Author Archives: Yvonne

When hosting becomes an excuse to make dessert

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I grew up in a large household, in a duplex where my parents, brother and I lived on the second floor unit. My three cousins and their mom and dad lived on the third floor. Until age 9, my grandma lived in the basement/ground level. We had 9-10 total people to share food with, so whenever I baked anything, whether it was cookies, brownies, or bread, there was always lots of people to share the food with and eat it. There was never a worry about “who is going to eat all this?” or “are we going to have too much sugar/fat?” because when you’ve got at least eight or nine people around, that food is most definitely getting eaten one way or another, and pretty darn quickly.

That all changed once I moved to New York and just had a roommate. We shared food only occasionally, but not always. It’s pretty hard to make food just for one person or meal. I still baked, but when I did, I’d usually share it with her and even my colleagues. The food had to go somewhere, and I would never want to waste the food. And even now with Chris, I can’t bake too much because we probably shouldn’t be eating that much sugar and butter, anyway. We’re also trying to limit Kaia’s refined sugar intake. So whenever I know I am hosting friends or relatives over, whether it’s just for one meal or for an extended duration of time, like with Chris’s parents staying with us on and off for about three weeks, I look at these as opportunities to make dessert: what kind of sweets can I make? What have I been dying to make for the last several months that I haven’t had an excuse to make?

So the short list for now looks like this:

Mango and coconut sago, maybe with coconut milk and juice agar agar jelly

Gulab jamun nut bread/cake

Brown butter chocolate chunk cookies (The Food Lab)

Lemon ricotta cake

Orange blossom almond cake

I was chatting with my friend about this, and she could completely relate. She lives alone, and she sees her brother a lot since he lives nearby. Once, she made cookies and he inhaled the entire batch in a single sitting. When she has friends or family over, it’s also her excuse to experiment with baking, especially since she’s more comfortable cooking and has shied away from baking. Yesterday for Easter brunch, she made egg yolkless tiramisu, which turned out really well, so this has given her more confidence to bake other things. It’s been fun to have a friend who is really into cooking and food and to have them around to share food fun stories (and the nightmares of the last several days) and know that they can empathize and understand your situation from experience.

Differing approaches to parenting regarding choking hazards

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Today, Kaia and I met up with a friend and his daughter, who is about eight months younger than Kaia, for lunch and an outing to Central Park. As we were getting settled in and after we ordered our food, Kaia asked for a snack. So I whipped out a bag of unsalted peanuts that I packed for her. I laid some out on her plate, and she started grabbing them and stuffing them in her mouth.

As soon as my friend saw the nuts on Kaia’s plate, his eyes widened, an apparent frown showed up on his face, and he raised his voice. “Wait, you’re giving her peanuts?” he exclaimed. “Really?”

Initially, I wasn’t sure what he was reacting to. Did he object to peanuts or legumes as a snack? Did he think it was unhealthy? Or did he perceive it to be a choking hazard?

“Yes… What’s wrong with peanuts?” I said, confused, handing Kaia more when she asked for more. “They’re unsalted, and they’re a healthy source of protein and a whole food. What’s wrong with peanuts?”

“All right, then,” he said. After I pushed him for his objection, he said he thought nuts were a choking hazard up until age 5, so even though most of the peanuts were halved, he still didn’t trust giving them to his daughter. I offered to share some with his daughter, and he vigorously waved his hand to indicate he didn’t want her to eat them. I tried to tell him that every child is different, and obviously you need to know your own child and what they are capable of…. plus, you also have to be comfortable feeding your child of a young age whatever it is they are eating. He waved me off, clearly not wanting to talk about this. He told me he knew of a kid in another classmate’s previous class who had choked to death on a whole nut. He cited another article he read about another kid choking on other similarly sized foods. And he said he’d only allow his child to eat a peanut if I broke it into a sixth of a piece. I think at this point, we were nearing the point of insanity, but I refrained from making this comment. His daughter is almost three years old, and I’d seen her eat far larger things in my presence. I think this level of overprotection was just too much, but again, I said nothing to contest it.

“I didn’t realize you were this cautious with her eating,” I said, still confused. “I have offered nuts to her before when (your wife) was around, and she was happy to let her eat them. In fact, she ate them back then! I think they were cashew halves.”

He shrugged. “Well, I’m not having any more kids, so this is all I’ve got!” I looked at him with a slight eye roll; yeah, because I’m planning to have boat loads more kids after Kaia!

