Monthly Archives: January 2023

Paying your way out of responsibility

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Our nanny is very opinionated. Initially, I found it a little off putting, especially since she gave zero hint of this during her initial interview or during her trial, but gradually I got used to it. I myself am pretty opinionated, so when she gives me her strong opinions, I’m more than happy to give mine right back to her and counter her if I disagree. Sometimes, she likes to go on small rants about politics, about how Republicans are ruining the country, how “white people” can’t stand black people and people of color. I generally just let her say what she wants if I am there. She’s also made it clear she doesn’t approve of gay marriage for religious reasons (“it’s not what God intended”), but I just let it go because I’m not in a place of insanity to think for a second that I could change her mind. Also, it doesn’t affect how she takes care of Kaia every day, so she can believe or not believe in what she wants.

When I shared the story of the gay couple having twins from yesterday, she immediately had a disapproving look on her face.

“So that’s what they’re going to do? Just pay everyone else to do all the work for them?” she spat out.

Wow, I thought to myself. That seemed so cynical and negative. I wasn’t quite expecting THAT response. For one thing, they’re biologically incapable of having their own children as a gay couple without some outside assistance. Plus, if they can pay to ensure the children are biologically theirs and get breast milk, then why not?

But then I realized that in general, our nanny is resentful of people who are “rich” who generally do not worry about money. She’s repeatedly made disparaging comments about “rich people” and how they throw money around like they don’t care. And I guess this couple, in her eyes, is doing something similar. I didn’t really say much to her about this because again, it doesn’t affect our day to day working relationship, but I don’t think this couple is quite in that same bucket. They want to have children, they want the children to be biologically theirs, and they are paying to ensure they get what they want. I’m not sure what the problem here is?

Building a family in an unconventional way

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Every couple of weeks, I quickly scroll through parenting groups I belong to on Facebook, and each time, there is inevitably at least one or two posts asking for night nurse requests/references. And because these posts are SO frequent, I have a little blurb about the two night nurses we hired, their contact information, and how we’d recommend them on my phone so I can just copy and paste the same thing (people do not like to use the “search” function in groups on Facebook, apparently). Well, earlier this week, someone direct messaged me on Facebook to ask if I could speak to him about the night nurses and our experiences with them, so I decided to chat with him today.

He introduced himself and his situation as being “different:” he and his partner are in a gay marriage, and they are currently expecting twins, a boy and a girl, through a surrogate. It would be their first children, they have no family nearby, and are looking for support. Initially I thought… None of this sounded that odd to me; I hear situations like this all the time in liberal cities like San Francisco, Boston, and New York. But what was actually different was how they are starting their family: the babies are both biologically theirs. How is that possible? I thought. Well, this man’s sister did IVF to extract her eggs to then fertilize with his partner’s sperm. So while the children did not come from his sperm, they are technically related to him.

That totally blew my mind. And what a selfless person this man’s sister is to go through the headache and volatility that is IVF stimulation and egg retrieval, all so that her brother could have a child that is still blood related to him. WOW.

And to add to that, the surrogate is this man’s best friend, who lives in Oregon. She will be moving in with them two months before the due date to labor and give birth to the babies here in New York. She also plans to pump milk for the babies… and even freeze and ship it to them every week!

As a pumping mama myself, that completely made me in awe of this friend. That’s a really, really good friend! I made sure to spend a few minutes letting this man know that pumping is NOT for the faint of heart, coming from someone who exclusively pumps, so I hope he realizes the sacrifices his friend is making to do this for his children. I also silently hoped he and his partner are compensating her appropriately for that effort. I’d even say in some ways… pumping is more effort and toil than pregnancy and labor!

Return to splinting my elbow

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Since coming back to New York, I started splinting my left elbow again. My cubital tunnel was acting up the whole month we were away, and I regretted not bringing my elbow splint with me. I didn’t think much when packing and only packed my wrist splints. In retrospect, I should have packed the elbow splint, especially knowing that 1) I wasn’t going to have my proper desk setup for work, and 2) I wouldn’t have much childcare help, which meant lifting and carrying Kaia more. But in just a couple nights of splinting my elbow, it’s already feeling much better. I’m thankful I am at a place with my cubital tunnel where I know how to manage the symptoms and don’t need to let them escalate. This may be a life-long condition I have to deal with, and I definitely don’t want it to get worse. So if something minor like splinting overnight needs to be done, even if I feel and look like a robot, then I guess I will need to do it.

If nothing else, I can count for my mom to get mad at something, or anything

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I called my mom during the week we were in Southern California. She asked the usual questions, like how we all were doing, how was work, what the weather was like, and if I was planning to see my cousin who lives down here. And then, she said that my aunt who lives upstairs from her knew I was in Australia and asked if I told her.

“I may have told her,” I said nonchalantly. “I really can’t remember who I told.” I genuinely did not remember, nor did I care. This was all inconsequential to me.

“She said that (your cousin) told her,” she said, insistently. “You told him you were going?”

