Whole-Brain Child

I just finished reading my tenth book this year called The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive, by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. While I did find it annoying and almost exhausting when they would keep saying “the left brain does this,” “the right brain does that,” and the upstairs/downstairs brain does y and z, I did find a lot of the tips to be very compelling and summed up in easy-to-digest-and-understand ways. Also, I think recent science has debunked the notion that different hemispheres and parts of the brain operate independently, as the brain is far more complex than that: the brain’s different hemispheres are not, in reality, like two separate personas taking turns thinking and processing information. In pretty much every situation, you are using both sides. What does hold water is that as young brains are developing, they are far more emotional than they are rational, and that’s where parents can help guide their children in the right direction. We can help them understand that an emotion is a temporary state and does not define them as people; we can help them understand the importance of things like a routine, sharing with others, and caring for others. Although the jargon and framing was a bit annoying and questionable, I did enjoy the book overall and think it does have a lot of practical applications, especially the last part, which has a “worksheet” you can use to apply their recommended strategies to kids of specific age ranges.

I really enjoyed the ending of the book, too, where the authors say this:

“It’s not how our parents raised us, or how many parenting books we’ve read. It’s actually how well we’ve made sense of our experiences with our own parents and how sensitive we are to our children that most powerfully influence our relationship with our kids, and therefore how well they thrive. It all comes down to what we call our life narrative, the story we tell when we look at who we are and how we’ve become the person that we are … Our life narrative determines our feelings about our past, our understanding of why people (like our parents) behaved as they did, and our awareness of the way those events have impacted our development into adulthood. When we have a coherent life narrative, we have made sense of how the past has contributed to who we are and what we do.”

People who don’t “get it” and lack empathy and deep emotional understanding always say, “the past is in the past.” The reality is that it actually isn’t because as the authors say here, the past and your past experiences shape who you are and how you see and interact with the world today and into the future. I personally found pregnancy and motherhood very triggering in a lot of ways because it forced me to reckon with my past experiences as a child with my mercurial, emotionally immature parents. I had to do a lot of thinking about what kind of parent I wanted to be, what I wanted to emulate of my parents, and what I wanted to steer far away from. In the most random moments, I would be reminded of some negative, toxic experience I had with my mom or dad, or that I witnessed between my parents and Ed, and I’d just feel anger and disgust that something so senseless and psychologically damaging could have happened. And I’d think to myself, I never, ever want Kaia to know what that type of treatment is like, ever.

I know why my parents are the way they are: my dad had absentee parents who left him at home as a latchkey kid to fend, feed, and care for himself. One parent was what my aunt called “like Dr. Jekyll and Hyde,” emotionally void and always distant; the other parent constantly criticized everything and everyone because nothing was ever good enough. So my dad became fiercely independent and expected his kids to be the same; he refused to teach us anything and expected us to learn everything on our own (one of Ed’s most painful memories that he used to recount to me from time to time was the morning of his elementary school graduation. Ed had never worn a tie before, but my mom wanted him to wear one for the ceremony. He asked my dad to help him. My dad snorted in response and said, “If you don’t know how to tie your own tie, you shouldn’t even be graduating”). My mom’s dad died when she was young, and her mom didn’t even want her because she was not only the youngest, but a girl. I’ve come to terms with how they are who they are; I’m an adult now, after all. I just don’t think I have to suffer their verbal beatings all the time anymore.

Awareness comes first. Action is in little steps every day. I’m just trying my best to be the best parent I can be, and I hope when Kaia is an adult that she will still want to spend time with me and enjoy it. The book suggests trying to find mutually fun things that you can do with your child as they get older that are fitting for their stage of development/age. Otherwise, they say, your child as an adult may not want to have anything to do with you because they will have nothing to do with you! That could not be truer for me: my parents and I literally have nothing we can do together other than eat, even when I’ve attempted to take them on light hikes and walks. Even a walk is not something they want to do altogether. That’s sad, isn’t it?

When the husband panics over a lack of “fruit”

From the period between March and July, our house is always full of mangoes — ataulfo (champagne) mangoes, to be specific, since here in the U.S., these smaller yellow variety of mangoes seems to be the most reliable when it comes to sweetness, flavor, as well as lack of stringiness. Americans who say they don’t like mangoes generally think this because of previous experiences with sad “stringy” and flavorless mangoes. Ataulfo mangoes are never, ever stringy unless you are extremely unlucky.

