🌸 Spring 2024: A time of new beginnings
Hello friends,
I’ve been slow to blog because we’ve been ultra busy putting around the house with little Peach (the internet name of Froggy’s baby brother) but here’s what we’ve been up to.
Pregnancy and birth
The tail end of this pregnancy was terrible this time — weird symptoms, exhaustion, brain rot. Nothing was enjoyable because everything was too hard. Books have always been my solace in difficult times but I’d stopped reading because it was too tiring to remember what I’d just read. Peach’s birth started out all very on theme.
My water broke at 3am and some tufts of hair were already poking out during check-in. I asked for an epidural ASAP. I sat around cramping for an hour and no epidural came. I asked the nurse to please call it in again and moaned for another hour in pain … and no epidural came. I moved beyond moaning and started mooing in much more pain for another. In between moos, I asked the nurse to please please go in person to check on the epidural, but no epidural came!! I learned when I max out my pain meter, my brain starts registering it as nausea and I start dry heaving. Finally the nurse came back, the anesthesiologist had been napping this whole time!!! The resident comes in bleary-eyed, mumbling about being burnt out. I try to sit still between my waves of nausea and mooing as the attending pays suspiciouslyyyy close attention and re-checks every step. But the epidural works and finally around 6:30am, I get some relief and slink down in the bed to get some shut-eye before the big event. Zzzzzz
I wake up to a dozen doctors streaming in. Someone grabs my IV and jams a vial of some chemicals in, another is flipping me and putting my foot in the air. I look like a dog ready to pee on a fire hydrant. One white-robed lady tells me: “Everything is fine but we may have to do other procedures” How ominous. But great news, I’m ready to push baby Peach pops out in less than 15 minutes! [0]
The doctor comes in to stitch me up, and I insist on nice pretty even stitches. She agrees but, there are no tears!!
Baby Peach arrives fat, healthy, with the wisest eyes I’d ever seen. He looked like an old monk trapped in a baby body. (Froggy had playful eyes) My parents come with the bougie salted caramel cappuccino and breakfast sando I’m never willing to splurge on from the ultra $$$$ cafe near our house. I cuddle our little Peach and sip my coffee. The nurse comes by periodically to ask if I need painkillers but there’s no pain and we are all confused. The restoration to my old self is instant. I feel I could run a mile immediately. I read an article about the physics of retaining walls just to check if my brain works again - it does!!!
Froggy and the Little Peach
Froggy loves our new little Peach!! He has been busy divvying up his empire in preparation. The week before Peach arrived, Froggy gathered all his plastic fish and dolphins into the tub for bath and proclaimed - “These fish, they all obey me!” Then he portioned out a choice dozen or so to the side and said those will obey Peach. We told Froggy that Peach was born in the year of the Rabbit, and Froggy then earmarked two stuffed bunnies for Peach.
When Peach first came out of the womb, I thought he looked like a mini-Froggy but from the get go he’s had his own personality. He’s much quieter, cries rarely, but when he decides to cry, you’d better give him what he wants. Peach eats a comical amount of food and it all going to his cheeks.
Froggy tries very hard to play with Peach. He brings toys to Peach. When Peach doesn’t play with them because he is a newborn, Froggy thinks it’s because Peach doesn’t like the toy he was offered so he brings out armful after armful. One morning Froggy looked grumpy. I asked him why and he was upset that he says hello every morning to Peach but Peach never replies to him. I think he was a bit appalled to learn he’d have to wait another year to chat, but we taught Froggy about baby language they say “auuooo” to each other.
Peach is a super adventure baby. He’ll make a modest peep to let us know he’s bored if we’ve been in the same place too long or he’s hungry. We take him everywhere from fancy sushi to waterfall hikes and watches everything with his wise owl eyes.
Froggy stories
Every month with Froggy is the best month ever.
