Author Archives: Yvonne

The friends/kids dinner that did not go as “hoped”

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Tonight, we went over to a good friend’s house for dinner. She has two kids similar in age to Kaia. Last minute, her husband decided to not stay home for dinner with us and instead to go play pickleball with friends. “It won’t be that bad,” he insisted to his wife (my friend). “They’ll just play together, and you guys can talk.”

It never goes as you hope, though. My friend had just come back from picking up both her daughters, and they were both cranky. One of them was particularly unwieldy and roaring at us like a wolf. And as we were attempting to eat dinner, and my friend had already reheated her dinner more than twice, it actually felt like the three girls could be in the living room all playing relatively harmoniously together. But out of nowhere when none of the adults were paying attention, Kaia started crying hysterically. She had the long, high-pitched wails, the big fat tears rolling down her face. I ran over to comfort her. I asked her what happened. Maya looked angry and kept staring away. And Maya’s little sister Juni, as though “protecting” herself behind the window curtain, yelled out, “She hit her!” Juni paused for a little bit. “And then, she did this!” Juni motioned and took a toy and crashed it down (on a head).

My friend then sent Maya to her room. She did not stay there, though: she kept popping out to roar repeatedly at us. My friend proceeded to call her husband multiple times, leaving several voice messages with the general message of, “Your daughter is being extremely NOT well behaved. YOU NEED TO COME HOME NOW AND HELP ME.” My friend was definitely struggling and increasingly getting frustrated and feeling helpless. She also just relented and ate the rest of her dinner cold.

Eventually, everyone calmed down. The kids played alongside each other, then together, then started running after each other while giggling. And of course, at that point, it was time for us to leave before all the tots got overly tired.

Once we left, my friend texted me several times to apologize for not having the night we “hoped” for. She said she blamed her husband for bailing on us so last minute. But she also blamed herself for not knowing “what was really bothering” Maya.

Parenting is hard, even when you have an involved spouse, even when you have paid and/or unpaid help, even when you try your absolute best with the best intentions. But as much as I hate to admit it, it’s in times like this when I think… I love having “just” Kaia. To me, it’s not *just* her. She’s my everything, and I love being fully devoted to caring for her as my one sweet baby.

The day you would have turned 46.

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Dear Ed,

Happy birthday – today if you were still part of this world, you would have turned 46. How crazy it is that you will eternally be stuck at 33 years of age in my mind. I turned 39 this year. How did I actually become older than you? Is it even possible to get older than your older sibling?

I’m back in our home city with Chris and Kaia. On Sunday, our mother let Kaia out of the house unattended, and Kaia almost ran up the entire block by herself. I ran out to get her just in time and brought her back down to the house, but all I could think of during that time was… first, they let Ed die, and now, they want to let their grandchild die, too? How could they possibly be this irresponsible and stupid? Or, maybe I am really the irresponsible and stupid one. I was the one who allowed Kaia into their dungeon of a house. I was the one who left her unattended with our mother to lure her out of the house without Chris and me in the first place. Maybe I’m the real problem here for allowing this situation to even happen. Maybe I just cannot accept that this house could not be more “normal” and welcoming than it actually is.

I get told by my friends who knew our parents that ultimately, I allow this emotional exhaustion to happen. I need to set better boundaries — everyone seems to tell me this, including both therapists I saw. Ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, we didn’t really have the verbiage to describe things like mental load, emotional load, emotional exhaustion. But now, we do. Now, I know that the feeling of exhaustion and heaviness was real whenever I’d go home and then leave home to go back to New York. I know now that when Chris would say I’d come back to New York really tense and seemingly uptight from San Francisco that it was all just the residual effects of dealing with our parents — emotional load. And it really took a toll on me. It still does.

“Why do you even bother?” a friend asked me yesterday. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. This is all on you.” I feel sad that our parents won’t ever be proper grandparents to Kaia. I want them to have a relationship. But I know it really won’t happen. You can’t really have people be real grandparents when they didn’t even figure out how to be decent parents. It’s just a pipe dream that I am still struggling to come to terms with. There’s what you rationally and academically know, and that always seems to conflict with the feelings and desires of your heart.

I think I’m out of words. You’re the only one who knows how bad it can be in that house with them. And you’re gone. No one else has first hand experience of it. And sometimes when I think about it, it makes me feel even more alone. I’m not saying you should still be here just to shoulder the burden of this knowledge. But it would be nice if we could still be together to empathize with each other… and just be. There is a hollow in my heart that will never be filled because you left this world far too soon.