Although I love to cook and bake, I rarely do either with any of these mangoes. I usually just peel and cut them for all of us to eat. Occasionally, I’ll make mango lassi, and that’s it. But this weekend for a lunch at a relative’s house, I’m planning to make no-bake mango tiramisu. I got the idea from a popular Indian food blog I follow, and I figured it would be a tasty idea to incorporate our favorite and seasonal fruit. I’m pretty excited about this mini project.

But late last week, Chris got upset when he discovered that I had not cut up any mangoes for his after-dinner fruit. For Chris, mangoes are king, and there is no greater fruit on earth than mangoes (I would agree with these sentiments). He asked if we had run out of mangoes. I replied, no, we have them, but they just aren’t ripe enough to eat yet. I usually “socially distance” the mangoes by the window to prevent them from releasing too much ethylene gas and ripening too quickly. But Chris got impatient; he was not satisfied with the raspberries, grapes, or even pineapple that I had cut and prepared. His “after dinner fruit” NEEDED to include mangoes, otherwise to him, there was simply an absence of actual “fruit.” So he stuck all the mangoes right up next to each other to encourage them to ripen more quickly. He called it the “mango orgie.” Then, in the next two days, he kept checking on them and asking me if they were ready yet. For Chris, asking if the mangoes are ready yet is akin to asking, “Are they ready for you to peel and cut for me to eat?”

We are a family of mango lovers… even if Kaia is currently on a mango strike. I swear she must be doing this to spite her parents.

Women are bearing children older – age 35 is the new normal

I think if my mom had it her way, I would have graduated from college at age 22 (done), gotten married between ages 24-26 (that was never going to happen), then have at least one kid by age 30 (yeah, right!). She always said that you should have one child before age 30; if you want a second kid, then it’s okay to wait until a little after 30 if you need to. Having children after 35 was a definite no-no in her book. But when I got married at age 30, she changed her tune: have kids ASAP — it’s okay. You could hear the desperation in her voice for grandchildren as soon as possible.

When we couldn’t get pregnant after trying for a while, she predictably blamed me, even after I told her that all my tests came back normal. It’s almost as though she couldn’t imagine it wasn’t her daughter’s “fault.” The truth is that my mom and a lot of other mothers in her generation don’t seem to understand is that having kids… is not necessarily easy (as in conception) to do, nor are the costs that we’re looking at similar to what they faced when they were in their child-bearing years. So it’s no wonder that when I went to see my OB-GYN yesterday, she told me that the averages they are seeing at her practice is that women in New York City are having their first kid at age 35 (hey, that includes me!). Childcare is too expensive; not everyone has the luxury of nearby grandparents who are not only able and willing to help, but actually able-bodied… and able-minded.

Once upon a time, the medical industry would label any pregnancy of a woman age 35 or above as a “geriatric pregnancy” (frankly, I’m sure that in many parts of this country and world, they are still labeled the same way). I poked fun at this and told her that I heard the cutoff for this derogatory label had increased to 40+, and I asked her if this was really true. She sheepishly admitted that yes, the label has changed to 40+, but insisted that they do not use that term in their practice. She has said that for women who want to bear children that her own recommended cutoff had changed with the times: finish having children by age 45, latest, she advises.

I told my friend this, who had his child at age 44 when his wife was 40. He responded, “Just because it is physically possible to be healthy definitely does not mean it’s easy!”

Well, if you want what you want and get it…

Corelle: my preferred dinnerware in my 30s

When I was a young child, I used to have (very riveting) fantasies about the future fancy china I would own. I wasn’t sure if it would be English or Japanese or Chinese, but I did know that they would be handcrafted, in some cases hand-painted, and very beautiful to look at. Back then, I never thought about important things that adults would usually think about when making a big ticket purchase on something like dinnerware… such as, is it durable? Is it dishwasher-safe (most bone or fine china absolutely are not)? If I knock it against another dish, will it be quick to chip? So when I finally became an adult and actually looked at how much these things cost (a lot) and how durable they are (not very much — AT ALL), I started rethinking how important a beautiful, fancy set of dinnerware really was to me. And I got to this point where I realized that I would rather spend more money on better ingredients for the food I put into my and my family’s bodies than invest thousands of dollars on a bunch of plates and bowls… that my child would likely break someday sooner than I’d like, or (gasp) I myself would break because of general wear and tear and the occasional clumsiness.

