Recent FOs

When I started this blog, I posted stuff about my corporate peon role, books, knitting, cooking, travel, all sorts of things.  But over the last year and a half, this blog has evolved to become a forum about my family and children.  That's fine, I know the only people who really read this blog are our family and friends who are genuinely interested in our family life and long to see pictures of our oh-so-cute kids.  BUT, sometimes, looking at my older posts, I am nostalgic for those freer days when both husband and I had more time for our personal hobbies and pursuits.  

Because I don't really have that much time to knit anymore, I decided that instead of trying to start new ambitious projects that I know I will never be able to devote enough time to, I would pick up my old projects I started but never finished and actually finish them.  Doing this, I have been able to clear out a bunch of things from my knitting basket and have ended up with some pretty cute things.  Some things, like the Poppy Beret were started in 2008 and only had a few more rows to go before completion, but for some inexplicable reason, it languished in my basket for 2 years?! 

The 2 year Poppy Beret which was originally meant as a gift for my sister in law, but now has become mine.

Here's the Vine Lace Vest which I gave to my mom.  It's a horrible picture, but trust me the thing is pretty cute in person.  I admit I have borrowed it once or twice.

The Noro Entrelac Scarf.  Another well intentioned gift.  Even if posting a picture ends up ruining the surprise, I am posting it anyway because I think it is pretty and the knitting technique is neat.

 The Open Ribwork Socks for my mom.  I have only knit two pairs of socks in my life, and one of those pairs was the pair I knit in sock class while learning how to make socks.  People who don't knit will probably chuckle about handknit socks and wonder why anyone would bother in this day and age, but let me tell you this - the socks are measured to fit my mom's feet perfectly, the yarn is comfy and pretty and they are super warm.  My mother actually likes wearing them to bed to keep her feet warm at night.  Go figure!

I have other unfinshed sweaters and projects that will still take a while to finish.  Maybe some will be finished in another two years (yikes!). 

I did manage to knit three things for baby Ethan, mostly done very late at night/past midnight between feedings, diaper changes, etc.  I felt like I had to make some things for the little guy because his sister got so many handknit baby things, but he didn't yet have any. 

A plain ol' newborn knit cap which is already too small for my little guy.

The Garter Yoke Cardigan - probably will fit in another month or two.  Still need to find the right buttons for it.  Oh how I hate to sew buttons and seams...

The Sweet Norwegian Baby Cap.  This matches the cardigan.  It is a neat contruction, sort of like a bonnet because it covers his ears and the back of his head to the nape of his neck.  It's a little too big for him now, but he will grow into it.

And the Hits Keep Coming

I don't know why, but this maternity leave has presented more issues than I care to admit.  It started out with double mastitis, and this past week, it ended up with unscheduled surgery. 

Last Friday, our family went to a corporate peon event - a backyard BBQ (except this backyard was like the kind of backyard you see in home and garden magazines where you wonder, who the hell has a backyard like that?? Well, this person did.).  That night, I started getting horrible stomach and lower back pains.  I had actually been having these bad stomach episodes throughout September but I put off checking it out, just chalking it up to tiredness and possibly postpartum kinks working themselves out.  Well, this time, the pain was something awful.  There was no position, no antacid, no pain reliever that was working.  I decided I should go to the hospital, but fully believed that I would return home sheepishly after being told it was just a bad stomachache or maybe food poisoning. 

Around 4 AM,  husband and I walked me to the emergency room of the hospital which is 4 blocks away from our place.  And once again, we felt how lucky we are to have my mother here since she was able to stay with the kids while we went.  I was in a lot of pain by then, and nurses kept asking me to judge my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain I can imagine.  Personally, I find this pain scale ridiculous because pain is so subjective.  I mean, to me, 10 would be like getting a limb severed or something, and so I would always just answer 4, because seriously, this hurt a lot, but it wasn't the worst kind of pain I could imagine, and I had had two kids after all.  However, the first nurse who looked at my face judged me to be in such pain that she thought I should have immediate pain relief with morphine.  That helped, haha. 

Long story short, I ended up getting an ultrasound, and being diagnosed with an inflamed gallbladder, lots of gallstones, and one large stone lodged and immovable from one of the gallbladder ducts leading to the intestines.  Ouch.  What was supremely annoying was that the situation was bad enough that the doctors would not release me, told me that I had to have surgery as soon as possible, and that I had to remain in the hospital until the surgery could be scheduled.  And on top of that, I was told that I could not eat anything until the surgery occurred since it would just irritate the gallbladder even further. 