Here we were again, another pointless conversation about a nothing topic that I really did not care about. This is why I didn’t bother to call my mom at all while in Australia. What was the point? She would always find something to get frustrated or angry or jealous about. All we had to do was sit there and vegetate, and she’d find a reason to get mad.

“Yeah, I probably did tell him,” I responded. I still didn’t know where this was going. But the underlying message was: don’t tell anyone where you are going or what you are doing, ever.

“So did you tell her you were going, or did he tell her you were going?” she continued on.

Doesn’t she have anything else better to do with her time than obsess over something so dumb?

“I may have told her, and I definitely told him, but who cares who told what?” I said, getting audibly irritated. “I don’t care!”

If there are trigger phrases to piss my mom off, they include this short list:

“I don’t care.”

“Who cares?”

“No one cares!”

So she immediately launched into attack mode: “You need to talk NICE to me! I told your father the SAME thing. You don’t say ‘who cares’ or use that tone with me! I don’t deserve it! I can’t take it! I won’t take it anymore! I am depressed and have anxiety and am resentful!”

It was her usual rant once again, post Ed’s death. So then I said some brief things to counter her, tried to keep my tone level, and eventually hung up. I’m almost 37 years old. I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with her constant dysfunction, self victimization, or verbal abuse anymore.

Decluttering for the new year

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We didn’t leave the apartment at all today. It felt like we were fully unpacked yesterday, but I still had to organize a lot of things today, plus I wanted to declutter and give away/donate a bunch of things. I separated out some baby items I wanted to post in our Buy Nothing group. I got rid of lot of junk and old papers in my drawers. After seeing all the clutter and “stuff” in Chris’s parents’ home, it almost drove me to want to own even fewer things than I already own. And relatively speaking, Chris and I own very few things. We’re confined by space given we live in a New York City apartment with limited storage space. And the less space you have, the less space you have to store and display stuff. But the idea of owning stuff that I not only do not use but am barely aware I even own did not sit well with me.

I tend to give away/throw out stuff almost every year at the beginning of the year to “start the year fresh.” But this time, I really want to cull things I don’t use, even if it’s just half used face masks or shoes I haven’t worn in 3+ years. Less stuff will make me feel better.

Sleep regression at 13 months old

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Whether we have been aware of it or not this whole time, Kaia has been an amazing sleeper. She was pretty much sleeping through the night, in her bassinet or crib, at around 3 months of age. She’d been a great eater. She is generally always jovial, curious, and in a good mood. We’ve had a relatively smooth experience as parents to date, and we’ve been extremely lucky and grateful for it. However, during the few nights we were in Orange County at a hotel, she refused to sleep in her pack and play, and instead, we let her sleep on top of our bed between us. We needed her to sleep. We needed to sleep. So we just let it happen and hoped it would be temporary.

Well, we are back now, and she refuses to sleep in the crib. It’s likely separation anxiety related, but it doesn’t matter how tired she is or how late it is. She will NOT sleep in the crib. She either needs to be on the bed with us or in our lap/on our chests. And the nanny is not pleased with us, as she just came back today to help us adjust back.

“This is not the Kaia I let you go to Australia with,” the nanny said sternly to us. “What happened to my Kaia who always sleeps and naps well…?!”

Well, I guess this is a rude awakening to what a baby sleep regression can look like!

My “distant” cousin and I reunite again after 3+ years

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Since we knew we’d be stopping over for a few days in SoCal, I told my cousin who lives in Long Beach that we’d be here and suggested we catch up over a meal. So he, his wife, and his two kids met up with the three of us at a Vietnamese restaurant in Garden Grove for lunch yesterday. It was enjoyable to see them, and I always enjoy chatting with his wife. Sometimes, it wasn’t always clear what else there was to talk about, but somehow, we made it work.

Even though this cousin is my cousin (my dad’s younger sister’s only son), I can count the number of times I saw him growing up on one hand, and two of those times were for funerals. Although he was born and raised in Alameda, just across the Bay Bridge, his mother, who is my aunt, hated our side of the family and hated her mother, my grandma, even more. And since our grandma lived with us, she rarely came to visit. This cousin and I didn’t really start communicating much until after I graduated from college, but especially after his dad died in 2012 and my brother died in 2013. It was like our shared grief, plus the constant family conflicts, kind of drove us together. In both of our sets of eyes, the other is the only seemingly “normal” cousin on this side of the family.

Today, he is fully estranged from his mother; he doesn’t even call her mom or mother; he just refers to her by her first name. She has never met his two children, who are her only grandchildren. He suggested I cut my parents off back when my brother died, but I couldn’t really do it, nor did I really want to, even with all the constant pain they still bring me. But we relate to each other so much as we both experienced the same intergenerational family trauma and are living examples of children who experienced childhood trauma within their families, who are actively trying to break the cycle of dysfunction. With him, I rarely have to explain my parents’ emotional immaturity; he gets it because he experienced the same with his mother. It’s sad, but my infrequent relationship with him is a sort of solace to me.