I had moments when I was in Taiwan, salivating over some beautiful hand thrown pottery that was hand painted (most definitely not dishwasher safe. And if I remember the price, a single tea cup from that set was around $80-100 USD). The tea sets and teeny tiny serving bowls and plates in Japan enamored me both times we visited, but both visits, I knew I was never going to buy any — they were merely eye candy. Then, when we were in Portugal, which is world renowned for beautifully crafted ceramics and tiles, I gazed longingly at all the shiny azulejo ceramic bowls and plates, all hand painted. And while the prices for ceramics in Portugal were relatively reasonable, nowhere as frightening as they were in Taiwan or Japan, I just thought of the hassle of carting them back to the U.S. (not to mention the luggage space they’d require, plus the anxiety I would have at them potentially breaking en route), and I quickly decided – nope — not coming home with us.

Now in my 30s and as a parent, I’m a lot more pragmatic about dinnerware. Sure, I want the dinnerware we have to look good, but I’m more focused on cost, durability, and the ability wash them in a dishwasher. And that’s when the oldie-but-goodie Corelle comes in: it’s what I grew up with (along with many other practical Asian families), and it’s so durable to the point where if you drop them, they may not even break! They’re all dishwasher safe! They don’t scratch or get bent up easily! They’re well-priced! And they’re very lightweight, so if you’re suffering from even temporary carpal tunnel, you will still be able to hold them and carry them to the table! They basically tick all the boxes. So when we returned a holiday gift back to Amazon in January and I remembered I wanted to replace two of our broken bowls from last year, I didn’t even hesitate: I immediately did a search for “Corelle bowls,” and I found a simple white bowl in the size I wanted. It was six bowls for $24 — where else are you going to get a deal like that…?! I ordered them, and I never looked back.

The oldies are oldies for a reason — they are goodies.

Homemade soy candle from candle-making kit is tunneling

A couple months ago, I used the soy candle making kit I ordered for a holiday team building event. I spent an afternoon melting wax, mixing in essential oils, and hand pouring into my candle jars with a glued-on wick in each jar. I made four candles and gave three of them away, keeping a lavender-sage scented one for myself. I was especially excited about mine because I added some extra pure lavender oil that I’d gotten during a New Zealand trip back in 2013, when we visited a vibrant lavender farm and I purchased a tiny vial.

Unfortunately, as I burned the candle the last couple of nights, I quickly realized that the candle was not of the highest quality: the wick is not big enough for the diameter of the jar (which really isn’t that big!), and so even when you burn it as long as you should, so 3-4 hours, it’s impossible for the wick to burn the wax fully and evenly to the ends of the jar. I went back to the Amazon listing and saw that only one reviewer noted this and posted a photo for proof. It looked exactly like my candle tunnel! The only plus side is that the scent definitely does carry well.

I spent last night using the foil method to try to reduce the tunneling; it helped a little, but not much. And today, I finally took out my heat gun that I use for heat embossing to lightly blow heat on the candle to even out the wax buildup on the sides of the candle jar. While the heat gun was far more effective than the foil method, now, my issue is that my wick is fully covered. So my next step, once this wax fully hardens, is to carve out some of the wax (that will unfortunately mean wax and essential oil waste!!) and burn the candle as evenly as I possibly can. These are definitely first-world problems.

Diner food, with a Thai spin

Growing up, I never really understood the obsession with American diners. I hated that Mel’s Drive-in was always so popular for meals. I disliked that I would even go there with friends as the “no-brainer” place to hang out and eat a relatively affordable meal (while in middle and high school). I was never excited by the generic food with the generic decor and okay-to-subpar service. I had no idea why anyone would *love* a diner.

Then, Chris found this place called Little Grenjai in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, which we visited today. It’s a Thai-style diner that recently opened in Bedford Stuyvesant. It’s kind of all the fun, quirky parts of an American diner, from the booth seating to the bright lights, with delicious Thai-inspired food. The kaprow burger is the go-to for lunch, which we got with a Thai-style fried duck egg. And it was kind of the perfect burger: a thin, pork-based meat patty, spiced exactly as pad kaprow is, with a lingering heat at the end and slightly crisp edges; fresh Thai basil inside in lieu of boring, flavorless lettuce, two fluffy sesame buns, and a perfectly deep-fried Thai-style duck egg with super crisp brown edges and a yolk that literally exploded all over my hands after I took a single bite. Pookster was even amused, as we ordered a side of fries, which to our surprise, came out in a pouch of large coin-shaped potato disks. Pookster happily ate almost the whole bag while people watching in the diner.

If diner food were this good at Mel’s Drive-in, maybe I wouldn’t have disliked it so much growing up in San Francisco.

