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. 

51 Mosquito Bites

I've been trying to think of something meaningful to write about in the last month with everything going on in society. I wanted to show that I was aware of what is going on. I wanted to show that I cared. But everything that I seemed to want to say or thought I should say seemed meaningless.

The other day, a mom dropped off a check to pay for her daughters' piano lessons. I went outside to say hi and we stood outside distanced from each other and talked for what turned into about 30 minutes. During that 30 minutes, I got feasted on by mosquitos: 51 bites. Mosquitos have always been extra attracted to me for some reason - something about certain blood types being more preferable than others. Mine is the most favored apparently. Never in my life have I been bitten this many times at once.

Needless to say, when I came back inside, I immediately washed my legs and feet to relieve the swelling. My husband asked me why I didn't just excuse myself and say I need to go inside because I was getting bit. I'm not sure why I didn't. I think it was a mix of not feeling like she and I were that close in relationship to be able to excuse myself but also that I enjoyed having some adult conversation with someone other than my husband since it happens so rarely now since we don't leave the house except for food.

For the next few days, I felt this insane itching that would continue throughout the day. Occasionally, I'd distract myself with something long enough to forget about it for a while, but it would come back. Sometimes, it was the bites on my feet. Other times it was the bites behind my knees. And sometimes it was the bites on my knees. It was always at least one of them, somewhere, itching, beckoning me to succumb to the feeling and scratch.

When I knelt on the floor to change my daughter's diaper, or sat on the couch, or when my daughter kicked me with her feet when eating, it caused me to think about them. It caused them to be irritated and itch. I'd wake up in the middle of the night scratching, subconsciously. I tried all sorts of home remedies to make the itching stop and wish them to heal. I'd poke them with my fingernails hoping the pain I felt would overpower the itching I felt. 

And then it hit me. These annoying bites, 51 to be exact, were causing me an incessant frustration for more than two days - they haven't healed yet. In the tiniest little way, it allowed me to experience a fraction of what the black people out there feel when they can't leave the house at certain times wearing certain clothes with certain things. It allowed me to experience what it's like to be constantly reminded that there is something to be wary of, a reason to be careful, a reason to fear. 

I read an article online about a boy sharing the rules his mother told him to follow when leaving the house. Some of you may have seen it circulating on social media as well. 

– Don’t put your hands in your pockets.

– Don’t put your hoodie on.

– Don’t be outside without a shirt on.

– Check in with your people, even if you’re down the street.

– Don’t be out too late.

– Don’t touch anything you’re not buying.

– Never leave the store without a receipt or a bag, even if it’s just a pack of gum.

– Never make it look like there’s an altercation between you and someone else.

– Never leave the house without your ID.

– Don’t drive with a wifebeater on.

– Don’t drive with a du-rag on.

– Don’t go out in public with a wifebeater or a du-rag.

– Don’t ride with the music too loud.

– Don’t stare at a Caucasian woman.

– If a cop stops you randomly and starts questioning you, don’t talk back, just compromise.

– If you ever get pulled over, put your hands on the dashboard and ask if you can get your license and registration out.

Someone, male, not black, commented something along the lines of "I was told to follow all these rules, too, growing up. What's so special?"

What's so special? What's so special is that if you, or anyone not black, were to forget to follow one of these rules, it would be an "oops, I messed up" kind of moment. But if someone, black, forgets to follow one of these rules, it may cost him his life. I'm using the masculine pronoun simply for ease of understanding. It's highly possible that black women feel the need to follow these rules (with a few changes) to a certain extent as well for fear of losing their life.

This is a menial comparison when it comes to even trying to begin to feel the pain, frustration, and anger that black people do. But these bites have allowed me to feel just a little bit more for them. 

Are you feeling yet? 

"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.

Color Blind

With staying indoors and going out less, I've been using electronics a lot more with my daughter. Part of it is she's a picky eater and I have no patience to try and cajole her into eating without the assistance of something she actually enjoys. The other option is reading a book to her over and over and over again, which normally I wouldn't mind. But, if I'm in a hurry or I want to eat too, or I'm managing the baby at the same time, it doesn't quite work.

