When feedback is NOT fuel

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We have this theme or saying at work that “feedback is fuel.” We pride ourselves on all having tough enough skin to accept constructive feedback, but it’s also strongly encouraged to the person giving the feedback that they do it in the most helpful, kind way possible. For the most part, I think as a company overall, we do a pretty good job of it. I’ve never received any feedback during my nearly three years here that ever felt like a personal attack or an attack on my integrity, and people generally assume the best intentions here all around. I can’t say that about any other place I’ve ever worked at.

So this morning, I had to tell our nanny that I was disappointed with her notes in our baby log that we ask her to fill out daily for Kaia. In the beginning when she started working here, she was pretty thorough about it. She would record all the things we asked her to: poops, pees, naps, and times for all the above; feeds and the amounts (when she had milk as her only food), then later on, foods she ate (and rejected), any fevers or difficulties. But if you look at the progression of her daily logs, they’ve declined in quality quite drastically: while she has always been consistent about recording poops, pees, and naps, she has stopped recording daily activities, and she’s pretty much never recorded any major milestones, which I told her would be new words, behaviors, or gestures. This previous Friday, the only note for activity was “playground.” The previous days were no better.

This felt unacceptable and a bit insulting, as I knew they didn’t JUST go to the playground. Plus, she told me that Kaia had said two new words: “outside” and “jacket.” So why didn’t she write this down? On top of that, the baby bathtub, which she is supposed to be cleaning weekly, was never cleaned the previous week. I called her out on that earlier in the week, and she said she “just forgot.” Okay, but she had already used that excuse previously when this was supposed to happen on a weekly cadence. Yet she’s been happy to talk on the phone while Kaia naps without this getting done. And over the weekend, when I checked the bathtub, there was not only still grey dirt on the top edges of the tub, but there were even traces of pink mildew, which I ended up scrubbing myself.

I also spent Saturday morning vacuuming under the dining table, the couch, and around the living room rug because there were endless food remnants that literally got everywhere that the nanny somehow had missed. And it really grated on my nerves that her cleaning job could be so sloppy. Why should I be spending my Saturday morning cleaning up after my nanny? I’m paying her to do this job after my child eats!

Well, I never got to addressing the poor floor cleaning. I only addressed the baby log because as soon as I said the notes were “not good” and “needed improvement,” and that “writing ‘playground’ was not enough detail, not everything you did, and doesn’t even cover new words,” she immediately put her face in her hands and started crying. Then, she proceeded to say that I pay her to be here to take care of my child, and she takes care of my child. Yes, I do pay her to take care of my child… which also includes filling out the baby log as we discussed and agreed upon in the contract, which also includes cleaning up after my baby’s meals! I’m not sure how any of this feedback is uncalled for or out of line. I told her that no one is perfect and everyone gets feedback when they work for someone; that is LIFE (for god’s sake, it was so frustrating to even say that out loud to someone who is almost twice my age). She barely responded and just said, “okay.” And that was really it.

I understand why some people are just anti having a nanny. It’s hard having someone that personal to you and your child and your home. There are real feelings to consider literally every single day, and there are also frustrating feelings to consider… like when they don’t think they deserve any negative or constructive feedback at all. In previous times of giving her feedback, she has refused to look me in the eye, she barely responds or says anything, and then she proceeds to avoid me the rest of the day. It’s so exhausting. And it really is completely mystifying to me that she’s so unprepared to receive such basic feedback. It’s not like I told her she tried to kill my child or put her in danger.

Duck cooking class

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I hadn’t attended a cooking class since early 2020, right before the global pandemic began. So I was actually returning to the same cooking school (with an expanded space, so a far larger kitchen than three years ago!) I had visited in 2020 because for Christmas, Chris got me a cooking class specifically on how to make duck. Duck has always seemed intimidating to me for many reasons, and it’s clear that I’m not the only one scared of it: finding a whole raw duck, cut up in pieces, or duck breasts or thighs is quite hard in New York City (and likely most of the U.S.). The instructor at the class on Friday night said that he struggled to source the ducks for this cooking class and had to go to multiple stores and online shops to finally find them, at the right time, on FreshDirect, finally in stock once again.

