Never a Dull Day

Two full loads of laundry piled up in the corner of the room. Dried laundry still needs to be put away. Dishwasher needs to be unloaded. Just when I thought you had a moment to catch up on housework, your 9 months started crying in the crib. It's supposed to be a 1.5 hrs of nap. Your only time to get stuff done around the house. WHY IS HE AWAKE NOW? Then, you feel a sore throat. After you get your baby out of the crib, the sore throat gets worse. SHIT, you are coming down with the flu. Extreme fatigue, body aches all over, and nausea. Then your 3 year old comes home from preschool and wants to "play outside with mommy"... All I can say is I made it to 8PM and was in bed at last. And my husband is home after traveling on and off for 3 weeks, so it wasn't the end of the world, yet.

Strawberry picking

Emil was at Fred's backyard looking over Fred's strawberry patches. After plucking off two strawberries, Fred said "why don't I hold them for you so you can pick more?" Emil responded:"that's okay. I have two hands!"

"Rest"

After spending an hour in the hot sun in Fred's backyard, Emil came running home. He sat down on the front door step and said: "I just wanna take a break in the shade now, it's too hot." Five seconds later, he was up running around again. But of course, he's Emil!

Parenting in the USA

Almost three years into it, parenting has its goods and bads like everything else. What I like about parenting in the USA: 1. Second hand shops with high quality clothes and toys 2. Amazon Prime or Amazon Mom, love the free second day shipping and Instant Videos! 3. Family friendly restaurants, shops and availability of public restrooms. The last bit was a huge problem when we were in Berlin last summer. Emil was 1 month short of 2 years old and already potty trained. We needed to go to the bathroom every 2 hours and he had many accidents because we couldn't get to a toilet fast enough. 4. Very little neighborhood play and replaced by scheduled "play dates". What I dislike about parenting in the USA: 1. High rats of food allergies in children. Not sure why is this happening but I find all the nut-free zones and practices annoying. 2. Late potty training. I don't know how some parents do it, but I sure am glad I'm not changing a poop diaper on a verbal and active 3 year old. The ironic thing is American parents emphasize respecting children's needs to the tee and yet controlling one's bodily functions is apparently not part of the teaching. 3. Playing nice and fair. Not sure if this is the thought in other countries, but here parents focus a lot of avoidance of conflict. If two children fight over toys, it's rare for a parent to wait a few minutes and letting the children work on the conflict themselves before stepping in. Also on playgrounds designed for little kids, you will see parents walking just one step behind their kids to make sure they don't fall. How can the kids learn the physical limits of their bodies if there's always a parent telling them to slow down and stop?!

Sweet boy

While sitting down on the toilet, Emil asked his Daddy to stay. Emil: "I want you to wait in my room daddy." K: "Why?" Emil: "Because I like you to wait there when I poop." K: "Ok, but why?" Emil: "Because I like you."

Last Names

Me: "Emil, what's Fred's last name?" Emil: "Young!" (not too surprising as Fred told him the previous day in the car, but I'm impressed with his memory) Me: "What's your last name?" Emil: "Kristen." (not bad) Me: "What's my last name?" Emil: "Aw-aw!" (ha!) Me: "What's Oskar's last name?" Emil: "Chubby!" (hahaha!)

Conversation with Jane

Jane: "I'm not too bright today."
Emil: "I'm not too shiny today!"

S*HIT Emil says - part 2

I bumped into Emil while he was running around being his normal crazy self. He immediately put on a sad face.

"Mommy! You felled me down!"

"Oh really, sorry!"

"I hurt. You felled me down!"


He has also wanted to race and make a game of everything. This morning while going downstairs after waking up, Emil wanted to race against Kristian. Of course, he was the first one to get down to the kitchen level because his daddy is a nice guy. ;)

"I won you, daddy!!! I won you. hahaha. "

You know Asian woman + white guy has gone mainstream, when _____

_______such couple with their baby appear on the front page for Amazon Mom!_____

K and I have known this for some time, especially living here in Boston. Our kind of combination was not and is definitely not that unique, for the better of course!

S*HIT Emil says

Emil:"I want more blueberries."
Me: "But you already had two cups, you want more??"
Emil: "Yeah, I'm a monster!"

Me: "Emil, you wanna go take a bath?"
Emil: "No, I'm too busy!"

While playing jumping on the mattress nonstop for 30 min
Emil: "This is wild! We are having fun!"