I tell myself what I show her is educational: library story-time, cooking shows, songs from Veggie Tales, or video clips of our friends and their children.

We watched a Reading Rainbow episode a few weeks ago. I grew up watching the show many afternoons at 1 pm or 1:30 pm, whatever the original air time was. She's really into Arthur right now so I picked the episode where they read Arthur's Eyes. It's the one where Arthur couldn't see and got glasses, was embarrassed about needing glasses, and eventually, embraced them in the end.

After reading the book, the show incorporated a series of different worldly applications of some ideas taken from the book. In that episode, one idea he mentioned was being color blind. Levar explained what it means to be color blind and the test for color blindness. He showed a few pictures of the colored circles with numbers inside them. He also mentioned another kind of color blindness.

"There's another kind of color blindness the kind that has nothing to do with your eyes. Has to do with your mind. Not with what you see but how you see it. Has to do with your heart. Not with who you see. But how you see them. People come in all kinds of sizes shapes and colors, and when you see through the skin on someone's face to the person underneath, then you're colorblind in the best possible way."

That episode originally aired on July 27, 1983. It is very unfortunate that in the last 37 years, we have cumulatively moved forward very little in this regard.

Let's be color blind.

Bulbs

In the spring of 2016, we went to a nursery and walked through, perusing various plants. This was before babies and toddlers, when Saturday mornings didn't involve automatic alarm clocks blasting through a monitor.

In particular, I was looking for something that could grow in shade. I happened to come across a flowering plant that grew in partial to full shade: Astilbe. Then, I saw the price tag and decided it was too much to pay for one plant. I took a picture of the plant specs and that was that.

Image from American Meadows product page.

For those of you not familiar with this plant, this is what blooming Astilbe looks like.

I saved the picture on my phone to remember the name of this plant. The year after, we even went back to the nursery in search of it again since I had decided to fork out the money. It wasn't there. Thus ended my search for Astilbe, for a while.

Fast forward three years. We were stuck at home with a toddler and a newborn. I wasn't working for the interim, and I was itching to do something. I did a search online and found Astilbe bulbs at a much nicer price, and it happened to be the planting season for our growing region. Now, despite being an amateur gardener, I understood that growing a plant from a bulb was more difficult than planting a grown, potted version. I decided to take the chance and buy a pack of five bulbs. That would have been about the number of plants I'd wanted anyway to fill the space.

The bulbs arrived and my husband planted them on April 16th. We watered and waited. After about two and a half weeks, we saw our first sprouts. One bulb sprouted first and then another shot up a few days after that. Unfortunately the other three didn't fare as well, so I only have two plant babies.

Being in the middle of a strange time in the world, watching these plants has made me remember that nature doesn't need us. When I was a senior in high school, we watched a video during class one day about earth without human existence. While most everyone else was probably zoning out, I have since remembered the general concept of that video: earth thrives without us. Grass and plants would grow wild and spread as they wished. The air would be cleaner because factories, machines, industry would not be running. The water cycle would balance itself out once again without human interference and consumption. 

As I already stated, I'm not the best at taking care of plants or gardening. My interest in this area is severely handicapped by my abilities. I've had many "plant projects" halted or ended because I didn't know what next steps to take. I'm hoping this one can continue at least a year, depending on how well I winterize them once the cooler weather returns. I actually don't know what colors my blooms will be as it was a mixed bag. I'll have to wait for their blooms to find out. Let's hope they bloom.

This will need to be added to my list of goals in 2020 I'd written about earlier this year and revisit the ones I'd originally stated.

Cream Cheese

One good thing that’s come out of this quarantine for a lot of people has been a chance to explore and experiment with cooking and new recipes. I’ve seen lots of people sharing photos and stories on social media about baking their own bread, making pasta from scratch, and even attempting a homemade Beef Wellington. We haven’t experimented with cooking nearly as much since we’ve had our hands full with a newborn, but we did make one thing we’ve never done before: homemade cream cheese.

Bagels and cream cheese is a favorite in our house. Unfortunately, we’re not very good at aligning the two foods together in our possession at the same time. We usually get our bagels in bulk from one store and our cream cheese from a normal grocery store. What ends up happening is we have cream cheese. We buy bagels a short while later, and then we run out of the cream cheese and have too many bagels left.

