About a week ago, my dad sent me a referral email letting me know that he had gotten a smart phone and was using Mint Mobile, the discount mobile phone provider. Thank god, I thought to myself when I saw the message. I had been telling him for the last THREE years to get rid of his dumb phone, which was tied to AT&T, who wasted no time in charging them exorbitant rates *just* for talk — no internet, no texting, no nada. He was actually paying more for his talk minutes with AT&T than I was paying for my share of unlimited talk, text, and internet on T-Mobile. Apparently, that wasn’t enough to get him to switch three years ago. So I wasn’t sure what finally got him moving on this at this time; AT&T must have tried to lock them into another stupid contract that finally caused him to move on. My dad, or well, my parents are extremely change averse. If you want a sense of how change averse they are, my dad still uses a TYPEWRITER to type letters he needs to do for his apartment management work. This is despite the fact that he has multiple computers AND printers at home.

Then, this evening, I was a little surprised to get a text notification from “Mom and Dad” on my phone. The message said:

“Hi Yvonne, Thanks to you and Chris for the specialty coffee. We will look forward to drinking this… How is the pregnancy going?”

I immediately started laughing when I read the text — it was my dad’s VERY FIRST TEXT MESSAGE. I couldn’t believe it. I was so excited by this that I actually took a screen shot of the text.

I proceeded to ask him via text which phone he got, and then he told me. He also let me know that my mom would also be getting her new smart phone soon, a different model than his, and they’d share the number after it’s set up. Amazing, I thought to myself. They could finally both leave the house separately and be accessible with their own numbers.

It took long enough, but they are finally in the 21st century.

Chris said that once we were safely out of the first trimester that he’d share with his parents and brother. It’s actually a really funny thing — watching him get squirmish and telling his parents because he knows his mother has had this top of mind basically since the day of our wedding, and he always likes to keep people, especially his own parents, guessing. His mother has given some not-so-subtle hints, even point blank asking me in December 2019 if the dismal and sexist work situation in the U.S. for tech companies was the reason we were “holding off on a starting a family.” She even texted me out of the blue in May of last year to ask if we were “trying for baby feet” given that work travel would no longer be an obstacle given no travel period was happening, so we’d always be together during my ovulation window. While I was really hoping to get pregnant in 2020, alas, it just wasn’t our time unfortunately. But… better late than never!

Chris is not super in touch with his emotions and doesn’t like to show them outwardly very much. So he literally just blurted out, after I nudged him to share with his family on our video chat tonight, “She’s pregnant.” And of course, all three of his family members were super thrilled, and you could see it in their faces and hear it in their voices. While they were getting all excited, Chris remained half smiling and relatively straight faced. I’m not really sure sometimes how Chris is related to his family given they are all so expressive and he’s so… “I smile on the inside.”

Chris’s brother commented that he had suspected I was pregnant a few weeks ago when he saw one of my Instagram stories and noticed that I looked “rounder” than usual, but he didn’t want to say anything in case I actually wasn’t. And his mom said that she suspected I was pregnant after this past weekend, when I posted a story while wearing a striped dress, and I also looked rounder in my midsection. Chris insists that they were both crazy and wrong, and that his mom was seeing what she wanted to see, but either way, maybe I am actually rounder no matter what I wear, and I’m just the one who cannot tell.

So, the circle of people who know about my pregnancy is slowly growing. It feels a little liberating to be sharing the news, but at the same time, I still feel very guarded because we have no idea if this is really going to all work out. But all I can do is live my life, hope for the best, exercise, and take care of my body, and the rest is just up to luck and whatever higher power exists.

I went to visit our sister apartment building two blocks away to view some potential 2-bedroom, 2 bathroom units. It’s a little funny when you are in your first trimester of pregnancy and don’t want to tell others outside of your closest circle that you’re pregnant because you’re not sure if it’s going to last. But you also want to indicate that you need more space.

“Are you sure you need a 2 bed?” the leasing consultant asks me. “Because I have a HUGE 1-bedroom, 1.5 bath that would be PERFECT for your budget, and wait until you see the kitchen!”

I did view it for shits and giggles and could not believe how much storage space the kitchen had, not to mention how big the kitchen island was. But yes, I told her. A 2-bedroom was non-negotiable. “It would be my office,” I said. “I’m going to be working from home full-time even after this pandemic is over, and I need dedicated space.”

Well…. I thought about that, too. Let’s say this pregnancy does work out. That second bedroom, realistically, is NOT going to be my home office. It will be the bedroom with the babies. So does this mean I’m left with the same result… WORKING AT THE DINING ROOM TABLE AGAIN???

I don’t really want to leave New York City, but the cost for space here is just outrageous.

I was chatting with my therapist the other day about my mom’s concerns for me given I am pregnant. I told her that while my mom is extremely excited, she’s also worried about what could potentially go wrong. She’s given me all kinds of advice, some of which is just outdated, too superstitious, and/or just plain wrong.