4.8 earthquake in New York today

Earthquakes are something I grew up with. Given that I was born and raised in San Francisco, while we were in school, we had earthquake drills as often as we had fire drills, so anyone growing up in San Francisco, or California for that matter, was well versed on what to do in the event of an earthquake. We always knew to get under heavy tables/desks or stand under load-bearing door frames. We also knew that if we had to evacuate a building, to never, ever use the elevator during an earthquake, but instead to take the stairs. I suppose that’s the same advice to heed during a fire, as well.

In 2011, New York City experienced an earthquake. I still remember I was at a work lunch when all the tables and chandeliers above us started shaking. Everyone was freaking out. My colleagues complained about it for days and talked about how scared they were. I was a bit nonchalant about it and barely said anything; that shake was nothing to me.

Well, we had an earthquake that lasted a couple seconds this morning. It was just past 10:30am when I was at my desk working. Suddenly, I noticed my entire desk shaking, plus the mug of hot, steaming chai I just made about to spill. It ended pretty quickly, though. But within ten minutes as I checked my Instagram, almost every other post was about the earthquake that hit us. The New York Times and BBC reported it was a 4.8 magnitude earthquake that originated about 50 miles outside of New York City, in New Jersey. Everyone in my Facebook groups were wishing each other safety or sharing how scared they were .

My reaction is still, “meh.” I had a meeting today where I had to present, and a few of my colleagues asked if I was okay and how things were in New York. I just smiled and told them it was a little shake, no biggie.

“Okay, I think Yvonne is the only calm person in all of New York City right now!” my colleague declared, laughing.

Honestly, when you’ve dealt with far more frightening or traumatizing things in life, you cannot sweat the small stuff. And the small stuff, for me. is a 4.7 earthquake. I raised my eyebrow for a second, then I let it go after the shake stopped.

“Mummy not here!”

People always say with children that the days are long, but the weeks / years are short. All the cute, sweet moments are often forgotten and lost in the depths of your mind. That’s partly why I write about them — so that if/when I do forget, I will always have a log to go back to and remember what cute, sweet things Kaia did that gave me warm and fuzzy feelings.

The last few weeks, I’ve been trying my best to get to the gym by 6:30am for an hour-long workout. It always makes me feel much more productive to start the day earlier, and it also means I don’t feel like I’m in a rush every morning to get my workout, shower, dressing done before turning on my computer, after Kaia leaves for school. This also means that sometimes, I can walk Kaia to school. It also means I can have a more leisurely morning preparing my tea and reading the news.

Kaia tends to wake up sometime between 6:50-7:15, and when she does, she will usually go to her book shelf, grab a book, then mozy her way over (still in her sleep sack!) to our bedroom. Sometimes, she goes to Chris’s side of the bed first, and other times, she goes to my side. As of late, she’s been going to my side, but alas, I haven’t been there since I’ve been at the gym. So she thinks I’m “hiding” underneath the covers, which I find absolutely hilarious, and she’ll pull the covers down to “find” me. When she realizes I’m actually not there after pulling the covers down to see no one, she will say “YThi not here,” or “mummy not here.” And then Chris will respond, “YThi at the gym.” Then, Kaia will repeat, “YThi at the gym.”

And when I return from the gym about half an hour after she wakes up, as soon as I open the door and put my keys in the basket, she will happily yell out, “Hi, mummy-dear!” before she even sees me. Then, I go up to her to kiss her and give her exaggerated “sniffs” on her hair, which makes her giggle. And I ask her if she slept well.

Witnessing these moments of innocence of young childhood never ceases to warm my heart and makes me think that becoming a parent is more than worth all the effort and exhaustion.

Sweet Malaysian freebies at closing time

Once upon a time, there were a number of bakeries across New York City that would offer deeply discounted baked goods within 30 minutes to an hour of closing. Manna House Bakery on Mott Street in Chinatown used to offer all pastries and bao at 50% off if you arrived about 30 minutes before their closing time; I only found this out by chance when I popped in one evening many years ago, and the lady behind the counter quoted me half of the amount that I was expecting to owe. The much loved and venerated Balthazar Bakery would offer their elaborate pastries for a discounted amount, and sometimes they even had random grab bags that would have a set (low) price. Eventually, though, all good (and cheap) things come to an end, and both bakeries put a halt to their slashed pre-closing prices.

