Since Kaia’s arrival, we obviously haven’t been spending too much time out watching movies or going to different shows or the theater. Babysitting not only gets expensive, but now given that Kaia is 10 months old, she’s in prime “stranger danger” mode, so even paying for help outside of the nanny could end up increasing her anxiety. Instead, after she goes to bed on Friday and Saturday nights, we’ve been watching Downton Abbey. Yeah, yeah, I know: it’s about 10+ years late. But it’s not like I’ve ever watched any show in its prime. Plus, with Downton, just the quick synopsis of it didn’t really interest me very much, but Chris insisted I would like it. And well, he was right. Sure, on the outset, a show about British aristocracy who don’t even know what “work” or the “weekend” is doesn’t really interest me. But the character development on the show is really rich, plus I love the interactions between the “upstairs” family and the “downstairs” servants family. The best thing about Downton is that most characters are very nuanced, just like with people in real life: no one is really all good or all bad. No one is a hero or a villain. We live in a world of shades of grey, not black and white. You don’t always love or hate any major character. You go through moments when you want to hug them and others when you want to punch them in the face. That’s what makes them all so relatable. It’s probably not realistic how well the Crawley family treats their servants, but hey, this is still TV, right?

I’m still not over Matthew dying. Chris laughs at me about it. But this is what happens when you really get invested in the character development and the story line.

It’s been raining since Saturday, and it’s been quite miserable. I don’t consider myself someone who gets seasonal depression, but I do feel sad and more moody when we transition from summer to autumn, then autumn to winter every year, as the shorter days and longer nights always annoy me, not to mention the dip in temperature. And when it’s rainy and grey outside, there’s little to no incentive for me to get out for fresh air. And then, even though I only have to go down to the third floor for the gym, I don’t even feel like going. That’s super lazy, but it’s my general feeling. I struggle to bring myself to even want to go down 16 flights of stairs via an elevator. Talk about feeling bratty and making lame excuses.

But after a few days, I eventually emerge from it all and drag myself to the gym. And I feel good once I do and get mad at myself for my previous laziness. This happens literally every single year when the seasons change. I’m that predictable with my timed laziness. 😀

The Sambal Lady had her annual food and beer event in her backyard this evening in Flatbush, and so Chris insisted that we not miss out on it. Kaia is almost 10 months old now, meaning she’s in prime “stranger danger” mood, and having a random babysitter look after her didn’t really sit well with me. Our nanny was out of town in Florida, so we couldn’t ask her to look after her, either. So we ended up just bringing her to Laksapalooza. To make matters worse, it was raining, so they had to do an outdoor tent setup outside and seat us in two groups of 20 indoors, rotating in Auria’s basement. It actually worked out really well; it was super organized and everyone was in a good mood from the delicious food and wide variety of beers and ciders.

Kaia isn’t used to being around big crowds, so I think she got a little fussy because of that. We didn’t have a good place to put her when we were outside, so we left her in her car seat on a table away from the loud music and chatter and periodically went to check on her after she had fallen asleep. While socializing, I thought I heard some high pitched crying, so I went to check on her and found her screaming and crying, upset at being left alone in a foreign place. Auria was super accommodating and hospitable to us: she let us store breast milk in her fridge, heat up milk in her kitchen, and change Kaia’s diapers in her living room. Kaia was not a fan, though. She kept looking around as though in wide-eyed terror, wondering where the hell we took her. It took forever to calm her down and she was still crying when we got an Uber to take us home. I felt a little guilty, but we didn’t really have great alternatives given the situation.

The moral of the story is: babysitters, especially ones you and the baby don’t know, don’t always solve problems, especially when your baby is in “stranger danger” age range. And when you don’t have close family nearby, you don’t have many options for childcare that don’t feel like you are burdening other people. Because even when close friends say they are happy to babysit…. they are really just saying that because it sounds good, not because they really do want to go out of their way to help you unless it’s literally life or death. And sometimes, you just have to suck it up and bring your baby. It gives them more exposure, and frankly in life, you can’t always be comfortable and have every single tiny need met, as a baby or an adult

This past Monday morning, the nanny showed up at 8am, dressed like a snowman. I’m not exaggerating: it was high 50s that morning, and she showed up in waterproof, lined winter boots, a puffy goose down jacket, and a thick hat. I laughed when I saw her and asked if she was preparing for a blizzard.

“I’m Jamaican!” she exclaimed, half laughing, half indignant. “I do not DO cold! I will wear 10 layers to avoid being cold!”

As someone who hates the cold, I don’t blame her. Every time autumn rolls around and we enter September, I always feel a little annoyed as the temperature noticeably cools down. The first morning when I wake up and feel like I need to immediately put on a sweater — that’s when I know it. Winter is around the corner. And I’ll be in hell.

That was also Monday morning when I had to throw on a zipped hoodie. No more jumping out of bed to do my thing without having another layer on! It also means that with my pumping, I can’t just pump wearing any old shirt anymore, as it means my stomach will be exposed and be cold. So I’ve started wearing my pumping/nursing tanks again to keep myself covered in the midriff. It’s definitely one downside of pumping in cold weather, even when you do pump indoors. You still want to be warm and comfy and not exposed. And you have to think about layers when it gets colder… even indoors.