Duck, because of its high fat content and super thick, fatty skin, is daunting to cook because it’s very easy to mess up. And when you do mess it up, it’s a really expensive mistake.This cooking class was probably the best cooking class I’ve ever taken in terms of learning technique, understanding how duck compares to other poultry (most commonly chicken), and the instructor was very clear and thorough both in explaining and in how he demonstrated. The key to making sure you cook duck perfectly is to go low and slow. You can’t rush duck, as it needs a lot of time and patience. On top of that, it’s best to have some good equipment (dutch oven, stainless steel or cast iron pan, a reliable low/medium-low heat setting on your stove), as well as… even more patience for the cleanup. Duck fat splatters literally everywhere. The fat was flying everywhere, especially during the rendering of the duck breast skin and the frying of the confit. When the cleaning lady came at the end of class after we all finished eating, I felt so terrible for her. Who knows how long that mess would take to clean up, and I’m sure there would be duck fat splatters hiding where you least expect it. I hope the cooking school was paying her well for such a sticky mess.

Another interesting thing about this class in particular is that for the very first time, it was a majority of men taking the class. There were 11 students total – eight men and three women. The two other women came with their spouses/partners. All the other men came on their own. Everyone in this class seemed to enjoy cooking and cooked regularly, and they all seemed to be intermediate-plus home cooks. I guess that’s further proof just based on this small cohort that duck is not really for the faint of heart, or someone who isn’t familiar with even how to boil water.

That meal was essentially two meals in one. I tried to eat what I could, but it was so, so much. Each of us essentially had a whole duck breast AND a whole duck thigh (confit) to ourselves, on top of a beautiful salad (with duck skin crisps we made!!) and Pommes Anna. I could not imagine anyone leaving that class still feeling hungry or like they did not get their money’s worth. The duck we made was restaurant quality, if not better. It’s inspiration for me to make it at home at some point… assuming that I am willing to splurge and also enlist Chris in the intense duck fat splatter cleanup.

Children’s birthday parties and the conversations that happen there

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The three of us went to a friend’s twins’ 4th birthday party at their home today. A number of kids were there, ranging in age from about 10 months to 6 years, so Kaia was a bit on the younger side in terms of the kids who were there. The oldest child who came engaged with her a bit in the beginning, as well as a three-year old who came, who mostly stuck to herself. One twin wanted to fully exclude her from “entry” into their castle, and the second twin had to wait until the first twin went to another room to “admit” her. It was a little funny and cute how distinct the two twins’ personalities were: one twin is very aggressive, exclusive, and wants what she wants when she wants it; the other twin seems a bit more thoughtful and wants to be nice to everyone.

While watching Kaia on and off and observing how all the kids interacted with each other, I had a few short conversations with the parents who came (everyone who attended the party had kids and came with their kids). It was mostly a lot of predictable conversations around pregnancy, birth, child-rearing, temper tantrums, and developmental milestones. I sort of annoyed one mom by suggesting to her daughter that if and when the school bully tries to hit her (she was telling me about the mean kid in her class), she should hit back (I mean… I’m all about self defense. Who wants to be seen as the easy target at school?). Another mom kept asking me when I was going to try for a second kid, which I kept trying to change the subject of, yet she still didn’t seem to get the message, and continued to try to steer us back to that. She also apparently has a very different definition of what it means to have family members who live “close by”: she said she had no family who lived close by. But her mom lives a 10-minute drive away, while her sister lives an hour drive away. The other dads who were there had strained conversations with me, and overall, the conversations were fairly insipid and unmemorable. Granted, I’d seen pretty much everyone here multiple times before at this friends’ events and gatherings, but we’ve never really clicked with any one of them. I think we’re at a point now where we’ve realized that we’re not going to be establishing any of these people as our own friends or people we’d want to see outside of these events. I guess in the end, we came for our friend, our own baby to have a semblance of a “play date” like setting, and for the food (which was excellent, with the main highlights being pan roasted Korean-style beef short ribs and homemade chocolate hazelnut macarons). So the overall party was just exactly what I expected it to be, end to end.

Early Intervention (EI) for children

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A lot of people look at the need or mention of “early intervention” in their baby or toddler’s life as a condemnation of their parenting abilities, whether it’s about whether they have done enough for their child, or if it’s something they could have passed down to them genetically that has stunted some part of their development. I’ve generally always been pragmatic about it: if a child needs some additional help, it’s probably better to get them help sooner rather than later, because whatever that developmental delay is, it could cascade and have negative affects on other areas of development if not addressed.