In general, I’ve never really said anything with friends who have young kids when I don’t agree with their approaches or what they do with parenting or feeding. I never said anything when I’d seen him or his wife previously spoon feeding their daughter purees even though I strongly believe in baby-led weaning; granted, I am biased, though, because Kaia ultimately decided on that path. I offered her miniature versions of our food and purees at the same time when she was sixth months of age; she categorically refused the purees and leapt right into hand held foods and never looked back. I never said anything when I saw their pouch consumption be pretty frequent, or when they refused to let even a grain of refined sugar into her diet (at least, to their knowledge).

Parents have to make their own choices for their kids, and I totally respect that; but what I get confused about is when people think that I am in some way being reckless or irresponsible in my own parenting choices, or as though I am trying to put my kid at risk of choking and dying. I started preparing for introducing my child to solid foods before I was even pregnant! I did so much research, and I read so many studies. I coached my own child through eating solids from day 1 and watched and observed her like a hawk. Frankly, I am the reason she is the great little eater she is today. I know my child better than anyone else when it comes to food preferences and eating abilities. Kaia was hand feeding herself at age 6 months. She was eating hot spices at age 7 months. She was eating chicken off the bone at 7-8 months and navigating all the bones and cartilage at age 1-1.5. She was devouring pretty much every vegetable in her baby months. She was eating whole grapes at age 2; she started picking around a cherry pit at age 2.5. With eating, she has always been advanced for her age both in skill and in wide preferences for what she will eat. Food has for obvious reasons been a huge priority in my parenting with her, as I want her to flourish in her tastes and abilities with eating. So I think I’d be the best person to make the call on whether she can eat whole or half peanuts or not. I also think you kind of have to put your kid in somewhat challenging situations so they can learn and figure it out. When Kaia started picking out cartilage and bone pieces from bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks, that’s when I knew that she could handle more “questionable” foods. Plus, it’s always with our supervision.

I am not a fan of helicopter parenting and strongly dislike overly cautious approaches to parenting in any form — food or non food. But hey, I’ll let my friends do whatever the hell they want — as long as they let me do what I want with my own kid.

Cooking mistakes happen in twos – the hot cross buns without crosses

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Since as long as I have known Chris, he has talked about how much he loves hot cross buns at Easter. He’s not a religious person at all, but he did grow up in a Christian family and with Easter traditions. And one of those traditions that exists in both Australia and the U.K. is having hot cross buns on Good Friday. These are lightly spiced, lightly sweetened fluffy bread buns that are usually filled with raisins and dried currants. They always have their unmistakable white crosses on the top. I originally always thought they were like a frosting, but I subsequently learned after reading recipes for hot cross buns that they are actually a flour-water paste that are piped on just for the appearance of a cross. Once the buns are baked, they are then slathered with a light sugar/honey/citrus glaze so that the outside has a faint sweetness.

I researched a few recipes to attempt to make this, but I wasn’t quite sure which one to go with. Chris found a recipe that claimed to be “the best” in Gourmet Traveller. It combined the famous recipes of three different well known chefs, and so I figured it would be a good one to use. Unfortunately, the explanations weren’t very clear as to “why” things had to happen, so I ended up going astray. For one, it uses instant yeast; I only had dry active yeast at home. But I’ve successfully subbed in dry active yeast on many other bread recipes, and I figured this wouldn’t be any different. That is, until I noticed that while the dough was rising, it wasn’t rising as much as I had anticipated. And I started going down a Google/ChatGPT rabbit hole, trying to figure out what I did wrong. And then I found it: milk has enzymes that tend to prevent dry active yeast from fully allowing doughs to bloom, and so it’s best to either avoid using the two together, OR to scald the milk and allow it to cool to a lukewarm temperature. The scalding would deactivate those competing enzymes.

This recipe suggested warming the milk until “lukewarm.” Nowhere did it say to heat it until scalding or why. Other hot cross bun recipes discussed this, but this one did not. I was beyond pissed.

It wasn’t a complete failure, as the yeast did not get killed and was clearly active. The buns were rising, just not as much. So I proceeded with the recipe. The second mistake I made was thinning out the flour-water paste too much for the crosses; it needs to be really thick to hold not just its shape, but also the white look of the crosses through baking at a high temperature. My crosses after piping looked fine. But once I put them in the oven, I could see immediately that the crosses were thinning out… and they eventually faded so that you could barely see them at all!

