The Glass Slippers

We had a Cinderella weekend.

As Cinderella got ready for her ball and the birds tied her bows, we packed everything up - diapers, wipes, food, milk, toys - and went out to be social and live life again. An early Christmas party here. A birthday party there. And a dinner date. And while Cinderella was at her ball dancing with the prince, so were we, eating plates of food, having conversations, happily letting someone else hold our baby.

Cinderella heard the clock strike every hour as did we as we watched our clocks and calculated how much time we had left before her energy would drain and unleash the screaming. When the clock struck 12, Cinderella suddenly realized it was time to rush out before her beautiful facade faded away back to brown rags and torn cloth. As Sasha became more antsy and wouldn't sit still anymore, we rushed to pack everything up and get her loaded in the car before she made a commotion of noise.

And of course, Cinderella's carriage and driver reverted back to their pumpkin, vines, and animal selves. And she walked the rest of the way home (as the cartoon showed). And the baby still screamed all the way home on the car rides, unleashing herself and her needs for everyone to hear.

Cinderella's story is not all sad and depressing. Her glass slippers stayed and did not disappear as everything else did. And she had her happily ever after when the prince found his princess with tiny delicate feet which fit into those exquisite glass slippers.

I always did want Cinderella's glass slippers...

As for us? Well, despite all the screaming and crying and fussy feeds and throw up and poop explosions (all of which happened this weekend at one point or another), those are gone. And chances are, we won't remember every single second of every party and social outing this weekend. Like the carriage, the gown, the horses. Those disappeared. But the glass slippers? Yup, still here 😉

Turner Falls

I've been wanting to share about various topics, but the time to sit down and write about them has always escaped me. This last month has been full of work, puking, and not enough sleep. Thankfully, I am not the one puking. Unfortunately, the little one's puking involves lots of laundry instead of scampering to a toilet.

However, we planned this trip about a month ago and were grateful it was able to happen.

Usually I teach every other Friday, but we made it a point to not teach/take off Friday the 26th so we could go on a day trip. Hubby's love of the outdoors has infiltrated my life and in our four years of marriage, we have hiked over 30 miles together. We went to Palo Duro Canyon in September of 2015, Big Bend in December of 2016, and Haleakala National Park in Hawaii in March of 2017. Our record together is a 15 mile hike in one 12-hour day, but the approximately 10 mile hike of Haleakala crater (where you go down first and then up) was no joke.

After having Sasha, we knew our days of tent camping and hiking long trails beginning at 5 am would be put on hold indefinitely. And, unfortunately, living in the wonderful and affordable suburbia which we do, nature is not a nearby focal point. However, I somehow came across this small park in Oklahoma, known for its waterfall, which was only about 2.5 hours away from us, closer than driving to Austin or Houston! We decided to make a day trip of it.

When we crossed the state border, we actually started to see a change in the landscape around us - we saw (tiny) mountains and different layers of rock formations! It actually reminded me a tiny tiny bit of Big Bend.

Some expectations and then reality checks of how the day actually played out.

Expectations:

1. We wanted to play the drive there and home right around the time baby would sleep so she could get a good long nap in the car on the drive there and home.


2. We brought our portable high chair seat so she could sit while we picnicked outside for lunch.


3. We'd get in a short hike with her in the carrier.

Reality:

1. Baby woke up at 7 am instead of her usual 8/8:30 am....so we bumped everything up and tried to leave the house by 9 am. We left at 9:15. She slept great on the way there. On the way back, we tried to leave by 2:30, but baby took too long eating so we didn't leave until 2:45/3:00pm. She slept ok and then woke up at 4:00pm and then screamed and cried the final 10 minutes home, probably because she was the only one in the back and had no people interaction for over 2 hours and didn't get any crawling/play time all day. I didn't want to sit in the back with her because I did for our last road trip and I got a headache/nauseas and just wanted to close my eyes and sleep.

2. She sat in her portable high chair seat, which was great so we could eat our lunch....except there were a crazy ton of bees and they wouldn't leave us alone. Had I been a third party watching us try to eat our lunch at this picnic table, it would have been a hilarious sight watching two people swatting their arms around, flinching every now and then, and walking around the table in weird circles and patterns with a baby sitting on the high chair seat on the table.

