The longer I'm a parent, the more I realize that there are some topics or questions that really bother me. I have been guilty of more than one of these myself in my pre-mommy days, but now that I'm fully immersed on the other side, I know better.
You may not agree with me on any or all of these, but these are my personal thoughts on some questions/comments to avoid telling/asking new parents.
1. "Enjoy the time when they're young. They grow up so fast!"
As a parent, I knew I had to do this, but in the spur of the moments - in other words, every single waking second - it's really really hard to enjoy. I personally did not enjoy the newborn stage. Not being able to do ANYTHING with my time (or so it felt) was so irritating at times. I literally felt like I had to feed her, put her to sleep, wash bottles when she slept, cook when she slept, pump when she slept, do laundry when she slept, and then repeat the cycle all over again. Yes, it's true, laundry can wait. Sometimes. Yes it's true, cooking can wait. Sometimes. Yes, it's true, washing bottles can wait. Sometimes. But every now and then things have to be done, and those things have to be done somewhere between the minutes and hours of tending to a baby's needs. It gets frustrating fast. Were there moments I enjoyed? Absolutely. Did I purposely try to enjoy and savor it? Probably not.
2. "Is he/she sleeping through the night yet?"
This is the favorite question of many people I know. Even family has asked me this, and it gets old really quickly. Because every time I respond with "No" they seem shocked - why isn't your baby sleeping through the night yet? Are you really that concerned about my sleep? Because if you are, you should really start asking women during pregnancy if they're sleeping through the night. I don't think I've slept through the night in an entire year or more. There's no true "time" for babies to sleep through the night. I've talked to friends where it took up to a year or more for their babies to sleep through the night. Honestly, I'm okay when she wakes up at night to eat because she eats better at night than she does during the day sometimes. So who cares if she wakes up at night to eat? I care if she's eating! Yes, there will be a time when she gets older and is more than capable of sleeping through the night, and at that point, I will parent a little differently in order to train her to do that. But when she's young - 2, 3, 4, even 8 months, please don't be surprised if I tell you my baby is not sleeping through the night. I understand this is a perfectly honest question to ask, but if you must ask, please always respond with "Oh, that's good," no matter what I tell you. (I've had friends/other parents ask me about her sleep and respond in this way - thank you for doing so. I appreciate it and remember who you are!)
3. Parenting other parents
This doesn't happen often, but I think there was one time, someone heard my baby crying, saw me "struggling" to feed her and told me "Oh, I don't think she wants to eat. I think she's sleepy." She may have been sleepy also, but I was pretty sure she was hungry, too. Once I got her to somewhere quieter and laying on the floor instead of holding her in my arms, she finished the bottle and then it was nap time. I think. I don't really recall anymore. Parental instinct is not natural FYI...it doesn't just appear when you have a baby. No matter how nurturing you are, how caring you are, how kind you can be, or how much you love your baby, you don't just wake up one day and suddenly "get the hang of it." So yes, you will see me struggle to take care of my own child. Please don't act like you know more than I do about my baby, even if you are a veteran parent. There's no "one size fits all" to parenting. By the way, I have a very picky baby when it comes to eating positions. I will literally try feeding her, she will refuse to eat, and then 5 minutes later she starts crying, I move her somewhere else, and she will finish the bottle. True story.
So what is something all parents, new or experienced, want to hear from other people?
Encouragement.
"You're doing a great job."
Seriously, something as simple as that, means a lot. Especially through the exploding poop diapers, crazy spit up, nursing/feeding strikes, hours of non-stop seemingly "for no reason" crying that babies do every now and then, we, moms and dads, need to hear that our endless guess-and-check attempts are not in vain.
To my sweet mommy friends who have encouraged me (and inspired me to write this post):
Thank you.
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Monday, August 13, 2018
馒头
My grandmother was the cook in the family. It's sad to say I honestly don't remember anything specific about her cooking. She cooked everything! I remember holiday meals at their house when they lived 15 minutes away from us and many dishes on the table, but I have no recollection of eating it. I was still too young to appreciate or enjoy the cultural dishes with sophisticated flavors. They moved away when I was about 10 or 11 years old.
