The Art of Retail

Since Covid hit nearly two years ago, our leisure shopping has decreased significantly. Only this fall did we start actually going out to "browse" with the kids, and even then, the trips were no more than 20-30 minutes inside the store tops. Thinking about the way germs spread and being in an enclosed space indoors has really affected some of the things we used to do. Right before the pandemic hit, my husband took some super cute pictures of our daughter sitting in chairs and playing with toys at Walmart and Target during my last semester of pregnancy. I would teach in the evenings and he would take her out during my lessons so I could teach in peace and she wasn't asked to be quiet.

In the winter of 2021, my daughter and I finally ventured out shopping again. I had taken her with me to run an errand and deliver some things. After our delivery, I took her to Home Goods. This was one of our favorite stores to peruse before we had kids and even before the pandemic. Almost exactly three years ago, we had taken her to the same store. She wasn't walking at the time and we pushed her around the store in her stroller. There was a giant stuffed penguin at the store for sale that day and we took a picture with it. 

Three years ago. One of us looks very different. Two of us look the same 😉.

She and I went into the store and briefly passed their Christmas aisle. I took her to browse the wall of kitchen tools, and then we made it to the toy section. She and I looked at toys for a while. Then I told her I wanted to look at my stuff and we browsed the beauty aisle. She told me she wanted to go back and look at toys. I obliged and we walked back to the toy section. She wandered around some more and we made it to one corner.

I found a Baby Shark mini tablet and pressed the music button. It started playing Baby Shark. Just days before, I had played around with the piano app on my iPad while she was next to me and came across the tune for Baby Shark. I played through it once and moved onto other things. For days after I'd hear her humming the melody or making up her own words to the tune. This girl has an ear! She hears something once and I'll hear it from her days later with her own rendition. I can't wait to start teaching her piano, but boy am I not looking forward to the sass she might give me when she realizes it's more than just fun and games. 

She and I stood there for a very long time listening to the Baby Shark song. She'd press the button, look at some other toy, and press it again after it stopped despite looking at other toys. Then, she asked me if I was going to buy it and take it home. I didn't give her a direct answer first, but after messaging Daddy and doing some googling online, we came to the conclusion that I was not going to buy it. I told her she could keep playing with it in the store but we couldn't take it home with us. So she kept pressing the buttons and listening to the music. 

The Baby Shark toy she played with for a long time.

Then, I told her to put it back because Mommy wanted to look at one more thing before leaving. Well, we ended up looking at like 10 more things. I wandered a puzzle section. We made it back to the kitchen housewares section and looked at sheet pans and kitchen shears. Finally, we were ready to checkout with our two items (and no toys!). She looked at a few more things while we waited to checkout but put everything back when I asked her to.

Normally I don't give a play by play of my shopping trip, but this is monumental. I haven't shopped like this in almost two years. When Covid first hit and I went inside a grocery store to shop in-person after a month of going nowhere, I started to make my grocery lists twice: once to list the items and a second time to reorder them in order of how the store was arranged. Leisurely shopping? What is it?!

We spent an hour and a half inside the store browsing and walking around. I had my daughter with me, I didn't buy any toys, and nobody had a meltdown. It was amazing. 

Two Zero Two Zero Resolved

At the beginning of 2020, I set out with three goals for the year. You can read my original post here. It also explains why I don't do resolutions anymore, but I intentionally think about some mental goals to ground myself for the year.

Here were my three goals for 2020:

1. Finish my cross stitch.

2. Find a new work life balance.

3. Keep my sanity.

Did I accomplish all three? I did, actually. It wasn't always easy, and this year certainly wasn't a straightforward one, but I did accomplish the goals I'd set for myself.

1. I finished my cross stitch.

I won't go into detail about it here as I already wrote a post on it back in June when I finished it for my mid-year check in. So that was a great accomplishment considering I'd finished it after having two kids to look after. Now my next goal is to get it framed and hang it up in my son's room as I had originally intended. That should be a goal for 2021.