How could this be??  I couldn't believe that I had the same condition that led to my husband's same exact surgery over a year ago.  Apparently, this condition is highly genetic and also influenced by diet.  But, I eat healthy and there is absolutely no one in my family that has or had this condition.  Just bad luck, one of the doctors said.

Anyway, I was hospitalized around 7 AM Saturday, got surgery Monday morning, and came home on Tuesday late afternoon.  So let's see - here are the highlights of my stay:
1.  Between Saturday and Tuesday, I was starving!  One nurse took pity on me and snuck me a popsicle.  Between Saturday and Tuesday morning, I ate two popsicles.  I guess, in some sort of sick way, this jump started my post baby weight loss.
2.  I got poked 6 times to get in one IV line because my veins are deep set and small, and ended up with an IV in my wrist, a very painful place.
3.  As I woke up from the anesthesia, apparently I immediately called out "Where's my baby??" over and over.  I was disoriented and I guess I thought I had just given birth again!  The funny thing is, I remember the post-op nurse saying "Your baby is fine, she is at home" and then me replying "But, my baby is a boy, where is my baby??"
4.  On the night after my surgery, I tried to go to the bathroom, unhooked the IV stand from the wall, walked to the bathroom and got the IV stand caught on the mesh top part of the draw curtain in my hospital room.  I was too short and too sore from the incisions to unhook myself, so I stood there stranded for 5 long minutes, away from the nurse call button, trying to get the attention of the nurses at the nursing station right outside my door, but was ignored until a random doctor making some rounds walked by my room and I yelled out for help. He unhooked me, but I felt like an idiot.
5.  One nurse, as she was helping me turn over in the bed post surgery, saw my ass (not weird given her profession), but then immediately commented that I had nice skin.  Awkward.
6.  The attending doctor told me that I was a tough woman, taking the pain of the gallstone attack and the post surgery recovery extremely well.  This was further confirmed by husband, who reluctantly admitted that I handled the immediate post surgery recovery in and out of the hospital much better than he did for the same surgery.  Face!
7.  I am really proud of myself for maintaining breastfeeding throughout this process.  I had to keep pumping to keep up my milk supply while at the hospital before and after surgery, but had to dump all the pumped milk because of all the meds in my body.  Pumping after surgery was painful, sitting up to pump every three hours, and nursing Ethan was painful for a couple of days after the surgery since my stomach was so tender and he would sometimes deliver a not-so-well placed kick while nursing!
8.  I am truly grateful for modern medicine.  I was able to get laparoscopic surgery, instead of having to be cut open.  The recovery time is quicker and the recovery itself is less painful. 

I will go to the surgeon's office this Wednesday to get the dressings removed from the incisions (4 holes and one through the bellybutton) and to get the all clear.  All in all, I am so glad this too has passed and that I am feeling pretty good. 

Whaaaaat??

This morning, my two year old said to me:  "I need diamonds...please."   Whaaaaaat???  At least she said "please."   We are working on our manners, after all.
   

Our Harvest

Our first harvest from our organic planter boxes in our remodeled backyard was...

Radishes. 

These were hard-won veggies. Our neighbors' cats (yes, that is right, multiple neighbors, multiple cats) would come in and dig up the seeds and the seedlings. After each raid, we re-spread the dirt, re-spread coffee grounds, a method that is supposed to deter cats, and then replanted the uprooted seedlings.  We still lost a crop of basil and chives, with only the radishes surviving.  Annoying. 

Look at our littlest farmer.

We planted the radishes as a sort of gardening experiment, since radishes have a very quick germination time. Unfortunately, no one in our family really cares for red radishes all that much. I mean, we aren't Fraggles, so what do you do with them other than slice them into salads?  Well, our Korean side of the family decided to make kimchee, because we Koreans love to pickle things.  Usually, this type of kimchee, called yulmoo kimchee, is made with young daikon radishes, using the root and the greens.  Our version turned out very nicely and we got about three large jars out of the radishes from our yard.  Delicious!

Ethan Says Hello

Hello,  my name is Ethan:

My mother says I have cute dimples.