Froggy watched his first movies. We got him started on Lion King and Totoro. We watched Lion King with Nonna Vicky because it’s JPs first movie as a kid. They were both really eye-opening and fulfilling experiences to share. With Lion King, Froggy was scared of the “bad” Lion Scar, and I thought about pausing the movie or skipping it but he decided push through it with the support of his fearless Nonna and me. It is a tiny moment but a coming of age milestone. He got to experience psychological fear, decide to confront it, and savor the fruits of his bravery.
Later we watched we watched Totoro because our friend Jeff gifted us stuffed Totoros for Froggy and Peach. It was psychologically interesting to me. At first, I was surprised that Froggy liked it since it’s movie that’s all atmosphere and nothing really happens - unlike say Lion King. I thought the pacing would be too slow, but he was riveted the entire time. But then I thought about it, exploring a new house and walking around a forest and meeting some new animals with your sibling is Froggy current idea of an epic adventure. It’s like Lord of the Ring for him.
My other revelation, and truly this may be a reason for me to switch to being a Ghibli over Disney family is that the Ghibli soundtracks have more replay value. It’s a lot more enjoyable by the time I get to the 100th replay in the car.
Froggy and I started having our first real conversations. He’ll talk about what he remembered from the day and how he felt about it. Froggy is funny as a physical comedian because he’s expressive. He told me he saw a blue bird, but he was too loud and it ran away and he’d stomp his little feet in the air to illustrate it.
I’m pulling the long con on Froggy for bedtime. I make him tuck me in, and demand stuffed animal after stuffed animal. He stands on the side of the bed and lectures me - “Mommy, you only get 1 stuffed animal for bedtime!!”. Sometimes I give him Chinese books which he tells me he doesn’t know how to read. I insist he makes up some stories for me because Mommy can’t sleep without THAT book. He humors me for the first book so I nag him for a few more books and eventually Froggy wags his finger exasperated, “No more books!! Mommy, you need to go back to your bed so I can sleep!!! Here is your goodnight kiss!!!” He ushers me out the door happy that the difficult work of bedtime is over. It’s a good life as a Froggy mother [2]
Froggy’s cousin visited us for a week and it was truly heartmelting to see the kids play and converse. They’d hold hands while hiking and generously offer each other turns to choose the music. One day, his cousin asked him “Froggy, do you like my dress” and he replied “Yes, I do!!” and his cousin was so happy! When they were going on adventures, it was incredible to see him so genuinely happy and excited to see her succeed. There was an advanced slide, and when she successfully climbed to the top to ride it, he jumped for joy shouting “She did it!! She went down the slide!!” Froggy was very keen to impress the cousin - there were many rides at the mall he’d been completely refusing to ride because they were too scary despite seeing other smaller kids ride them. Very interesting as soon as he saw his cousin ride one, he transformed into a mall ride cowboy. Took her around the mall showing off the rides to her as if he hadn’t been mumbling in fear just a few days ago.
My little Froggy worker and his cousin collecting rocks for me.
Life with yours truly
Gardening - My love for this hobby has deepened over the years. I love putting around the garden and checking up on my plants. I have some very ambitious goals this year, there’s a sunset palette cut flower garden, and long-term investments in rose plants and peonies [3]. I’m developing the landscape beyond the garden beds — I’d like to have a shade flower garden by our tree hammock and a native wildflower garden by the creek. We’ll have the veggie garden classics of tomatoes, peas, and zucchini and I’m adding a watermelon patch (with pink, orange and yellow personal melons!) and a sunflower forest.
Childhood round two for meeeee - I’ve been going back to re-live the old childhood dreams I had at Froggy’s age. I’m surprised they’re still floating in my head after almost 30 years.
Rocks — I used to eye the shiny bags of polished rocks at the National Park gift shops and gas stations but be sad, they were so small. I liked the big fat river rocks but you could only fit 1-2 big rocks in those tiny brown felt bags. At one point, I talked my parents into buying me a kit but I didn’t know how to research the kits so the results were horrible. YouTube has given me the knowledge to procure an industrial rock tumbler. Motherhood has given power over 1 Froggy worker to deploy on rock collecting duties. There’s a pale pink crystal one I like - they’re $40/lb to buy so I’m making good $$$/hr on my Froggy worker.