While eating dinner at the table
Me to husband: "Now we've got 2 kids, Emil being a big brother and Oskar being a little brother maybe it's enough kids?"
Husband: "Yeah, maybe."
Emil: "What are you talking about, Mommy?"

TBD ;)

Milk Experiment

My last 10oz of pumped stash is finally gone! The 2 bags of breast milk came out of the freezer this morning. I didn't know what I'd do with them then. I wasn't prepared to just dump all of it into the drain. Looking at them brought back memories of those tightly scheduled 3x a day pumping sessions, the fluorescent lit pumping room at SLF and all the washing I had to do daily with all the breast pump parts. Those were some busy times and I'm glad it was only for 5 months. Many mothers have had to do it MUCH longer.

So after coming home from dinner this evening, I thought to have Emil try the milk out before his bedtime. After all, I pumped those for him right before I quit my job. They were prepared to him anyway. Sure, it was in the freezer for 11 months, definitely not the freshest. But it wasn't unsafe.

The milk tasted okay to me. Although much different from cow milk, sweeter and milkier (not sure how to describe the taste). I warmed the milk, gave the cup to him, awaiting a reaction. He took a sip, then another small sip, did a double look at the cup then put it down. Without saying anything! I suppose he honestly prefers cow's milk now, which is a good thing! He drank the replacement cup of warm cow milk in one take, so clearly he didn't like the breast milk that much.

Even though I had weaned Emil back in December, getting rid of the last bit of the stash was the ultimate end to our breastfeeding relationship. We had a great run, my little man!

The Blue Curtain of Cringe

I've been back on FaceBook for almost a year now, and my feeds are pretty full on most days. With many friends from college, grad school and work having kids, I get a fairly good amount of birth news.

Usually it's stuff like "First Name Last Name, xx lbs xx oz, xx inches long, born at xxx hospital at xxx time this morning!" It's very cool to see new babies being acknowledged in the cyber space in almost real time. Not to mention sometimes I haven't been in touch with the parents for a long time and it's nice to share a part of their lives.

Along with the newborn stats, there are often birth photos. You probably have guessed it by the title of this post, some those photos contain the Blue Curtain that I often dread seeing. It's the surgical blue curtain drawn above the mother's chest from a caesarean birth. Mother is smiling in her surgical cap, while the father dressed in a blue surgical gown, holding the baby to her face.

Yeah, so I'm seeing more of those photos than I would like. There are situations where a c-section is necessary to save lives, like breech births and other complications. In the US today, that's probably not the reason why most c-sections are carried out. I won't get into the specifics of the debate because you can read it on your own or just watch The Business of Being Born. I mainly just feel sad seeing those photos because the mothers are my friends. They are all college educated, professional women who are generally healthy and below the age of 35. I just don't understand why this is happening to them so often. More over, I just wish something could be done so this wouldn't happen to another woman I know.

You can't really walk into a baby shower and tell the expectant mom "hey, do you know the c-section rate in this country? Before you open up another wrapped onesie gift, please switch from your OB to a midwife and write up a birth plan!" That just won't work well. Expectant moms want and should hear the warm and fuzzy. With friends that I know well and really care about, I suppose I wouldn't shy away from giving such advice if I think they haven't heard it already.

Earthquake, Libya, global warming, the US budget, too many things to fix in this world, ain't it. But I wouldn't mind if the Blue Curtain of Cringe is eliminated though. Seems like it'd be more easily done than the other things aforementioned.

Bye Bye Diapers!

Emil achieved a major milestone last week, he's potty trained! The little man learned it in a week or so, and has now moved onto regular underwear. Let me know tell you, a 21 months old toddler in tightee whitees is just too cute! Size 2T/3T is the smallest most brands make for boys' underwear, thankfully Emil is a big boy for his age.

Not having to change diapers is a fantastic gain for me and Kristian. It wasn't too bad when it was just breastmilk poop. But once he started eating the same food as us, the gross factor went straight up.

Before I started this, I had heard mostly about 3 year olds resisting potty training. I'm glad I did it now because power struggles with a 3 year old Emil would not have been fun.

I tried when Emil was 13 months and he was already holding pee for 3 hours at a time. Cognitively he wasn't ready for potty though, so I quit and waited until he was 18 months old. If you have a child in diapers, don't wait too long to potty train! Readiness for most kids is on either side of turning 2, and once you miss that, you may end up with a 4 year old in diapers.