The only item I paid for in this photo was the hat
she's not wearing! Love hand me downs and gifts.

To be honest, it was really hard to get my priorities straight: run away from the bees, or get the bees away from the baby. Clearly, I couldn't do both because my lunch was on the table and I couldn't carry the baby and carry my lunch (a hot bowl of curry) away at the same time. So hard, right? Clearly first world problems.

A bowl of curry and homemade bread. Could the bees not leave us alone? 😭😭

3. We arrived at the park at 11:45 am and by the time the two of us were fed and we managed to get her to finish a bottle, it was 1:00 pm. We explored the waterfall and took our fair share of pictures, and then had a short hike of probably 1 mile round trip.

It only matters if she looks cute.

Family photo!

Nothing compared to what we used to conquer in a day, but we did see a yellow caterpillar on the way back though and had an amusing time watching it crawl around for a while.

Our little yellow caterpillar friend. We named it Yuzzy!

Traveling with a little one in tow is definitely so different than traveling with two adults, but after doing so twice now, it makes me a little braver to keep going. We're going to get her a passport soon.

2019 is going to be a big year (I hope!) :)

Goodbye Mum

I sold my senior Homecoming mum today, sold it for 50% of the cost of the mum to begin with...so if you don't factor in inflation, that would be a negative 50% return. However, if you consider it literally plastic, paper, and ribbon hot glued together to make something ridiculously noisy that high school girls wear around for one day of their lives, I made a great sale. No, I did not wear mine around school. It's been hanging on a wall in my old bedroom for the last 10 years in pristine condition.

Every fall, I contemplated selling it to make some money and to get rid of it, but every fall, I either forgot or couldn't bring myself to sell it. There was too much sentimentality behind it because it was completely my own handiwork.

My handmade senior mum.

During junior year, my homecoming date was from another school. He and I had agreed not to do the mum and garter stuff with each other. We were going together just to have a date for the dance and to hang out with our friends. Well, being the girly girl I was, (and still am at heart,) I bought my own mum that year from the drill team moms and paid for it with my own money. I also bought some craft things and put together a last minute garter for him anyway even though we said we weren't going to do that. It wasn't my finest handiwork, but you know, for someone who thought he wasn't getting a garter, I think he was pleasantly surprised to have gotten one after all. I'm sure it's long been in the trash for years since that night.

For senior year, my homecoming date was yet again from another school. He and I had again agreed not to do the mum and garter stuff with each other. We were, once again, going together just to have a date for the dance and to hang out with our friends. And once again, being the girly girl I was, I wanted my own mum - because let's face it, the silver and white ones are so much more "elegant" than the maroon and white ones, if you can even call glitter, ribbon, and plastic "elegant."

But, I was going to make my own. Being a year wiser than I was the previous year and more intuitive, I figured out how to assemble all these seemingly useless pieces of craft materials they sell at Hobby Lobby and Michael's into something rather beautiful. My favorite part was the mum base. I creatively designed my own pattern and put it together with some of the more expensive glitter ribbons.

My mum base.

The trickiest part to making beautiful mums which I discovered in my own experience is how to embellish and hide the staples and glue. Everyone can take hot glue and glue a cow bell onto a piece of ribbon, or tie a cow bell onto a string and hang it off the mum. But how many people can DIY hide the charm hole at the top of the cow bell with something beautiful? (Also considering that mums are most often made by boys for girls with high expectations, chances are slim to none that they have any idea how to do this; hence, The Mum Shop in Plano has such lucrative business for only operating 3 months of the year.)

Someone out there will be Class of 2019...how
convenient: I only had to change one sticker.

17-year-old me figured that out, and I had a lot of fun making my own bows and ribbon embellishments to hide the charm holes, staples, and hot glue.

Made my own deluxe loops, and my own
ribbon braid on the right.

Cleverly concealed the top of the bell
beneath a decorative ribbon.

