Author Archives: Yvonne

“It takes a village” that can even include total strangers

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The last several days, I haven’t been taking the stroller when picking up Kaia. It started when Chris said he wasn’t going to take her in the stroller to school when we got ready early one morning, and so he wanted her to walk. It made perfect sense: the weather was warm and comfortable, and well, Kaia can walk. So she should walk! She tends to walk better (as in, in the right direction and at a decent pace…) with Chris than she does with me, though. She barely will walk the one block from the school to the subway stop in Chinatown with me, so I end up carrying her. Then, when we arrive at Columbus Circle, she will whine and whinge when I ask her to walk just for the two blocks home and insist that, “Mummy carry you! MUMMY CARRY YOU!” So I end up having to tell her if she doesn’t walk, she won’t get <fill in the friend, stuffed animal, toy, food, treat>. When we finally land on a motivator (yesterday, I told her if she didn’t walk, she wouldn’t get to see her friend Jacob this weekend…), she will eagerly hold my hand and walk with me the full two blocks nonstop.

Today, when we got to the corner of the street with two blocks to go, she started crying and asked me to carry her. I said, no, you will walk. Big girls walk, and you are a big girl now! She refused, so she simply sat down in front of the luxury apartment building and just stared up at me blankly. I was not going to let her win this; I do NOT want her always getting her way, even if we were running late to get home today. So I did my usual thing and threatened to take all these things away I knew she wanted. Nothing worked. She just would not budge. And I was not going to let her get what she wanted in this moment. I stood my ground.

Then, a good samaritan appeared out of nowhere. A slightly older woman with a big smile came up to us and kneeled down to Kaia. “Hey there!” the woman said in an upbeat voice. “What’s going on here? You don’t wanna walk with your mommy? You just don’t feel like it, huh? Well, how about this: if you don’t want to walk with Mommy, then I can take you with me! You want to come to my dance class with me? It’ll be so much fun! And then after, I’ll take you to my house! How about that?”

Pookster peered up at her and gave her a slight side eye. Then, she looked at me to see what my expression said. I simply smiled. After a few seconds, Pooks jumped up, grabbed my hand, and we started walking. I thanked the nice woman and wished her well, and we were on our merry way home.

“Sometimes, it just takes another person to chime in for a bit, and all is well in the world!” the woman said gleefully, as she wished us a good night.

Who is part of my village? All of New York City who has done things to entertain Kaia, soothe her, make her laugh, play peekaboo with her, and encouraged her to walk with her friggin’ parents properly.

Neighborly neighbors and my fixed earrings

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I was rummaging through my vast earring collection a few days ago when I came across a pair of earrings that Chris’s cousin had made me. She had taken a jewelry making class last year, and with that she decided to use her newly learned skills to make all the women in the family earrings for Christmas presents. It was so sweet of her. She’s always been a very crafty person. She’s knitted and crocheted Kaia a number of different clothing pieces, from mittens to hats and even more complex pieces like sweaters. As someone who enjoys creating arts, crafts, and homemade food, I really appreciate her hand-crafted pieces and the time and effort she puts into them. Anyone can buy a gift; not everyone is willing to put the time and effort into making it with their own hands for someone else.

Unfortunately, I only ever got to wear those earrings once before I broke them. Me being me, I overstuffed my carry-on bag that held the earrings, and tone of the earring backings fell off. The way it broke could not easily be fixed unless I found a new replacement piece, so I left it in my jewelry box and just let it sit. Though I figured someone in our neighborhood must know of a place where I could buy a replacement piece, so I posted in our Upper West Side Neighbors group for a recommendation on recommendations.

Amazingly, someone who is an artist herself responded. She said she’d have the finding needed to fix it, so she’d help me do it herself. I just had to come to her apartment. So yesterday, I went to her place after my dentist appointment, and she showed me the piece she’d glue on the earring back to fix it. I was truly amazed at her generosity, plus the fact that she’d so willingly let a stranger into her apartment. She lives in a co-op building in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, where she uses the larger bedroom as her studio. If I hadn’t known any better when I walked in, I would just assume this was a work space and not originally intended as a bedroom! She said to leave the earrings with her so that after the glue dried, she could test it to ensure it really was successful. She’s already messaged to tell me her handiwork was a win, so I’m planning to go back up to her place to pick them up. I offered to pay her, but she insisted she just wanted to be a good neighbor and meet people in the ‘hood. So I’ll likely bring her flowers as a token of appreciation.

