My Holidays

Since the nanny took off 2.5 days during Christmas, we did not end up doing much either. We had a lunch gathering at home the day after Christmas, and we took Winston around a few times. Other than that, I concentrated on Winston’s “sleep training” during the holidays – it’s not exactly what one would expect to do during the holidays!

Before I had Winston, I never heard of the term “sleep training”. But now I feel that I know too much about it. Since Winston was rocked to sleep every day for the first 6 months of his life, I was told that I had to train him to fall asleep on his own naturally at some point, or else he will want to be held and rocked for a long time. As he’s now weighing over 20 pounds at just 6 months, can you imagine how heavy he will be when he’s 1 year old? Besides, babies that fall asleep on their own can easily go back to sleep on their own when they wake up in the middle of the night or in the middle of a nap. It’s true that the nanny had to hold him for a long time if he woke up in the middle of his nap, and it became quite tiring as he became more and more sensitive to his environment and would wake up the second he's put back into his crib.

A lot of parents have used the method “cry-it-out” to train their babies to fall asleep on their own. But I just did not feel that I could possibly stand listening to him crying for 30 minutes to an hour. Some friends told me that they literally thought that their babies would die, but after 45 minutes, they did fall asleep. The next night the crying was a lot shorter. And eventually they did fall asleep by themselves peacefully and happily. I admit that I am an especially protective mother, and the thought of having to endure his crying just made me shudder. So I procrastinated on the sleep training, until the night after he got his flu shots. He woke up every hour during the whole night, and I could not sleep at all. Of course, it might have been due to the pain related to the shots, but I realized then that I had to sleep train him.

I braced myself for an unbearable night. I hugged him after changing his diaper, and I held him in the rocking chair, reading him a story, while turning on the musical mobile. I put him down in the crib, and he stared at the musical mobile above him. After a couple of minutes, I turned the musical mobile’s light off and switched it to heartbeat, and left the room. He suddenly realized what’s going on and started crying. Previously, just a minute of crying at most would get him attention, so his cry was not so bad at the beginning. Then it got worse and worse, and I felt that my heart was going to break into pieces listening to him crying hysterically, intermittent with coughing. I almost could not listen to the cry and yet I would not want to be anywhere else but next to his door. So I kept looking at the clock, thinking that if he did not stop crying for another 10 minutes, I would go in and comfort him. His crying went up and down, and just when I thought that he was about to be finished, he resumed his agonizing crying, to the point that I really felt that I could not take it any longer. As I was about to open his door, he stopped crying, and my hand stopped turning the door knob at that moment. He moaned a little bit, and then I did not hear any more noise from him.

My first thought was, “oh I hope that he’s not dead.” Of course, he was not. When I went in a few minutes later to check on him, he was sound asleep. His chubby face always looks so peaceful and beautiful when he’s asleep.

Oddly, a famous line from FDR came to mind, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” I had feared sleep-training Winston for over 2 months, and when I could overcome my fear, I realized in the end that it was doable, even by a soft-hearted mother like myself. We can all overcome ourselves, if we dare to challenge ourselves.

New Year's Resolutions

Last time when I made a New Year’s resolution was perhaps in 2003 or 2004, and I can no longer remember what they were. Since it’s quite humiliating to make a long list only to realize just a couple of months later that I have not stuck to it at all, I have not bothered with another New Year’s resolution for quite a few years.

This year, however, I am thinking that perhaps I should try to come up with a list of New Year’s resolution again. Even if I fail to accomplish any of them, just the effort itself, however short-lived it might be, will be a good exercise in discipline. So what are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2010?

I was at McKinsey for just a year and it was quite a while ago, but its military-style training left an indelible mark on my thinking. Somehow, I can’t help but treat each question with an “issue-tree” analysis, complete with bullet points and dashes. So here they are – my New Year’s Resolutions:

Soft and fluffy ones:
• Be more patient and relaxed
• Be less anxious and perfectionist (isn’t this one essentially the same as the above?)
• Be more considerate, and yet at the same time -
• Be more firm and assertive

Concrete actionable items:
• Delegate more and wisely, when it comes to childcare and housework
• Practice more positive reinforcement
• Read a book every month
• Have lunch out 1-2 times a week
• Have dinner out at least once a month
• Take 2 leisure trips in 2010
• Embark on something exciting!

Somehow, as I am reviewing this list, I notice that many “concrete actionable items” are essentially things that I easily did before Winston’s birth. Now I need a New Year’s Resolution to make an attempt at them!

Of course, the most important task, which is implicit, is to raise Winston well. That will be top of the list for every year from now on.

Winston says Mama Baba!

Winston now says Mama and Baba when he's unhappy, which is whenever he is horizontally oriented.

Winston loves babbling and being tickled

Have I Complained Enough About This Rental House?

My answer to that question will be – it’s never enough.