When the buns came out, they looked like what my friend called “a cross between wanting to be a cookie or a scone.” Chris looked at them and said, “What happened to the crosses? Wow, you really are godless.” But then, we both ate one each tonight, and I happily yet reluctantly admitted that the flavor was still spot on, and while the bun wasn’t as fluffy as I had hoped it would be, it was still pretty fluffy and light. It even had crispy edges and bottoms.

“Good hot cross scones!” Chris declared.

This was even more frustrating that this happened tonight after my garlic chips debacle yesterday. Mistakes in the kitchen happen in twos…

Garlic chips go awry

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About a month ago, I made garlic chips (and its delicious residual oil) for the second time ever, and without intending to sound arrogant, the chips and the oil came out perfectly. The first time I attempted this about three years ago, I burned a lot of my garlic chips and they tasted bitter; I had waited too long and let the garlic brown in the oil, at which point they will get overcooked and thus bitter. This time, I did a proportion of one bulb’s worth of garlic cloves to one-third cup of neutral oil. I heated the oil on medium heat until it got hot enough so that when a garlic piece was dropped in, it would lightly bubble. Then, I dropped all the garlic slices into the oil and let it fry for about 7-8 minutes, stirring occasionally until the garlic pieces turned a faint golden color. I shut off the heat, strained the garlic chips with a fine sieve, drained the garlic oil into a mason jar. And voila, I had garlic chips and oil to add to a Thai soup called gaeng jued that I made! It was really the perfect topping and flavor accent to this soup.

Today, I figured I would double this, so I used two bulbs of garlic to two thirds cup oil. Not thinking straight and trying to save time on de-skinning the garlic cloves individually, I nuked them in the microwave for 30 seconds before adding them to the oil. And well, the extra moisture from the microwaving prevented them from ever crisping up. The rule of dropping things into hot oil and hoping they will get crispy is that you need to make sure whatever you are frying is as dry as possible. And well, I did the opposite since I was clearly not of sound mind at the time and just trying to multitask. So while the oil turned out delicious and fragrant, the garlic “chips” ended up being a huge mass of garlic mush, having absorbed too much of the oil and thus never crisping up at all.

I was really upset with myself. That took a lot of my time and energy, and I ended up with a result I was not happy with. In the end, I’ll likely throw the garlic from this mini disaster into a stir-fry, but it still upset me because I really hate it when I don’t get the result I want in the kitchen; this is when my perfectionist tendencies really come out… So I decided to try it again. And this time, I got distracted by having Kaia around, and the garlic chips got too brown and turned out bitter once again. I think the multitasking didn’t help, but I also think that scaling is just hard. As much as I’d want to double the recipe, maybe I just don’t know my stovetop well enough to scale this up, even if it’s only twice as much. I failed to get the oil temperature right — it was clearly too hot. So next time, I’m just going to stick with one bulb of garlic to one-third cup of oil, and make sure to do this when I do not have my toddler around to distract me. Hot oil needs 100 percent of my attention — sorry, Pookster.

Aziz Ansari at Radio City Music Hall tonight

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One of the greatest gifts and privileges of living in New York City is the fact that pretty much every artist and entertainer will come through here. It doesn’t matter if they were born and bred in New York or if they are coming from halfway around the world. They *will* come here. In the entertainment world, New York City is essentially the center of the universe.

When I was younger, even though my parents would never let (or pay for) me to go to concerts, I used to look at touring and concert schedules of singers and bands I liked, and I always noticed that when they would come to California, the artist would most definitely make a stop in Los Angeles, but they rarely came to San Francisco or the Bay Area. That’s changed a lot now, so more artists come through the Bay Area. But even then, I always thought — how amazing would it be to live in New York, where literally everyone goes!

Aziz Ansari was at Radio City Music Hall tonight. He no longer lives in the U.S. and actually resides in London now with his Danish wife. They got married two years ago and are trying to have kids; it was a big part of the second half of his show, being vulnerable about the “TTC” aka “trying to conceive” journey and how hard it’s been, especially given it is almost 100 percent his wife’s responsibility, and given he is currently on the road for work. He even had to have sperm samples frozen. He said he was so confident he would impregnate her their first time having unprotected sex, and lo and behold, that most definitely was not the case. And after seeing fertility doctors, they were simply told to “just keep fucking.” It’s been refreshing to have comedians and people of our generation be open about their fertility struggles. Hasan Minhaj, Ronny Chieng, and now Aziz Ansari have all spoken openly about their fertility struggles and IVF journeys. Fortunately or unfortunately, this seems to be the “new normal” for people of our generation trying to have kids and give our parents grandchildren. You really do have to “try” to have a baby, and it’s not just something that “happens” very easily anymore.