What I do remember, however, is what my grandfather made: steamed bread (馒头). I remember in the summers he would cover their entire kitchen counter with dough and flour and make tons of steamed bread and buns. I never helped in the process, but I remember watching him roll out and knead the dough by hand. I remember him pinching my nose with floured hands. I remember playing with small bits of dough he'd rip off and hand to me. (Side note: This is where I learned how hot Texas summers were. Once, I took the small ball of dough outside with me to play. We had this little Fisher Price tricycle and some other self-propelling plastic toy car. I was riding around on one of them in the driveway. I needed to use the bathroom, but I still wanted to play. I remember leaving my ball of dough on the toy outside in the driveway, running inside really quickly to go, and returning back outside only to find my ball of dough was now a hollow, wrinkly, rubbery ball. Seriously, I wasn't gone that long. )
Over 15 years later, the urge to want to replicate my grandfather's steamed bread has returned. I think partially it's because cooking while taking care of a baby and working part time is exhausting. I have to think far in advance what to thaw, what to buy from the grocery store, and how I'm going to plan my time to prep and cook - I hardly ever cook at "dinner time" anymore. We love going out and buying steamed buns (包子) - so easy and so tasty - but it adds up financially. So the goal was to try and make some ourselves. However, the first step was to get the outer bread right.
I finally had some time yesterday afternoon to sit down and make some steamed bread. I followed this recipe. And found the results decent. I'm not sure if my dough didn't rise as it should have or if I cut my portions too big...I only yielded 4 and the recipe said 8. Oh well. Steaming time was also a little different because after about 10 minutes I felt they were done (they were) and took them out.
I was so excited to try one. Upon ripping off a piece from the side and tasting it, I was immediately transported back to my childhood, standing in my grandparent's kitchen, being fed bits of this freshly steamed warm bread. I'm not sure I could replicate this again if I made it a second time or doubled/tripled the recipe, but it's a start.
I did forget to follow the instruction to cover with floured plastic wrap, hence the little peaks on the tops of my bread versus a smooth round top. Needless to say I had a hard time removing the plastic from the tops...
We're one step closer to making 包子! One of these days I'll find an afternoon for hubby to watch the baby for a solid 5-6 hours and I can cook in peace.
What I do remember, however, is what my grandfather made: steamed bread (馒头). I remember in the summers he would cover their entire kitchen counter with dough and flour and make tons of steamed bread and buns. I never helped in the process, but I remember watching him roll out and knead the dough by hand. I remember him pinching my nose with floured hands. I remember playing with small bits of dough he'd rip off and hand to me. (Side note: This is where I learned how hot Texas summers were. Once, I took the small ball of dough outside with me to play. We had this little Fisher Price tricycle and some other self-propelling plastic toy car. I was riding around on one of them in the driveway. I needed to use the bathroom, but I still wanted to play. I remember leaving my ball of dough on the toy outside in the driveway, running inside really quickly to go, and returning back outside only to find my ball of dough was now a hollow, wrinkly, rubbery ball. Seriously, I wasn't gone that long. )
Over 15 years later, the urge to want to replicate my grandfather's steamed bread has returned. I think partially it's because cooking while taking care of a baby and working part time is exhausting. I have to think far in advance what to thaw, what to buy from the grocery store, and how I'm going to plan my time to prep and cook - I hardly ever cook at "dinner time" anymore. We love going out and buying steamed buns (包子) - so easy and so tasty - but it adds up financially. So the goal was to try and make some ourselves. However, the first step was to get the outer bread right.
I finally had some time yesterday afternoon to sit down and make some steamed bread. I followed this recipe. And found the results decent. I'm not sure if my dough didn't rise as it should have or if I cut my portions too big...I only yielded 4 and the recipe said 8. Oh well. Steaming time was also a little different because after about 10 minutes I felt they were done (they were) and took them out.
I did forget to follow the instruction to cover with floured plastic wrap, hence the little peaks on the tops of my bread versus a smooth round top. Needless to say I had a hard time removing the plastic from the tops...
We're one step closer to making 包子! One of these days I'll find an afternoon for hubby to watch the baby for a solid 5-6 hours and I can cook in peace.
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
The Dollhouse Furniture
There's a doctor somewhere out there who has brought me much grief. No, I was not her patient. No, nobody I know has been or is her patient. Why then? Because she never returned what she borrowed from me nearly 15 years ago.
We weren't even friends really. We went to school together. She was a few years older than me and I had "little sister syndrome." I wanted to hang with the older kids and do everything they were doing. No, don't worry, I never got myself in trouble....for the most part.
10th grade science was chemistry. They had a mole project assigned, and she was making a little "mole" house I think. She asked if I had dollhouse furniture and wanted to borrow them for her project. Me, having "little sister syndrome," immediately let her borrow the pieces she wanted. They were some of my favorites - the shower, the toilet (with a lid that actually lifted up and down), a sofa, etc.
Years after she had finished 10th grade chemistry and was about to graduate, I remember asking people to ask her about returning my dollhouse furniture. Because we weren't actually friends and the introvert and ever developing passive aggressive side of me thought it inappropriate to directly ask her for them back myself. I remember asking a friend to ask her, and he told me when he asked her about returning the pieces, she became angry. Who does that?