2. I did find a new work life balance.

Covid really did me a huge favor on this one. After having my son, the world took a big pause and quarantined/locked-down for about 6 weeks, and even after that, life has taken on a different pace. I did cut my maternity leave very short and returned back to teaching when he was merely 6 weeks old, but it was teaching online without needing to clean the house to be presentable for students. For the first 5-6 weeks after returning to work, I was teaching 7 students a week. It was great. I felt like I had the mommy routine and teacher routine down. In June, I added a few more. It was still doable. Then in August when the new school year began, I added some more, and next year, I'll be adding a few more and considering my studio full once again.

At the beginning of the year I had huge fears about how I was going to breastfeed my baby (assuming my body cooperated) and have my work schedule as well as watching two children. Because of the way this year panned out, I was able to exclusively pump, have an ample supply to feed him and freeze a stash, and have surplus to share. 

3. I did (for the most part) keep my sanity.

To be honest, staying at home and refraining from social gatherings did not affect me too much because I'm an introvert to begin with. I don't really enjoy large groups or crowds so being at home was doing what I enjoyed, for the most part.

It wasn't until about August when I started to really feel the "blues" of being at home all the time. There were just days when I wasn't motivated, didn't want to do anything, and lacked drive. Part of it was not having places to go as a motivator to get my day started. 

One of the outlets I was able to use as a "pick me up" was organization. Like everyone else, I watched The Home Edit, and although not inclined to organize my bookshelves by color or rolling my scarves, it made me want to organize our house.

So we did. We bought all sorts of products and organized our pantry, a built-in cabinet, kitchen drawers, bathroom drawers, and our closet. No, we didn't pay anyone $250 an hour to come do it for us. Yes, I bought a lot of clear storage containers. Yes, it was still expensive. 

Was it worth it? Yup. 

I grew up with a super frugal (and potentially incorrect) mentality that spending money on something to put what you already bought with money into is useless. Well, now that I'm officially in the 30s age range, it's finally clicked that organization is worth it because it changes your perspective and mindset.

That's for another blog. 

Here's a sneak peek at one of my favorite
drawers, newly organized this year.

I hope you were able to reflect on your year and find some silver linings through all the "unprecendented-ness."

Bye 2020. ✌

Momma's Boy

 When I found out I was pregnant the second time around, I was actually hoping for a girl. The practical and efficient side of me thought: How great would it be if I could reuse all of the old clothes again and not need to buy anything new!

Their due dates were 5 days apart, although my first was 6 days late, so due date for #2 was actually the day before #1's birthday. My morning sickness was just as bad if not worse than the first time. The seasons of my pregnancies were going to be identical so no need for new maternity clothes. How perfect was this? 

Well, as all things go, you can only plan so much. I ended up buying some maternity clothes anyway because I didn't buy a single maternity shirt the first time and stretched out a few of my regular shirts...sad day. Unfortunately, I can't wear those now anymore without looking a little too boxy. And, of course, we were having a boy instead of another girl.

I wasn't disappointed when I found out. Surprised, maybe, cause with all the pukey feelings and food aversions, I really thought it'd be another girl. But we were having a little boy. It actually brought a new excitement to this pregnancy. If I really didn't need to buy new clothes for this baby, we would have essentially spent $0 on baby things (not counting diapers) for our second. Not a bad thing to save money, but it takes the fun out of it. 

So last Thanksgiving and Christmas, I got to do some online shopping to purchase clothes and stock up on the basics. A few months later, we said hello to our little boy and bunkered down for a few months as the epidemic began. It's a good thing this wasn't our first baby. We did a lot of last-minute shopping for baby things with our first, so we had more than enough this time. 

I'll never know if it was because he was a boy, or he was our second child, or simply his temperament is much easier, but he's been an absolute dream from the beginning: started sleeping through the night around 2 months old, eats on a fairly predictable schedule, falls asleep on his own without needing to be rocked or held, and doesn't have a spit up problem. We'd been trained by one of the neediest babies ever, so it seemed, so when I experienced the feeling of laying a baby down in a crib, walking away, and finding him asleep 5 minutes later, it was like a miracle had happened right before my eyes!