Did you know that Kaia knows who her JiuJiu is? I told her it was your birthday today. She even recognizes your face sometimes when I show her photos of you. She’s over three and a half now, and she’s constantly surprising me with all the things she’s learning and absorbing, and all that she remembers that we’ve told her. I know you’d be so happy and proud of her if you were here. My sweet little Kaia Pookie will never meet her JiuJiu in real life. And that loss is not just a loss for her and you — it’s a loss for me, too.

I’m trying to do what I can to be a good mama to her and not perpetuate intergenerational trauma. I say that almost every week to myself, if not every year to you when I write you. I’m almost like a broken record about this in my head. I’m just trying my best. I hope you know and can see this.

I really miss you, Ed. It’s strange. Even twelve years after your death, when I am in that house, I still have this weird feeling of anticipation that out of nowhere, the front door will open, and in you will come. It’s 100 percent irrational, but I still have the feeling in the back of my mind and in my body that it will happen. It is depressing to have a feeling of anticipation for something… that you know in reality will never actually happen.

I love you. Take good care of yourself wherever you are out there. I am always thinking of you — I hope you don’t ever forget that.

With all my love, and with the deepest desire to see you again,

your little sister Yvonne

Ferry Building Farmers Market and the whining and whinging in the background

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On Saturday morning, we decided to take a Waymo out to the Ferry Building for the famous Saturday morning farmers market there. I love that farmers market; it’s likely my very favorite one in all of the U.S. that I’ve visited. As a native San Franciscan, I quietly feel a lot of pride and joy when I walk through the endless fresh produce stalls there. Every time we walk by the stalls, whether they are selling various (all labeled by variety!) heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, strawberries, or peaches, it’s as though the perfume of these fresh fruits and veggies beckon to us. I have yet to visit any farmers market in the U.S. that has such rich fragrance coming from the fresh produce all around. If my parents’ house weren’t as cluttered and dirty, I’d be tempted to buy a bunch of the produce there to prepare simply and eat at home, but I guess that is not to be.

While I enjoyed seeing, sampling, and inhaling all the deliciousness around me, it felt like there was someone whining in the background every time I reveled in a tasty piece of tomato or local Valencia orange. No, it was not my toddler. It was actually my mom, mulling in the background, complaining that this peach or that strawberry was too expensive. Seemingly every stall we visited, she’d remark how expensive something was and how could anyone pay so much for any of this produce. It almost dampened my experience of the market. Unlike her, these people take pride and joy in the produce they grow and sell, and they should be charging what is a reasonable price to make a living and continue to sustain themselves. Not everyone has the luxury to not work and have several paychecks come in every month. But she is so out of touch that she never thinks about this.

My mom said she wanted to come with us to spend time with Kaia. But I think we all know there was no quality time spent together. The one moment I actually stopped to pay for a small basket of sun gold tomatoes, I asked my mom to watch Kaia. That didn’t work out. She held her hand for maybe five seconds, and then Kaia ran off. My mom ended up luring her back with candy, which I explicitly told her not to give. If it’s not one thing, it’s always something else that is going wrong.

A friend of mine, who also has a dysfunctional relationship with her mom, reminded me that our parents will never change who they are, and we’re incapable of changing them. The only thing we should be focused on is making sure we are an improvement from them and try to be better parents to our children than they were to us. Each generation should be “better” than the previous. I hope I am achieving that — I hope.

The moment I wanted to bash my mother’s face in

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Before I became a mother and would tell older colleagues and friends that I’d never trust my parents with my future children alone, many of them scoffed at me and said I was just saying that. They insisted that once the reality of how expensive daycare, nannies, and babysitters are had hit me that I’d relent and give in — to allow my parents the pleasure of having “quality” time with their grandchild, and also to relieve my bank account from paying exorbitant sums for mediocre childcare.

Kaia is over 3.5 years old now, and I still have not relented. And the few moments I do, I regret it because she gets exposed to all kinds of dangerous things just in my parents’ house. Their pills, both vitamin supplements AND prescription medications (who the hell can keep track of which is what?) are scattered all over random surfaces and tables and benches. My mom leaves sharp knives and scissors in her reach. My dad has razor blades and high blood pressure medication just inches from her little hands as though it’s no big deal. And the place is just filthy with mouse droppings everywhere. She got her hand and foot snapped in mouse traps. And to make things even worse, my mom refuses to listen to me when I tell her not to give her any candy. My parents’ house has so much candy in endless forms in every nook and cranny of the house that I cannot even keep track of it all!