“They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us”

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Since getting pregnant with Kaia, I’ve thought a lot about the concept of intergenerational trauma or inherited trauma. I suppose my generation is the first to acknowledge that such a thing even exists and how toxic it can be. In previous generations, it was all about survival. Now, my generation is being more introspective about why we are the way we are, and how the way we are is largely shaped by how we were raised and what we were told was expected or “normal.”

I’ve read more books in the last several years about complicated parent-adult child relationships, dysfunctional ethnic family dynamics, and child-rearing in general. In the last year, I came across a book recommendation, a memoir entitled, “They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies that Raised Us” by Prachi Gupta, an Indian-American journalist who is my age. In her memoir, she details her parents’ journey to the U.S., their path to the “American dream,” and how the model minority myth fractured her family and even potentially even led to her brother’s premature, untimely death.

Prachi is exactly 18 months older than her brother. Her parents told her they had intended always to have two children, and for them to be close in age, because they wanted the two of them to be each other’s best friend; their mom said that they wanted them to take care of each other once they both passed. Prachi and Yush were basically like best friends up until their late teen/early adult years, when their relationship became unsteady due to their diverging views on men vs. women’s roles in society, as well as their family’s dysfunctions.

I really felt for Prachi reading this book; I finished the book within just a few sittings. Even though she specifically discusses the Indian American / desi experience, I could relate a lot to the complexities of the dysfunctions of her family, the verbal and psychological abuse she, her brother, and their mother endured. I could hear the same echoes and pressures of keeping things a secret or “having/losing face” in my own family. And I could especially feel for her in the moment she found out that her little brother was dead. All the things she so eloquently writes about in detailing her emotions around her brother’s life and death feel so eerily familiar, so similar to how I felt with Ed. The only difference was that Yush was a high achieving, outwardly “successful” Asian American, and well, Ed was not. Both were depressed and suffered from different psychological disorders; both felt that they were less than human beings in their on-earth-bodily states. This is a pretty good quote to summarize how she felt about her family in the world:

“I had once thought that I came from a line of Gods, and I had punished myself for failing to be Godlike. But we were not Gods, and I was not the avatar for our family’s unraveling. I was just another product of inherited trauma, unresolved grief, and reactive survival mechanisms, like everyone else who came before me. We were mortals who felt ashamed when we failed to appear omnipotent. Now I see that my job was to release my ancestors from this burden, to allow those who come next the freedom to be ordinary.”

The book ends with her having little to no contact with her parents. The memoir is written as a letter addressing her mother throughout, saying all the things she wish she could say to her, but her mom refuses to listen to. While she yearns to have a close relationship with her mom as she did when she was a child, it cannot happen without the meddling of her abusive, controlling, and mentally ill father.

Even though it’s been a few days since I finished reading the book, I’m still thinking about it a lot. The emotional rawness of it felt so real, so scarily relatable. As a review in The Atlantic wrote, “She explains better than any writer I’ve ever encountered how conflicts that may appear low-stakes—such as an argument over grades or extracurriculars—can tear open an unnavigable gulf.” People always say that certain arguments don’t matter or don’t mean anything — but my general thought is, well, actually, these seemingly little arguments can expose larger fractures that should very likely be addressed before they blow up. I’m happy to see people of color in my generation writing books like this, and also addressing exactly how complex and unpredictable “dysfunction” can look like.

Twelve-years-aged tangerine peels from my friend’s mom

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When I met up with my friend for lunch this past Monday, I was shocked when she told me that her mom had brought me back a gift from her trip to China. Over a year ago, I told my friend that I was taking on “old Asian lady” habits by attempting to dry a bunch of mandarin peels that winter. In the winter time, we eat so much citrus that it felt wasteful just to dump the peels out. One winter during the pandemic, I was taking citrus peels and making homemade house cleaner with it, but I eventually got bored of that. I felt like a better and tastier way to use the peels was to preserve them via drying for future Chinese dishes. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, aka TCM, preserved mandarin or tangerine peels are known to be a warming ingredient that can warm your spleen and regulate your qi. It’s supposed to help with dampness and disperse phlegm from the lungs. But in general, even if you don’t believe in TCM, aged tangerine peels give an interesting, complex, complementary flavor to savory courses, such as braised pork belly, beef noodle soup, or tangerine beef or chicken dishes. In a lot of traditional homely Chinese soups, a single peel or two can be thrown into the pot for an extra flavor note.