But that's not even my favorite part.

Sometime between 2-3 months old, he started to do a happy squirm wiggle giggle whenever he'd see me after a prolonged period of time. This would happen if I went in to get him after he woke up from sleeping or if I walked away for a little bit and came back and looked at him. I don't ever remember my daughter doing this, and it is absolutely the cutest thing ever. 

My daughter is still the needier child, but she will always be special to me for some very personal reasons, and I'm thankful to have a daughter. But I'm also thankful to have a little boy whose face lights up in delight when he sees me. 

This is not how his face lights up when he sees me...but
this is one of the very few pictures we have together.

Mid Year Check-In

At the beginning of the new year, I wrote a post with a few goals I wanted to accomplish. It's my version of a "New Year's Resolution." Well, Unfortunately for most people, 2020 has turned out to be one terrible year. You can read about my take on the terrible twos here, more for comedic relief than real talk. 

A whole six months has gone by. I can't tell you half of what I did in these six months, But I know the time has gone by because:

• I'm not pregnant anymore
• I have a second child
• There are more gray hairs on my head (I think...I'm not really counting...)

I started the year with three general "goals" I wanted to accomplish. 

1. Finish my cross-stitch
2. Find a new work-life balance
3. Keep my sanity

1. Finish My Cross-Stitch

I did! I finished my cross-stitch. I put in extra hours early this year, stitching at night, but I didn’t finish it before he was born. Somehow, after my son was born, I found time here and there to finish! It took me about three and a half years, but I finished it on June 28, 2020. This is my second large-scale cross-stitch that I've finished. Once again, the irony is that when I purchased this cross-stitch, I was living in China and single. When I finished it, I was living in the USA, married, with two kids two and under.

Originally, I bought this cross-stitch with a goal of finishing it before we had kids. That didn't happen. So then, I wanted to finish it before we were done having kids. That didn't happen either...but to my own credit, I only missed that goal by about three months.

Here it is!

Something often overlooked about cross-stitches is actually the back. If you enter a cross-stitch into a county fair or contest, they actually judge you more on the back than the front. Why is that? The back tells about the journey. Anyone can come up with a nice looking design on the front, but it takes dedication and patience to have a beautiful cross-stitch back.

So what is it about this journey that's so important? 

1. No Knots - cross stitching doesn't involve tying any knots. The ends of each thread are secured by looping your stitches on top of the ends. Every time you start a new thread, it must be secured in this way. 
2. Reaching over vs. starting new - I don't know if there's a technical term for this. If anyone's savvy enough in cross-stitch terminology, please let me know! But this is where instead of cutting the thread and starting in a new location, you take your thread from your last ending point and reach across the canvas to start it in a new location, therefore resulting in a very long piece of thread traveling on the back. It makes the back look messy and sloppy.
3. Consistency - The Xs on the front need to be crossed the exact same way in order to appear consistent and neat. This means if you stitch the bottom left to top right first, it has to be stitched first on every single X. When done correctly, the stitches on the back will all appear to be in the same direction instead of alternating vertical and horizontal stitches. 

Is it obvious to tell if someone's taken their time and cross-stitched the correct way? Yes. If you know what you're looking for, it's extremely obvious. One of the most telling signs is that the back of your cross-stitch should look exactly like the front.

Here's my back:

I have to say, I did a really nice job on this cross-stitch. I've been sloppy on previous ones in the past and learned the hard way, hence how I've been able to come up with my mental list of "what it takes to have a good cross-stitch." The design itself is not a difficult one, especially not compared to the last one I finished, but it fits perfectly for why I wanted to finish it: it's for my children. 

