Category Archives: Contemplations on New York Life

A calm weekend – different from last weekend

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It’s a long weekend for us here in New York with Labor Day tomorrow. Yesterday, we went to the Bronx. Today, we’re mostly at home and in the neighborhood. I vacuumed and cleaned a lot, cooked a few things, and enjoyed some time on the roof. I was productive, but I also felt very relaxed. I felt a lot more relaxed this weekend than last weekend in San Francisco, even though I did get to see my friends.

I always feel a little bad when I see my friends in San Francisco. I feel like they probably get a more tense version of me because I have to deal with the toxicity of my parents while there, which leads to my not being that at ease while with them. I’m not sure if they’ve ever noticed it, as no one has ever said anything. But I don’t feel like my normal self when there.

It seems like it’s impossible to be calm and at ease in the presence of my parents. Whether it’s my mom getting mad and making a big deal out of something senseless, accusing me of doing yet another “bad” thing I haven’t done, or my dad criticizing me or constantly talking to himself, nothing is ever “calm” there. He can’t help but nitpick and get mad about something when I am home. Despite the fact that he lives in a cluttered mess, he still feels the need to give feedback about things I do while in his home for such short periods of time. This time, he got mad at about how I didn’t tightly wrap up the baby’s pee diapers in the trash bin (that they were already going to take outside anyway), and then he got mad that I didn’t wipe down the bathroom tiles after showering (the long run issue here is that mildew buildup can occur). Is either the end of the world or going to cause massive problems? No. But he has to point them out anyway because when you do things that are “wrong,” then they are WRONG and BAD. If he does even half a thing wrong, it’s totally cool. And if Chris hadn’t been there, he likely would have raised his voice and been a lot more mean about it when addressing me. It’s exhausting, and I am always so relieved to finally leave that place.

The return of the drugstore beetles

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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!

2nd baby shower this year

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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. 😛

Baby goes to Flushing

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Although we’d taken the baby to Queens a few times, we hadn’t yet gone to Flushing with her and did that today. Flushing is not necessarily the easiest place to take a stroller with its crowded streets and endless hustle and bustle, not to mention that most of the food spots barely have enough space for adults to sit and eat, but somehow, we made it work. We were able to get seats in places where you usually have to fight for seats. We sat in the New World Food Court to feed her and eat some Uighur kebabs and a samsa. We even managed to get through a torrential downpour where we got separated for about half an hour. I was waiting for fish dumplings that were being cooked to order, but I wanted to pick up my favorite soy milk and pork-cabbage bao at the same time. So I walked a block away to get the milk and bao and ended up getting stuck there due to the flooding. Chris and the baby found shelter inside a random nearby apartment building, where the doorman offered to let them stand inside. When I reunited with them, Kaia couldn’t be phased by anything, and it was like business as usual for her.

We returned home earlier than expected to have our fish dumplings and bao and with a good assortment of Asian greens for me to eventually wash, cut, and cook. I’m looking forward to having our baby be an Asian greens connoisseur.

The magic of Jamaican blue soap

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“Have you ever used Jamaican blue soap?” my nanny asked me a few weeks ago while folding Kaia’s laundry.

She wasn’t surprised that my answer was no. “When I first saw Kaia’s burp cloths, I knew you didn’t have the blue soap,” she said, smirking. “The Jamaican blue soap is the secret to how I keep all my whites VERY WHITE!”

She’s not kidding. As soon as summer officially began with Memorial Day here, she’s worn an endless stream of white outfits to our home, and I can say without hesitation that her whites.. are blindingly WHITE. They legitimately all look brand new, as though she just purchased them the previous day. I don’t think anything I own is as white as any of her clothes. And well, I never really took the time to properly clean them outside of throwing them into the washing machine. She takes great pride in keeping her whites extremely white; she sets aside time every laundry day to separate out all her whites and hand scrub them with Jamaican blue soap before adding them to the washing machine.