The lease for this rental house is for a year in total, and now I have about 4 months to go. Maybe I will complain about this house until the day I move out, as was the case when I complained about my temporary fully furnished apartment in San Mateo, until the day I moved out. One would think that I should have learned my lesson the first time – i.e. for a place to live I should be very careful and extremely picky. But obviously all the lessons are saved for the next house, which I will buy as opposed to rent.

Talking about renting, our tenants in San Diego have caused us plenty of headache. They are surely incompetent when it comes to fixing anything, but I would think that incompetent people tend to be super careful as well, since they themselves cannot repair anything. But they are not. As a result, we have paid the handy man many times to go in to fix something, to the point that our agent finally asked for a cushion fund so that the handy man can get paid before the monthly rental check is due.

Our landlord here in Bay Area, on the other hand, would not fix anything unless he himself can check out if something is really broken. That sent me into a fury when both the washer and dryer were broken, and he insisted tossing a wet towel into the dryer for at least 30 minutes for a test. This house was built about 10 years ago, but apparently was made from cheap materials with poor design. It’s by a noisy street, which somehow I did not notice when I decided to rent this house. Poor Winston must have got woken up plenty of times when he was a newborn by the loud motorcycles in the day time. There are stairs to lead up even to the first floor, and as a result, it makes it very hard to load and unload groceries. The sound proof quality is especially poor, so that the nanny does not even dare to flush the toilet at night for fear of waking up Winston. There is no park nearby, and no downtown area accessible. The windows look either directly into the neighbors’ houses, or into the slanting slope that leads up to the street level. No wonder I don’t like to stay home if I can avoid it. While it’s got 4 bedrooms, somehow I always feel as if it’s much smaller than our 4-bedroom house in San Diego.

Out of wishful thinking, I have been looking online periodically to see where I would like to live, even though we still have another 4 months left in this rental house. Now that I have made two mistakes when it comes to housing in Bay Area, I am surely not going to make a third mistake. It has to be brand new or recently remodeled; it has to have somewhat of a view; it has to be in a warmer climate; it has to be close to either parks or downtown area; it has to have reasonable designs; what needs to be big (i.e. closets, size of toilets, dining room, bedrooms) should be big; what needs to be narrow (e.g. hallway, standing space in the bathroom, stairs) should be narrow; what needs to be strong (e.g. water pressure, showers, fires of the kitchen range) should be strong; it cannot be next to a busy street; and hopefully, it will bring a smile to my face when I get in every day, as was the case with my house in San Diego.

Is that wishful thinking here in Bay Area?

A Holiday Present

After I got home from work yesterday, I opened the mailbox and found a package. One look at the sender's information brought a smile to my face - I did not need to wonder at the content of the package. My long-awaited home-made sausages finally arrived, all the way from a friend in Boston!

She told me a while ago that she was making sausages from scratch based on the recipes from her mother. Now this is a friend whose diversity of skills and interests is on the same order of magnitude as my lack thereof. While she is an amateur photographer, as far as I can tell, she’s a better photographer than those who put up exhibitions in museums. She does pottery, and I have a beautiful vase that she made. She draws and paints and travels, and she’s a Ph.D. biologist with a full-time job. She might even have gained a couple more skills since I last saw her. By contrast, I can’t think of one thing I do that’s worth mentioning – does watching movies count as a real hobby?

I showed the sausages to the nanny, who’s from Chengdu and is a pretty good cook. She immediately recognized the sausages when I asked her to boil them, “where is your friend from? They look like the ones that we would make back home in Sichuan in the winter. In fact, right now is the time that my family would make sausages and cured pork.” I asked why they would not simply buy such things from the stores, and she wrinkled her nose, “well, I would never eat those things sold in the stores. You never know what kind of meat they used. Plus it takes just a little more effort to make something that tastes really good, so why not? You cannot find the same thing from the store anyways. If you buy some pork belly meat, I can make cured pork here for you.” When it comes to cooking, I am notorious for emphasizing the quantity and speed over quality. I would usually gladly accept worse-tasting food if it means just a little less effort.

The sausages were boiled and then sliced. True – you cannot buy such sausages from any stores. The meat was mixed with some red chili peppers and probably some other ingredients that I can’t name. In short, they tasted wonderful. If sausages from the stores or restaurants could taste like that, I would be eating sausages often myself. My only regret is that we finished them all too quickly, long before I remembered that I promised to share some with another mutual friend close by.

The next morning, I went to Ranch 99 to buy pork belly meat. Now I am eagerly awaiting the result of my nanny’s pork-curing effort.

Again, one more data point to show that people from the south are more resourceful, talented and industrious than people from the north!

