Carrying a stroller up and down the stairs on the subway

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For a while when doing our weekly Saturday outings to explore different neighborhoods and boroughs of New York, Chris and I would take the stroller frame with the car seat, and because he was insistent on ensuring he could do it himself, he’d carry the stroller frame collapsed down in one hand and the baby in the car seat in the other. Then, we decided to start using the stroller seat since it would provide Kaia more comfort. And even though you can technically break it down, breaking the seat down means… well, there’s no seat for the baby to go in. And Kaia isn’t walking yet, so someone would need to carry her. Chris did this a couple weekends and decided it wasn’t efficient enough, and so he decided we would both carry the stroller, NOT collapsed, and keep the baby in it. That meant one of us would need to carry the front while the other would carry the back. This was not very comfortable for me given my wrist pains/mommy thumb, plus it would occasionally be ominous when Chris would inevitably try to move the stroller faster than I would, but this is a part of taking a stroller on the subway. The subway is not wheelchair/handicap/stroller friendly AT ALL. And when you get excited occasionally and see elevators or signs for accessible stations, you will also eventually see an “out of order” sign, or the elevator will take ages and ages to arrive. And by that point, Chris will be steaming in his impatience and decide to screw the elevator option.

Is this fun? No, it’s not. It also tells you why so many city parents just stay in their own neighborhoods once they have babies because the subway system was not built for parents of babies. But it also just makes me frustrated that the subway system is not accessible in general, and they don’t have plans to make every station accessible.. until like 2055. Seriously? We spend so much money in subway fare and the fares keep going up, yet the service doesn’t seem to get any better, and we have to deal with inaccessibility crap like this. It’s so frustrating… until I remember that in pretty much every other city in this country, you need a car to get around, and public transportation is not even an option.

So the moral of the story is: it’s either going to suck, or it’s going to suck worse.

When your favorites get smaller and less packed with ingredients

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Going to Chinatown since the pandemic has begun has become a little treat. It’s been a time when I can not only get as many Asian vegetables as I can conceivably carry, but I also stock up on perishables (like noodles to freeze), pantry items (bamboo shoots, coconut milk, water chestnuts). And on top of that, I like to get my favorite ready-to-eat items that feel like a treat, like doufu fa (tofu pudding), grass jelly (not all the time, but occasionally), zongzi (Chinese tamales), and nor mai gai (Chinese steamed sticky rice with chicken, mushrooms, and Chinese sausage wrapped in lotus leaf).

I went to my usual spots to pick up treats and goods, and while I stopped off at Mott 46 to pick up two nor mai gai for what Chris likes to call our “morning dinners” this weekend, I noticed that they were quite smaller than they previously were. The last time I tried to stop by, they had already sold out, so I wasn’t sure if my eyes were deceiving me, or if I just had a fake memory. But after steaming them up and opening them, I realized I wasn’t wrong: the filling inside was much lesser, from the meat to the sticky rice. And there weren’t any minced mushrooms, which I love. The price had remained the same, but the product was far less.

This sucks. It’s like when prices go up, the quantity stays the same. When prices stay the same… the quantity you get goes down. My Chinatown haul this trip, despite filling up two reusable sacks plus my backpack, felt so much sadder this time, and it seemed like I had spent more; in total, I’d spend almost $150. Chris even commented that I didn’t get that much when most of the time, he thinks I go nuts whenever I go down there. Not happy.

When your home cooked meal yields no leftovers = sadness

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I had my friend come over for dinner on Tuesday night so that we could spend time together with Kaia. With a baby now, it’s easier just to have friends come over and hang out. Not to mention with my pumping schedule, I now pump right at dinner time, so it’s harder to go out in the evening. I prepared most of the food the day before, but I got annoyed with my packets of organic chicken thighs from Costco when I realized that my approximately two-lb bags seemed more like they were 1.5 lb. The total packets are supposed to be about six pounds total, and I’m pretty sure this total was less, which was why this packet was so small. After I prepared Tuesday night’s butter chicken, I looked at the pot and saw how little chicken there was, especially since meat always shrinks after cooking. There was no way we’d have any leftover butter chicken after my friend left! I thought. Plus, with my nanny eating some of the food, setting aside a small portion unsalted for Kaia, and the three adults, there was… just a lot of butter chicken sauce and some diced bell pepper left. I felt so disappointed at the end of the night, seeing how little leftover food we had.