We got some pretty annoying mango and apricot stains on the high chair straps (thanks, baby led weaning…), and our nanny worked her magic on them with the Jamaican blue soap and an old clean toothbrush. After seeing this, I decided to try this technique out using the blue soap on the mesh bassinet sides that Kaia used to lick constantly. These were heavily stained brownish grey. Well, this freaking soap worked: the brownish grey marks were completely gone.

This Jamaican blue soap really is magic. I suddenly got really excited, wondering what else I could use this magic soap on…

“When will I see you again?”

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Chris’s parents left for the airport at midday today, so I asked the nanny to stay with the baby until they left so that they could say goodbyes and get some cuddles in before their flight. I know they’re both sad to be leaving, knowing that Kaia will be growing and developing by leaps and bounds between now and the next time they see her, which will hopefully be at the end of this year. And honestly, it made me sad, too, as the days wound down and we approached today, to know that they were leaving. I really enjoyed having them here and seeing them enjoy cuddles and quality time with their granddaughter.

After the Uber left, the nanny took Kaia to Riverside Park, and I went back upstairs to get my pump set up, and my eyes just welled up. I thought about how happy Kaia was to be with her grandma and grandpa, and how quickly time flies and how all that time will be spent apart. I thought about how outside of Chris and me, Kaia really has no family nearby to love and care for her unconditionally, and that suddenly made me feel so lonely for her. I don’t want my daughter to be alone or feel alone. I want her to be surrounded by people who adore her. And those people who love and adore her and have spent so much happy and loving time with her in the last few weeks are now leaving. How much will she really know them or care for them with the distance between them? How much will she understand them, or they understand her? How much of a relationship will they really share? I’m not sure. I can already imagine her a little older, able to speak, asking them, “When will I see you again?” And I can already imagine myself tearing up at the question.

I’ve never really cried or gotten upset when Chris’s parents have left before. Of course, in past visits, I’ve been a little sad once they’ve left since they bring so much happy, positive energy to our home every time they are here. I mean, seriously… these are people who get excited over a simple, all-natural bar of soap that suds well to the point that they rave about it and then go back to Whole Foods two hours before departing for the airport just to get more! They genuinely appreciate the simple things in life that the rest of us take for granted. But this time, it’s different with Kaia here. I just had that sad, sinking feeling in my stomach when I stood at the kitchen counter, alone with my pump, after they were all gone. It’s different because Kaia’s presence is also a reminder to them and to me that they’re getting older; we’re all getting older. At some point, they may not be able bodied enough to visit us on this long-haul flight. They don’t even have access to health coverage while here, and in an emergency if they needed it, it would cost a fortune (which is supposedly covered by their credit card, but who the hell knows how much would really be covered?!).

On the other hand, I guess I also mourn my own relationship with my own parents, and Kaia’s soon-to-be relationship or lack thereof with them. As my therapist frequently told me before I ended sessions with her before Kaia’s arrival, it’s okay to be sad for what you wish you had but don’t have. As we all know, we cannot control our parents or our relationships with them. They are what they are to a large extent, especially when we’re talking about people who are just flat out unstable. It’s okay to wish you had a relationship with your parents that never existed. It’s okay to feel envious of Chris’s parents, but also be aware that you still get to enjoy them as in-laws.

It is what it is. We cannot control everything. But it also makes me wonder sometimes… what am I really living for? Sometimes, I’m not even sure what my end goal is.

When you go through twice the amount of groceries with double the heads to feed

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In the short time that Chris’s parents have been staying with us this trip, given we’ve had the baby and are a lot less mobile, we’ve been eating a lot more at home. What that also means is that given we have four adults as opposed to two, I’ve had to increase the amount of everything I’ve made. With that, it’s made me more aware of how much more quickly we’ve gone through everything, whether it’s toilet paper and tissues, fruit, or even eggs. Chris and I don’t eat eggs that often, and so normally, I might buy a carton of eggs maybe once or twice a month. After just one meal altogether, we went through almost a dozen eggs! So when we went to Costco on Sunday, I got two dozen, which I would usually never do unless I was planning to bake, or if Thanksgiving or Christmas were coming up, which would necessitate more eggs for both cooking and baking. I’m preparing chicken satay for dinner tomorrow, so instead of just marinating two pounds of meat, this time I marinated four pounds. I also doubled the amount of peanut satay sauce, which meant I used my entire bag of peanuts for this. On the one hand, it’s fun to make more food for more people to eat and enjoy. On the other hand, it makes you realize how much more expensive it is to have home cooked meals when your family starts to expand.