I had a hunch Kaia would be quite verbal this time last year, and I was right: at this point, she can say over 60 different words, which according to developmental milestone charts I’ve read, is at the 2-year old-plus level of speaking. But the area where she hasn’t been that strong is in walking. She easily pulls herself up and gets down. She sits in a lot of different positions. She also is happy to walk while we hold her hands, or when she’s pushing her walker. But she just won’t walk independently, and she will only stand on her own for about 3-4 seconds max. She crawls super fast though, and she’s very, very nimble. Crawling was supposed to precede walking. But still to this day, no walking on her own. I told the doctor this at her appointment today, and she suggested that she recommend Kaia for early intervention to see what we could do to help her walk. Someone would likely reach out to me in the next 2-3 weeks to set up an appointment to come to our home and observe and potentially make recommendations to help.

I don’t really mind it, and I don’t see any harm in having someone evaluate her and watch her closely. I especially don’t mind since it’s fully covered via our health insurance, plus we don’t have to go out of our way to get the help. Who knows – our nanny says that she thinks Kaia is just on the brink of walking and will likely get there before the EI appointment is even scheduled, so we shall wait and see.

Two years since we lost our friend

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When we found out our friend Raj passed away due to seizures of a still-unknown cause, we were beyond shocked. I felt sick to my stomach for more than a day, especially knowing that his son had just been born a couple weeks ago, and his wife was still recovering from childbirth and breastfeeding. To this day, Raj is one of the most kind-hearted, gentle, warm, gregarious humans I have ever known. If there is one person who seemed to always, always assume the very best intentions of anyone, it would definitely have been him. Two years after death, his wife is still struggling to fully accept he is gone, but his spirit still lives on through her and their son, now over two years old.

Raj’s death was also shocking and scary to me because when we found out he had died in 2021, it was shortly after I found out I was pregnant. At that time, I was pregnant with twins. That week, one of the twins “vanished” (vanishing twin syndrome), and I went through my own downward spiral that was separate from Raj’s death. I thought about how Raj and his wife had brought this tiny human into the world, thinking they’d raise him and any future children together, but instead, so soon after their baby was born, the baby’s dad died, and mom would be left alone without a life partner to help. Raj would never be able to experience the joy of watching his son grow up. And I thought about how absolutely devastating that was and how petrifying it would be for me if I were in the same situation.

I think about Raj all the time. But when I think of him, I still realize that in his short life, he probably lived a much fuller one than those double his age because of his positive outlook and all-around warmth and kindness. It would be hard to imagine anyone knowing him who did not like him or appreciate how good of a human he was. We could all benefit from trying to embody a little Raj in our own lives.

Listening to news: a real human reading vs. a robot/AI

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One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about subscribing to the New Yorker (digital version) is that a lot of the major feature articles are also read by a reader. This means that while I am multitasking, whether that is working out (my favorite), showering, or cleaning around the house, I can still “read” these stories. The New Yorker has always been one of my favorite publications because I like that they always go in-depth on something random that you wouldn’t immediately think to read about (a few recent long-form titles: “The Exhausting History of Fatigue;” “The Dirty Secrets of a Smear Campaign,” and even the profile “The Button-Pushing Impresario of Balenciaga.” It’s not always as depressing as breaking news that you get via CNN or NPR. It’s not always in your face about how awful this country is the way The New York Times always seems to feel, at least on the front page.

So I got excited when I started scrolling through the Wall Street Journal app today and realized that so many of the articles had audio. I thought, wow, this is a big win! Now I can also get major headlines read to me from a reputable source. The unfortunate part…. was that it wasn’t a real human reading the stories. Given the volume of articles, it made sense that it would be some robot reader. It would take a lot of time and resources (MONEY) to have a real person read all these stories to this level. The robot readers mispronounced endless “foreign” names and random acronyms, and the articles weren’t anywhere as enjoyable to listen to as the New Yorker‘s, for obvious reasons given who (or what, in this case) was doing the reading. Sometimes, the monotone was so grating to listen to that I just went back to the actual written article and read it myself. Oh, well. You have to take what you can get.

Kaia’s growing hair

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In the last couple of months, Kaia’s hair has gotten noticeably longer to the point where I can’t just part it out of her face with the usual side part. I have to either clip it back or tie it up. While she easily tolerated hair clips from around seven months through 12 months, since we’ve come back from the Southern Hemisphere, she will not wear them at all. She will insist on pulling them out, throwing them, and chewing on them. And of course, this gives our nanny anxiety because she knows that I will be checking at the end of each day to see if any hair clips are missing (they were quite pricey for what they are, given they were handmade and meant specifically for fine baby/toddler hair). So because of this, she just won’t take them out of the apartment. 😀

So I started rummaging through my random hair accessories, including complimentary things I’d been collecting from different hotel stays, and I actually did find a couple of baby-sized hair ties that would be appropriate for her hair length and texture. I started tying her hair up, and for the most part, she’s accepted this. After a rough few days of not understanding why I had to comb and tie her hair up, now, Kaia patiently sits there each morning as I comb and style her hair. This morning, I tied her hair up in two little pony tails. The nanny said that some of her “friends” at the library, including a boy of a similar age who lives in our building, saw her, and then proceeded to attempt pulling her ponytails.