“No wine, no coffee, no hot food!” —> Alcohol, yes, limited coffee, not that I am a big coffee drinker, and who the heck ever said spicy food can negatively impact babies’ development??

“Don’t lift anything that’s over two pounds!” —> Pretty certain I’d be a total delicate damsel in distress and a bit of a loser if I didn’t lift anything over two pounds. I’m positive my laptop is over two pounds in weight.

“No more gym!” —-> Ummmm, no. No, no, and no. Exercise is not only good for my health, but it’s good for the baby’s. Healthy mom = healthy baby. I need the blood circulation and the sanity that comes from exercise. While I’m no longer doing HIIT routines or doing crazy high speed interval runs, I just started jogging again today and will continue doing it while I am comfortable, plus elliptical exercises, strength training, and yoga.

“Ginger is good for nausea, but don’t eat too much ginger, otherwise it’s too spicy for the baby!” —> No, mom. No. First of all, I don’t think I could drink more than two cups of ginger tea, and second of all, nothing is too spicy for the baby. 😀

She says it all out of love and worry. I get it. In some ways, I appreciate her warnings and her nags because that’s what caring moms are supposed to do. It still feels good and comforting, in some strange way, to have someone who cares in a way that is different than your friends or your spouse.

I was having a Zoom chat with two of my friends yesterday night, and one of the topics that came up was fruit cutting, funnily enough. We were talking about our lack of social lives given the pandemic, that Zoom chats were the real “out” of conversing with our partners. And I told them that I’ve prepared lunch every single work weekday for Chris and me, not to mention daily fruit bowls.

“I have probably prepared about 370 fruit bowls for both of us since this pandemic began!” I exclaimed.

One of my friends responded that her boyfriend is obsessed with having fruit cut for him, too. When they were in Bali years ago where they had a helper who would prepare meals, he explicitly requested a fresh fruit smoothie and a plate of a variety of cut fruit every day. She thought it would be nice for her to cut him some fruit one day after the trip, so he asked for papaya. She went to buy a papaya and realized how annoying it was to peel and cut the fruit, so she gave up, and he ended up having to cut it!

“If he wants fruit, we can go on vacation again, or my grandma can cut it for him!” she said, laughing. She said moving forward, she would cut him a fruit bowl once a year… on his birthday.

Chris has no idea how good he has it….

While Chris does admit that he can be controlling when it comes to deciding on trips, even where we are going on our Saturdays exploring New York City, he is also quick to point out that he rarely decides what we are eating since I do 99 percent of the cooking, and thus I usually decide what we eat and let him know after I’ve started prepping. I mean, to be fair, if he says he feels like a certain type of food, I am happy to accommodate it, but he rarely does.

But the really funny thing that always happens whenever we go grocery shopping together is comparing what I put into our cart vs. what he puts into our cart. For the most part whenever I go grocery shopping, regardless of what store/market I am in, the bulk of my purchase is always fresh, perishable foods, which translates as primarily fruit and vegetables (if we’re at Costco, I’ll purchase meat to stock our freezer quarterly. Costco is the primary place I buy meat at, and occasionally at Whole Foods. I buy almost all my seafood at Whole Foods). Occasionally, I’ll pick up a whole grain or whole wheat bread, some tortillas, and of course oat and/or cow milk and juice when we are running low, but fruit and vegetables are my primary purchase. So when we are loading items into the cart, I’m mostly adding fruit and vegetables, or some pantry staple like dried beans or rice. But when Chris thinks about grocery shopping… he’s mainly thinking about a few categories:

1. Juice (no orange, ever)
2. Milk (cow or oat; he gets upset if he sees that I’ve purchased almond and/or soy)
3. Chocolate (he prefers Aussie or British chocolate, but occasionally likes to try chocolates imported from Belgium or some other chocolate renowned country)
4. Mixture or banana chips (if shopping at a South Asian grocery store, or some kind of ‘to tide you over’ snack pre-dinner time)

This is why I jokingly have told him many times that not only he is my baby, he’s a baby when it comes to grocery shopping: he likes to pick out the “non-essential” items that are more like snacks and treats rather than the “real food” for our diet. 😀 He’s like the kid who accompanies his mom during grocery runs, adding in the “extras” like random snacks and sweets covertly while mom is busy checking items like vegetables or fruit or grains on her shopping list.

My mom called today to let me know that she was surprised to receive a $600 check in the mail from the government. Apparently, she qualifies for a stimulus check because of her disability status. She was obviously super excited because… well, who would NOT be excited to receive $600 when they were not expecting it at all?

I haven’t read much about the way the stimulus checks work, especially since I know I don’t qualify for any money, but that is rightly so. I was reflecting over the last year of my mom telling me that she’s had nearly daily food deliveries, plus free produce and canned foods from some local provider for senior citizens, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt that something seemed off. My parents have no money problems. They live a comfortable life and it’s their choice to live frugally. Why do they somehow qualify for all this free food when I found out my former high school teacher, actually living on a tight, fixed income, qualified for nothing?