That’s the thing about Asians who cook: we aren’t like most Western people. We get excited when we have leftover food. When it’s from a meal out, that means the cost per meal goes down. When it’s from food that you cook, it maximizes the time that you spent cooking that dish. Oh well. Now, I just need to know to double the butter chicken recipe next time and remember to use more chicken.

9-month appointment

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I took Kaia for her 9-month wellness checkup, and everything is looking pretty good: she’s developing well, has little divots on her bottom front gums, indicating she may have some teeth in the next month, and she’s growing like a little weed: now, she’s jumped up to the 44th percentile for weight (from 25th percentile at her six-month checkup), is at the 88th percentile for length/height (though I do think the medical assistant didn’t straighten out her legs enough to properly measure it, but whatever), and 84th percentile for head circumference. She’s also developing stranger danger more: she was not happy to see the nurse practitioner and was even more unhappy with her handling her and giving her the first dose of her flu shot. But luckily, she cried a lot less at this appointment than in June and calmed down as soon as I picked her up. With all the solids she’s eating, it will be interesting to see where she is at in terms of her weight and height at her 1-year appointment. My baby is happy, healthy, and growing. I felt so proud leaving the doctor’s office today for her.

Nanny’s expanding palate

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I always offer my nanny the things I make because I think that’s just a nice thing to do. She oftentimes declines, but I still continue offering because I’m sure something will be of interest at some point. She’s tried things I’ve made that she’s really enjoyed, like black bean soup, butter chicken and noodles. She’s also tried things she didn’t think she would like, such as the various types of dal I’ve made. She said that the versions her husband likes (he’s Indian ethnically) she didn’t care for, but after seeing how well Kaia ate the dals I made, she wanted to try mine. And she said she really enjoyed mine. She said that if Kaia likes it, it’s probably good. Well, I guess Kaia’s palate is more trustworthy to her than mine is…

The nanny calls in sick on the same day I get yet another milk clog – WTF?

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This morning, I woke up around 5:45 to a text from my nanny, who was letting me know she wasn’t feeling well and would be unable to come in today. While it was obviously fine for her to not come in when feeling ill, especially since I knew I only had two meetings today, I also woke up to a weird feeling in my right breast, like a little rock on the side of it. Ugh, I thought. I had a similar feeling a couple days ago, but luckily it never resulted in a clog and cleared up after I pumped that morning. But this time, after my morning pump, which was much lower than usual in terms of output, I realized that “rock” was still in my breast.

Ughhhhhh. Not only did I not have childcare today, but I’d also have to deal with another stupid milk clog… my third one ever, and my first since I started religiously taking sunflower lecithin supplements twice a day as a preventive measure for clogs to thin out the milk fat. WHY did it have to happen on the day the nanny called in sick?

While it would have been an enjoyable day feeding and spending time with my baby, it ended up being an exhausting day of taking care of her while also trying to get the clog out… which in many ways, took more mental energy out of me because there’s always the stress of not knowing when or if the clog will come out. Plus, it physically hurts. It feels sore and hot since a milk clog is essentially an enflamed milk duct, with milk fat that has gotten stuck. Eventually, it finally went away after a lot of massaging, pumping, and ibuprofen, but it was still exhausting. By the end of the day, I was totally pooped and just wanted to pass out. And I did just that… and even skipped my last pump. That probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do given my clog just came out, but I was just too tired to stay up for yet another hour to pump. I’m now at over nine months of exclusively pumping — no one understands exactly how much time and mental energy this takes to do, not to mention the extreme discipline. My body is still not my own as long as I am pumping, but it’s a sacrifice I’m making for my baby.

