Came home just in time to make it to our town’s carnival with kids!

Brunch at Norma’s

My lobster & asparagus omelette. Yum.

Next stop:

Four-handed massage awaits at Aire Ancient Baths…

What a lovely time spent with the girls! So grateful for our friendship…Happy birthday Amy!

Staying in Manhattan Club hotel tonight celebrating my beautiful friend’s birthday!

Starting the evening with drinks at the Plaza.

During our cab ride to downtown,

I got texts from them. Wow… My friends  are Gen Z!? 

Delicious food at Charlie Bird

Happy birthday!!!

Dancing the night away~~

We went out to Crystal Springs with our friends’ family for a round of golf on this sunny beautiful day.

It’s our first time golfing on the green for Chloe and me!

I got attacked by a bee right before my swing. 

Look at these kids swings…so much better than mine…

A big meal after a hard day of work, I mean golf.
We had a great time golfing with the Lee family! I can see why Andrew’s so crazy about golf. It was fun!

I’m super excited to go out on a date with this hot guy.
Wearing: Milly dress

Dinner at Zuma!

We had chef tasting menus and it was beautiful. Now for the desert:

It’s always great to share meals with this wonderful Wang couple.

Last few months have been challenging for me watching this girl trying to grow up too quickly. I’m seeing her more and more in her room with closed doors, mostly reading and sometimes playing with her Barbies or AG by herself. She’s gotten a lot more sensitive about how we view her, especially me, her mom. She complains to me about how I love Shane more than I love her. This utterly breaks my heart every time I hear it. I tried explaining to her many times that while my amount of love for her and Shane are same, how I show it is different. For example, I just LOVE spending time with Chloe one on one. We definitely have similar interests like cooking, painting, being creative in general, etc, and she talks to me about her friends, school and what she’s into. With Shane on the other hand, I know that he’s such a boyish boy who loves sports, video games and we have very little in common interests. One time I had to run some errands with him and he was just a pain in the butt and complained the entire time. Chloe would never do that even if it’s just  going to the dry cleaner for errands. She would be so excited about our little time together. So how I love Shane is mostly through physical affection. Yes, I still hold him  like a baby and would carry him around the house until my back can’t handle any more. Plus, that boy in general is so sweet to me showering me with lovely words all day, how can I not, kiss and hug him every 5 mins? It’s impossible. Really.

So seeing me showing more affectionate to Shane, makes her believe I love Shane more than her…

During our talk one night, she said something along the lines of how she tries so hard to gain more love from me by doing this and that and I had to stop her and tell her that there’s nothing she can do more or less for my love…. That was hard to hear…so I’m writing her a letter she can read later.

Dear 8 year old Chloe,

You are my one and only beautiful daughter, Chloe who is so precious to me… You are my daughter therefore I love you and I am so proud of who you are and who you will become.  I have loved you since you were in my belly and I’ve been telling you that ever since. I wish I can show you how much love I have for you but I can’t. With all my might and strength, I love you and Shane…the same… It may not seem that way not because it’s not true but because I’m not a perfect mom. Unfortunately, my love is not and can’t be perfect and fair as you expect it to be. I recognize that I am unfair to you many times, and I’m trying to figure out and learn how to be a better loving mom to you… I mess up a lot, and I hope you accept my apologies along the way for hurting your feelings without even knowing that I had done that sometimes. I hope you forgive me and I pray every day that by the Grace of God, you will forget the bad and unfair memories you have of me.
I love you guys the same and that’s the simple truth. I can’t love you the way you long to be loved because we are both sinful humans…but you know who can and who does love you with the perfect love is our perfect God. He Loves you with His perfect love that you long for and I hope you understand that little bit more and more each day. So I hope your heart may be filled with Love from Him and not feel like you’re not loved as you should be. I pray for our relationship and I pray that God will provide me wisdom, patience and love to guide you and teach you to become a beautiful Godly woman.

I love you Chloe with all the love I have in me….

Mom

Chloe’s every growing reading list.

Chloe & Shane’s souvenirs from Turks & Caicos

Kids have been reading about Italy preparing for our trip coming up this summer!

We had a close friend’s family over for a lunch today.  I ordered 2 dozen oysters and Andrew learned to shuck them from Youtube. He did a great job! 

Chloe’s been raving about these pork belly buns that she sometimes eats when she goes to her friends house for a playdate so I decided to try making them myself.  It turned out delicious and Chloe said she likes them both but if she had to chose one, she likes her friends mom’s pork buns better than mine. She’s very honest, that girl.

And the mom got me the buns so I don’t have to make them. 🙂 Thanks Thao!

Cheers to a lovely day.

When she came back from her fabulous party in the afternoon we played the monopoly game that Chloe had created for me for Mother’s day.  She wrote and cut out all the money, chance cards, etc and the places/thing she put on the boards were everything I love…(except for jail). Where does she come up with these stuff?

Chloe’s invited to her friend’s birthday party and they took the girls to American Girl in NYC to celebrate! 

Nice ride~

I chaperoned for Shane’s class zoo trip today.

So worth to take a day off from work to hang out with Shane and his buddies. Loved seeing him enjoying his friends.

Plus he was so so so happy that I was there. He made me feel so special.