Things your mother should have told you list

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Target - Madison Hilldale

Harvest time!

There's so much to learn about gardening. How and when to plant, how to make your plant grow, how to manage pests. Even when to pick the fruits of one's labor is tricky. Here it goes! These have just a teeny tiny bit of green and still have their little stems. Hope the taste great!

Charlotte brought a flower home for me today

I'm hoping these strawberries will turn out!

The peas are ready. I hope we can keep up with eating them.

These were the easiest and most successful plant I've grown in the backyard.

I'm so excited about my tomatoes. I hope they ripen ok.

First hot date with my friend Carrie in at least six years

The first big pea harvest of the summer

Fourth of July in the Presidio

Daniel and Charlotte blowing bubbles while I nurse Nicholas

How to Darn a Sock | The Art of Doing Stuff

I just darned a sock using this tutorial. It feels like it'll hold up.

Learning about lettuce

We have had an explosion of lettuce this year. We can hardly keep up with eating it. Gotta start giving it away. These heads are from some plants we got a year ago at the framers market at the ferry building. They seem to be a lot hardier than the plants I grow from seeds. Farmers market plants may be the way to go!

We are at the Academy of Sciences

Cuddle time

Tonight, I realized just how special it is to cuddle with my baby. Between trying to put baby down for nap and soothe achy tummies and gas, it's hard to remember that the time I'm spending holding him is so brief. My darling Charlotte is only two and a half and most of the time wants her independence. When I try to give her a good cuddle, she responds with a giggle, a "no mama" and pushes me away. Nicholas is a pretty squirmy baby so when he is awake and happy, he mostly wants to face forward and look at what's ahead. Tonight, he was passed out from a big meal and fell asleep all floppy so I held him and nuzzled him and gave him some extra squeezes before putting him down. Normally, I'd be praying that he stays down, but right now, I kinda hope that big gulp of air he swallowed wakes him up so that I can give him another nuzzle.

Nicholas moves around nonstop in my arms, so I'm not sure how long I will get to hold him tight. Charlotte was a pretty stationary baby so I don't think she started stiffening up to drop out of my arms until at least two. Maybe a couple of months after she turned two. Babies aren't really solid enough to give them a good squeeze until about three months. So we get from about three months old until about twenty five, twenty six months to really cuddle with each of our babies? That is so short in the big picture of life. Makes me sad and I will definitely be nostalgic later. So I have already missed out on cuddling Charlotte with this realization. I will have to take full advantage of my time left with Nicholas.

Saturday mornings

My big girl is 2.5 and my baby boy is almost four months. After baby nurses at 6 am, I head out for my few hours of me time for the week. I got to the farmers market to pick up some fruit, Home Depot to browse (since its the only store open at 7am), sit in the parking lot for a little bit to admire the view of the south San Francisco hills, then to target at eight to run some errands and browsing :) then back home by eight thirty in case baby gets hungry. Sometimes home at nine thirty if I have milk prepped and for char's swim class.

My attempt at making three cup chicken with Basil

My attempt to make oyster sauce asparagus. Seems pretty easy.

Boil asparagus whole for seven minutes. Remove from water. Chop into smaller pieces and drizzle oyster sauce on top.

Our first year of cherry blossoms!

Reusing (or is it recycling?) pretty cardboard packaging to organize

I love pretty packaging. I just feel bad for it when at the end of its life, its only been used as packaging. Charlotte's wall mirror came packaged in a bright pink cardboard backing with a glossy paisley print. I kept it just in case I could figure out something to do with it. I finally thought of something.

Since having baby number two, Daniel and my mom have been helping me out with getting Charlotte dressed In the morning and with laundry. They have been asking me where her clothes are and where clean clothes belong a lot. Instead of having to answer their questions, I'm going to use the pretty cardboard to make clothing rod dividers to help all of us out.

First, I cut the cardboard into 4x6 pieces.

Then I made a list of Charlotte‘s hanging clothing categories.

Next, I cut a circle out using the candleholder from Charlotte's Melissa and Doug birthday cake as template. I also cut a slit to slip the divider on the rod. I cut out the first divider and then traced the hole and slot onto the other cards.

For now, I'm just going to write the categories with a sharpie. I want to eventually make some cute labels for the dividers. It will have to be between the next nursings. It's time to feed my new hungry little monster.

I dream of Charlotte

Mommy guilt is always lurking around somewhere. The night after Nicholas was born, while still at the hospital, I had a horrible nightmare about Charlotte. I dreamt that I had taken her to a toddler class at Wurster Hall (a building on my college campus) and afterwards, we walked outside toward Cafe Strada, but she didn't cross the street with me. She walked to the bus stop and stood there.

I asked her what she was doing and she replied that she had to wait for the bus to go home. I asked her why she was taking the bus home and she said that she had to take the bus home by herself, her eyes welling up with tears. Her actual words in my dream were a mix of Chinese and English "yeh yeh zhi Ji take the bus to go home." Lately, in real life, she has been asking to do a lot of things on her own.

At this point in my dream, I realized that she wasn't mine and I started crying and kept asking her why she wasn't mine. Images of her parents in my dream started to form and I imagined her getting off of the bus to meet them at home. I remember sobbing in my dream pleading with her to answer why she wasn't mine and she just stood there looking for the bus to turn on Bancroft way from College Avenue. The grief and confusion I was feeling was retry unbearable. I could not grasp the fact that she wasn't mine and I kept searching for a reason that could have caused this to happen. I think it was the wrist feeling I had ever felt in a dream or in reality.

I hope this dream was a result of raging postpartum hormones and not any sort of premonition of my future with my darling Charlotte.

Crafty friends and family

Doing some organizing and realizing that I have some crafty people in my life.

A couple of cozies from my brother and his girlfriend, now fiancé.



A beaded flower ring from my friend Doris.