2. Find a New Work-Life Balance. 

I have been able to find a new work-life balance. In doing so, I've cut my students in half, I limit the hours I work, and I'm only teaching online right now. For most of this, I have to thank coronavirus actually. If the virus didn't exist, I would have pressured myself into taking all my students back which would be 12+ hours of teaching a week in five days. Add that onto taking care of my kids during the day while my husband was working as well as breastfeeding, or attempting to breastfeed my son, and that results in one crazy mom. 

I'll never forget the day I put my pump on the kitchen counter and pumped during my 30 minute break in between two lessons while cooking spaghetti on the stove for dinner at the same time after my daughter was born. I don't even know where she was. I think my husband was watching her. 

I'll be eternally grateful for coronavirus that I will not have to do that with my son this time around. But that's pretty much the only reason why I'm grateful for this virus. For everything else, it's ruined a lot of plans, trips, outings, and life in general. 

3. Keep my Sanity

As mentioned above, this virus has helped me to keep my sanity in certain ways. In others? Not so much. It's been a new learning curve to figure out how to plan grocery trips now and be intentional about what I buy. I've had to train my daughter into a daily routine/schedule that doesn't involve going on playdates or wandering stores for fun. But we've found other things that she has enjoyed during these last three months of staying at home and staying out of public places, which has also kept us from going crazy ourselves: going on bike rides in the bike trailer, swinging in our front lawn and "blasting off", swinging in our hammock, watching our neighbors mow and trim their lawns, going swimming in our neighbor's pool, watching bunnies and squirrels, digging in our flower beds which don't have flowers, and learning how to be a big sister, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. 

Overall, I think the transition to having two kids while maintaining both of our jobs and general lifestyle has been pretty smooth. The kids have kept me busy during all this staying at home, and to be honest, it's been nice. I wonder to myself what quarantine with no kids would have been like. I think I would have had a lot more time to do the things I wanted to do and no will to do them. Chances are, I would have sat at home, watched a lot of TV, or spent a lot of money shopping online, neither of which I have time to do now.

I hope despite all the terribleness this year has brought for many of us, you've been able to find some silver linings to reach some goals or discover something new for yourself. 

Here's to the second half of 2020. 

"Terrible" Twos

My daughter is two. Are the twos as terrible as they're infamously named? In some ways, totally. She, on occasion, wakes up from her naps screaming hysterically, and we don't know how to calm her down. Sometimes this lasts for 15-20 minutes. 

She likes to play the "I don't actually know what I want" game. Not familiar with it? It goes something like this:

S: I want ice [in my water]!

Me: Ok. *adds ice in water*

S: No. No. No ice.

Me: 🤦🏻‍♀️ *Takes away bottle. Dumps out - refills water only. Hands back bottle*

S: Ice! Ice! Ice!

Me: Are you kidding me?! 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

She likes to sleep with her door open, but if it's not open enough, she'll scream at you to open it more. 

She needs all her stuffed animals lined up in a particular place and way under the blanket and if they move even the slightest bit (even if she moved/kicked them around), she'll start crying for you to come back and fix it.

Are you exhausted yet? That's just the start.

**

On the flip hand, she amazes me at how helpful and capable she already is at just two years old. She can help me unload the clean clothes from the dryer into the basket, and sometimes, she'll even drag the basket to the living room for me to fold if she's feeling extra cooperative. She can help me bring bags of light items from the grocery store into the kitchen for me to put away. She can turn on and off light switches when asked to. She can retrieve items for me when requested. 

So is she really that terrible as a two year old? 

Sometimes. The answer is sometimes. 

**

It's the year 2020. We've only had a handful of years with two 2s so far: 2020, 2012, 2002, 1922. Unfortunately, many people started the year with high hopes, only to have them be squashed. Some would say it's been a terrible year. It has indeed been a year filled with uncertainty and unrest.

A Pot of Curry

I went grocery shopping for the first time today in about seven weeks. Things have changed. There's plexiglass at cash registers. People are wearing masks and gloves. There's a designated person wiping carts at the entrance. Entrances and exits are marked separately. There's tape on the floor marking six foot distances. Traffic on the roads was a lot lighter as well as people shopping overall. (Granted, I did go at 8:30 in the morning...which is early even without our current situation.)