This is my big sister, Emma (at least that is what her shirt says):

Sometimes, my big sister makes me feel like this:

But, my mom says that I have to be nice to her, and that she has to be nice to me.  Oh well.

My Darling Little Girl

My little Emma turned two on Sunday.  It sounds so cliche, but I cannot believe how quickly the time passed.  One of my friends reiterated the old parent saying that with raising kids, the days are long, but the years are short.  How true.

My in laws and great grandmother in law came up to San Francisco for a quiet birthday celebration.  We went out for a birthday dinner at Mayflower on Saturday, had cake on Saturday night, then opened presents on Sunday morning.

Just look at her eyeing that piece of birthday cake! 

She doesn't really get to eat sweets very much, so anytime there is cake, Emma gets super exicted and starts to sing Happy Birthday, no matter whether it is anyone's birthday or not!

Here is my darling first baby on her actual birthday  (ignore the smudges around  her  mouth, which is probably leftover from breakfast-oops!).

She took in quite the birthday gift haul - she got a puzzle set, hair ribbons (two of which she is wearing in her picture above), a cute ladybug bag, books, lots and lots of stickers (her current obsession), a Hello Kitty doll and coloring book, a lunch box set for preschool and birthday money from her grandmothers, grandfather, great grandmother, aunts and uncles and cousins. 

From us and Baby Ethan, she got a play kitchen and play pots, pans and cooking utensils.  She played with the kitchen, cooking and making thing all morning long on Sunday.  I love her bed head look in the picture.

Emma also starts preschool tomorrow.  She will be going two full days a week - Tuesdays and Thursdays.  She had two trial run visits to the preschool last week, and she loved it.  The preschool is one of the "right" preschools in San Francisco (one that is a feeder preschool for desirable San Francisco private kindergartens), and we were surprised that we were able to get in without having to wait over a year to be pulled off the waitlist.  We just got lucky one day when we called the school and they told us that there was an immediate opening, and would we like to take it, since we just happened to be calling that day?  I will never understand the San Francisco preschool admission process.  The funny thing is that the opening happens to be in the preschool's Jewish traditions class (the preschool does have other non-Jewish classes).  Hee hee.  So each morning, Emma will participate in a Shalom circle.  She will also learn about Jewish holidays and sing and learn some Jewish children's songs.  Since she won't attend on Fridays, she will miss the school's Shabbat, where all of the preschool's children partake in challah bread and grape juice, and someone comes in to say a blessing.  I think her preschool and special class will be interesting for Emma, and she will also learn some great communal values! 

A Lot Has Happened! (Baby Ethan's Arrival and an Ode to My Mom)

Firstly, and most importantly, our son, Ethan Jung-Bin, was born on Saturday, July 9, 2011 at 3:44 PM.  At birth, he weighted 8 pounds 11 ounces and measured 20.5 inches long.  From start to finish, the labor and delivery took about 14-15 hours which sounds long, but is still less than half the time it took for Emma to enter the world!

 Look, he has dimples!

He looked so much like his big sister when she was first born.  At birth, Emma's head was definitely bigger and she had a lot more hair.  But, because of his size, at birth, Ethan looked like Emma at two weeks or older.

Here's Ethan a few days after we came home from the hospital:

Here's Emma, in virtually the same pose:

So why did it take so long for me to write Ethan's birth blog entry?  Well, let me tell you - this may be TMI (too much information) for some, there will be talk of breasts and nipples!

I got home from the hospital on Monday afternoon. My in laws arrived for a three day stay on Friday morning.  I was recovering from delivering Mr. Big Baby.  I thought the recovery was going ok, certainly less painful (and fewer stitches!) than the recovery with Emma.  But then, during the in law visit, I got mastitis in my right breast. For those who don't know what mastitis is, it is a breast infection caused by clogged milk ducts.  It causes fever, chills, flu-like symptoms, including all over body ache, swelling and tenderness of the breast and exhaustion. Lucky me, I got all these symptoms in spades. To make matters worse, Ethan, just like his sister before him, had caused cracked and bleeding nipples during his breastfeeding sessions.  On Sunday morning, my sister in law and brother in law arrived.  My mother in law had a small birthday BBQ in our newly remodeled backyard (a post for another time), but I was too sick to participate.  All our guests left late on Sunday afternoon, but I was still feeling very crappy. One of the remedies for mastitis, in addition to antibiotics, is to massage the affected breast with hot compresses.  Well, when the breast is swollen and tender to the touch, the massage can be downright painful, and each time I fed Ethan (every two hours), I had tears in my eyes from the pain of the mastitis and his suckling on my raw, bleeding nipples.

