No Waste Family

That is what I call our family to our kids whenever they do something that is wasteful to me--"What family are we?" In monotone unison, "The no waste family." "That's right so eat that last grain of rice!"

I really hate it when things or food go to waste. I am not sure if it is the Korean immigrant mentality in me, the tree hugger in me, or the scrooge in me--probably a combination of all three.

While I don't go to the lengths of 1st generation Korean moms who would reuse ziplock bags (I actually rarely use ziplocks because they are not recycleable, but if I do and there are no greasy food particles in it, I will use it to wrap Sam's poopy pull-up), I am pretty bad, or good, depending on your perspective--

All the artwork our children do at home is on the back of a piece of paper. Only if they are drawing a picture for someone's birthday card, do I give them ONE piece of clean paper. When I give them the pristine sheet of paper, their eyes light up like it is Christmas.

If there is cake leftover from a birthday party, I see it as my own personal mission to eat it all up before it goes bad. Once we had 1/4 sheet of ice cream cake left and I ate it all up on my own in less than a week. It was a tough job but the thought of throwing out all that cake was too painful.

As far as I am concerned, those "best used by" dates on food are an approximation, give or take a year...and that includes dairy products. Chang and I are big into the sniff test. A little sour odor just means there are more active bacteria to help us poop better...waaay better.

Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Beach Boys vs Backstreet Boys

Joey is now a full-fledged reader. I am amazed at how much her reading ability has improved in this past year. Her teacher is recommending that she begin reading chapter books. Though I would like for her to tackle War and Peace soon, I figure we would just ease into it with some fun books like Junia B Jones, Magic Tree House, and Amelia Bedelia.

Joey has been reading Amelia Bedelia for a while now and those books bring back memories. I read Amelia Bedelia when I was younger and I remember not understanding the idioms or phrases used in the book. I didn't get the humor of the book at all though I understood the premise of the book. To a certain degree, I felt like Amelia Bedelia. Even though I was born and raised here in the states, I am definitely the child of immigrant parents and a lot of things that are so ingrained in American culture are things I am still trying to figure out.

I realized that there are some lessons learned through formal education and other lessons learned through parents. So I have decided to take it upon myself to teach our kids music. And I'm not talking about Beethoven. If our kids never learn to distinguish between Fur Elise or Clair de Lune, it's somewhat forgivable. But if our kids don't know the difference between the Beach Boys and the Backstreet Boys, they may end up as the idiot on Jay Leno's "Jay Walking" one day.

So I have been forcing the kids to listen to the radio in the car, instead of Raffi or the Wiggles (thank God I am finally free!). And whenever a song comes on that I deem worthy of retention in their mental music catalogs, I yell out the singer and title of the song. I sing along to try to get them into it, but the girls are not interested at all. Sam, on the other hand, is enjoying it for the most part. Now he asks me who is singing when we listen to the radio and he always repeats the name as if he will actually remember.

Sam: Who's this, Mommy?
Me: This is Soft Cell.
Sam: Sah Sel?
Me: Mm-hmm, Soft Cell singing Tainted Love.

Next song...
Sam: Who's this, Mommy?
Me: This is Taylor Sw...never mind. I'm sure in a few years, we'll all be over her.
Sam: Never mind?
Me: Mm-hmm, Baby, never mind.

A Spamtacular Mistake

So I am guilty of emotional eating. I eat my favorite ice cream (B&J's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch) practically every night as a means to treat myself after a grueling day with the kids.

Despite the torrential downfall of rain, I still had to run my usual errands, one of them being Costco. I have to say, it really sucked. I didn't strap Sam in because the safety belt was soaking wet. So the whole time, I was trying to keep him from taking a flying leap from the cart. Finally, I put him in the back part of the cart and he happily beat on the boxes of pull-ups like drums.

When I was at the checkout line, the guy who loads up the carts asked me to put Sam into the front part of the cart. He might as well have asked me to conjure up a two headed snake out of thin air. Both were impossible tasks, and the whole time they were ringing me up, I was wrestling a screaming Sam, trying to cram his feet through the leg openings of the front part of the cart. After the sadistic cart-loading guy watched me attempt mission impossible, he told me it was okay and let Sam stay in the back while he loaded up the cart. When I got outside, the rain was pouring down. I let Sam hold the umbrella while I tried to run and push the stroller. Sam thought it would be funny to hold the umbrella upside down so it would catch the rain more than repel it. Yeah, not very funny.