Working Families

There is a lot of discussion about extending GWBush's tax cuts in Congress. I often hear news people and politicians using the word "working families". Mostly they say "working families" need money in their pockets to feed their kids, pay mortgage and buy clothes, etc. Therefore, as the logic goes, we should extend the cuts for the "working families" but not the "rich". The rich here is families making more than $250k a year.

Here's my question. Are rich families not working? Do they just get money somehow but not via our standard definition of work? If they do in fact have to work to get the $250k, then why aren't they considered "working families" and get the tax cuts too?

Remembering Kathy

My college friend Kathy Chavez past away on Wednesday. She had fought cancer courageously for 13 years and the latest round of tumors took the last bit of energy in her. She was an inspirational figure to many and made each of us's life a little brighter. I'm grateful for her friendship in the last 7 years. Below is the eulogy I wrote for her funeral.

Kathy, I'm sorry I can't come to say goodbye in person tomorrow. Rest in peace.

"The doctors and nurses say I'm a living miracle!" Kathy told me on the other end of the phone when asked about her latest bout of cancer treatment. She sounded proud, not a bit of fear. Indeed, Kathy lived her life to create a miracle; a miracle for her family, for her friends and most of all for living a full, informative and positive life in this world.

Kathy's positive personality was a highlight in McClelland Hall long before I befriended her. She was one of the oldest students in the classroom and yet she never shied away from asking thoughtful questions to the professors and helping her classmates. I got to know Kathy better when she returned to school after taking a semester off to undergo further cancer treatment. For the first few weeks of our friendship Kathy didn't tell me she had cancer. Of course, she also never mentioned she had maintained straight A's every semester.

"You can do it!" She would tell me when I dreaded the next day's economics exam. Learning to her was an opportunity not to be had again and she seized every moment of it. There was something sacred in education and she treated it with uttermost respect and seriousness. She made it look easy for the rest of us twenty something college students. To us, it was the hang-over from Friday night's party that made studying seem so impossibly hard. For Kathy, being a wife, a mother, a daughter as well as a cancer patient were not that hard, she could always find time to study.

Even though there were 20 years of age difference between us, Kathy was someone I could always talk to about my private struggles. She was not one to start giving advice just because she was older. She listened, with a kind heart and forgiveness. She never assumed anything, never jumped to conclusions. I can't help but wonder if she ever thought my struggles were trivial compared to what she had to contend with, but she never made me feel that way. To her, everyone regardless of their background, age, motivation deserves to be heard and everyone's struggles are equally important.

When her treatment was taking away her memory, her ability to drive and check email, she said with some sarcasm "I really should do better at staying in touch, you know I've just been so busy living my life!" I didn't need to tell her to not apologize, I knew she wanted to make me laugh.

Kathy, I'm going to miss your cheerful Hello on the phone. I will remember the wonderful trip Naomi, you and I took to San Francisco. The wine tasting we enjoyed and the slight buzz we felt afterwards. I will remember the short chats we'd have right before the 8AM ECON class. I will remember the delicious meals we made together in your kitchen. Most of all, I will remember how miraculously you lived your life and tell your miracle to my son, Emil.

Your friend,

Cecily

Outrageous baby item of the day

$112 Burberry pants for infant, no?

Recap since the baby

Emil is 7 weeks old tomorrow, yeah! He's going for 15 lbs right now, giant, I know.

To recap since my rant about motherhood, the following has become true, oh my goodness.

1. I've been to a Babies R Us store. Although to my defense, I went there because it was a gift. My thoughtful coworkers decided I must need a gift card from there, instead of, say stores like amazon.com or Costco where prices and selection are both better! So if you are gifting to someone expecting or new parents and reading this, remember that any giftcards will do but amazon.com, paypal or even grocery store cards are much better than a specialty chain like Babies R Us! Parents will still need to eat and they can't have stuffed animals for lunch no matter how cute they are!

2. I have a diaper organizer. My neighbor actually gave it to me. It's not a full blown diaper bag, more like a toiletry bag. When you are breastfeeding, there really isn't much you need to lug around in a big diaper bag. The most important is probably a few diapers and some wipes, which can fit into most purses. Anyway, we do bring the organizer with us when we go on walks but we only had to use it once to change Emil. It was at a friend's backyard BBQ.

