your priorities and responsibilities change to support this new being. We were somewhat ignorant of this fact and assumed we would be able to continue our careers, while still managing to raise our daughter. As you might expect this put a lot of stress on us as we tried to cope with the additional responsibilities in our already busy schedules. We changed from nightowls to early risers as Jasmine tends to give us a good wake up call at crack of dawn, as she is wide awake, ready to take on another day of exploring. It has shuffled our entire lives around, but every day we are reminded that although stressful we would not change it for the world.

As we embark on our quest to providing Jasmine with a family life, our cultural differences, cause for some interesting choices to be made. Do we expose her to St. Nicolas or Santa Claus or neither based on her asian heritage? What languages do we speak at home?, etc. The last one is an interesting one as the only language, Thanh and I can communicate in is English. So, if for example I would tell Jasmine something in Dutch, mom would have no idea. Likewise, if Thanh tells her something in Cantonese, I would not have a clue as to what was said. This would make it very easy for Jasmine to play tricks on us as she would have the upper hand by understanding all three languages. While other cultural differences may be a cause for lots of confusion to her as they often have very conflicting believes and customs. All of this is certainly going to add a whole other dimension to us living together as a family.

Early signs of these issues are already starting to emerge. Jasmine looks confused when mom talks to her family in Cantonese, She tells mom "nee. nee. nee" when she no longer wants food. Thanh mistook it for baby talk for a very long time as it did not resemble any language she knows.

Today, we realized that Jasmine says "there" and "that" to mom when pointing at things while she says "die" and "daar" to me. When I was changing her diaper and mom was entertaining her by moving every butterfly in the room she pointed at. Jasmine would point and say "die" in dutch. It is interesting, since Jasmine spoke Dutch although we both would understand her better if she had used English. It makes me wonder when she will be able to make sense of all these languages in her life and when she will know when to use which one.

As we approach Christmas and most of Jasmines gifts arrived. We decided to give two of them early as we never had a chance to wrap them in time. In her gallery, you will find pictures of jasmine enjoying her first piano and rockin' lion.

Happy Holidays!

Christmas was a lot of fun. Jasmine woke up and opened presents. Laoye was not able to join us for Christmas despite his initial request for the day off. Well, Jasmine still managed to have a great time. She had a wonderful dinner, opened presents, and spent time playing with her toys and relaxing. She seems to enjoy every moment of it and has no complaint, although she did miss spending Christmas with Laoye but instead she looks forward to seeing him around her birthday timeframe.

This weekend, her aunts and uncle came to visit. They are spending a couple nights with us. They are here to help us celebrate the New Year and to do a pre-brithday celebration because Aunt Jenny has to return to Missippi the 7th of January. It is great to see some of the family that Jasmine was not able to see on Christmas day!

Hosting them is a pleasure as well. Together, now, we are counting down the days until Jasmine turns 1. In 8 days, we will be celebrating Jasmine’s first birthday.

We HOPE EVERYONE HAS A WONDERFUL AND SAFE NEW YEARS :-)