So, when I shared this with my friend last year, she told her mom, who I’d only met once back in 2018. I went to her house so that I could meet my friend’s then new baby. And since then, she’s shared lots of stories of what I cook with her mom and also showed photos and videos, and I guess her mom has been very impressed. She remembered this story about my drying mandarin peels, and so she picked up this individually sealed bag of 12-years aged tangerine peels for me and carted it all the back from China to New York! If you are not aware, dried tangerine peels get more expensive with age (the color also gets deeper and darker brown), so 12-years aged tangerine peels cost a small fortune here.

I was honestly in shock when my friend told me this, and I felt like my eyes were going to bulge out of their eye sockets when she presented the bag to me at lunch on Monday. I kept on staring at the bag and turning it every which way, admiring how thin and dried and deep brown they were, and even trying to see if I could smell some aged citrus fragrance from the sealed bag. I was just so touched that her mom would not only think of me, but even be so generous as to buy me a highly prized Chinese cooking gift while in China and carry it all the way back here for me. I’d only met her mom once — ONE TIME. And somehow, she has remembered me AND gifted me something now! I love a lot of things about this scenario, but I guess I especially love it because it is such a unique gift, one that not just anyone would appreciate. Her mom thought specifically of me, how I dried mandarin peels, and knew I’d appreciate this a lot. And I really, really do. I am beyond grateful and felt so blessed in that moment — not just for her thoughtfulness and generosity for someone she only met once, but also for having this friend who would have a mother who would do something like this for me!

“That’s my mom’s love language: remembering random things I tell her about friends or me and then taking action on it and gifting something related!” my friend exclaimed. “She’s bad at most other things, but she’s really good at this!”

As with most things that matter, if you know, you know #iykyk. And if you know, you know that 12-years-aged tangerine peels in Chinese cooking is like aged fine wine.

Grocery bagger’s integrity

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I was at Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights this morning picking up a few Indian grocery staples before getting some work done at a cafe and then meeting a friend for lunch in the area. At the cash register, one worker was ringing all my items up, while a second was bagging my groceries with my canvas bags. The Indian male worker who was bagging my groceries was likely in his 70s or 80s; he was short, had a bad back with his very visible hunch, and was slowly bagging each item into my first canvas bag. After all my items were rung up and I paid, I thought I would help speed things up given there was someone behind me who was about to be rung up, and we could get done quicker if we both bagged the items. The grocery bagger gazed up at me sternly but grandfatherly, shook his head and wagged his finger with a smile on his face to indicate to me that he didn’t want me bagging my items, and motioned for my second canvas bag to fill it with my items. I let him finish slowly bag up the rest of my items, thanked him, and departed. He gave me a slow smile and a wink on my way out.

I don’t know why, but on my walk over to the cafe, I kept thinking about this guy. He didn’t say anything to me; I’m not even sure if he spoke English. But what’s clear is that he took his job seriously and had a lot of integrity. He knew that if I helped bag my own items, it would have been quicker; two is always faster than one. But he really didn’t want me to do it. And it made me think about integrity. I am not sure what he did for a living before bagging groceries at Patel Brothers, but I am willing to bet that as a little boy, he didn’t dream about bagging groceries in his 70s and 80s. Yet what I also think is true is that given this is his current chosen job, he just wants to do the best possible job he can because he actually cares. And frankly, not everyone cares enough to do the best possible job they can at any job today, especially ones that are higher in pay or prestige elsewhere.

The world of chicken soup

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Every culture on earth likely has their version of the restorative, soothing, and homey chicken soup. In the U.S., it’s oftentimes made with a mirepoix (carrots, celery, and onion), lots of shredded chicken, and egg noodles; this is what you picture when you think of a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. A Jewish version may basically be this, but instead of egg noodles, it would have large, fat, airy, fluffy matzo balls (which I love and even craved while pregnant with Kaia). In China, chicken soup has endless variations, but the most basic ones just simply have some ginger or garlic added; the version made for postpartum confinement is made with rice wine, Chinese red dates, lots of ginger, and plenty of chicken and collagen from the bones. In Vietnam, pho ga is extremely popular, flavored with charred onions, ginger, and whole cilantro stems, spiced with delicate fennel seeds.