I got so mad at the cob webs all over the walls and ceilings of the bathroom — these have been there likely since the pandemic and no one has made any attempt to clean them up. So, this morning just before 8am, I took out my dad’s old vacuum, climbed up on top of the sink, and started vacuuming. Both my mom and Kaia were confused as to why I was vacuuming. I looked at my mom and said, “Do you think these cob webs are clean? A spider will come bite and kill you!”

Shortly after my vacuuming stint, my mom said she was leaving for her JW Sunday morning. So I figured we’d have some quiet time in the house before we left to meet my friends and their kids for a morning at the Bay Area Discovery Museum. But then Chris came over and asked, “Why is Hoj outside with your mom?” Confused and annoyed, I went outside to see that my mom was standing in the driveway, and Kaia had already run up half the block on her own, completely unattended. I could actually feel the blood rushing to my face to see her just standing there, looking down at me. I ran up to her, grabbed her hand, and walked her down with me. The driveways are small and narrow on this block, and the visibility is low when cars are backing out. A driver could easily miss someone of Kaia’s size when backing out. Not to mention that at the top of the block is Fulton, one of the busiest, high traffic, and high speed streets in the Richmond District. What if she had run all the way up there on her own and gotten hit by a car? So many awful, deadly incidents could have played out if the timing were all wrong.

My mom stood there, looking at me helplessly when I brought Kaia back down to the house. “My leg hurts!” She cried in defense of herself. “I have a dislocated disc! If I ran after her, that would be it for me and I’d be dead!”

I could barely contain myself. It was like fire was coming out of my mouth. “Anger” didn’t even describe exactly how infuriated I was. “WHY DID YOU TAKE HER OUT OF THE HOUSE?” I screamed at her, knowing full well that this was in public in the early morning and could easily wake up the neighbors, but I truly did not care. She needed to hear how stupid and irresponsible she was. “SHE COULD HAVE GOTTEN HIT BY A CAR COMING OUT OF A DRIVEWAY AND DIED! SHE COULD HAVE DIED BECAUSE OF YOU! HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE WHAT YOU DID WAS WRONG?! YOU WERE JUST GOING TO STAND HERE AND LET HER GET HURT? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

My mom proceeded to protest, but nothing mattered at that point. If I got any closer to her, I would have wanted to bash her face in and inflict serious bodily harm on her. The idea of my little daughter, my only baby, dying on the watch of my mom was far too much for me to bear or think about. All I could think was, first, you let Ed die, and then, you want to let your only grandchild die, too?! I slammed the gate and then the front door so she would realize how badly she fucked up.

Well, that was naive of me. After 39-plus years of dealing with her twisted logic, her lack of rationale, her constant victimhood, her holier-than-thou attitude, apparently I refuse to accept that she will never admit wrongdoing in any situation where she was, point blank, in the wrong. Of course, my mom wouldn’t acknowledge she did anything wrong. When has she ever admitted fault in her life with Ed or me even once? Instead, she spent the rest of the day thinking… how dare her daughter raise her voice and yell at her, her mother. How dare she be so cruel to me. When Chris brought Kaia back to the house before I came home from my spa afternoon, my mom confronted him about the situation to try to “explain” what happened — all defensive, zero remorse. Regardless, he wasn’t going to deal with her; that was my job since she’s my mother. He simply told her to keep Kaia in the house and walked away.

Then when I did laundry this evening, once again, she tried to defend herself, saying she would have died if she tried to run after Kaia (the cripple sob story because she just let her 3.5 year old grandchild out of the house, completely unattended where cars could potentially hit and kill her — no big deal, right? If she ran, she’d push her disc further out of alignment, and thus her back would be ruined and she’d die, etc.). My mom said she was upset because the real problem was that I actually had the guts to yell at her. “What kind of child speaks to their mother this way? What kind?!” Refusing to admit wrongdoing is a theme in my family – and something I want to break the cycle of.

“You can talk to your husband or your mother-in-law like that, but never to me! I will not accept it!” she hissed.