Everything else has gone as planned, including a drug-free natural birth, no blog or facebook page devoted to my son, no nursery or baby decoration in the house.

I have been fanatic about uploading photos to Flickr, but that's mostly because both Kristian's and my parents live far away and want to see their grandson grow.

HypnoBirthing class crowd

Thursday night was our HypnoBirthing class at Mt. Auburn Hospital. HypnoBirthing is one of the natural birth methods taught to expecting parents these days. Not to spend too much time discussing the merits of HypnoBirthing, it’s mostly about using hypnosis relaxation techniques to let your body accomplish a natural, comfortable birthing.

After everyone sat down in a circle, the instructor, Meghan, asked each of us tell the group what jobs we had, what we did do for fun, etc. About half way into the icebreaker, before my turn, I was having such a hard time holding back laughs that Kristian was giving me a face. I had realized this was absolutely the highest concentration of "white people" I'd been with in recent times. White people as in stuffwhitepeoplelike, not in the sense of the race itself.

Granted, we do live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the north-eastern capital of liberal, highly educated, and high income hipsters. Our city may be smaller than Seattle or Portland, it contributes quite significantly to “white culture”. An abundance of intellectuals, high-tech companies, universities, proximity to the ocean and maybe just the fact that it's New England, makes Cambridge a hot bed for hipster living.

Here are the highlights about some of the expecting parents:

Dad #1: Just started his solar energy company. Attire: Patagonia fleece jacket and Chaco sandals.

Mom #1: A librarian.

Dad #2: A PhD candidate in engineering at MIT. A mountaineer who is "always looking to climb some snow covered peak". He's about to go away for a month long research trip overseas.

Dad #3: A freelance film producer. Attire: beret hat and a scarf, while sipping from his SIGG bottle.

Mom #3: Owns her own organic foods restaurant in town. She said they "love hiking, backpacking in the mountains and traveling."

Dad #4: An engineer. Loves hiking, backpacking and mountain biking. Wife and him are on ultimate frisbee teams.

Mom #4: A research assistant at Lincoln labs. She is outdoors, sports nut as well. She didn’t stop playing ice hockey until she was 13 weeks pregnant.

Mom #5a: A social worker for troubled youths in Boston.

Mom #5b: A librarian.

Dad #6: A psychology PhD, fellow at a hospital and waiting to get his state license to practice.

Mom #6: Cultural anthropologist, teaching at Northeastern University. Got her degree from Columbia. Both said they love skiing and snowboarding up in NH and VT.

Dad #7: IT Consultant. They are "very big into white water rafting".

Mom #7: Teacher. Loves traveling.

Dad #8: Conducts orchestra at Ithaca, NY. (I’m guessing Cornell related)

Except for two couples, one was Kristian and I, everyone confidently stated their passion for the outdoors. It was either hiking, backpacking, mountain climbing, rock climbing, white water rafting or something else. The class instructor is a married lesbian with 4 kids. There's another lesbian couple students.

In 15 minutes, I’ve accomplished the feat of witnessing first hand the following white people behavior:

* Organic Food
* Traveling
* Snowboarding
* Outdoor Performance Clothes
* Having Gay Friends
* Frisbee Sports
* The Ivy League
* Graduate School
* Bottles of Water
* Non-Profit Organizations
* Scarves
* Making you feel bad about not going outside

What can I say, it really was like playing stuffwhitepeoplelike bingo!!! Me and the orchestra conductor couple were Asian, everyone else was white. Speaking from a white culture perspective though, Asians are pretty white already. Oh, and since I'm an Asian girl married to a white dude, #11 Asian Girls should be on the above hit list as well. :)

Motherhood Anti-Expectations

On my first blog entry after becoming pregnant, I'd like to rant a bit about what I have observed about pregnancies, babies and parenting in today's America. Rather, this is a list of things I SHALL NOT DO as a new mom.

1. Since plenty of people have asked this question (either out of well-intended curiosity or felt obligated to ask it to make conversation), I will not "decorate" the "nursery" and paint the walls either pink, blue or yellow depending on the sex of the baby. I happen to think white walls are beautiful in our spare bedroom. In fact, I don't plan to find out the sex of the baby so people will not give me all baby things pink or all baby things blue. The downside is I might end up getting everything yellow, because of course, yellow is a "neutral" color. That's like the first lesson you learn in parenting 101, duh!

