Thit kho and baby’s first pork ribs

It’s been at least 3-4 years since I last made thit kho — Vietnamese braised caramelized pork with eggs. The last time I made it, it was for a Lunar New Year friends’ gathering at home in our last apartment, and I remember using my Instant Pot to make this traditional Vietnamese new year dish, as well as using pork belly, which is traditional. This time, I got the idea from a food blogger I follow to use baby back pork ribs instead since pork ribs are quite a bit leaner than pork belly. Plus, with just two adults and a baby to feed, I really didn’t want to have that much pork belly in the house. So I waited for pork ribs to go on sale at Whole Foods before making this dish. I used my dutch oven to make it and braised it for just over two hours over the stove. It came together really easily with just a handful of ingredients. I also used two bottles of Harmless Harvest coconut water, so we can be certain the coconut juice requirement is legitimate and tasty. As soon as I tasted the braising liquid after a couple hours, I knew the flavor was right. I also knew Kaia Pookie would really enjoy these. Ribs are a great food for babies to eat because it provides chewing/gnawing skills, which help babies understand the “map” of their mouth. And since Kaia’s chewing and tearing skills are already so mature, I knew she’d enjoy the taste as well as the pure act of eating these.

Well, I was right. After dinner last night, our nanny reported that Kaia pretty much cleaned off her entire dinner plate; she gnawed every last bit of meat off both of her rib bones; she loved the ribs so much that when she realized she was done and had no more to eat, she started crying.

That made me so proud: my baby is appreciating traditional, authentic Vietnamese flavors, and at the same time, she’s also respecting her meat enough to get every last bit off the bones. That’s a good baby right there.

Baby shoes – how the hell do you figure out the fit?

The nanny suggested that we get Kaia shoes so that they could practice walking outside. In all the sources I’d read, they all said that babies don’t need shoes until they are walking. They are much better off learning to walk on their bare feet, no footies, no socks, to properly grip and understand their feet indoors. So buying shoes wasn’t high on my list since Kaia had only been cruising along furniture. But I thought, well, maybe shoes at the playground would be helpful, so I picked out a few pairs on Amazon and had them sent. The sizing is by age range (12-18 months), and one brand said they ran large, so I got two pairs that are 12-18 months, and another pair that was 8-12 months.

Well, they arrived today. And all three are way too big. What are we supposed to do now, get custom fitted shoes??

Approaching nearly two months of staying away from her crib

I thought that Kaia not sleeping in her crib would just be a temporary thing, that eventually she’d go back to her crib within a month of coming back from Australia. Unfortunately, we’re almost approaching two months of her sleeping on our bed between us. Everyone keeps suggesting to just move her back into her crib after she’s fallen asleep; well, unfortunately, we’ve tried that too many times, and it’s always failed. As soon as she feels she’s being moved, she opens her eyes, looks around, and then screams bloody murder. She can barely go 3 minutes without going ballistic.

Maybe I should be more firm about the “cry it out” method at this point, but I’m a softie with her. I hate hearing her cry for too long, and the idea that she’s going to cry so much that she will vomit really bothers me. Plus, I’d be lying if I said I did not enjoy waking up to her little face right there on the bed. I like hearing her babble as soon as I wake up, and sometimes, I even like her trying to sit and roll all over me before I’ve woken up. This time is all finite, as they always say. It won’t last forever, so I’ll just enjoy it as long as it lasts.

The magic of Ms. Rachel

A number of mothers have let me know the magic that Ms. Rachel from YouTube has worked on their young babies. Ms. Rachel has encouraged babies to clap, make hand signals, wave byeybye, and say words and phrases. There’s a lot of skepticism around whether any of this is actually effective, but I’d say that if it gets your baby to actually say and do new things that they hadn’t done before, then it’s a win. I’m careful with how much I let Kaia play with our phones and be exposed to screens, so I don’t want her watching anything endlessly. So over the last two days, I let her watch Ms. Rachel three times, in 10-minute increments. She seems to light up and giggle a bit when she sees Ms. Rachel’s face and hears her really high pitched voice. During just 30 minutes of watching Ms. Rachel, Kaia had already repeated “keys,” “got it,” and tried to do different finger movements to follow Ms. Rachel as she sang and used her fingers to show “itsy bitsy spider.” Very quickly, I was impressed and in slight awe. This was really working!

1st time being separated from baby

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.