Little Arabia in Anaheim, California

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In previous trips to Southern California, we’d always flown in and out of LAX since it seemed like it was the most direct way to get there. But Chris found out that there actually was a direct flight from Orange County (via Santa Ana) to JFK once a day, and so he booked our return flights to New York via Orange County. This gave us more time to explore in further depth the Orange County area and places we had not yet seen much of. You could truly spend years exploring Orange County and never get through it, but this segment of our trip gave us more time to do so.

I already knew that Orange County had a big Central/South American and Vietnamese/Filipino population, but I was unaware before doing a quick search on Google that Anaheim is actually known for having an area called Little Arabia. Most people who are aware of Anaheim know that it is home to Disneyland California. Little Arabia would be news to most people, though, even those who are local to Southern California.

Earlier this week, we ate at an Iraqi restaurant that had delicious kebabs, tender, fall-off-the-bone lamb shank, and even an interesting grape soda we’d never tried before. We stopped by a Syrian bakery that had plenty of Western and Middle Eastern sweets, but a hidden item on the menu was bouza ice cream, similar to Turkish dondurma ice cream in its chewy/stretchy texture, which it gets from mastik and orchid flour. When you order it, it’s churned to order and rolled with ground pistachios. It was super stretchy and fragrant of rose water. Our last stop in this area was a Palestinian bakery, where we had cream kanefe (the first cream version we’d ever had, and not too sweet!) along with Turkish coffee, and a delicious spiced and sweetened milk tea, fragrant from caradmom and cloves. The coffee and tea were made to order and with a lot of care from the owner of the bakery, who was extremely warm and hospitable. All were in strip malls, so very much a classic SoCal experience.

We could spend ages exploring SoCal for all its delicious ethnic food and never get through it all. But at least we had a good taste of it, though brief, this segment of our trip.

When uncles interact with their nieces

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In the couple of weeks we spent in Melbourne that overlapped with Chris’s brother Ben being in town, it was really sweet to see him interact with Kaia. After some initial drama in scheduling immediate family events, Ben actually cleared his calendar mostly to maximize time with her. I’m sure he also felt guilty that he had missed her first birthday party, so he probably did this to make up for that, in some way. He helped feed her a couple of times and played and read to her. I loved watching them together. Initially, as with anyone else, she took some time warming up to him, but finally when she did, it was as though no time had passed. I enjoyed watching them play peek-a-boo and make faces together. Listening to her sweet, high pitched giggle at things he’d do to entertain her, like jump up and down and do squats, made me feel really happy.

It’s hard to observe these interactions and not wonder what it could have been like to watch Ed interact with Kaia. While Ed was awkward around adults, he really loved babies and young children. He was really kind and warm when interacting with young children. Who knows — in another life, maybe he could have been an early childhood educator or worked at a toddler educational center or something related. When colleagues and church acquaintances had kids, he’d always give them little gifts and candy. And knowing how much he inundated me with gifts, I know he would have spared little expense to spoil Kaia thoroughly, whether it was with the latest and coolest age-appropriate toy or the most fashionable clothes. Ed always had really good taste in clothing, and he always thought a lot about gifts before he purchased and gifted them.

I don’t know when Kaia will finally understand people who have died and the fact that life will always end in death. But I try to occasionally share anecdotes about her Uncle Ed to her, and eventually, I’ll show her photos of Ed and try to have her “know” him as much as she can. Every now and then when I look at her face, I see Ed in her, and I hope that wherever he is, he is finally at peace with himself and the world. I still miss him and think about him every day, and with Kaia Pookie in my physical life now and him not anymore, sometimes my heart really aches, wishing what could have been.

Rude travelers and their rude assumptions

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Most people who have interacted with us while traveling with Kaia have been extremely kind, friendly, and praised Kaia for how well-behaved she’s been on flights. She’s been told how sweet and cute she is, how well she has slept, how good she’s been. It’s been glowing reviews all around, and I don’t say that just because I am her mother; I say that because I have also been shocked at her behavior and how she’s handled so many changes, as well as how nice people have been to us, cheering us on and encouraging us. So many kind strangers have expressed empathy to us and insisted we’ve been doing a great job managing. It’s been quite heartening to experience.

Well, the first rude couple encountered us on our flight from MEL > LAX. They wanted to sit together and away from the baby (yeah, maybe 5 feet more away…), and they asked if Chris could swap seats with the wife sitting next to me (my seat is where the bassinet is set up). When we declined their offer (TWICE), the wife kept making passive aggressive remarks to me, saying, “it’s going to be disruptive for me, yeah? The baby will be making noises and disturbing me, and that’s not quite right, yeah?”

Actually, not “yeah.” My husband and I paid for these fucking seats in business class, so stay the fuck away from me and my baby, you entitled, overprivileged twat.

Then, the husband tried to complain to a flight attendant, which then prompted her to go to Chris to ask him to move. And of course, Chris responded with something along the lines of, “I don’t care what other people want!”

They lost, and we won. And well, Kaia was actually quite quiet throughout the whole flight, with a few small outbursts, and that was it. Part of me wishes she was a bit more disruptive just to piss off the woman and her husband, but then that would have been disruptive for us, too.