9 months: a year in review

This time last year I was preparing for the launch of our start up by attending celebrations in two countries: Qatar and the United Kingdom, graced by a visit with the Queen at Windsor Castle no less.

And now here we are on the year anniversary of that and I'm about to walk away from the job that's had very high highs, and very low, lows.

What's remained constant however, is the growth of this little bundle that is our baby.

He now stands, pulls himself up, smiles at Katy Perry on Sesame Street (and her Peacock video!) as well as eats solids. A baby is such an incredible time keeper. He reminds me of how I felt this time last year, waiting for his arrival, unsure of what kind of parents I would be.

The truth is, I am up to my neck in work. There's leaving this job, there are two start-ups I'm involved in as well as pulling together a volunteer taping of a pilot for a web series. Oh and being a wife, trying to lose the weight, write in my journal and remember to eat, sleep, shower, and show up for meetings on time (most of which I failed to do today).

I have such willing hands to help from our nanny; she spends a lot of time with the baby and she's great at it. He adores her but smiles and turns his head when I enter the room so that helps.

I don't feel the guilt that other mothers talk about - particularly working mothers. I don't know if it's because I am literally running on my feet (which is why I haven't posted here in 2 months) or if it's because I always thought motherhood would be somewhat distanced for me, given the way that I grew up.

My parents were not emotionally tied to us - except in the case of negative emotions - until college. Up until then we were a threat to their good names and me particularly, had a vagina that needed strict policing against the amorality of American teenagers.

Watching Glee today and actually most nights of the show, I wonder about this teenager that our rambunctious little one will be become. Will he experiment and self destruct?

Will I force him into staid Christianity as I experience during college and not be very happy -- but be very good?

My husband had riotous upbringing and broke his father's heart on a regular basis.

Will our son do the same?

Always a lover of inclusive groups and lots of people, I suddenly wonder if I'd rather only have one. Where will I find room in my heart for the other kids? How will my body slow down enough? And not to mention on this new self-employed lifestyle can we accommodate another plane ticket?

When people ask, I try to pretend as though money were no object as to how many kids we'd have: 4-6. As I flip through the pages of People magazine, I see lots couples who have adopted or taken in foster or ill children, puppies, you name it.

And I want that.

But I want to be a jetsetting traveler too. So maybe then it will come.

But maybe not now?

One thing is sure: there is a lot of uncertainty but also excitement ahead.

Both for me and the baby.

Seven Months: seven choices

I can hardly believe all the month of February has gone by without my writing down anything about motherhood. Or that our child has now passed the halfway mark into his first year on the planet.

I held him the other day close, whispered about how he was growing up and it was a sad time for me as his mother.

People always go on and on about how fast they grow. And it's not that he's growing up fast: it's that time is fleeting the older I get. Soon he will walk, he will run, he will go off to college, fall in love, make mistakes - in that order or not.

Children are a great way to mark the passage of time as my nearly 12 year old neice reminds me of being in college and spending the summer carting her around with me in the Florida heat.

My absence from this blog isn't because I haven't been experiencing or thinking about motherhood and the baby. It's just that during my Saturday writing times I focus on my main blog, articles, or other pieces I'm trying to get done so that my career as an academic or writer doesn't suffer from my day job(s). This plus the meetings that often happen on Saturdays as well mean that every single second of my day is accounted for.

This is the life of the working mother, or indeed a mother's life in general. My hsuband is generally great and does pitch in to help but his hours are not close to mine. And mine are nothing near what our nanny spends with the baby. This is modern parenthood. You have to pick your battles. There is no other way.

Other friends seem to suffer from a lot more guilt and don't have the luxury of help. I also have come to the realization that I don't want to worry about things like sleep schedules and other dilemmas. I'm trying to be a relaxed mom so that our child will get from me a sense of what's important and what's not.

Figuring out how to spend my day is a skill I want to transfer to the baby. Being at work is crazy because I'm still doing all the programs I was before, I just have a reduced number of hours to do them in.

Add in again the fact that social obligations intrude on these hours and you have a receipe for a very hectic day to day. I know I put more pressure on myself than others do and often I now see why they take the easier path of not commiting to as much.

But I would rather have a bit of stress so that I could do more and sleep a bit less. These are the choices I've had to make - going to church 30 minutes late, but going nonetheless. Exercising for 20 instead of 60 minutes, but exercising nevertheless.

I hope the baby realizes that you can have most of what you want but it will come at price. And most days that prices is completely worth it.

Is that your baby?

People seem slightly obessed with the differences in color between me and our baby. He's much lighter than me and a mini version of his father. Which I don't mind because I happen to love his father very much. If things were otherwise, I can see why people get annoyed during divorces or separations, abandonment, etc.

It's generally Phillipino women who seem amazed by this difference. Or in a city where so many families have nannies, people think I'm out with my employer's child.