I insisted she was wrong, that she put my child in danger, that I could never trust her to care for Kaia, that neither of them could ever be trusted with her unattended; and how insane that she would ever suggest I leave Kaia with her at home while I went out with my friends. “She would be dead by the time I got back!” I yelled at her.

I ended the conversation by walking away. I refuse to normalize stupidity and irresponsibility. I refuse to accept child negligence and constant verbal abuse and gaslighting — even of adult children. I will not.

The evolution of Stonestown Galleria

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When I was growing up, malls were always exciting places with lots of different stores, various foods to eat, and experiences to have. Since I went to Lowell for high school in San Francisco, I was just a couple blocks away from Stonestown Galleria, what was then considered a more modern, chic mall in the city. Back then, it had a Macy’s, a Nordstrom, a number of mid-price-range shops, as well as a movie theater. I oftentimes would go there to get a quick smoothie or dinner during my late nights in the high school journalism room. Other times, I’d just go there and wander the mall with friends to kill time or procrastinate on studying. It was a pleasant, clean, fun place to hang out and just be.

Malls haven’t been doing so well, though, across the U.S. And according to the New York Times, the only ones that are really surviving are the ones that have successfully pivoted into experiential spaces… or become really, really Asian. Stonestown has become far more “Asian” since the last time I visited when Ed was still working at Macy’s. Almost all the restaurants inside are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or some Asian fusion, including Supreme Dumpling, where we ate with my cousins tonight (which had a wait of at least 75 minutes and a huge crowd outside when we left). What was a bit surprising is that they had a fast casual ma la tang restaurant (like individual hot pots) where you choose your proteins, vegetables, noodles, etc., and pay by weight. Then, they cook it all for you and put it in your chosen broth of varying spice/heat levels. The seating was all open, and this place was pretty busy! Even the dessert, snack, and drink places scattered throughout the mall outside the food court are heavily leaning Asian. As soon as you enter from the main front entrance, Onigilly, a Bay Area-based mini-chain of Japanese onigiri (Japanese rice ball) and Japanese snacks greets you. On the first floor, they had WanPo, a fresh bubble tea place from Taichung, Taiwan, as well as Uncle Tetsu, a Japanese jiggly cheesecake I already had familiarity with given that they have a location in both Melbourne and New York already. The food court was unrecognizable to me, as the only place that survived from my high school days was Panda Express (ugh, but it’s still pseudo-Asian, I suppose). They had a Taiwanese night-market-type stand named after the famous Shilin Night Market, a poke bowl stand, and Matcha Cafe Maiko, a matcha/soft serve spot I like, which is originally from Hawaii, but also has a location just around the corner from Kaia’s school in Manhattan Chinatown.

Macy’s and Nordstrom, the two major department stores that made up Stonestown once upon a time, are now a relic of history. Instead, they’ve been replaced by a chain-based fitness center, a bowling alley, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s. It was strange to be in there and see all the changes that have happened in the last twenty years. My cousin pointed out to me that Supreme Dumpling, where we were dining and sitting in, had previously been LensCrafters, which I had completely forgotten about. A sushi-boat eatery on the second floor was previously Banana Republic, which I used to browse all the time during high school breaks. But if he didn’t remind me of these places, I would have totally forgotten. I almost felt like I was outdated walking through the mall myself. I like the changes, and given the types of food are at the mall now along with Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, I could even see myself going here more often if I lived in the area. But the whole experience also made me sad to think that Ed wouldn’t recognize the majority of it if he just miraculously came back to life and plopped himself in there. The last time I remember being there when Ed still worked at Macy’s, Trader Joe’s was brand new, the main attraction. And Ed would occasionally go there and buy things. But now, Macy’s no longer exists there… And neither does Ed in this world.

Coming “home” and the “why” behind it

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“Are you looking forward to going back home… or, is that even an appropriate question?” my friend asked me over dinner on Wednesday.

“I’m… not really looking forward to it,” I said honestly. “It’s just something I do. There are parts I look forward to, but the idea of going home does not excite me at all.”

That sounds like a terrible thing to admit out loud, but it’s the truth. It’s like what a lot of people say about their family: they love their family, but they do not necessarily like them as people. Their bonds are due to blood, obligation, and history, as opposed to shared or aligned values or respect for each others’ respective lives. I want to see my parents in person, but for limited amounts of time to protect my sanity and mental health. I also want them to see Kaia, and for Kaia to know who they are and that they are her maternal grandparents. But I know the reality of them “spending” time together is very limited in terms of the type of interactions they will have — regardless of what age Kaia is.