People complain a lot about Facebook, but I’ve really enjoyed feeling like I’m really a part of the Upper West Side through the Buy-Nothing and Neighbors groups. It really makes me feel like I’m a part of a real community and that people do care and look out for each other here. Yes, people do genuinely look out for each other here, in this big concrete jungle. Just in the last week, a kid’s new giraffe stuffed animal got returned, and in the craziest incidents, a real diamond tennis bracelet got returned to its owner! It’s really not terrible living in a big city!

The baby tooth that could

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I went in for a dental cleaning today and told my dentist that my destabilized baby tooth (thanks, pregnancy) felt even more destabilized in the last few weeks. He took x-rays of the tooth and showed me what it looked like.

“The bone has completely degraded underneath the baby tooth!” he exclaimed while looking at the x-ray through the light. “The baby tooth has nothing to hang onto! It’s really any day now!”

My childhood dentist told me that I’d be lucky if my two baby teeth lasted until age 30. I’m turning 39 in just a few months. The only reason this baby tooth got destabilized is due to pregnancy tooth decay in the neighboring tooth, which resulted in a root canal in 2022 that shook up the baby tooth. All dentists I’ve seen since childhood have told me they’ve been amazed I’ve kept both baby teeth in such good shape for this long; I’m an anomaly. And as each year goes on and the baby teeth stay in tact, I’m even more of a freak (or miracle?) to them.

We decided I’d just wait until the tooth fell out on its own. That day is going to be utterly terrifying and relieving at the same time. I can tell it’s gotten looser in the last few months. I consciously try to avoid eating anything hard on my right side because of it. The day it falls out is also going to be a sad and bloody one, an end of an era. I just hope that when it does finally happen that I’m not in a public place; the last thing I want to do is freak people out by trying to run to the nearest bathroom with blood running down my mouth and chin. And then, at that point, I’ll need to get bone grafted for a potential implant, which will not only require surgery, but also be quite expensive. The dentist told me that I should be reserving next year’s dental allowance from my insurance for this. I’ll need to brace myself.

This is what getting older means: spending more money on annoying health-related procedures. It’s mortality staring me in the face.

Listening as a skill

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A former colleague I was friendly with reached out to me a few weeks ago to let me know that she had relocated back to New York in the last year from San Francisco. She asked if I was still here and if I was, that she’d like to meet up for coffee to catch up. I hadn’t seen her in over two years, so I thought it would be good to see her. We met up late Friday afternoon for some tea and sat at a park in Chinatown before I went to pick up Kaia from school.

We chatted for over an hour about all the usual things: her relocation, our respective work situations, people we still kept in touch with from our last company. We talked about Kaia and parenthood, and we also talked about health. I was pretty stunned when she recounted to me things I’d shared with her over three years ago when she was last in town, and we met for coffee. I invited her and another former colleague to hang out on my roof, and she remembered me telling her about my cubital tunnel syndrome and random travel anecdotes that I didn’t even remember telling her. I was really endeared that she remembered, and it felt really comforting. I’m so used to being a broken record nowadays and sharing the same stories over and over again that I forget who I have shared them with… and frankly, who even cares and retains them.

But it made me realize how it feels like people have such short attention spans now that they don’t really listen. People complain about news articles being too long. There are even people now who think that some TikTok or Instagram videos are too long, so they just swipe to the next one that is faster. Chris even complains sometimes when his brother or I are telling a story and he keeps saying, “Get to the point!” People don’t seem to appreciate the art of story telling the way I always did as a kid and even now, as an adult. But I think the best stories are nuanced and have interesting arcs. There’s always a good lead up. Characters have different subtle personality quirks that only reveal themselves with time. And it’s comforting to know that there are still some people in existence who really do take the time to listen, and even remember.