By the time we were on our way home, I was already done for the day, and it was only 11:30 am. I was soaked with rain and self-pity, so I drove to the nearby In-N-Out and ordered a cheeseburger (animal style), fries and a chocolate shake. I totally deserved it, right?

Well, that night, I lost it again. I mean, really lost it. So after we put the kids to bed, I made myself S'mores. It hit the spot and the world was good again.

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Do you ever get a craving for something and that desire to eat it just simply won't go away? Well, I have had a hankering for Spam for weeks now. Probably due to this blog post. Clearly, Spam is not the healthiest thing to eat and honestly, do I want to bring it into the house and raise up a new generation of Spam eaters? If we were extremely healthy, maybe I would have given in earlier, but as you can see, we're not. So it took all my willpower to say no to the Spam. But we were at a mall yesterday and there was an Ono Hawaiian BBQ place. The Spam Musubi was crying out to me like a muse and I could no longer resist. I got two Spam Musubi. You know how they say that there will be a big feast in heaven. Well, I have not doubt that Spam Musbi will be one of the many treats in the heavenly buffet.

Unfortunately, my body did not agree with the excessive intake of Spam, and I think I have been cured of my Spam cravings for quite some time. But God, please keep Spam Musubi on the menu in heaven because up there, we won't have to deal with indigestion, right?

Not Exactly a Lump of Coal...

Around this time of the year, I begin to hoard things for the kids. Stuff that they would normally receive right away, such as toothbrushes and toothpaste. All these items get wrapped and placed under the tree. They may not be the most exciting gifts but when wrapped in festive decorations, the wow factor gets kicked up a notch.

So on the dawn of Christmas morning, the kids will be getting goodies such as underwear, fleece pants, Scholastic books, and toothbrushes. I did get them a couple fun items too like:

For Joey

For Elysha

For Sam

The functional gifts remind me of the prizes we would win at picnics hosted by our 1st Generation Korean churches. After winning a potato sack race, we got to choose from an assortment of prizes ranging from toilet paper to bar soap. It was disappointing as an eight year old to walk away with toothpaste, but if it was wrapped in snazzy wrapping paper, I'm pretty sure I would have been more excited.

Korean Men and Soju--Not a Good Combination

I was listening to NPR the other day and they mentioned the case of Yuon Bum Lee, a Hyundai executive who caused the death of a motorcyclist because he drove intoxicated. I think the reporter said that Lee supposedly had about 20 drinks and decided it would be a good idea to drive himself home. How stupid is that? Instead of owning up to what he did, he took off to Korea and vanished...until now.

I know that it is wrong, but I have this stereotype of Korean men, who drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol when they go out on company functions or you know, just a Tuesday night. In Korean custom, if someone offers you a drink, you have to drink it, plus you then pour a drink for the person who just offered you the drink. As you might guess, this custom can lend itself to many soju shots. This whole scene freaked me out enough that I never went to a Korean night club...or any club of any sorts.

At one of my many jobs, I worked at Stanford in the Registrar's department. My job was to ensure that graduate students met all their university requirements prior to receiving their degree, as well as take in their dissertations. I did this job for only a year but during my time there, I took in the dissertation of a Korean foreign student. His dissertation did not meet the university requirements but it was a quick fix so he was pretty much done...except that he wasn't. Even so, he went out drinking with his friends that weekend and was killed in a car accident because his friend was driving drunk. The registrar came up to me shortly after the accident and asked me to grant the student his PhD posthumously. It was a sad situation but I remember just feeling angry that he and his friends would make such a bad judgment call on their sobriety.

Chang doesn't drink and though sometimes I wish we could share a bottle of wine together every now and then, I really do like the fact that he doesn't drink...shattering the bad stereotype of Korean men that I have in my head from the stories I have heard, and the silly (and highly addictive) Korean dramas that I have watched. Okay, so none of my KA male friends really resemble this mental image I have, but when I hear stories like this of Yuon Bum Lee, it just reinforces it and it really irritates me.

Our Immigrant-like Day in the Snow

We drove out to Mt Baldy to play in the snow. Originally, I figured the girls can ghetto it up by wearing jeans with leggings underneath, a rain jacket with a sweatshirt and sneakers...you know, just like their mama did during those church winter retreats in which we would actually encounter patches of snow. I didn't own any real snow gear until I started skiing in sixth grade.

Anyhow Chang went to REI earlier in the month and got the kids (including Sam) snow jackets. At first, I scoffed at the idea but REI is having a really good sale! He got Joey a size 8 which is way too big so I went back to exchange the jacket and got suckered into buying the kids (including Sam) snow pants.