Hilariously, the East Asians don't think the baby looks Asian at all. I'm not sure if it's because he has large eyes, which are often the central feature of Asians and their ephicantic eyelids. But when we were with the Korean mafia - my nickname name for the close knit group of my husband's college friends - some of them commented that they didn't think he looked Asian.

This was hilarious becuase in nearly all instances, they had each married other Koreans. So their babies were completely unmistakable. And often in photos when they were much younger, I struggled to tell them apart.

Our nanny thinks the baby's face is very cute and she's very glad he's not "dark" like our next door neighboor. This kind of talk of course makes me shiver.

It's been another month since I wrote about breastfeeding. A few weeks after that last post about how much fun it was, I stopped. I got a liquidating stomach virus from my mother in law and realized I was passing it along to the baby. The diapers alone were enough reason to move forward my intention of stopping a few weeks earlier than planned.

While in the US, the readymade formula was easy to find at nearly every drug store or supermarket.

Having the first grandson on both sides with the extended family was a delight for everyone. He was adored, they somehow just turned into silly, babbling babylovers.

And we had willing babysitters for any of the movies, shopping, dinners, errands we wanted to go out on during our first trip back in a year.

I vowed to myself I would exercise 6 out of the 7 days while out on annual leave for over a month. And I nearly did. When I got into the habit of exercising early in the morning when the rest of the house was asleep, it felt great to be cleaned up and ready to go by the time everyone got up.

DC, GA, NV, FL. It was an amazing trip that no one really wanted to end.

I had conflicted feelings about bringing the baby back. While I wanted to be in my house with the nanny at my disposal, I didn't want the negative feelings about work to crowd back in and dominate my day.

The baby and I went on a road trip, our first, just us two. While I had been slightly dreading being left alone with him for a week, and nervous, though never admitting it to all the naysayers who thought the trip unsafe and foolish, I had a great time.

During the day we saw people from my childhoold and college days. At night we snuggled and slept in king size beds between NC and FL. The flight back was even fine - except for the dynamic poop that sent me walking the length of the US Airways cabin back to the bathroom room that had no changing table.

Changing tables, fear of ear infections, and his first serious illness were all a part of this trip.

Thank god my mother came with us to Vegas because the baby's first cold and the mucuous extractor were a little more than the two of us could handle on our own.

What surprised me was the utter love that was showered on him by his paternal uncle.

"He's my blood," he said.

And I renewed my resovle to adopt a child.

This week I'm readying The Unwanted, the story of a family living in Communist Vietnam. And my heart keeps breaking for the "half-breed" children who are half-American and half-Vietnamese during a very dangerous period of history.

It's hard to escape the fact that our baby is blessed in life because of his fortunate birth. Of course, living in a wealthy society, there are many children who are much better off than he is. But then there are also so many children in the world who are so much worse.

It's hard to know which is better and which to celebrate.

I'm giving away his clothes now, clothes that he has already outgrown because he is just shooting up. Now he laughs, he wants to eat our food, and he pulls my hair. He also rolls, cries when he's bored, and is ready for solids.

The solids thing is so interesting because now he has a spoon and a bowl and has to sit up in order to receive food.

I See Now

Breast feeding has finally settled down into being fun. When I first started going back to work, I was on a mad dash to be at home and make sure the baby didn't have formula but my milk (as our nanny calls it).

This meant I often felt as though I couldn't win at work or at home -- I was always losing. But for the first four months or so this period of time was a welcome buffer between the morning at work and the afternoon at home.

I would feed him, climb the stairs, and we'd take a 2 hour nap together. I knew the dangers of this much sleep having encountered a similar pattern a few years ago when working at the national university. I was depressed and my waistline, energy level, and overall outlook on life reflected this.

But I couldn't seem to shake it. When I finally talked myself into working out, it would be just before we had to go out, so rushed, and short. Half though I would always regret not having started earlier. Right now I'm trying to just get up in the morning and get to it. My gym is right outside our bedroom door on the second floor of our house.

To my surprise, I love breast feeding. I'm amazed my body can do this for our baby. I am sustaining him with something I am producing. No one else can do it: not his father, not grandparents, not our nanny, who dotes on him.

Imagine my horror when I started my period. I thought this signaled the end of my milk. I called the lactation consultant in a panic.

"How do I know?" I asked, driving through town.
"Remember the diapers," she said.

Yes, those diapers. The explosion he had while we were at a poker party last Friday proved that my milk is still coursing through him.

And I've almost made it twice as long as I thought I ever would. My original goal was 3 months! We're in month 5 and I hope we can go even further.

You're Pregnant

"Not any more," I told the gushing acquaintance last night whom I hadn't seen in some time.

"Oh," she said and I just kept going to help her recover her embarrassment.