Counting and Cracking

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Tonight, we went to see the visiting Australian (and Sri Lankan) show Counting and Cracking at NYU’s Skirball Theater. It’s a show that takes us through a multi-generational journey of a Sri Lankan-Australian family from 1956 to 2004, political turmoil of a divided Sri Lanka, and relatable stories of family love, conflict, pain, and forgiveness. Chris’s brother originally took their parents to see the show in Melbourne, and he told us about it and the fact that it would be coming to New York in the fall. So we got tickets and went tonight. Even though the show is three hours long with two intermissions, which is quite long, it didn’t feel like it dragged at all; instead, it actually felt like it was gripping you along, forcing you to wonder what would happen next. The show tries to condense a lot of history into a short amount of time, and it does it really well. I never once felt like it was too long or as though I was losing interest in the plot.

I found myself moved to tears at certain points of the show; I don’t think that’s happened at a show for me in ages. At the end of the show, Radha talks about how she would likely have never left Sri Lanka, even in the dire political state it was in, had it not been for Siddhartha, who she was pregnant with. She gave up the home that her grandfather built from scratch; it was a home her husband thought she’d never, ever give up. She ultimately left Sri Lanka for Australia 100 percent because of him: she wanted him to have a better life and to be safe. These moments in movies and theater just hit me differently since my fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood journey. It’s almost like my brain and body have been rewired since becoming a mother; it’s the process of “matrescence” that doesn’t get enough research or attention. Parents really do sacrifice so much for their kids, and most of their kids will never quite grasp even a fraction of the sacrifices until they (may) become parents themselves.

 

Beef rendang, coconut rice, and the rice cooker that decided to stop working

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It seems to be a once-a-year activity now: I decided to defrost the beef chuck I picked up at Costco a few months ago to make a batch of rendang using the Sambal Lady’s rendang spice packet (in partnership with Burlap and Barrel, who I have grown to love and admire). Last year, I made the rendang with a leg of lamb I cut up. In 2022, I made it with beef chuck I purchased on sale at Whole Foods. Just like the previous two years, while the process was simplified greatly given I didn’t have to source all the different spices with Auria’s spice blend packet, it was still a labor of love since it takes low and slow cooking and stirring over the course of four hours. Prior to having a fully remote job, this would have been unthinkable as a weeknight meal unless I did it on the Sunday before Monday dinner. But I was able to adjust the heat and stir the beef mixture between meetings and work tasks yesterday, and the beef rendang came out beautifully.

I planned to serve the rendang with coconut rice (infused with some cardamom pods) made in our rice cooker, but I was sad to see that after 14 years of operation, the rice cooker decided to stop working. I had to salvage the partially boiled rice by dumping it all into a sauce pan and finishing it over the stove. RIP rice cooker, and hello to your updated replacement (the same brand) coming in a couple days!

I wasn’t sure if Kaia would enjoy the rendang given these spice packets were the original hot ones, and she’s recently been complaining about spicy food (that friggin’ Dragons Love Tacos book that demonizes spicy food!). So I was very pleasantly surprised to see her carefully inspecting the beef shreds, tearing them apart, and daintily placing small pieces in her mouth and chewing. She’d hesitate, ask for water or milk, then go back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. She did say the rendang was spicy, but she kept going back for more. This is ALL a good sign! I’m trying to raise a spice/heat loving little eater!

Was the rendang a big effort? Yes. But was it worth it? Darn right it was. And we have plenty of tasty leftovers for the next few days to keep the ROI going.

The grass is always greener on the other side – from a food perspective

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Whenever we travel, and especially to places with really strong food cultures, like France, Italy, and pretty much anywhere and everywhere in Asia, I always think how amazing it would be to live in a place that truly values food and freshness. The U.S. was built to feed a lot of people en masse, which basically means that we’re feeding for the sake of feeding people here (quantity matters, full bellies matter) instead of thinking about quality or sustainability of raw ingredients. So whenever I hear about people who are of a similar age as I am, originally born and raised in a Western nation like the U.S., but have done the “reverse migration” of going back to their country of origin, I am always intrigued, and my ears tend to perk up.