It was still very bittersweet and a bit sad when I handed away my mum to the lady who was picking it up. Granted, I would much rather have the cash than my mum hanging in my room, but I'm still sentimental at heart and I will miss my fine handiwork from 10 years ago. Also I'm pretty sure she will take apart my mum and simply use it for pieces to make another one. But I'm thankful I was able to sell it for cash than simply throw it away in the trash. Perhaps my legacy will live on anonymously through someone else's mum, at least for one year.

Just for kicks and giggles, I went online to The Mum Shop and created a mum order for something comparable to mine (number of charms, number of ribbons, etc.) to see how much it would cost to buy. I paid quite a bit less than what they're charging. Here are the numbers:

In my opinion, mums these days have gotten so large and so flashy that they're gaudy. I think they're actually more beautiful and elegant when they don't weigh 20 pounds and cover the entire girl whom it adorns. But I digress.

I did, however, remember to remove one detail from my mum. Years ago when I was preparing to hang my mum in my room, I needed a large needle or safety pin to hang it up on the pushpin. The only thing I could think of to use was a pearl pin I had kept in my music box. Before selling it and giving it away, I switched out the pearl pin with one of my many safety pins I've amassed from shopping at baby consignments. (I probably could have handed it to her without anything and it would have been fine, but I was trying to make it more marketable.) 

Why such a big fuss over such a small pin? It's the pin from my corsage from my mother's funeral.

In about sixteen years, I'll hopefully be able to pull up this blog post and share with my daughter about my old Homecoming mum and how much fun I had making it and how special it was for me. 

Goodbye, mum. I'll miss you.

The Shopping Cart Conundrum

I took my daughter with me to the dentist today. She sat quietly in her car seat carrier in the corner as I got my teeth cleaned. The last 10 minutes or so she became a little fussy, but overall she was very good - everyone said she was super cute, very aware, and healthy-looking. Why, yes, if I don't say so myself.

After finishing up at the dentist, I really wanted to go grocery shopping next door because I'd put off shopping for groceries for about 10 days and we were down to eating rice and beans, frozen chicken nuggets, and deli sandwiches. I've always loved the fact that my dentist's office was next to a grocery store I frequent, albeit it's up to 40 minutes away from my house.

I didn't have the stroller caddy with me in my trunk today because it ended up in my husband's car so I figured I'd plop her in a shopping cart and grab the few items I needed:

- 2 onions
- 5 pouches of baby food
- 2 cartons of strawberries
- 1 bag of carrots (1lb)
- 1 bag of potatoes (5lb)
- 1 container of yogurt

Doesn't seem like much, right? Usually, this would be no problem for a basket and I'd hold the bag of potatoes in my other hand. Well, when your baby in the car seat in the cart takes up 100% of the base of the shopping cart, and there's no room left to flip out the little part at the front that usually your child would sit in (but she can't safely sit with only a lap belt yet), you need to leave empty-handed or get creative very quickly.

I piled stuff around her feet being careful not to crush her toes. I put some items above the hood of her carrier, and anything else I held in my hands to the checkout line.

After checking out, I piled the few bags of groceries on the bottom level of the cart where you would normally put your heavy items - cases of soda, water, larger boxes, etc. Carefully, I pushed her out of the store, being extra cautious when pushing her over the threshold at the sliding door entrance. Well, I was doing great until I went to go down the accessibility ramp (which I learned in college is mandatory for all buildings/stores/places to have a ramp for handicap accessibility, or in this case, mothers pushing strollers or grocery shopping carts) and the ramp had ridges. Dundundundun went the cart, and of course the vibrations jiggled my precariously placed bags on the bottom level of the cart off onto the ground.

So here I was, diaper backpack on my back, purse over my shoulder slowly slipping down, holding the cart so it wouldn't roll away into the street with my precious baby, attempting to bend over to grab all the spilled items, and hoping nobody is behind me trying to exit the store because I am smack in the middle of their way.

Would you believe me if I said it wasn't the first time this has happened? It's not.

So this is my life: teaching piano part time, raising a baby, and wondering if there's actually going to be any room in my shopping cart for the groceries.

"Mommy, stop crowding my personal space."

Parenting Etiquette

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.

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.

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.