For a while when doing our weekly Saturday outings to explore different neighborhoods and boroughs of New York, Chris and I would take the stroller frame with the car seat, and because he was insistent on ensuring he could do it himself, he’d carry the stroller frame collapsed down in one hand and the baby in the car seat in the other. Then, we decided to start using the stroller seat since it would provide Kaia more comfort. And even though you can technically break it down, breaking the seat down means… well, there’s no seat for the baby to go in. And Kaia isn’t walking yet, so someone would need to carry her. Chris did this a couple weekends and decided it wasn’t efficient enough, and so he decided we would both carry the stroller, NOT collapsed, and keep the baby in it. That meant one of us would need to carry the front while the other would carry the back. This was not very comfortable for me given my wrist pains/mommy thumb, plus it would occasionally be ominous when Chris would inevitably try to move the stroller faster than I would, but this is a part of taking a stroller on the subway. The subway is not wheelchair/handicap/stroller friendly AT ALL. And when you get excited occasionally and see elevators or signs for accessible stations, you will also eventually see an “out of order” sign, or the elevator will take ages and ages to arrive. And by that point, Chris will be steaming in his impatience and decide to screw the elevator option.

Is this fun? No, it’s not. It also tells you why so many city parents just stay in their own neighborhoods once they have babies because the subway system was not built for parents of babies. But it also just makes me frustrated that the subway system is not accessible in general, and they don’t have plans to make every station accessible.. until like 2055. Seriously? We spend so much money in subway fare and the fares keep going up, yet the service doesn’t seem to get any better, and we have to deal with inaccessibility crap like this. It’s so frustrating… until I remember that in pretty much every other city in this country, you need a car to get around, and public transportation is not even an option.

So the moral of the story is: it’s either going to suck, or it’s going to suck worse.

Going to Chinatown since the pandemic has begun has become a little treat. It’s been a time when I can not only get as many Asian vegetables as I can conceivably carry, but I also stock up on perishables (like noodles to freeze), pantry items (bamboo shoots, coconut milk, water chestnuts). And on top of that, I like to get my favorite ready-to-eat items that feel like a treat, like doufu fa (tofu pudding), grass jelly (not all the time, but occasionally), zongzi (Chinese tamales), and nor mai gai (Chinese steamed sticky rice with chicken, mushrooms, and Chinese sausage wrapped in lotus leaf).

I went to my usual spots to pick up treats and goods, and while I stopped off at Mott 46 to pick up two nor mai gai for what Chris likes to call our “morning dinners” this weekend, I noticed that they were quite smaller than they previously were. The last time I tried to stop by, they had already sold out, so I wasn’t sure if my eyes were deceiving me, or if I just had a fake memory. But after steaming them up and opening them, I realized I wasn’t wrong: the filling inside was much lesser, from the meat to the sticky rice. And there weren’t any minced mushrooms, which I love. The price had remained the same, but the product was far less.

This sucks. It’s like when prices go up, the quantity stays the same. When prices stay the same… the quantity you get goes down. My Chinatown haul this trip, despite filling up two reusable sacks plus my backpack, felt so much sadder this time, and it seemed like I had spent more; in total, I’d spend almost $150. Chris even commented that I didn’t get that much when most of the time, he thinks I go nuts whenever I go down there. Not happy.

About a year ago when we first moved into this apartment, we had an infestation of drugstore beetles, likely coming from the dried Mexican chilies I bought. Well, somehow, the beetles have returned. They came, and when they did, I had the exterminator come and set glue traps for them. That was about a month ago. They were nowhere to be seen for about two weeks after that, and so I thought they had just disappeared. Well, they are back AGAIN, and this time, I have to kill at least 5-6 every day. I find dead, flattened ones on the floor all the time. Even Kaia has managed to kill them by rolling over them and squishing them with her hands, unknowingly on her play mat. Almost every single glue trap the exterminator set up has at least 3-4 dead sesame seed-sized beetles on them. I went through my entire pantry and have no idea what the culprit is. And with these types of pests, they just keep multiplying unless you identify the source.

The exterminator came back today, and he took one of the glue traps with the dead bugs and said he’d examine them under a microscope to properly identify what type of beetle they are. But he’s pretty sure they came in via a bag of grains or rice. I went through all the bags of beans and rice we got in the last month, and I’ve seen no trace of them anywhere. I’m not even sure what to do anymore.

I also found them stuck dead on the honey bottle my nanny brought me back from Jamaica, honey from the hive her nephew keeps. Who knows – maybe these will all just die off in the week we are away in San Francisco if we are lucky. I just hate these bugs so much…

Oh, and my nanny sees them, but she refuses to kill them. “I can’t kill them,” she insisted. “I can’t kill another living being.”

Oh, really? Well, how noble of her! And I can’t hold it against her because nowhere in her nanny contract does it say she has to help me kill household pests!

Today, I went to a second baby shower of the year for me: my friend and his wife are expecting the arrival of a baby girl in about two weeks. Since they moved apartments for more space, I went out to Forest Hills for their housewarming/baby shower party. I was also reunited with a few of their friends, who had since had babies (or more babies) since the last time we all saw each other. Of course, we exchanged baby pictures, videos, and stories, and a number of the kids were actually there. It was actually the most un-baby shower baby shower I’d ever been to. There were no baby shower games, no opening or unveiling of gifts. It was just a bunch of adult friends with some of their kids, catching up and enjoying food and company.

This is why I tell Chris that baby showers really aren’t always awful events the way he thinks: baby showers are just excuses to host / throw parties and gatherings of friends and family. It’s an excuse to have a social event with food and to get people together and have fun. They don’t always have to have baby shower elements like the annoying games or party favors. They are what you make them. If you want to be social and host a party, why not use a baby’s pending arrival as an excuse? Chris avoids baby showers like the plague.

Chris just doesn’t like hosting parties or events… or really anything that resembles a group that is not family. He rather just go drink at a bar. 😛