Play room

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Up until this year, we’d never really taken advantage of the play room in our building. I’d taken family and friends who visited to see it, but we never really made use out of it because they never brought kids, and we had no kids of our own up until this point. But given that Kaia is now 9 months old and crawling, I realized that now is the perfect time to get her using the play room. So I brought her there for about an hour this afternoon, and she got to explore the play house, the little matted castle where she can climb up a cushioned stairway, slide, and tunnel. She seemed a little apprehensive initially, but once I gave her an incentive (always, her pacifier or my phone), she went along with it. And to my pleasant surprise, with a little support, she was able to actively and enthusiastically climb up the stairs, which I personally thought were a bit wide apart. But she did it twice! I felt so proud.

My baby is growing so fast. It’s exciting and makes me happy, but makes me feel like time is passing too quickly. Enjoying these moments watching her grow and evolve sometimes doesn’t even seem to be enough. Sometimes, I just want to freeze time and hold her face in my hands and just stare at her and kiss her. My little baby is getting bigger and exploring a little more of the world every single day.

Awkwardness around “pumping”

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When I was at my parents’ while in San Francisco, I basically made myself at home with all my pumping gear and bottles: I laid out a towel to put all the bottles in the kitchen. I set up my pump with the pump parts on Ed’s old desk. I also walked around liberally with my breast pump connected as though no one was there. No one really commented on it; my mom knew I was pumping, so she didn’t say anything. My aunt and her roommate upstairs never said a word or even acknowledged that I had a nipple sucker connected. And my dad? Well, he averted his eyes whenever he saw I had my “brrr, brrr” device on.

One day, I did leave the cap on my second pump tube on the dining table. My dad found it and came over to me. “You left your… device piece on the dining room table,” he said.

My “device”? Do you mean… my breast pump piece?

Hahahahhahahahahaha. My dad is so awkward that he couldn’t even say “breast pump” or “pump.”

Weather/seasons-appropriate baby clothing

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A relative on Chris’s side had gifted Kaia three different outfits when she was born in multiple sizes. She thoughtfully gave a gift receipt because she told us that the hardest thing with getting clothing gifts when her two kids were born was to fit the size of the clothing to the time of year and season when it would actually fit the kid. I’ve realized that this was definitely very relevant because I had to return almost all of the clothes from our baby registry that were gifted simply because the outfits were too warm to wear between 6-9 months, which is essentially summer time here when Kaia would mostly be wearing summery things.

“Kaia has no fall clothing,” our nanny announced to me yesterday while going through her drawers and in the closet. “She needs to have layers and coats. Are you going to get her some?”

We had so much, perhaps even too much clothing, for her first 9 months of life, particularly 0-3 month clothing. I had to actively cycle through certain outfits to ensure she’d at least wear them 3-4 times. Now, her clothing pile has dwindled down as she’s gotten bigger, so we now have to actually buy her clothes to fit her soon-to-be toddler self.

Pacifier police

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Once upon a time, we left Lenox Hill hospital with our baby and a whole ton of supplies that the nurses gave us. Included in the massive suitcase and bags that they packed us were five newborn pacifiers. We also had 4 pacifiers that were gifted to us via our baby registry, so in total, we had 9 pacifiers. At some point, one of them got lost while Kaia was out with her nanny at the park, so then we had eight left. And since that one pacifier went missing, Chris became the pacifier police overnight and started maniacally counting the pacifiers on the kitchen counter every evening after our nanny would go home to ensure that all were accounted for.

“Where is the 8th one?” he’d demand at around 6 or 7pm each evening. “You need to tell the nanny to count them at the end of each day!”

I thought this was ridiculous. Eight pacifiers really wasn’t that much to account for, and there was no reason that I needed to insist to our nanny that she had to keep tabs on every single one of them. And given that our baby is now nearly 9 months old and we managed to only lose one… to me, that just seemed like a miracle. We were either really anal about ensuring the pacifiers were all there, or our baby was just far easier to keep track of than other babies. In parenting forums, you always hear about things like pacifiers, bibs, and burp cloths going missing constantly.

So, I suppose this adds to Chris’s list of job titles: father, milk manager, baby bottle feeder, and pacifier police.