On Sunday night, I got mastitis in my left breast.  I couldn't believe it - both breasts were now infected and so painful.  The fevers came back because of the new infection and it seriously took so much of my energy to move.  Each breastfeeding session, with the massage, feeding and pumping out the extra milk, took over an hour, cutting into the time when I could sleep or rest between feedings. I think I was also just plain exhausted from recovery, staying up at nights with Ethan, trying to spend time with Emma, and visitors.  It was all too much, too soon.  During this time, Emma was being so great, kissing her brother on his head, patting him, calling him Baby, and coming to my bedside for stories.  I felt horrible emotionally because 1) Emma was getting so little attention from me, and 2) breastfeeding, something which I thought would be easier than the first time around with Emma and would be a beautiful bonding experience, had turned into something so overwhelming and painful.  I was so close to giving up breastfeeding Ethan, and I cried a few times from pain, sheer exhaustion and guilt.

Finally, on Tuesday, I started to feel better, where I could move around some.  My doctor had warned me that I needed lots of rest and sleep to fight off the infections, but seriously, try doing that with a newborn and a toddler in the house.

On Thursday, we got notice that my father, with whom I do not really speak (for so many reasons which are not for this blog), was coming to San Francisco from Korea for a FIVE DAY stay starting on Saturday.  He gave us two days notice - so freaking typical.  For those who don't know my father, the news of his visit was not exactly good.  He is not the type of guest who is easy and he is demanding and very high maintenance.  Oh, you might think that this would change because he would know that we have a newborn and toddler in the house, and that I was still sick, but his behavior was pretty much as expected.   I won't go into all the details here, but our entire household breathed a sigh of relief when he left for Korea this Thursday morning, without TOO many incidents during the visit.  I will say that he was besotted with Emma (not so much with Ethan, but I guess that is because newborns don't really do very much in terms of being entertaining), and I was glad that he got the opportunity to spend time with her.  She impressed him by knowing her letters and speaking Korean and English and just being overall cute.  As a side note, just to make sure that the I knew the universe was laughing at us, during my father's visit, both my mother and I caught bad colds, from which we are only now just recovering.  Still, a bad cold beats mastitis any day!

In addition to chronicling my crazy post partum, I also wanted to use this post as an ode to my mother.  I swear she is like Superwoman, and I just don't know how I would have gotten through these past three weeks without her.  She was there, doing all the things that I should have, or would have been doing, had I been feeling "normal."  She cooked and cleaned for all our guests, and she made sure that there was always something to eat for Emma, husband and myself during these past three weeks.  She entertained Emma when I couldn't and when husband had to go back to work after the first week and took her on walks and to the park everyday.  She was the one who stayed up with me at nights, helping me with the hot compresses each and every feeding.  She did the mountains of laundry that appeared from all the hot compresses and general messy post partum recovery.  She calmed Ethan during the wee morning hours, just so I and husband could catch an hour or two of extra sleep.  And she did this all in her quiet manner, rarely complaining, and just getting things done without me or husband or Emma having to ask.  Once again, I am floored by her nurturing ways and her ability to power through difficult situations without keeling over from exhaustion.  In addition to taking care of the household, the visit from my father wasn't easy on her, but she still managed to get through it all, even with the bad cold.

So here we are, on a Saturday, three weeks after Ethan's arrival, and our household is FINALLY quiet and back to normal, or as normal as it can be with a newborn and under two toddler.  Emma's 2 year birthday is coming up soon, and frankly, I am glad that we made the decision to make her birthday a small and quiet celebration this year, because I don't think we can take much more craziness!

And because Emma is still my baby, no matter how old she is, here are some pictures of her, too.

From 4th of July weekend, in our newly redone backyard.  Note her sunglasses.  She insists on wearing them when she goes outside:

After she got caught pawing through my makeup - that is expensive lip gloss rubbed all over her cheeks.  Well, at least the lip gloss was organic...

 Coming out of her bath/shower.  A hand towel is just the right size!