Bird watching — There was a girl in elementary school, J, who always knew about all the birds at school and brought binoculars to show and tell in 3rd grade. I remember feeling a keen desire to do the same but unable to bring myself to act on it. We took the whole family out with local birding legend Julie and Froggy and I have been the birding life ever since! It’s great - he loves to look for birds, and I love to suggest he look out the window for birds when I need a few more minutes to enjoy my morning coffee.
Interesting how J is nowhere in my life, she probably has no clue who I am, but here I am 2 decades later looking at birds and wondering if she still enjoys birdwatching.
Froggy is a confident birder - he has seen goldfinches, eagles, and even kingfishers in our backyard. Sometimes I have doubts, but he educates me that the bird we are seeing has a yellow beak just like the ones in his picture books. I am an unconfident mommy as I ponder whether he should enjoy his bird safari in peace or learn to recognize robins and bluejays properly.
Wasting money on claw machines and winning giant stuffed animals. My parents never let me waste money on those neon cabinets. I’ve been on a strange low-stakes mom gambling life where I go to Round1 with other moms and win giant stuffed animals from 8-10pm every couple of weeks [4]. I got to flex on some teenage girls who saw me two weeks in a row who were like WHOA you’re such a baller, I can’t believe you can drop $50 here every week.
I’m pretending that I’m doing it for Froggy and Peach so I gotta cram them all in now before they get any actual opinions on what’s fun. It’s for me, but it’s for them - they have more fun if the whole family is passionate and joyful. I want grandkids someday so Froggy and Peach need to see how good I have it. Froggy’s going to grow up imagining the day he has his own Froggy worker to collect rocks for him. This is also for me, but once again for them because hanging out with Froggy and Peach is more fun than I could have imagined.
This is only half the animal from the trip.
I thought I finished coming of age in my teenage and 20s to become my final form. It’s reinforced from all angles - fairytales that end with happily ever, coming-of-age literature, and movies full of young protagonists. Even science tells us the brain plasticity rapidly decreases in our 30s. My lived reality is even weirder than coming of age because ages ~5 to ~30 were a smooth evolution. It’s like going from Charmander to Charizard. Then I mutated - like I started a Charizard and morphed into a Gengar. [4] I don’t think it’s just I had new experiences that changed me or I’m getting older - it feels different from past growth where I can draw a line between what happened and how I changed. Many of this batch of changes have no reason and it’s physical. I like different foods. I find different things interesting. I’m convinced my eyes and nose sense differently now. It’s surprising and scary that I have new beginnings in me but it’s also delightful. As Froggy and Peach grow up and experience the world for the first time, I get to have my own re-birth and experience the world with them.
Thanks,
Kathy
[0] What happened was that the baby’s heart rate fell in the womb around 7am which is shift hand-off time so we had two sets of doctors and nurses for me and the baby. We would have needed a c-section but I was fully dilated so we were able to deliver instead.
[1] Sigh, I have this vision of myself as a terrifying tiger mom and then I’m like the biggest punishment I can concoct is… a whole 10 minute car ride with no music!! But I do think, if you are willing to threaten, you have to be willing to execute the thread with an iron heart and this is all that my iron heart is capable of.
[2] To be clear, he likes it — when he’s being slow at flossing his teeth, I threaten to not let him read books to me and he flosses faster.
[3] Literal investments! I’ve got some designer breeds of roses that sell for $6 a stem!!
[4] I have two no-evidence/Kathy-belief-only theories here (1) It’s the large and sustained hormone changes that changed me physically. It makes sense to me that our brains have a puberty like window to transform as parenthood is such a big transition. (2) This brain plasticity loss in our 30’s thing is correlation, not causation. I think loss of brain plasticity is caused by sleep deprivation due to parenthood which happens in our 30s. I recently read an article that recent science has shown brain plasticity decreases in early 30s not late twenties now and I was like HRMMMM really seems in line with a shift in parenthood trends.