The other food “problem” in our house is milk. Only one person drinks milk in our household of four. But the amount of money to buy a half gallon is like 75% or more of what it costs to buy the whole gallon unless it’s on sale.  Usually I end up using some in recipes (biscuits, pancakes, cake, etc), but even then we’ve thrown out a good amount of milk gone bad at times.

Enter cream cheese. I googled how to make cream cheese one day and came across this recipe that used whole milk.

I won’t post the whole recipe here, but I’ll provide a shortened explanation with pictures of how it’s done.

Ingredients:

1. Whole milk
2. Vinegar or lemon juice 
3. Cheese cloth
4. Food processor ( I know this isn’t an ingredient, but without it, it’s pretty much impossible to make.)
5. Salt 

Instructions:

Bring milk to a simmer.

Add vinegar (or lemon juice) to curdle.

Strain Curds.

The bottom is whey.

Blend in food processor.

Add flavorings and store. This one is blueberry.

I bought these small mason jars when my daughter was younger and used them to store homemade baby food for her. We still use them now to make her breakfast overnight oat portions, portion canned fruit (vs buying the fruit cups), and I look forward to using them a second round for baby food!

And they make the perfect cream cheese containers :)

Valid Concern

My Chinese has never been very good, but by some miracle, I've been able to keep most of my speaking fluency and some of my reading abilities.

After my husband and I found out we were expecting two and a half years ago, I made a mental note that I would speak solely in Chinese to my child(ren). I knew early on that my children would only be as good as or worse at Chinese than I was, so I was going to have to work really hard to pass on as much as I could.

Now, there was a second factor into this situation: my husband! Unfortunately, his Chinese skills when we got married were not very good. When people asked about his language skills, I'd have to explain to them that his parents were fluent in too many languages, and because of that, he never got to really focus on anything other than English. It's also just really hard to pay attention in Chinese school as a kid growing up: I'm guilty of that myself. 

One day in the car, this conversation popped up, and it was noteworthy (and funny) enough for me to share it with his permission:

Two years later, I have to say, teaching my daughter Chinese hasn't felt like very much teaching at all because complete immersion is the best way to learn, and she has been completely immersed since she was born. I also have to say I've never actually pushed my husband to learn Chinese from me. Sure, I've joked with him about it here and there, but I've never sat him down and told him straight up: you will learn Chinese and I will teach you. We maybe had one evening when I taught him colors. :) 

Our daughter really started talking and took off with her language skills around 18 months. I will never forget the day I was laying in bed one morning, pregnant with my son, and I see my daughter come walking through our bedroom door to my side of the bed. She came up to me and said very clearly, "妈妈起来.” Mommy, get up. And with that, I was wide awake, getting up, and amazed at how fast my daughter was growing up right before my eyes. 

When she started speaking more, I noticed my husband would ask me what certain words meant as I said them. I would tell him and he'd say it a few times. I'd correct him if it was way off in pronunciation, but for the most part he was close. 

Slowly, he picked up phrases and started saying them more: 洗澡， 吃饭， 睡觉， 过来。

And now he's saying even more phrases and even getting close to using complete sentences: 最后两口， 躺好换尿布， 你的 (object) 在哪里,  穿衣服。

Toddlers learn language so quickly at their young age - it's absolutely amazing. My daughter will say words or phrases during the day and I'll ask my husband, "Where'd she learn that from?" 

And he usually always replies, "I don't even know what that means so she didn't learn it from me!" 

Of course, she learned it from me, but I didn't realize she could remember so much of what she had heard me say. 

There was one day I was speaking to my daughter in Chinese and then I turned to my husband to ask him a question. I almost asked him in Chinese, not having completely switched languages in my head, but I caught myself. 

Unfortunately for him, her language skills will surpass his - they probably already have - and chances are, they will be better than his for her entire life. She's got the advantage of time on her side. However, I am very proud of him for learning as much of the language as he has in the last year two years. However valid my concern was two years ago, I am not concerned anymore. One of these days, I may not have to catch myself to switch languages, and he may even be able to reply (in Chinese!)