After a bleary eyed 6am flight from JFK to SFO, we arrived in San Francisco just past 8:30am local time. After a car ride to my parents’ place, our driver stopped in front of the house, to which I looked up at and got really annoyed. “What the heck is all this scaffolding in front?!” The scaffolding looked precarious, as though it was so unstable that someone would fall to their death from it. Plus, there was this hideous sheer black tarp covering 80 percent of the house’s facade. And then when I opened the front gate… it would not open all the way because that wretched scaffolding was preventing me from doing so.

I hadn’t even entered my parents’ house yet, and I was already in a pissy mood.

Then we got into the house, and of course, it’s clutter central. There are so many rolls of toilet paper in the hallway that I cannot walk in a straight line to turn the corner and get to my bedroom. Frustrated, I took several bags of them and pushed them into the sun room. The door to the breakfast room is still removed, leaning against a large framed photograph of Hong Kong Harbour in the dining room. It’s been like that since pre-pandemic. All the cabinet doors are pulled out of the bathroom; the lighting has no covering, with the light bulbs exposed. There are so many cob webs hanging from the ceiling of the bathroom that I felt compelled to take out the vacuum and clean it all up — cob webs of a size that usually only exist in abandoned buildings or attics that haven’t seen life in ages. There are over ten dozen eggs in the fridge — for what purpose, who knows. And then there is a bunch of rotting fruit on the dining room table with fruit flies swarming it all. I looked out the window at my parents’ yard, and it looks like the same awful weed fest from last year. Nothing has changed. If anything, there is more garbage in the house and the backyard.

That’s not even the worst of it. At lunch, my dad barely says anything to us at the dining table. He’s mostly on his phone once again while Kaia attempts but mostly fails to get reactions out of him. My mom keeps telling my dad to talk to Kaia, as though my dad is a baby, but my dad doesn’t really listen and continues looking at his phone. Once he’s done eating, he gets up and leaves the table. Kaia then asks him why he’s not sitting with us. It’s funny and also tragic that Kaia not only notices this but calls it out. Children say things exactly as they are whether adults like it or not. My mom fusses around in the kitchen, sits for less than five minutes to eat, and then gets up and fusses around Kaia and the kitchen some more.

After some playground time and wandering along Clement Street this afternoon, we came back home. I had a shower after dinner, and it was, by far, the worst shower I can remember ever having. The water barely drips out of the low-flow shower head that my dad has installed; it’s no wonder Kaia hated her shower so much earlier in the evening. It was so atrocious that I ended up “showering” under the bathtub faucet. If that sounds awkward, it was, but it was necessary. Otherwise, I would have had a light drip down on me all night to get clean.

Sometimes, I wonder why I even go to the trouble of dealing with all this. I don’t really enjoy it. I hate the shower, the clutter, the broken things that will never get repaired, the garbage, the mouse traps everywhere. “Why do I even bother?” I even said this out loud to Chris this afternoon while Kaia was playing in the sandbox at my childhood playground. But the “why” is always a complicated, not-straightforward answer.

Kaia expects visitors at dinner now

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Last week, Kaia got to be in the company of Chris’s cousin, her husband, and their baby for three days at dinner time. This week, she had Chris’s friend unexpectedly visit and have dinner with us on Tuesday. Then yesterday, our friend came over to see and play with her before she and I went out to dinner together. So, she’s been quite used to having company over. And Kaia being Kaia, she loves being around people and being social in her very toddler-esque ways. So when we came home today, she asked if “friends” would come over. I told her that tonight, we’d have no one coming over, that it would just be the three of us before we got ready for bed and got on a plane to go to San Francisco tomorrow. She gave me a very glum face and said, “I want friends to come,” and then demanded that my friend’s husband come visit (the friend who came yesterday).

I love watching Kaia interact with our friends and family. I love seeing her build bonds and attachments to them. And I also love seeing how she connects partners to partners and siblings to each other. This is my sweet Kaia Pookie making sense of the socially connected world we live in.

When is “regular” dinner time?