I was reminded of this last night when I was in the East Village for dinner with a friend. On our way to the subway station, we passed by Lady Wong, one of the best (and rare) fancy bakeries in the city for Malaysian-inspired desserts, including the famous kuih. As we stepped in, we weren’t sure if they were still open, so we asked. The man behind the counter looked up, greeted us and said he would still be open for five more minutes. Then, he smiled and said, “Take it all!” We thought he was just joking given the closing time. So we each chose two items each and paid. As we were about to leave, he looked at us quizzically.

“You don’t want any kuih? I’m serious: if you don’t want it, I will throw it all out! You can take whatever you want, just tell me which ones…. just not the serimukkah because those are my favorite.” He smiled as he said this. He explained that it was highly unusual to have this much leftover at the end of the day; usually, they are almost sold out. But today was a weird day with the grey, cool weather, and they didn’t get as much foot traffic as they normally do. He couldn’t eat all of the remaining kuih, nor would he be selling them the next day. So my friend and I got really excited and told him which ones we’d like. He got them all ready in two separate boxes for each of us.

We thanked him profusely, and being very Asian, he brushed us off. “It’s okay… if you didn’t take them, they’d just be going into the trash bin!” he insisted. As he was boxing these up for us, a group of friends walked in, obviously having read about the place since two of them were explaining to their friends that this spot was “known for Malaysian dessert.” The guy behind the counter, who I *think* is one of the co-owners, told us in a near-whisper, “Don’t say anything, okay?” So in other words, he was going to give us all these freebies, but he definitely had plans to charge these folks!

We walked out with our paid and free sweets. I wasn’t sure what cracked me up more, the fact that he said we could take any of the kuih, *except* the serimukkah since they were his favorites, or that he was happy to give us these freebies, but was planning to charge the other group of people who came in after us!

Good Friday eats near New Brunswick, New Jersey

New Jersey is quite far from my favorite state. I think part of the reason I felt strange about New Jersey was how so many of my colleagues have been from New Jersey over the years, and how they only looked at New York City as a place for “work” and pretty much nothing else. They didn’t see the glitz and glam that I saw when I looked at New York with all of its incredible diversity in people, culture, food, theater, and entertainment. They didn’t see it as a land of opportunity, excitement, and fun. Instead, they just saw it as a polluted urban jungle with too many people, too much garbage, and too much pollution. A number of them had said to me that they’d “never” want to live in New York and were completely repulsed by the mere thought of living in the city; one said he’d rather die. Part of me wanted to respond, if you feel that strongly against New York, maybe you shouldn’t work here at all and just get a job in your own state! While not everyone I know who lives in New Jersey thinks this way, enough of my New Jersey-based colleagues over the last 16 years have expressed this sentiment that I just found them to be banal.

So for me, New Jersey has been exciting really only for two main reasons: the delicious Indian and Korean food. Most of the incredible Indian food has been around Edison, New Brunswick, and Princeton, where a lot of people of Indian descent live. For Korean food, the majority has been around Fort Lee and Palisades Park, which also have a large Korean population. Every time we go to these areas, I always marvel not only at the high quality of the food, but also how much cheaper the meals are in general. I can’t believe X dish costs 25-30% less than what this costs in New York City, even in Queens!

Today, we took a day trip and rented a car to go to the New Brunswick area. Chris picked out a “pure veg” Indian restaurant called Indian House of Dosas, and I loved the food so much that I almost licked my fingers and plates clean at the end of the meal. We had two tiffin combo plates of idli, vada, pongal, poori, and masala dosa, which came with peanut chutney, coconut chutney, a rare but interesting ginger-tamarind-jaggery chutney, sambar, and a semolina halwa. And they cost $12-13 for each combo! Along with two Madras style filter coffees and a mango lassi, tax, and a 20% tip, we paid $48. And I was stuffed to the brim at the end of the meal. The food was so fresh, well spiced, and flavorful. I really though the medu vada we had were some of the best I could have had in my life; they were all clearly made to order and extremely fresh. The vada were so hot that they felt like they came straight out of the fryer. If this place were close by to us, I’d likely want food from here at least once a week. I’m still thinking about it long after we have left.

Pre-baby, I would have been happy to occasionally go all out and make dosas and their fermented batter, along with the different chutneys. I did it a number of times, including one interesting variation with a quinoa dosa, which Chris begrudgingly admitted was good. But now, it’s such an event with all the different steps and endless little side dishes. I’d rather just leave it up to the professionals now. Maybe one day I will revisit it, but probably not anytime soon unless something inspires me.