My highly verbal baby

Since Kaia was quite young, she had already started her babble. She babbled earlier than the baby guides said she would, and since Australia, she’s been mimicking lots of sounds and words that we say. It’s unclear which she actually knows the meanings of, but it’s so adorable to see and hear her try to say certain things. The other morning, I told her that she’d have some Weetbix for breakfast, and she had a big smile on her face while saying over and over, “wee bih, wee bih!” She often repeats, “hey,” “byebye,” “baby,” and of course, “no!” One of the latest things she has been saying on repeat, which I have no idea what she is referring to, is “bobby! bobby!”

I can’t believe my baby is already over 14 months old. Sometimes, I still can’t believe we got so lucky with her. She is my sweet little blessing.

When baby led weaning really pays off

Kaia is just a few days shy of 14 months of age. She has about 7-8 teeth in the front, and in the last month, I’ve really noticed how adept she’s gotten at biting and tearing food, especially bread and vegetables. On Sunday, when I roasted brussel sprouts, I was cutting the sprout halves for her, assuming it would be easier to eat, but she rejected them. So I changed it up and instead just gave her whole halves. I figured she was advanced enough to handle this shape, even for the smaller sprouts, so why not try it now? And what did she do? She picked up a brussel sprout half, started pulling individual leaves and shoving them into her mouth. And when a sprout got to be about half the original size, she started tearing it with her front teeth to bite. I had this moment of pride just bursting out of my chest, and I felt so proud to watch my sweet baby developing her eating skills.

And well, that was tempered by her a couple meals later, when she decided she wanted nothing to do with the brussel sprouts. In the baby/toddler eating world, you win some, and ya lose some.

Doing things for oneself

I think I may end up pumping until the 14-month mark, so about February 10 now. I’m only producing about 30ml/day…ish, but somehow, it still gives me purpose. I was telling a friend of mine today how ridiculous this was. You would think I would feel so free, so liberated, to be near my last pump, but I actually just feel sad. It’s like one of my biggest life’s purposes, to provide sustenance for my baby, is being taken away, and that feels hard and emotional to me. I always thought I’d feel free… but instead, now I feel sad and like I don’t want to let go of it. So for now, the moving target is to pump once a day before bed until February 10. It’s not like I have much else to do before bed anyway, so why not?

But I have done little things for myself since I’ve come back. I’ve already read two books this year, and we’re not even in February yet. I want to start reading more often again, and not just long-form articles from The New Yorker like in the second half of last year. I want to read books, fiction and non fiction. I’ve lit candles to enjoy. I’m masking more frequently, and I got new clay masks as a way to treat myself (even though my husband just mocks me and calls me “big spender”….). I want to start cooking “project” dishes again. I’ve also been doing slightly longer workouts at the gym and focusing on stretching and strengthening again. And it feels good. I hope to get back into yoga again and toning my core, as in the last year, I mostly focused on cardio. It’s important to remember what makes you “you” outside of being a parent… because that can easily take over your life if you allow it to. Being a parent is important, but it’s not everything.

Back to taro and turnip cakes for Lunar New Year

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.

Kaia, the typical toddler

Kaia, since last month, has started exhibiting typical toddler behavior. Sooner than I had hoped, she has already started developing preferences for food, primarily carbs, carbs, more carbs, meat, and fruit. My sweet baby, from age 6 to 11.5 months, loved her greens and always enjoyed teething on the long, thick stalks of yu choy and gai lan Asian greens. Now, she will eat a few bites of them at most and then “sweep” them aside. Each day is a little different though: some days, she eats all her tiny spinach piles and will eat more that is offered. Other days, she will take half a bite and then want nothing more to do with any vegetable. No one in their right mind could possibly tell me that this sudden preference is due to a lack of exposure before this: I was super intentional about always making sure she had at least one green, plus another vegetable, at every single meal, even at breakfast. So now, this new struggle we are encountering is really unnerving me. She will make it seem like she is teething or just overly tired, yet magically, once a noodle or clump of rice is seen, she will be fully consumed by it and eat endless amounts of whatever that carb is once it’s presented.

I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not a single meal and not a single day that defines how “well rounded” her eating is; it’s a week, a month, a quarter. Our nanny has obviously noticed these preferences since we’ve come back from Australia, and she told me that it was inevitable; she was just hoping it would have been later than now for Kaia specifically since she’s been exposed to such a large variety of foods.

“It’s okay, Yvonne,” the nanny said to me yesterday. “Even though you may think Kaia isn’t eating much or enough variety, she’s still eating more and eating more variety than 99 percent of all other kids out there. She really is. I’m not just saying it.”

What she is saying may be true. But I still want the best for Pookster, and rejecting veggies is not what I want for her. I can’t help but want to combat the preferences and keep pushing her vegetable and non-carb exposure as much as possible. I refuse to just serve her beige foods. I will NOT become THAT mom. I will keep pushing with the greens and at least having her see them on her plate or tray.