Who ever said baby girls shouldn't wear blue and baby boys can't be seen in pink? Gimme a break people. The other thing I will try to do (though I may fail miserably at it) is to resist buying a whole bunch of cartoon print baby stuff. Don't really want Whinnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse crap all over my baby and my house. Baby stuff that are black, brown, non-cutsy or with little skull print on them is welcome!

2. I will not blog or build a Facebook page for my baby. Babies are babies because they don't know, can't and probably don't want (if they knew) to blog or write their Facebook pages. They will be too busy eating, pooping, sleeping and crying. Plus, all the flash from the huge number of pictures taken by parents can make an infant plenty dizzy. You can tell the babies about their earlier days when they are older if you wish. But building an on-line identity of your baby without their consent is not something I will engage in. Leave the babies alone!

3. I am choosing to go with a midwife, not an obstetrics/gynecology doctor. One thing I must clear up is that I am not a hippie/holistic medicine nut. I don't eat 100% organic and I believe in science. Also, I am going to a hospital to give birth.

The reasons I'm going with a midwife is 80% science based. Statistics show midwives deliver a higher percentage of babies without induction, epidural and Cesarean section, provided if the mother is healthy. There are also other studies out there that show a positive correlation between an epidural and longer duration of labour. The other 20% is that I have heard and seen enough to conclude that people are over-treated and over-medicated in the U.S. in general. So I plan to resist the mainstream inclination to get ob/gyn to "actively manage" or dictate the terms of a birth.

C-section surgery, for example, is more profitable for the doctors and hospitals. It's faster and more predictable, and you bill it to the insurance company as a major surgery. Some doctors (I'm not saying all) prefer c-sections because overall it's a better alternative for them. They may get to eat dinner at a normal hour! Something like 27% of women have babies via a c-section in the US, which is a crazy high number. Of course, there are many other reasons for a higher rate of c-section besides a doctor's preference, such as older age of the mother, higher rates of obesity and diabetes. But I still think there are many unnecessary c-sections out there.

4. My last rant is my aversion of expensive and special purpose baby stuff that parents love blowing money on. The list starts with $1000 strollers, $500 crib, bottle warmers (cus a microwave is just not cute enough for your new baby), nursing pillow (cus regular pillows will make your baby sad) and designer baby clothes like Ralph Lauren for infants (your baby must look preppier than your neighbor's).

I'm sure the list will grow since I haven't stepped into a Baby r Us yet. (I hope I won't have to)

The best blog comment I read today

Originally posted by Pffefer on Danwei, which I copied it below.

I have similar thoughts on the American voters. What happens when Obama is the President of the United States, is that Americans will continue to complain about the electoral college system, the suburbs, the health care system, big corporations, high gas prices and China. :)

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I love how some people love saying "it is not you, it is your government that we have a problem with". It's got to be the cheesiest line ever. Has it ever occurred to you that if one day China democratizes you might not like it any more than you do today? Has it ever occurred to you that a free and democratic China might be no less threatening than you think it is today?

I chuckle every time when I see people making the China argument a "human rights" and "democracy" one. While I don't doubt that there are people out there who geuinely care about these, but make no mistake: Whether you admit it or not, it has always been about "us" vs. "them" driven by diverging interests. China has been propped up as a bag guy, challenging the west with its non-Judeo-Christian culture, its non-democratic model and above all, its reluctance to succumb itself to a world order which first and foremost seeks to maximize western interests. Us, the good guys vs. them, the bad guys. So naturally China becomes a bad guy and no good things can ever happen to a bad guy, right? Those western journalists who came to China came with the preconception that China is all about human rights violations, oppressed people etc., so it is only natural for them to see what they want to see which will only reinforce their preconceptions that China is a bad guy (unlike us good guys). So they keep spoon-feeding those negative stuff and BS to people back home and presenting as the only face of China, overtime that's what most people are used to reading and it does not make any financial sense (bottomline-wise) for those western media outlets to break from this decades-old tradition.

Typically this is what you hear about China: A dictatorship who has no regards whatsoever for human rights and common decency ruthlessly suppress its people who are vastly unhappy and fed up with the regime and the only thing that keeps them from rising up is the economic growth that this regime has been able to deliver. What? PEW says some 80% of the Chinese are satisified with the direction in which China is heading? Oh God that's wrong! PEW must be infiltrated by the evil Chinese government and their survey sample consisted of people who are members of the Womaodang only!

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