This Denver work trip was the very first time I was separated from Kaia overnight since she was born. It really wasn’t a long work trip at all — I left mid-morning on Wednesday and arrived back in the wee hours of Saturday morning, so she got to see me again when she woke up on Saturday at around 6:30am. It’s always been unclear whether Kaia actually recognizes that someone is missing or gone. When Chris went away on three separate work trips, once just overnight in Australia, she didn’t seem fazed at all. When she got separated from our nanny multiple times, she didn’t seem to care (other than crying when the nanny came back after her two-week long Jamaica trip). But it did make me happy when she woke up on our bed on Saturday morning, and she said repeatedly, “mama” and “mummy.” I hope she was happy to see me again, as she was quite smiley.

I didn’t really mind being away from her the first night or the second night, but by the time Friday came around, I did miss her and want to play with her again. While at the airport, I started watching videos of her on my phone just to see her and hear her sweet little voice. These times really do fly by, and I want to soak it up as much as I can while she is this little and actually wants to spend time with me. I missed my little Pookster and was happy to be reunited with her again.

Last year, I took a hiatus from making traditional savory Chinese New Year cakes. I had made taro cake year after year, and in recent years, started experimenting with the turnip cake since it’s a bit lighter and adds more variety. Last year, I was just too tired, with Kaia being a newborn, my own postpartum recovery, plus my insane pumping schedule. This year at this time, I’m pumping just once a day before bed, and I have a lot more “balance,” so I figured it would be a good time to start making these laborious cakes again. We went to Chinatown to pick up ingredients earlier this week, and I finished making these cakes on Friday afternoon. When I finished steaming them, I felt so accomplished, like I had done my grandma’s memory good, and I would also be exposing our daughter to our family traditions, to bits of her culture. No, she doesn’t get the full Lunar New Year experience as she would if my family actually were together and actually celebrated it, since they don’t and have not since my grandma passed away when I was 9. Plus, with my mom and aunt as Jehovah’s Witnesses, they’re not supposed to “believe in” Lunar New Year anymore. She did try both cakes and seemed to enjoy both, but seemed to initially prefer the turnip version. Watching her eat these foods of my childhood really made me happy. I hope she embraces these, plus other Lunar New Year foods, as much as I do today. Maybe, just maybe when she’s a little older, she can even help make them with me as a family activity around Lunar New Year.

It’s been about a week being back in New York now, and Kaia still has not slept in her crib for more than 1.5-2 hours at a time. Her morning naps during the weekdays have been on top of our nanny’s chest and stomach; her afternoon naps have been in a stroller. At night, she’s been sleeping on top of our bed. And while everyone loves to be judgmental about this, we need to sleep, too, because we have work, so it’s not like we can just spend all night soothing her in her crib.

We let her “cry it out” over the weekend for a record 1-hour, and it resulted in… absolutely nothing. All she did was stand at the edge of the crib and cry endlessly, the fattest tears you could possibly imagine streaming down her face and all over her sleep sack/onesie.

I spoke with a Cleo “sleep expert” about this issue this afternoon, and she said that the first thing we needed to address was getting her reacquainted and liking her crib again. We need to make her realize that her bedroom and crib are a safe space, so we need to start putting her in it, just a few minutes at a time, when she’s clean, fed and full, and happy, and not needing to sleep yet. We could play peek-a-boo with her in it; sing songs; make faces, and just do it for a few minutes, to five, to ten, to fifteen, until she was fully comfortable being awake in the crib. Once she is happy being in the crib while awake, she will realize that it could be a safe place to fall asleep in.

“She needs to build trust with the crib first,” the sleep expert said.

Okay, well… we’ll try that. Baby steps, right?

Our nanny is very opinionated. Initially, I found it a little off putting, especially since she gave zero hint of this during her initial interview or during her trial, but gradually I got used to it. I myself am pretty opinionated, so when she gives me her strong opinions, I’m more than happy to give mine right back to her and counter her if I disagree. Sometimes, she likes to go on small rants about politics, about how Republicans are ruining the country, how “white people” can’t stand black people and people of color. I generally just let her say what she wants if I am there. She’s also made it clear she doesn’t approve of gay marriage for religious reasons (“it’s not what God intended”), but I just let it go because I’m not in a place of insanity to think for a second that I could change her mind. Also, it doesn’t affect how she takes care of Kaia every day, so she can believe or not believe in what she wants.

When I shared the story of the gay couple having twins from yesterday, she immediately had a disapproving look on her face.

“So that’s what they’re going to do? Just pay everyone else to do all the work for them?” she spat out.

Wow, I thought to myself. That seemed so cynical and negative. I wasn’t quite expecting THAT response. For one thing, they’re biologically incapable of having their own children as a gay couple without some outside assistance. Plus, if they can pay to ensure the children are biologically theirs and get breast milk, then why not?

But then I realized that in general, our nanny is resentful of people who are “rich” who generally do not worry about money. She’s repeatedly made disparaging comments about “rich people” and how they throw money around like they don’t care. And I guess this couple, in her eyes, is doing something similar. I didn’t really say much to her about this because again, it doesn’t affect our day to day working relationship, but I don’t think this couple is quite in that same bucket. They want to have children, they want the children to be biologically theirs, and they are paying to ensure they get what they want. I’m not sure what the problem here is?

Since we knew we’d be stopping over for a few days in SoCal, I told my cousin who lives in Long Beach that we’d be here and suggested we catch up over a meal. So he, his wife, and his two kids met up with the three of us at a Vietnamese restaurant in Garden Grove for lunch yesterday. It was enjoyable to see them, and I always enjoy chatting with his wife. Sometimes, it wasn’t always clear what else there was to talk about, but somehow, we made it work.

Even though this cousin is my cousin (my dad’s younger sister’s only son), I can count the number of times I saw him growing up on one hand, and two of those times were for funerals. Although he was born and raised in Alameda, just across the Bay Bridge, his mother, who is my aunt, hated our side of the family and hated her mother, my grandma, even more. And since our grandma lived with us, she rarely came to visit. This cousin and I didn’t really start communicating much until after I graduated from college, but especially after his dad died in 2012 and my brother died in 2013. It was like our shared grief, plus the constant family conflicts, kind of drove us together. In both of our sets of eyes, the other is the only seemingly “normal” cousin on this side of the family.

Today, he is fully estranged from his mother; he doesn’t even call her mom or mother; he just refers to her by her first name. She has never met his two children, who are her only grandchildren. He suggested I cut my parents off back when my brother died, but I couldn’t really do it, nor did I really want to, even with all the constant pain they still bring me. But we relate to each other so much as we both experienced the same intergenerational family trauma and are living examples of children who experienced childhood trauma within their families, who are actively trying to break the cycle of dysfunction. With him, I rarely have to explain my parents’ emotional immaturity; he gets it because he experienced the same with his mother. It’s sad, but my infrequent relationship with him is a sort of solace to me.