In the last year, I discovered the freelance journalist Clarissa Wei and her cookbook Made in Taiwan. She is of Taiwanese descent, but she was born and raised in Southern California. She has since moved back to Taiwan and is living there with her husband and young child. When I did a search for her, I actually realized I had read endless articles she had written about Chinese and Taiwanese food previously, but I had just not remembered the by-line on those articles. Her cookbook reads like a journal or blog, peppered with lots of heavily researched factoids and also personal stories of her own experiences in the U.S. and in Taiwan. She says that when Costco opened in Taiwan, she and her husband got a membership and treated their visits there like her parents used to treat treks to Ranch 99 in California: while her parents would get excited at stocking up on all their favorite Taiwanese and Asian ingredients and fresh produce, she and her husband now meticulously plan what they will buy at Costco: avocados, bagels, and all the Western things that you cannot easily find in Taiwan that they missed having easy access to while in the U.S. “The grass is always greener on the other side,” she lamented. Prior to moving to Taiwan, she used to get excited about having easy access to the night markets and all her favorite Taiwanese dishes. Now that she has all that literally at her doorstep, she wants the American things that are either far more expensive in Taiwan or more difficult to find.

Another funny anecdote she shared that actually made me laugh out loud: she said that her standard Taiwanese stove top was able to get so hot that it would make restaurant-quality fried rice with real “wok hei” as I always get excited about. I always love getting stir-fried noodles and rice at restaurants because “wok hei” is just impossible at home with our stove top. On the flip side for Clarissa, it was very challenging to impossible to slow simmer anything on her stove top. So she went to a shop to see what it would cost to get her range replaced with an American-style one. The shopkeeper looked at her like she’d gone crazy and said, “Why would you do that? Do you want food with no flavor?” The sheer horror!

We always want what we cannot get easily and romanticize the things we don’t have. Off the top of my head, I think that if we leave the U.S., I would most definitely miss not having to think about how to read food labels (this is a funny one, isn’t it?). In New York City specifically, I’d miss easy access to literally every cuisine on earth, somewhere across these five boroughs. I’d also probably miss easy access to boneless, skinless chicken thighs, or trays of neatly cubed beef chuck, or a boneless leg of lamb. I am American, after all, raised in a western country that is used to having its citizens being quite far removed from the process of animal slaughter.

Varied fast-casual lunch options in a post-pandemic NYC

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Prior to the pandemic, the quickest lunch options while at the office were always the standard types of things you’d expect: salads, sandwiches, and pre-made sushi. While we did have nicer sandwich options like the Cambodian sandwich shop Num Pang or higher quality salad spots like Sweetgreen, there really wasn’t a great fast casual option for Chinese food nearby. We had a few places that had limited lunch specials, but they were standard sit-down restaurants, not places where you could grab and go the way you do at Sweetgreen or Le Pain Quotidien. So when I read about Milu, a fast-casual, modern Chinese spot that opened near Madison Square Park, I thought it sounded promising, especially since it had interesting options for lunch that you wouldn’t normally think about, like Yunnan-style beef brisket or Mandarin crispy duck. I met a friend here for lunch today and was impressed by almost everything about it, from the sleek seating and booths, the fresh, bright, modern decor, the quick ordering and serving system, and the food itself. You order at the counter and grab a number, and within five minutes, the food is brought out to you. With a plate and a drink for each of us, Our meal came out to less than $50. The duck was crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside, with duck fat rice, fresh herby salad and pickled cucumber salad on the side. My friend’s brisket was fork-tender and a little spicy, much to my surprise, and had similar side salads.

I think New York needs more Chinese places like this that are quick, casual, and modern that also have high quality food. The average person who isn’t exposed to Chinese food thinks it’s a bunch of greasy, MSG-laden fast food, but this food is fast, high quality, not greasy, and NOT MSG-laden.