The Obsession with Food

Growing up in Beijing, I don’t think I ever had an obsession with food. The reason was definitely not an over-abundance of the varieties, as my mom was not into cooking until I left home to attend college, and we hardly went to any restaurant. As a little kid, I did not like candies, cookies or cakes. My mom was raising me and my sister with her teacher’s salary, and I recall that we lived on mostly a vegetarian’s diet, not by choice, but rather by necessity. There were indeed a few indulgences in my childhood that I still remember vividly though. My mom took me to this little dingy restaurant that specialized in spicy noodles in Sichuan style (i.e. Dan Dan noodles) when I was at most 9 or 10 years old. It was so spicy but somehow I found it irresistible. Since then, I have been able to eat very spicy food. My first experience eating in a restaurant that served “western cuisine” was when my mom took me and my sister to the Tao Ran Ting Park one Sunday. We were really tired and hungry at the end of the day, and my mom decided to treat us to a meal at the “western cuisine” restaurant in the park. I was shocked at the price of a tiny bowl of chicken noodle soup, and I tried to eat it very slowly to savor the taste. Now that I have a son myself, I can imagine how my mom felt when she saw me eating the soup in such ecstasy.

It was not until I had to go to the military academy for a whole year of training after high-school that I had developed craving for food. Of course, I was not alone. The food there was so bland and so devoid of protein and fat that we all ended up gobbling down a ton of carbohydrate all the time, and still felt hungry immediately afterwards. As a result, all of us skinny girls in high school ballooned. I remember wanting to eat all the time. Looking back, the insatiable appetite perhaps was not only due to the poor diet but also due to boredom and frustration. I remember loving all the food with protein and fat.

Of course, once I returned to civilization at the end of the year, I lost all that weight immediately, as who wanted to eat so much carbohydrate when there was something else to eat? I found the food served in dining halls at Peking University “heavenly”, but somehow did not feel the urge to overeat at all. I was quite skinny again when I arrived in Boston as a transfer student at Harvard. As I was never a picky eater, I was quite amazed at the “all-you-can-eat” dining halls of Harvard dorms. Maybe human beings are naturally rather dim when it comes to deciding whether they should stop or keep eating, if there is always food in front of them. When so many varieties of food were laid out in huge quantities, somehow I ended up overeating again. I did not get as plump as I was in the military academy, but I surely got chubbier, partly due to the high calorie content of the American cuisine, and partly because I did always sample more varieties than necessary during meals. Or maybe it was the sense of anxiety and loneliness that I felt, as a foreign student in a totally foreign environment, struggling to understand what’s going on around her?

At both Peking University and Harvard, I heard others complaining about the dining hall food being really bad. Since I spent two years at each place during college, I actually found both places to be really great when it comes to food, both in accessibility and in taste. I terribly missed having access to such dining halls when I was in graduate school at MIT – an austere institution with austerity stamped on everything. I suddenly found myself having to “find” food, since I usually had no time to buy groceries and cook, and had no money to afford eating out at decent places. As a result, like other graduate students, I loved free food, not only because of the fact that it’s free, but also because it was right there, completely accessible, just like back in the college days at Harvard. This habit of loving free food would stay with me for years, as it does with most former graduate students. It’s a condition that we don’t shake off for a long time. Naturally, due to the scarcity of free food, and the fact that it takes extra energy to either cook or buy food, I lost not only the extra pounds gained at Harvard, but even some more. I was extremely skinny, and would remain so for many years.

Not until I became pregnant with Winston did I start gaining weight again, as well as a strong appetite after the first trimester was over. I did not have any real cravings, except that for a few weeks I ate a lot of bread and ice-cream. Clearly I ate more than before, and I gained almost 50 pounds during my pregnancy – i.e. an increase of over 50% in weight! I noticed that when I was having morning sickness during pregnancy, I only wanted to eat food that I ate when I was growing up (vegetables and grains) – as opposed to food that I came to like in my adulthood. Strange, isn’t it?

The other day, I rented the movie “Julie and Julia”, which has two parallel plots. The one on Julie Powell was kind of boring – it’s about a frustrated office worker writing a blog on her conquering all recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook in one year. The other is on how Julia Child became a famous cook and author, which was very entertaining, with the phenomenal Meryl Streep playing Julia Child pitch-perfect. It was a feel-good movie. I could not help thinking that while love is a theme that writers never tire of writing, food is a topic that movie-makers never tire of filming. There have been so many movies featuring food from different countries in the world – “Like Water for Chocolate” from Mexico, “Babette’s Feast” from Denmark, “Mostly Martha” from Germany, “Eat Drink Man Woman” from Taiwan, “Tampopo” from Japan, “The Scent of Green Papaya” from Vietnam, and of course many American movies such as “Big Night”, “Chocolat”, “Fried Green Tomatoes”, and of course now “Julie and Julia”. I am sure that there will be more to come in the future.

The obsession with food is like the fascination with love. Both will live on in the imaginations of writers, film makers and artists, as both reflect the fundamental needs of human beings. Even those of us who claim to have no obsession with food not only cannot live without food, but we all find the topic comforting and reassuring. On a dark rainy day or after a period of stress, what else can be more relaxing than watching Meryl Streep as Julia Child cooking a delicious-looking dish with such gusto in the kitchen? It makes me feel that life could be, just could be, as great as a feast – well, if not all the time, at least once in a while.