We had a blast on the little patches of snow that we found on the side of the road with the other families who didn't want to pay the $8 per person to get into the tubing park. The kids didn't need a lot of snow to actually enjoy it. What made Chang and I snicker is the fact that there were a ton of ethnic people at the make-shift free snow park. It reminded me of my childhood.

I want to rent a winnebago every summer and drive around the US to different landmarks. It may sound cheap but it is still four star compared to the one family vacation I had as a kid. My dad converted an econoline van into a motel with a couple plywood planks, some sleeping bags and a propane portable stove. I have no idea where we bathed those few weeks we were on the road, but we got to see the Grand Canyon, Mt Rushmore, Old Faithful and some ginormous statue of Paul Bunyan in some state. Am I weird that I really want to fight the "Jefferson's" mentality of movin' on up? As I wrote before, the kids need to "slum" it up more...get some ethnic upbringing into their memories to balance out the good life that they are living.

Living the Good Life

Chang and I went out on another date night the other night. We watched Slumdog Millionaire. I had no idea what the movie was about and we were about 15 minutes late going into it, so I was a little lost in the beginning. But it sucks you in immediately. Both Chang and I think it is one of the best movies we have seen in a long time. During and at the end of the movie, I got very choked up. The movie is about two brothers who grew up orphaned in the slums of India, and then were taken in by a gangster who took homeless children under his wing and forced them to beg for him.

There were some disturbing scenes and all the while, I couldn't help but think of my kids. They are truly living the good life. Chang and I have talked about the lack of struggles our kids will experience by not being children of immigrant parents, by not growing up poor, by not being forced to do manual labor to help the family business. It is not that I want my children to suffer, but there is a part of me that worries about them. I mean, come on...they have the perfect parents (natch), they live in a house in LA, they want of nothing...this is why I am so hard on them. Yup, if life circumstances do not cause them to suffer, then I, as their thoughtful mother, see it as my duty to be a tiny bit hard, impatient, snarly. When, in the future after years of therapy, they overcome their embittered childhood memories, they will thank me for not spoiling them with loving-kindness and understanding. Life has to suck, one way or another, in order to grow up grounded, you know?

In other news, Sam is becoming a bear to handle. That willfulness is kicking in like a toddler high on chocolate milk and gummy bears. When he doesn't want to eat something anymore, he squeals and tosses it from the high chair, or spits it out if it is already in his mouth. Like Elysha when she was this age, he throws himself to the ground when he is upset. Man, I thought I got lucky with this child, but that crazy gene that all my kids possess must have just been dormant in him.

Here's Hoping for Five Generations of Turkey with Kimchi for Thanksgiving.

I was reading Hawaii5-ohana's blog and Nina's post on Kimchi Mamas it got me thinking...

I grew up in a community that was fairly diverse. When I became a member of the student government in high school, I was asked by the advisor if I thought there was anyway to get the different groups to interact more with one another. We talked about the layout of the lunch area and found it somewhat amusing that the predominantly white cheerleaders/jocks sat in this section, the band members sat in another, african-american students sat here while the hispanics sat there. There was very little intermingling between the different races. It was very much like that scene in "Mean Girls." Asian-american students sat on the end of the lunch area, not on tables, but on the concrete planters. There were maybe a handful of students that were multi-ethnic--my BFF being one of them. We hardly talked to each other during school since I was in all the honor classes and she was the head cheerleader.

Maybe it is because we were young and we had issues outside of our race to deal with like her mother passing away, my parents divorcing, her on-again, off-again relationship with the captain of the football team, and my inability to date one guy for longer than three weeks. I never saw her struggle with her identity as someone of both Japanese and European descent.

As I meet more people with multi-ethnic backgrounds and read interesting posts on Kimchi Mamas, I feel embarrassed that I was so unaware of the complex struggle of identity that some people of multiple ethnicities experience. Now with Obama as president, he has become a symbol of hope, change, the future. And as much as african-americans shed joyous tears at his election (as if his election is the fruition of all their struggles here in the US, from past to present), those of multi-ethnic backgrounds share in the victory just as much.

I voted for McCain. The biggest reason is because I don't like any one party having so much control. I know my vote for president was moot being here in California, but I still voted for McCain in defiance, despite my extremely strong misgivings for Palin. However, when it was clear that Obama would be our next president. I cried. Uniting with everyone who has experienced bigotry, in one form or another, I cried. Regardless of how I feel about politics, his election was awe-inspiring and did make me feel like we have entered a new era, uncharted territory, a vast unknown of possibilities that have opened up for my children.