And then there is Thailand, where, when westerners think of Thai soup, they immediately think of tom yum goong, with its red tinged broth and big prawns. What’s actually more common in Thai home cooking, though, is the favored and beloved tom kha gai, or Thai chicken coconut galangal soup. I’ve been trying to make more soups this year, and this soup naturally seemed to fit on the list of things we’d like to enjoy at home. Other than having a strong chicken stock base and coconut, the soup primarily relies on fresh herb infusions, primarily thinly sliced galangal (of course, given the “kha” in the name), pounded lemongrass, bruised makrut lime leaves, and sliced chilies.

I had all of these items except for the galangal stored in my freezer. So I went down to Chinatown to look for galangal, knowing this would be harder to find. I popped into Hong Kong Supermarket, where very occasionally I had seen galangal before, but it was usually a rare item. When I couldn’t find it, I asked one of the workers in Chinese if they had galangal (in Chinese, it’s pronounced “gao liang jiang”). He responded, “Galangal? We’ve had it before. But I don’t think we have it today. Why don’t you use ginger instead?” and then pointed over to the massive ginger pieces on the shelf.

This guy was clearly Chinese and not southeast Asian at all. No Southeast Asian would ever, ever say that galangal could be replaced by ginger. It’s a totally different world of flavor!! I ended up going to a small Thai shop on Mosco Street to source my galangal instead. And that trek was worth it.

I made the tom kha gai soup today, which came together really quickly, and it was even more delicious than I had envisioned. It tasted soothing, comforting, creamy, and very fresh because of all those fresh herbs. This soup was like the embodiment of everything I love about Thai cooking. As I was sipping it and picking out pieces of woody galangal, I thought about how my Thai cooking journey started, and it was all because of Hot Thai Kitchen. When I first moved to New York and lived in Elmhurst, I was surrounded by endless authentic and delicious Thai restaurants. I marveled at all the different herbs and spices and thought it would be too complicated to make at home. And now 17 years later, with Hot Thai Kitchen’s guidance and expert explanations, I’m making Thai food semi regularly now, and it’s not daunting at all! It’s the evolution of my cooking knowledge and skills thanks to some amazing sources like Hot Thai Kitchen’s Pailin that make their cuisines so approachable and easy to understand.

“Nosey, facey, huggie, kissie”

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Since Kaia was a baby, she’s always been affectionate and craved affection. We’ve been giving hugs and kisses often and always, and we’ve always communicated that via English and Chinese. When she crawls into our bed in the wee hours of the morning now, she will demand “Cuddle! Cuddle!” to me, which I find very sweet and endearing, but Chris insists is controlling and manipulative. Well, potato, po-TA-toe!

But what is really cute is that she’s also embraced what I call “face kissing,” “nose kissing,” and “eye kissing.” “Face kissing” is basically what you see lions do with each other — they rub their cheeks against their young or loved ones as a sign of affection. “Nose kissing” is rubbing one’s nose against the other, as though you are shaking your head, just with your noses rubbing. And “eye kissing” is getting your eye closed and close to the other person’s eye and rubbing it. I am working on getting her to do “eyelash” kisses, but we’re not quite there yet. She loves doing these three types of “kissing” along with regular kisses and hugs. And she’s even gone ahead and renamed them: nose kissing is now “nosey,” face kissing is “facey.” She also added an “eee” sound to hugs and kisses, so when we are leaving each other, she asks for “huggie!” and “kissie!”

I love her excitement at these little signs of affection, and I love even more how she renames them to things that she likes. I thought about all the words she has mispronounced since starting to speak at about age 9-10 months, and I think about the bits of sadness I felt when she started saying the words correctly. It really made me feel this one Instagram post that said this:

“One day, they mispronounce a word in the cutest way, and you never want to correct it. Then, without a warning, they say it right. And just like that, a tiny piece of childhood slips away.”

I still remember (and luckily, have video recordings of her saying) words like “bluey” for blueberry, “manga” for mango, and even the way she used to say, “ah- MO!” for “more.” I don’t even remember the time she switched from “ah-MO!” to a properly pronounced “more?!” But I loved every minute of it. And now, I love that she actually knows she’s not saying the “right” words, but in fact, she’s aware we’re “making up” words for these cute things we do together, like “facey” and “nosey.” These little moments make me unbelievably happy, like so happy sometimes that I feel I could burst. Sometimes, I really just cannot believe how lucky I am to have these sweet little human in my life. Every time I think that, I realize (and think) how crazy that is given people get pregnant and give birth to babies literally every single day. But I know I am still lucky regardless, because knock on wood, Kaia is healthy and happy and growing, and I am privileged to be her mama.