Baby Stuff: Burp Cloth, Nosefrida, and Buzzy

Flat Diaper Cloth
I inherited some flat diaper cloths from my sister-in-law and I must say, I'm a fan! I use them primarily as a burp cloth but, they're just great multi-purpose cloth. The ones I inherited doesn't have a label but if I were to guess, it's similar to these.

Nose Aspirator
The hospital gave us the standard blue nose bulb. They work ok but every time I use it on my baby, he would cry his eyes out. Until NoseFrida! I can't tell you how much I love this thing. First of all, it works better in sucking snot out than the bulb. Second, no more crying! In fact, I get giggles now from the bub. I got mine from Amazon.com but, I saw that Whole Foods carry them as well.

Buzzy
This is what I get for watching too much morning TV and talk shows... I totally got sucked into buying this gadget. It's supposed to help take the sting out of shots. Well, it didn't work at the bub's 4-month appointment, poor boy cried his eyes out! I'm not giving up though. I'll try it again at his next appointment.

Eats: Mama Yu - Indonesian Restaurant in Houston

David Buehrer, of Blacksmith, told me about this new Indonesian restaurant. It opened recently. Of course, I had to check it out. 

As you can see from the exterior shot, similar to Rice Bowl II, it actually doesn't advertise itself as an Indonesian restaurant rather, a Chinese one. I find it very sad Indonesian restaurants can't survive in Houston. It either has to market itself as a Chinese restaurant or in the case of now closed, Noodle 88, start selling sushi.  Why is that? Marketing? Location? It's not for lack of interest. I know, because I get asked if there's an Indonesian restaurant in Houston all the time! 

Anyway, enough rambling. I'm sure you're more interested on Mama Yu itself. 

Exterior

Homemade passion fruit soda

Mie bakso

Nasi pecel ayam

Nasi soto ayam

Limited Indonesian menu

Chinese menu

In my opinion, Indonesian dining can be divided into the following class - restaurant being at the top, followed by warung, and kedai second to bottom. Think of kedai as your fast food, serving mediocre food, kind of like old fashion taco trucks. That's how I would describe Mama Yu's food mostly because all the rice dishes we ordered came with just one or two items, not a complete meal with vegetables, etc. but, it's not family style either because each plate came with individual rice. The food itself was pretty authentic.

If dining there, they also have homemade passion fruit soda, young coconut drink (they were sold out when we went), and teh botol. 

Mama Yu

10815 Beechnut (and Wilcrest)

Houston, TX

https://www.facebook.com/MamaYuRestaurantHouston?fref=ts

Eats: River Oaks Donuts

This donut shop opened recently I want to say... last week? Stopped by to get my favorite donut, blueberry cake. Verdict: I like it! I think it's better than Shipley's - crunchier edge, more blueberry-y (is that even a word?) and definitely bigger for sure!

Added bonus: they have drive-thru! I can't tell you how much I appreciate drive-thru's at the moment.

Blueberry Cake Donut

River Oaks Donuts

3601 Westheimer Rd.

Houston, TX

http://www.riveroaksdonuts.com/

EaDo Addition: Green Bone

I'm so excited there's finally a doggie daycare/grooming service that opened in my neck of the woods. My first visit there was to get the babies nail's clipped and to check them out. My second visit was to get the babies bathed. They did a wonderful job I'm very pleased with their handling of the babies and how clean they were when I picked them up.

In addition to daycare and grooming service, they also have a coffee bar for humans, homemade treats for dogs, and host play outings to Discovery Green.

2104 Leeland St.

Houston, TX

http://thegreenbone.net/

Baby Stuff: Baby Monitors and Apps

We debated extensively on which baby monitor to get. Originally, we registered for the Motorola Video Monitor. In the end, we got the Angelcare Deluxe Plus per recommendation from my sister-in-law. SIDs is every parent's nightmare. This monitor provides new parents peace of mind since it has sensor pads that detects baby's movements. If there's no movement for more than 20 seconds, an alarm would sound off. Sure it would be nice to see your baby on a video monitor but at the end of the day, you need to sleep when the baby sleeps, not watch your baby on the monitor.

I also appreciate the monitor's room temperature sensor feature. It let's you know the baby's room temperature and will alert you if it's too cold or too hot.

Now, this monitor is not perfect. It's annoying every time you remove the baby from the bassinet, the sensor pads interprets it as an alert, and if you turn the nursery unit off (because that's what you do when it beeps, d'uh!) then the parent's unit will start to beep (d'oh!). All this is extremely annoying at 4am! What worked for us is press "hold" on the parent's unit first, then turn the parent's unit off before picking up the baby. But when you're a sleep deprived new parent, you don't always remember all these steps.

As annoying as that last bit is, I'm still happy with our purchase. Having said that, now that the baby is over 5 months old and sleeping in his crib, we don't really use this monitor anymore. Instead, I purchased an app called Best Baby Monitor. Basically, if you have two iOS devices you can connect them over the same wireless network or bluetooth, one acts as the nursery unit while the other as a parent's unit. Not a bad app for a $3.99! Plus, it's easy to take traveling since we always have our iPhone and iPad with us when we do.

Eats: Airport Dining - Cat Cora's Kitchen

This is a great option if you're looking for real and/or healthy food at Bush Intercontinental Airport. Let's face it, there's not many of those at any airport so this was a welcoming sight for me. But, between waiting for a table and the time it takes for the food to arrive, just make sure you give yourself plenty of time . It was quite busy when we went there.

Flank Steak Soft Tacos w/ Grilled Pineapple Salsa

Salt Roasted Beet Salad w/ Goat Cheese Crostini
Note the plastic knife :-)

Menu

Cat Cora's Kitchen

Terminal E, Bush Intercontinental Airport

Houston, TX 

Eats: Comfort Food

I caught a stomach bug while I was in France. Unbelievable since I usually have a stomach of steel. Seriously! I am the queen of street foods, I even ate bugs in Thailand and Vietnam and I was fine.

The problem with being sick in a remote French village is I don't have access to my comfort foods. So when I landed in Houston, I made a mad dash to Soma for some ramen. A couple days later I went to Kata Robata for more ramen... and then Nippon. Yes, ramen is definitely one of my comfort foods when I'm sick, along with Chinese rice soup (congee). What is yours?

Kata Robata's shoyu ramen

Soma's spicy miso ramen

Nippon's miso ramen

How do they compare?

Kata's ramen was a bit salty for me. It flavored the noodles well but, I wasn't able to really drink the soup.

In the past, Soma's ramen tend to be heavy on the salt as well. But since hosting Ramen in Common tasting events recently, I say the salt is a lot more balanced now. The only thing I didn't like about the ramen was the big chunks of pork belly. It's definitely a personal preference but I like the meats in my noodle soup to be thinner.

I've always had a soft spot for Nippon's miso ramen, perhaps because they have been serving ramen longer than the other two establishments. As you can see, it's less fancy than the other two but it tastes more comforting, sort of like a bowl I'd get at someone's grandmother's house.

Side note, the Nippon one was a take-out order. I had a sleeping baby that I didn't want to wake up :-P