I really believe that the likelihood of my children marrying korean-american is very unlikely. Maybe because of this, all this talk about race, being multi-ethnic and the inherent struggles of being half is really interesting to me. Additionally, I want our children to retain as much of our korean heritage as possible--it is a losing battle for me now as a 2nd generation korean-american. I can only imagine what it is going to be like for my children's children. My only hope is that five generations from now, kimchi will be one of the sides served during Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Happy 1st Birthday Sam!

My baby is one today. It is hard to believe that he is already one year old. Even the girls were saying that the year went by fast. We had a family gathering at our house yesterday and it was chaotic with the wildfires. I had family coming from all over and everyone was stuck in traffic. My poor mommy had to drive all the way here by herself. The original plan was for her to drive to my uncle's house, and then they come together. But with the 91 closed down, they designated my older uncle's house as the meeting point. But the 10, 60, and 57 freeways were a mess so I rerouted her all the way around where the traffic was flowing. So unfortunately, she had to drive three hours to get to our house. Fortunately, she is doing much better with her physical therapy. She says she can now raise her hands to the heavens. Still, she is tired and being stuck in the car for hours doesn't help.

Anyhow, everyone eventually made their way over to our home and it was nice to have everyone over. Sam was being a good baby as usual. Originally, I wasn't going to do all the traditional Korean stuff but my mother-in-law insisted. My uncle said we should have been going all out for the boy, like we did with Joey (for whom we did a mini-wedding at a nice Korean restaurant. And yes, male favoritism runs rampant in both sides of the family). My sister-in-law felt bad for Sam, so she splurged on a balloon arch and other decorations. We set out the stuff for the dol jabee and Sam grabbed a pencil and a golf ball. My mother-in-law declared he would become president. The nice thing is now that Obama is president-elect, there is a part of me that thinks it could actually happen.

What I love most about Sam these days is that though he plays very independently, he likes to know that we are around. When I am busy around the house, he follows me around like a puppy. And when he is playing by himself in the playroom, I will come sit next to him after I am done doing whatever, and when he sees me, his face lights up, he stops whatever he was doing, crawls over to me, and collapses into my lap. He will lay his head in my lap for a little bit and then go back to what he was doing. He also gives us kisses. Sometimes, when I am holding him, he will put his head against my chest or shoulder, look up at me, and then lean in and kiss me. He makes that "mmmmah" sound while he presses his slobbery lips against mine. It is so cute. Afterwards, I feel like I have been slimed because he is so drooly, but it is still so adorable. When he is being held, he has this look on his face of total surrender and implicit trust. I pray, pray, pray that it will never go away.

I love you Sammy! We all love you so much. With all the circumstances surrounding your conception, gestation, and delivery, I have no doubt in my mind that you are a gift from God. He has a plan and a purpose for you. You will always be my cuddle bunny. If I had my way, you would always fit in the crook of my arm.

Pictures to come tomorrow...

Will our kids be as Korean as they look?

Okay, here is a serious topic that I have been thinking about a lot these days.

Even though Chang and I are both 100% Korean ethnically, we are culturally Korean-American. I say Korean-American because you can bet your kimchijigae that if you compare us to a Caucasian-American family, there will be very discernable differences. But we would probably identify more with a Caucasian-American family than with a Korean-Korean family. Beyond the fact that we eat rice regularly or our kids ask for oo-yoo when they want milk, I think the Korean part of our heritage is interwoven in our daily lives. Even so, I feel a sense of loss on many levels. For instance, I know that our kids will probably not speak korean, or pick it up as easily as I did when I was 18, and made the decision to start speaking korean to my parents. Will our kids ever have really meaningful conversations with the older generation in our families? Did I? Nope.

I am already a very watered down Korean girl. Someone once told me that my parents raised me wrong because I was never forced to speak Korean, learn Korean customs, or even eat Korean food. I dated various ethnicities, but it was when I was dating a Caucasian Texan in college that I realized that being with an ethnically Korean man was more important to me than I originally thought.

To think that Chang and I are somehow suppose to impart Korean culture and customs to our children seems like a hopeless cause. But at the same time, what is it that I want to pass down to our children? Speaking the language? Eating the food? Or is the implicit understandings that are inherent not only in Korean culture as it is just common decency and displaying compassion, selflessness, and generosity--bringing a gift when invited to someone's house, caring for the older generation, fighting over the restaurant tab, making monumental sacrifices in order to give to the younger generation a better chance at a better life.

Just some thoughts that have been running through my head and will probably keep running through my head even when my kids are married and have their own kids.