When your Zipcar doesn’t turn on during a trip

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For this quick weekend trip, Chris decided to get a Toyota Sienna for us given the baby, her car seat, stroller, and luggage for all five of us. It gives all of us more room to be comfortable while in the car, as well as ample space for luggage and baby stuff. The Sienna rode pretty well and was very comfortable. We didn’t have any qualms with the vehicle… until we finished our last stop before heading home at Costco. Chris tried turning the car on, and it failed to turn on. After a long time waiting on hold for a Zipcar representative, multiple reps spoke to Chris to try to troubleshoot, yet nothing worked. It seemed to be a security issue that no one at Zipcar could figure out. The final resolution ended up being that we had to leave the vehicle in the Costco parking lot, empty out the van, and get two Uber rides back into the city to accommodate all five of us, our luggage, plus our big grocery haul. Needless to say, it was quite an unexpected adventure at the end of our Poughkeepsie/Beacon trip.

It was also an unexpected adventure for my breasts, too. I was planning to skip my 11am pump and pump when we got back to the apartment, which would have been around 4pm. That never ended up happening since we didn’t get back home until around 5, and I didn’t start pumping until 5:45pm since we needed to unload and organize everything we bought. So when I went to take off my regular bra and put on my pumping bra and hand express, it was really awkward: for the first time, my breasts were so full of milk that my nipples were nearly inverted. Milk was already leaking out. It felt awkward just sticking my nipples into the flanges! I also pumped a record amount at one time: over 315ml.

Poughkeepsie getaway

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Since we didn’t plan an Independence Day weekend trip, we decided to take a long weekend the weekend before the 4th of July this weekend to the Poughkeepsie/Hudson River Valley area. This area is just about 1.5 hours outside of New York, yet it really does feel like an entire world away. Everyone drives. You can access hiking trails and wineries easily. The air is actually fresh air.

This will also be Kaia’s second trip away from home, and yet another crib/bed that is not her own that she will sleep in. So far today, she seemed like a really good little traveler yet again, sleeping almost the entire way in the car and happy and babbling a lot while at the winery we visited. So far, we’ve gotten really lucky with her adapting to new places and sleeping arrangements.

After having spent about half a day here, I totally get why people do weekend getaways to Poughkeepsie or Beacon. It’s so close to the city and even accessible via train. It feels very quaint and nature-y. It feels good to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city every now and then and do things at a slower pace. Then again, I guess once you have a baby, you have to go slower no matter how efficient you want to be.

Changing tables and large bathroom stalls in New York City – a luxury

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In the last few months of being out and about with baby on Saturdays, it’s only become increasingly obvious to me how unfriendly New York City is to babies. Given how much real estate here costs, restaurants and businesses tend to have teeny tiny bathrooms with barely enough space for a toilet and a sink, much less a changing table or adequate facilities to change the diaper of a baby. Almost every weekend, I inevitably have to get ready to change our baby on some filthy floor, using our portable changing pad that I would immediately throw in the wash as soon as I would get home. It’s gross, but it’s all I have to work with. A couple weeks ago, Chris was able to change the baby in the restroom at the newly renovated Penn Station atop a real changing table, which was the very first time she had a changing table to get changed on in New York, at least outside our apartment. And today, while at a newly renovated office/communal dining space in Midtown East, not only was I able to comfortably change her on what looked like a brand new changing table in a brand new bathroom, but I was even able to roll the stroller into a huge bathroom stall so that I could pee and not hold her. It was amazing! The stall was so long and wide that the stroller could fit inside the stall with me, with additional space for me to stretch my legs out and pee in comfort. I couldn’t believe it!

How nice it would be if every public restroom in New York City could be like this, just for the sake of families with young children. But alas, that is an unrealistic expectation in a city and a country that is generally hostile towards young families and babies.