Mid-Autumn Festival: Lantern making with parents activity at school

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Each month, Kaia’s new school will have activities where parents are invited to participate in the classroom. It’s done by lottery, and usually two parents will be invited to join each event. This month, I was selected as one of two caregivers to attend for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival lantern making activity. I dropped Kaia off at the school at 8:30 and then came back at 10am for the lantern making. It was a bit haphazard, as nothing was really described beforehand, and we all just jumped into the activity. The kids were given the supplies, and steps were barely described even as we went about the activity. On a positive note, I finally got to meet the Chinese teacher, who comes in from 9-4:30 every day, which is why I hadn’t met her yet; we just never overlapped since I pick up at around 5pm.

Pookster was very excited to see me come into the classroom, but she reverted into a bit of a baby from the moment I arrived. She wanted me to do all the pasting and positioning of the mooncakes and rabbits for her on the lantern. She wanted to squirt liquid glue everywhere (which I was not an fan of…). And every time I got up to get supplies or my phone to take photos, she freaked out and followed me, thinking that I was going to leave. When she said she had to go pee, the Chinese teacher offered to take her, but she refused. So the Chinese teacher still took her, and I just sat and watched from outside the door so she could see me.

“It’s okay,” the Chinese teacher reassured me in Chinese. “All the kids are like this. Once their mommy comes, they just want mommy and no one else. She is usually good here and always listens. She’ll go back to normal once you leave.”

The activity barely lasted 30 minutes, so I really wasn’t there that long. When I had to leave, it was total pandemonium. One kid whose grandpa had come was crying because her grandpa was leaving, and then Kaia started crying loudly when I told her I had to go, but Daddy would come pick her up later. One of the admins picked her up to comfort her as I said bye and went out the door.

I’m not sure I should come to these events moving forward after this. I don’t want to disrupt the day and just want her to engage with the daily activities and have fun with her classmates. The admin reassured me this was all normal and not unique to her, so it is what it is. It just made me feel bad that when I wanted to participate when given an opportunity, I probably made the day worse in the end for my Pookster.

Cute toddler moments, continued

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In this calendar year, it’s amazing how much Kaia’s speech has advanced. It’s almost like every day her sentences get more complex and her vocabulary grows. In just the last seven days of her new Chinese immersion school, she’s started speaking complete Chinese sentences to me. And when I’ve heard them, I’ve done a double take and stand there a little shocked. It’s as though she knows what she’s doing is impressing Chris and me because after she says a whole Chinese sentence, she will sit there and grin ear to ear. Or, the other hypothesis I have is that she’s been holding out all this time and just waiting to unleash her Chinese sentences on me, which could very well be the case since she’s such a cheeky bubba.

Sometimes, she will say sentences when she thinks neither of us is in the room or listening. The one time I laughed out loud earlier in May of this year was when she was in the snacks bar of a hotel where we were staying during Chris’s parents visit, and she kept going on and on when she got excited and saw the goldfish crackers: “Wow, goldfish! Ooooh, I like goldfish! Goldfish is yummy! So tasty, so good! I can’t have that!” She also knew she wasn’t allowed to touch it, so she never got her hands on it and just kept staring lovingly at the bags of goldfish crackers.

Today, she said, “I want orange” in Chinese. This doesn’t seem that exciting or complex, but the fact that she actually said, “I want (fill in the food)” was a big deal because she’s never even done that once before with me. She will say “want” or the name of what she wants, and that’s been it to date until now. She’s also said she likes x. It’s literally verbal baby steps.

While reading her Dragons Love Tacos book lately, there’s a page where there’s a large dragon sitting on top of a house. In the last couple weeks, she usually points at that dragon and says, “That’s a dinosaur on the house!” I’ve corrected her a few times and told her that it’s actually a dragon. She usually fights with me and gets upset, saying that it is really a dinosaur. So I’ve let her have her way with it and relent, responding that sure, it could be a dinosaur. Yesterday, she looked at the dragon on top of the house, paused for a bit, and said, “This is not a dinosaur. It’s actually a dragon!” I squeezed her and gave her a kiss and said, “Yes, Pookie! That’s right! It is actually a dragon!”

They grow so fast, people always say. It could not be truer for my Kaia Pookie.