“That was inevitable,” my nanny said, rolled her eyes. “Boys always want to pull girls’ hair!”

Pookster finally sleeps in her crib all night since coming back from Australia

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On Saturday night, I slept in the air mattress we set up next to Kaia’s crib, with the front rail removed. While she fussed a couple times through the night, she mostly just needed the pacifier back in her mouth, as well as to get a brief back rub (she mostly prefers to sleep on her stomach at this stage). At around 2am, she fussed and needed to be comforted, so I pulled her off the crib mattress and onto my chest so that she could fall asleep on top of me, and eventually put her back on her back on the crib mattress. She slept soundly all the way until about 7am on Sunday morning. I opened my eyes at about 7:12am, and I found her sitting on her knees on her crib mattress, staring down at me, probably wondering when mommy would finally wake up.

Then last night, at Chris’s suggestion, I snuck out of the room after her first mini fuss, at around 12:30am. I went back to our own bed and slept there, checking on her twice through the night to make sure she was okay. She slept all by herself in her room until around 6am, when Chris woke up and saw her standing at the crib, waiting for us to get her. He went to retrieve her and brought her back to our bed, where she slept for another 45 minutes before waking up. It was like in the old days, before the Australia trip, when she happily slept in her crib but would occasionally want to join our bed in the early morning.

It took a while to get here, but I hope this keeps up. I want her to feel safe and comfortable in her crib, in her own room, without us there. I just hope no future trip disrupts this and causes her separation anxiety to come back again.

Don’t withhold food from the Pookster; she will come for you

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Kaia’s palate always seems to surprise pretty much everyone. Our nanny doubted me when I introduced different new, strongly flavored and spiced food to her way in the beginning of our solids journey. Other nannies tell our nanny that she is lying or exaggerating when she talks about what Kaia eats. Parents on both sides have questioned whether our approach has been smart or safe. Envious friends have suggested that not all parents would be comfortable implementing the same feeding approach. But the funny thing is, even though we have certainly been bold and seemingly fearless in introducing as many new flavors to her as possible, especially in the period leading up to her turning 1, Pookster also occasionally astonishes us, as well.

With some of the produce we picked up in Jackson Heights and Woodside yesterday, I made a fresh sour mango salad as part of our dinner this evening. I really didn’t have that many sour green mangoes, so we really just had enough mangoes for Chris and me as part of our meal. Because I pounded two Thai chilies into the garlic for the dressing and tasted it, it seemed a bit too spicy, so I decided not to give Kaia any.

Well, I probably “decided” that too soon because while feeding her dinner, she kept peering into my dinner bowl, wondering what I was eating, and probably also wondering why the hell she didn’t get the same thing. My baby gets massive FOMO when it comes to food. She whined until I gave her some, and then of course, she had to have 4-5 more spoonfuls until I had no more salad for myself left, except the parts with pounded chili residual.

Okay, well I guess I learned something: next time, I will not only buy more sour green mangoes, but I will also just give her the spicy food while I eat it. There’s really no need for me to be a tease with my own child, is there?

Pookster eats at Dosa Delight

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Today, we took the train to our beloved Jackson Heights and Woodside, stocking up on Thai, Filipino, Indian, and Colombian groceries and treats. We ate lunch at Dosa Delight, our favorite place for dosas and idli, and Kaia finally got to try the food here (last year, we attempted to get in, but the wait was just too long). She had no problem helping herself and ripping into my masala dosa; she clearly loved the coconut chutney and happily grabbed it (even though it’s obviously not something you can “grab” with your hands), and she even had a number of spoonfuls of the curried potatoes and the sambar that came with.

It was cute to see the group of four sitting next to us observe Kaia voraciously eating all her vegetarian South Indian delights. Two of the women kept looking over to watch Pookster eating while smiling. I felt so much pride in that moment, of other parents watching OUR child and wondering how she got to be such a good little eater.

I hope my tiny foodie always stays a foodie, with curiosity around different cultures and their foods that never ends.