The fact is our son is now five months old and I was hoping that breast feeding was going to melt away the pounds as it had for one of my husband's colleague's wives. The fact that she is a nosy busy body and walking around the size of a toothpick doesn't engender any warm feelings either.

My disappointment at the myth of breast feeding is only eclipsed by the horror of having to see photos of myself in the newspaper and other places.

In order to motivate me to lose weight, I struck up a competition with a co-worker who was also trying to lose weight. He is a 6 foot plus South African and we both had the same goal: lose 20 pounds.

At the end of two months he beat be, barely, by losing one kil (2 pounds). I had lost none but maintained 140, the weight I basically came home from the hospital with.

Happily I was kicked out of the office because I had too many unused vacation days. Every day since the start of this 'staycation' I've exercised first thing in the morning.

I realize why rich people look so good. Looking good takes time. By the time I've exercised, showered, and am ready to do anything, it's usually 12:00 pm. Half the day has gone by.

I'm trying to be gentle to myself and take these two weeks to create this sustainable habit of exercising four times a week. I've never been able to do it even when working out with a personal trainer, going to the gym to private classes, or using the compound's bike, elliptical, treadmill.

Three days, three nearly 1 hour work outs. Let's hope I can keep it going even during the upcoming holiday season.

He is so white

This is a comment that I've heard often enough to make me pause when out with our baby.

I am South Asian and brown; not dark or light. My skin is my skin. After growing up in suburban Florida, I've learned to be completely comfortable in it, despite being aware of the fact that lighter is always better.

Unless you're white. Then it's tan that people spend a fortune and put their health at risk to seek (will NEVER figure that one out). Yet racism still exists because people think those with different skin color are in fact different from them.

The first time it happened I was in the spa with my son. One of the staffer's I'm not really fond of - she told me at 8 months pregnant I was really big - came to stay hello and coo at the baby.

"Oh, he's so white," she said.

I let it go because she has been pushing my buttons since we became members and now I didn't have the excuse of hormones to blow up at her.

A few days later, I was at the frame shop, picking up a few items with my Sudanese American neighbor's son. He is perhaps the most precious child I've seen outside my family (the nieces have a firm place in my heart).

"He's so white," one of the women said.

Again, the first time I let it go. But she had to say it again.

And then: "Not like his brother."

I realized she was talking about our neighbor who is clearly of African descent.

"That's not his brother," I found myself saying, though it was none of her business.

Multiple comments about our baby's color makes me realize that he is in fact a child of mixed races.

This may sound odd, but my husband and I are both children of Asian immigrants who grew up in emotionally reserved families with demanding fathers. We both work harder than we should at our jobs and enjoy traveling in style.

In short: we have more in common than in differences. If we were to list the differences they would be in the area of personality: he's an extreme introvert and I'm so extroverted, I wish I could run electricity off my energy to save on the power bill.

I've never thought about our different appearances. Though everyone kept saying "we can't wait to see what combination your genes will produce," I didn't really equate that with old fashioned notions of race or color.

At least for our son's sake, he was lucky and got the favorable color: whiteness.

A Month Later...

It's been nearly a month since I last sat down to post my ruminations on this blog. And it isn't because I haven't been ruminating. In fact, sometimes I feel that's all I do now, that somehow having this baby has opened up so many news spaces in my life.

It's true I've shed lots of old habits in order for this to happen. I keep an eye on the clock after a certain part of the morning push back from my desk within fifteen minutes of the time I say I'm going to. I race home, guilty, sweaty, slightly angry at the thought of being controlled by an 8 week old.

But when I get home and see him -- his eyes, and yes his miles of hair that everyone exclaims about -- I never regret the decision to leave on time.

Working 9-2pm is a different style for me; the workaholic who infamously ran a company by herself for the better part of a year.

But I don't want to do that anymore. Even though my body and mind don't know this: I was jangly tonight after passing up not one but two networking opportunities to come home.

Even after coming inside the door to find my husband watching football on television I couldn't shake the nagging feeling I'd somehow made the wrong decision. But when I was upstairs with the darling and he had fallen asleep on my shoulder, all such silly thoughts vanished.

People comment on one of two things when they see him: his hair or his temperament.

"Does he ever cry?" a parent of another two month old asked. I tried not to simper with pride.

Because of course he does.

"He vocalizes so much," another mother said of him in comparison to her own child who was only a week older (lots of kids born this summer!).

Again, I resisted the urge to preen. My parents put horrible burdens for behavior and expectations on us and before I found comfort in faith, I teetered under the weight of their demands. I don't want to do that to my child -- particularly starting when he's so young.

But this afternoon when he has his fingers in his mouth, it's REALLY hard not to snatch them out!

Instead of being angry at him, I decided to give in and see what the worst was that could happen. His sucking of his fingers got so loud, even my football watching husband could hear them.