The lady who normally checks me out at the register was working. I wasn't sure if she'd recognize me without my daughter and with a mask on, but she did. We chatted for a bit since nobody was in line waiting to check out behind me. I told her I had two kids now. She didn't believe me. I showed her a picture. She said she couldn't wait to see both of them again. Mentally, I thought about how many more months it would be before I would ever venture outside with my two young kids.

Upon arriving home, I completely changed everything I had worn out and threw them directly into the washing machine. Times have changed. Sadly, they're never going to go back to the way they were. Masks and gloves in public may be a part of our new normal. Social distancing may always be on our minds. But life will eventually go on.

In some ways, I've been grateful for this virus. It forced me to stay home in a time when I would have stayed home anyway. Convenient, right? I've known women who are at the mall or taking their baby out DAYS after giving birth. That is not me. My body has proven to me that it takes time, sometimes longer than normal, to put itself back together. With the quarantine this year, I've appreciated being able to accept that without feeling like I'm depriving myself of anything.

I've appreciated the time at home with my family. My husband was blessed to have six weeks paternity leave from his company. This was a drastic change from two years ago when our daughter was born and he was given one week paternity and took one week of PTO. Looking back, watching one baby at two weeks old by myself at home would have been a piece of cake. Part of me is still anxious and terrified about him having to return to work (at home) and being "left alone"with a six week old and a two year old.

In other ways, it's been a huge pain. We've been to the grocery store two times since having a new baby. I miss using fresh ingredients to cook. Normally, I almost never buy frozen or canned vegetables. I don't really know what to do with them. The texture is different, and sometimes, so is the taste. We've been eating a lot of prepared frozen foods, which, back in my childhood/teenage days, I may have loved. But being an adult now, it gets old pretty fast.

We haven't been able to have as much help as I had thought. My in-laws didn't come. My dad hasn't come over. Friends have dropped off food occasionally, which has been really nice, but I miss seeing people. I was texting a friend and telling her, "T loves to be held. I wish I could give other people the privilege!" He was quite tiny when he was born, not even 7 pounds, and he went down to almost 6 pounds at his lowest, but he is shaping out to be quite the chunky baby. At one month, he was just under 10 pounds, and I'm pretty sure by 5 weeks he went comfortably over that. (Yes, I know, this is small compared to other people's standards, but when he weighs 8.4% of my postpartum weight, not even my normal, that's pretty significant!)

Lastly, it has impacted my work. I am self-employed and run my own business so I knew by taking a maternity leave I was going to be giving up 2-3 months of income. Not a problem.

So where's the problem?

My substitute was an older lady, and when this virus came about, it was decided she would not teach students inside her home. Also, being a substitute who wasn't familiar with my students, online lessons were not likely and my students did not wish to take online with someone who wasn't their normal teacher. Originally, I had been thrilled over half my students wanted to take lessons with the substitute this year - significantly higher than two years ago. I was also very excited to have her as my substitute as well. Unfortunately, none of it panned out.

As a result, my teacher instincts and concern for my students decided to shorten my maternity leave by a month. So instead of starting the second week of June like I had intended, I am now starting the second week of May. I am teaching a lighter load of about 6-8 students, but it means adding the slightest bit of work to my already busy daily routine. You also have to understand though that the longer my students go without lessons - whomever the teacher may be - the more difficult my job is to teach them again when they return. It's a catch-22. Yes, it is my personal decision to do this, but no, it was not the original plan.

When my daughter was born, I went back to work when she was 8 weeks old, and that was planned. I told myself it was too soon and I would need more time with my son. Well...that isn't happening. He will be 7 weeks old when I start teaching again. So, if we have a third child, does that mean I'll go back to work when he/she is 6 weeks old?! Ha...