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When I think of dinner time, I generally think of the hours between 5-7:30pm. Growing up, dinner time was always around 6:30pm, as my parents usually got home between 5:30-6pm to start preparing dinner for us. In college, I usually ate dinner between 6-7pm. And once I started living on my own, whenever I’d make dinner plans with friends, we’d typically meet between 6-7pm. This became earlier once Chris and I got together (he has stated multiple times that his preferred eating time would be… 4:30pm!), and then now with Kaia with us, we usually eat between 5:30-6pm.

All the above dinner windows assume that you wake up at a reasonable hour in the morning, so between 5-8:30am. If you are waking up later than that, it’s likely that a 5-6:30pm dinner will be far too early for you. So when I started hanging out with my very nocturnal friend who typically wakes up around 11am-12pm and works into the wee hours of the night, I realized that the way I define “dinner” time is not at all what she considers an actual dinner time. She typically has dinner between 9-11pm. And so when I had previously suggested a 6pm dinner, she said that was “like lunch” for her. Granted, we had never met for “dinner” before tonight, so when we went out for a 7:15pm dinner this evening, she did consider it not lunch, but yes, an “early dinner” for her.

It would be nearly impossible for me to operate on her dinner schedule, though, with a typical 9-5 job as well as a young child at home. And well, I also like to give my body time to digest food before I sleep. So given this, I am happy that we typically meet for her breakfast/my lunch or coffee/tea in the mid afternoon. This seems to be the most winning combination for both of us.

Indo-Java Groceries store lunch on a random summer Tuesday

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Ever since we visited Indo-Java Groceries in Elmhurst earlier this year, which is just a short walk away from my former apartment in the neighborhood, I’ve been thinking about how I could come back on a Tuesday to have an authentic Indonesian lunch prepared by a very famous, local Indonesian auntie. The Tuesday auntie is the most famous for having home-style, regional Indonesian cooking readily available to locals in the ‘hood for the last 10-plus years. When I told my friend about this, she got really excited, as she used to live in Amsterdam for many years. In Amsterdam, given the history of Dutch colonization of Indonesia, she had easy access to Indonesian food everywhere. But she had forgotten about the mega Indonesian population right in her backyard of Elmhurst! So we decided that this summer, we’d go on a Tuesday and have lunch in the middle of workday… in the back of a tiny Indonesian grocery store.

The yellow folding table was teeny tiny, but enough for two plates and utensils to comfortably sit on top. We sat on blue and red plastic stools. My friend and I shared fish balado, beef rendang, curry egg and tofu, mixed kale, spicy green chili, spicy potatoes in chili sauce, and freshly fried shrimp crackers. The spice was not burn-your-mouth-hot like in Jakarta as I remember, but it was definitely enough to wake you up if you were sleepy! We chatted about work, travel, and our kids as we dug into our little Indonesian feast. This was such a New York city experience, an “if you know, you know” type situation. As we ate, we saw many other people coming in for their to-go lunch orders, as well as a few others who wanted to sit outside and eat. The grocery store owner graciously pulled out additional folding tables and chairs to allow the other diners to sit outside and eat, overlooking the traffic of Queens Boulevard at Grand Avenue. This was truly an authentic New York City experience right in my old neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens. I loved every second of it, and not just the eating and friends catch-up time. I also enjoyed watching all the in-the-know people coming and going, picking up their pre-ordered food, enjoying homemade Indonesian auntie cooking. This was a real locals experience.

As my friend and I wrapped up our delicious lunch and I had to run to the nearest cafe to take a work call, all I could think of was: I just LOVE New York City. I am thrilled that spaces like this exist, and I love that I have such easy access to it. And I also love that I have friends who can appreciate these types of experiences with,.

Building our family home with blocks

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About two years ago during Prime Day, I saw that the Lovery wooden block set was on mega-sale on Amazon, so I decided that I’d buy it for Kaia. Two years ago, she was a bit young to use blocks, so I knew this was a “gift in advance” I’d get her so that when she was ready, the block set would be available immediately to her. In the last few weeks, the blocks have been a primary form of toy entertainment for her, as she’s been very into building us a house to live in. She’s built houses on her own. She wants me to help her build the same house, or build a house alongside the one she’s building. And when she’s done, she likes to tell us where each of our bedrooms is and where we will sleep. According to Kaia, “mumma, daddy, Kaia, Suma, and Topa will all live in this house!” We’re all going to live together!

I think we all know that this living situation she has outlined will never actually manifest itself in real life. But I find it really endearing to see her thinking of all of us when she builds these houses, as she wants all of us to have a comfortable, safe place to live… together.