I never got the dollhouse furniture back. Years and years later when I was cleaning out my dad's house, I looked again at my incomplete set of dollhouse furniture which was missing some of my favorite pieces. It'd been so many years, I had long given up on ever seeing them again. I boxed away the remaining pieces and gave them away. I had convinced myself it wasn't worth keeping an incomplete set.
It was just a simple $10 40-pc set of girly dollhouse furniture from Toys 'R Us. Everything was constructed of plastic in shades of white, pink, and light blue. I loved that set of dollhouse furniture. The drawers and cabinets actually opened and closed. The tiny television had a sticker of New York City with the Statue of Liberty framed between the Twin Towers. The set came with a mommy, daddy, and baby doll. The baby even had a cradle that rocked back and forth.
As a child I asked for a lot of things. I wanted a lot of things as children do. And for the most part, I did not get them. This is not to say I did not receive things I wanted or that my mother never bought me things. She bought me a lot of things - clothes, books, snacks - but when it came to toys, she was always the first to say no. With all the toys I had growing up - and I had a lot, most of them meticulously taken care of and saved to this day - I remember my dad buying them.
I remember looking in the Toys 'R Us ad and flipping through the colorful pages. I saw this set of dollhouse furniture and remember it costing $9.99. Surely that price for the value would convince my mother to buy it for me. 40 pieces for $10? That's $0.25 a piece - what a steal! I showed it to my mother, and she actually agreed to buy it for me. I still remember going to the store with her, and she asked the salesman to get a package from the top shelf because she wanted to make sure the box we bought was in good condition.
Thinking about this memory always makes me cry. There's anger. There's sadness. I've told myself over and over again I just need to get over it and move on. In some ways I have. Over the years I've always just thought the dollhouse furniture was sentimental to me because my mother bought it, and having lost her, it made the things she gave me more meaningful. This time, when this memory resurfaced, I realized why this set of colorful, cheap plastic was truly sentimental: my mother said yes.
We weren't even friends really. We went to school together. She was a few years older than me and I had "little sister syndrome." I wanted to hang with the older kids and do everything they were doing. No, don't worry, I never got myself in trouble....for the most part.
10th grade science was chemistry. They had a mole project assigned, and she was making a little "mole" house I think. She asked if I had dollhouse furniture and wanted to borrow them for her project. Me, having "little sister syndrome," immediately let her borrow the pieces she wanted. They were some of my favorites - the shower, the toilet (with a lid that actually lifted up and down), a sofa, etc.
Years after she had finished 10th grade chemistry and was about to graduate, I remember asking people to ask her about returning my dollhouse furniture. Because we weren't actually friends and the introvert and ever developing passive aggressive side of me thought it inappropriate to directly ask her for them back myself. I remember asking a friend to ask her, and he told me when he asked her about returning the pieces, she became angry. Who does that?
I never got the dollhouse furniture back. Years and years later when I was cleaning out my dad's house, I looked again at my incomplete set of dollhouse furniture which was missing some of my favorite pieces. It'd been so many years, I had long given up on ever seeing them again. I boxed away the remaining pieces and gave them away. I had convinced myself it wasn't worth keeping an incomplete set.
It was just a simple $10 40-pc set of girly dollhouse furniture from Toys 'R Us. Everything was constructed of plastic in shades of white, pink, and light blue. I loved that set of dollhouse furniture. The drawers and cabinets actually opened and closed. The tiny television had a sticker of New York City with the Statue of Liberty framed between the Twin Towers. The set came with a mommy, daddy, and baby doll. The baby even had a cradle that rocked back and forth.
As a child I asked for a lot of things. I wanted a lot of things as children do. And for the most part, I did not get them. This is not to say I did not receive things I wanted or that my mother never bought me things. She bought me a lot of things - clothes, books, snacks - but when it came to toys, she was always the first to say no. With all the toys I had growing up - and I had a lot, most of them meticulously taken care of and saved to this day - I remember my dad buying them.
I remember looking in the Toys 'R Us ad and flipping through the colorful pages. I saw this set of dollhouse furniture and remember it costing $9.99. Surely that price for the value would convince my mother to buy it for me. 40 pieces for $10? That's $0.25 a piece - what a steal! I showed it to my mother, and she actually agreed to buy it for me. I still remember going to the store with her, and she asked the salesman to get a package from the top shelf because she wanted to make sure the box we bought was in good condition.
Thinking about this memory always makes me cry. There's anger. There's sadness. I've told myself over and over again I just need to get over it and move on. In some ways I have. Over the years I've always just thought the dollhouse furniture was sentimental to me because my mother bought it, and having lost her, it made the things she gave me more meaningful. This time, when this memory resurfaced, I realized why this set of colorful, cheap plastic was truly sentimental: my mother said yes.
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