As nice as it's been to humor my homebody introverted self for the last month and a half, life will eventually need to resume. We can't stay home forever in fear of getting the virus. But we will also never leave our house with the same carefree mindset we used to. Shopping trips will need to be meticulously planned, and stopping by two or three different stores at once to snag the best deals is probably a thing of the past (at least for me.)

Tonight, we'll get to eat our pot of curry with fresh vegetables and chicken.

Stay smart, even if the state is reopening.

Mamalogues: Strange Times

We live in strange times right now. It's been even stranger to have a baby during these times. Nobody could come visit us at the hospital. Our own daughter wasn't even able to come visit. We haven't had anyone over at the house to see the baby since he was born including our own family. We don't go to the grocery store if we can help it and mostly live off pantry staples and frozen foods. Some people have come to drop off some groceries or meals here and there, but we haven't asked anyone for anything because we don't want others to risk going out on our behalf.

Our daughter decided to rebel after we picked her up to come home with us after baby brother was born. Every day since has included tears and tantrums of some degree and her sensitivity right now is off the charts. I can't even open the cereal box for her if she wants to open it herself without a crying fit ensuing. We're lucky the second child is rather calm and likes to sleep. We joke that our daughter was a handful as a baby, and now that there's a new baby, she is STILL the handful.

I can feel the postpartum depression creep in at times. The foods I couldn't eat when pregnant, I now still can't eat because of to-go only rules and closed restaurants. Let's face it - sushi is not a to-go kind of food. And even though Asian cultural confinement says you shouldn't go outside for a month after delivery, it's still depressing to think that after my month is up, I still can't go out anywhere as I please. On the bright side, it means I don't have to worry about loading up two kids in the car by myself to go out.

I remember after my daughter was born, I struggled with the same kind of emotions in a different way. After my husband went back to work, I was left alone at home with a new baby whom I barely understood how to take care of. I still felt like I was crawling in the dark, feeling my way around, desperately trying to read nonverbal cues. Music was what helped me get through it. I'd go and play piano for a bit while she slept, and lucky for me, it didn't wake her up.

I would do the same now, but a needy toddler doesn't appreciate it when you don't pay attention to her for more than five minutes. When I've tried to play for a bit, she will actually come up to me and say, "Mama, nano [sic] all done." Clearly she dictates my world as well.

Being sleep-deprived and listening to a whiny toddler is not a good combination. Although my body is used to running on less sleep than the days pre-kids, sleeping two cycles of 2-3 hours and then being up and running for 13+ hours is exhausting. Factor that in with a defiant two year old and you have a recipe for disaster. It's an understatement to say that life at home is tough right now.

I miss my students. I stopped teaching a week and a half earlier than I anticipated because of the virus. I also caught a minor cold the week before I delivered 😬. My substitute plans fell through because of the virus. Part of me feels obligated to start teaching (online) earlier than I originally planned instead of leaving my students hanging for two and a half months. Part of me wants to start teaching when I originally planned. A tiny, tiny part of me thinks I should use the virus and the fact that I now have two kids two and under to stop teaching for a while. But I really don't want to do that.

My daughter's birthday was last week. There were no presents. There was no party. But we celebrated in our own small ways. I looked up a cake recipe without milk or eggs because we need to ration the supplies 😂 and she helped me make it. Then I made a homemade frosting.

I let her mix the batter.

...and then I had to grab a second fork and help her mix.

She was more interested in the candle flames than the cake itself and only had like two bites. Oh well. I’d like to say she’s not that interested in sugary treats, but if we had the chocolate cake from Costco, she’d probably be eating it up by the mouthful...

And of course, in To family fashion, we made her a homemade birthday card. I told myself before her first birthday that I’d hand make her a card every year for her birthday. So now she has two. 

I was filling out my son's baby book. There's a spot for world leaders, the price of gas, the price of a house, and popular movies. But there's no spot for world events, no spot for me to write "Coronavirus" or "Covid-19". Both my children will inevitably learn about this in their history books. But I'll tell them: we lived through this.