I’ll admit, it was a crabby day. The whole Valentine’s thing didn’t help. I’m sooo a curmudgeon, but this holiday sort of annoys me. Is that terrible? The kids seem to really dig it though. They spent part of Sunday making cards for each one of their teachers and classmates and Mia came home with a bounty of cards and candy. It’s all about hearts, the color red, cute little cards and candy. Wish life were that simple.

New Yorkers were reveling in 50 degree temps today. The snow from January is almost all gone. I really wanted to spend the day walking around by myself, but it wasn’t meant to be, too many annoying little things to take care of at home. I spent a good hour sitting on my bed in the sun instead. I felt like the cat, and in fact I did kick the cat off the bed in order to hog the patch of sun to myself. Mark went to the Flea Sunday sick and woke up to go to the kitchen at 7am, only to return within an hour because he wasn’t feeling well. He spent most of the entire day in bed, asleep. Though we rarely get sick, the schedule and lack of sleep sometimes catches up on you. Hopefully he’ll awake in the morning feeling much better because one more day out of the kitchen and we’ll be behind on orders. It’s non-stop when you own a business. You don’t get sick days and Mark did in fact drag himself out of bed in the afternoon to push about a dozen packages to the post office in his granny cart (the people need their cookies!). This is when I sat in that patch of sunlight on the bed, while he was gone.

Sometimes you feel melancholy for no particular reason. I sort of sat there spacing out, feeling a bit overwhelmed by stuff. It takes a good bit of work to stay positive and happy, but I let my guard down at that moment. I think most times we’re so busy that we don’t really stop to think – but maybe that’s a good thing. Or maybe it’s denial. But then you snap out of it because it’s time to pick up the kids from school and then you’re off again.

Tomorrow is another day.

And it went something like this:

Mia: “I’m writing in my diary right now and I don’t want anyone to read what I’m writing”.

Claudine walks over to the table where Mia’s writing in her diary and hovers.
Mia: “CLAUDINE! Go away! I don’t want you to read it!”.

Me (while washing dishes): “Uh, Claudine doesn’t know how to read yet. She doesn’t know what you’re writing”.

Mia: “But she knows how to read SOME words, like “I” and “Mia”.

Me: “Um, ok, but she’s not going to get any information just from those words out of context. But anyway, Claudine, you should give Mia her privacy.”

Claudine walks away, reluctantly.

Me: “What are you writing in there anyway?”

Mia: “Stuff. Private stuff. And I’m going to make sure no one reads my diary by switching up the key and locks so no one can open it”.

Me: “Ok, but you just told me how to open it. You don’t want mommy to read your diary either?”

Mia: “No”.

Me: “Ok, guess it’s really private”.

“Do it”.

I hear a little voice and I look down. Claudine appears out of NOWHERE and is suddenly standing next to me. She cups her hands around her mouth and whispers again, “Do it.”

Me: “Huh? Do what?”

Claudine (points in Mia’s direction behind her other hand so Mia can’t see):
“Read. The. Diary.”

Mark and I aren’t big on Valentine’s day, probably because for a week, it’s Valentine’s all day, every day. Plus our high school had this tradition where you can buy someone a flower, anonymous or with a note, and then it would get delivered to you during homeroom period on Valentine’s Day. The pretty cheerleader girls always got delivered multiple flowers. Since I never had a boyfriend all throughout high school, it pretty much sucked, plus as art major goths we thought the tradition was stupid. But my friends and I would buy each other sympathy flowers anyway so at least we didn’t walk around school flowerless all day and unloved. I know the gesture is nice, but don’t school administration remember what it’s like to be a teenager where everything ends up being a popularity contest?

Thanks to everyone who ordered treats for their Valentine’s this year – it was our biggest Valentine’s Day yet so it definitely kept Mark busy in the kitchen all week. And because Valentine’s prep week always coincides with Mia’s birthday week (’cause ya know birthdays just drag on for days), the beginning of February is always hectic.

We survived another birthday party, the first drop off party we’ve hosted. We had 14 girls over for Valentine’s Day card making, cookie decorating, pin the arrow on the heart playing, fun. The girls were sweet and well behaved and surprisingly didn’t dump every toy basket all over the floor (in fact, the girls’ room remained intact – a birthday miracle!). The trick is to have almost every minute of the 2 hour party scheduled with activities or else they start running amuck and that’s when mayhem can ensue, but Mark and I kept it pretty much in control with him muttering, “we’re never doing this again” only once (oh c’mom Mark, you know we’re going to have to do this again). The only time I got really scared was when Mark brought out the cake and to get everyone’s attention, started singing “Happy Birthday” really loudly which then gave the girls permission to continue singing very loudly. Imagine 14 little girls singing at the top of their lungs and for some strange reason, channeling Ethel Merman while they’re at it, and I guarantee you’d be scared too.

So we’re done with our rough week and we don’t have to think about birthday parties again for another 8 months. Mia, however, gets to go to another birthday tonight – a sleepover party, in fact. I hear 7 girls are coming over and sleeping on one big multiple airbed mattress in the living room. Those parents are brave.

Blah blah, Tiger Mom, blah blah. After reading the WSJ excerpts, every X/Y generation Asian-American comes forward with their own war stories! Westerners are appalled! It’s old news by now so why do I bring this up now? I admit that I didn’t read the original article till rather recently. I snorted and dismissed it when I saw the title “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”. But then, you know, a rap song came out…and parodies… and memes, so I finally followed a link and read the essay (here you go if you’ve been living under a rock). None of it was shocking, but not because I was raised by a Tiger mom (this phrase is seriously cringe-worthy, btw). My mom always used to tell me that she wasn’t strict, that she pretty much let us do whatever we wanted and that she didn’t pressure us to bring home good grades. When I was a kid I used to roll my eyes whenever she would say this, but in looking back, yeah…I think she was right.

So why did my brother and I seem like near perfect examples of your stereotypical overachiever, Asian kid if we weren’t raised with the same kind of overzealous, extreme parenting style that Amy Chua represents? Here, let’s go down the list:

1. Piano lessons – check! (ok, so neither my brother or I played Carnegie Hall when we were 15, but I did audition for the school band with a cover of Rush’s Subdivisons on keyboards. That has to count for something, right? (btw, that video is a FINE piece of visual social commentary on the mediocrity and conformity of suburban existence. You know, if you can get past Geddy Lee looking straight at you with that hair.)

2. School spelling bee champ – check! (ok, so I didn’t advance on the next round in the Queens Catholic school regionals. I lost to a girl who had a million new wave band buttons on her uniform vest. I’m telling you, I was distracted by all those faces of Martin Gore and John Taylor looking back at me).

3. Valedictorian in Junior High School – check!

4. Top 5% in my high school class – check! (our high school used to post our academic rankings for each grade in the hallway of our school, all the way from #750 in last place to #1. Great for self esteem! Seriously, what was the point of making that public only to humiliate the bottom 5% and make the top 5% feel smug?)

5. Full scholarships to art schools – check! (ooooh, wait. back up! Asian kids aren’t allowed to study art for reals as careers, only as hobbies…or are they?)

My brother had more of a math oriented route in his adolescent academic career. He was the kid who got near perfect scores on his Math SATs and who got into the most competitive high school in NYC where 50% of the student body is Asian (I’m not even making that statistic up).

So I tell you all this because we were pretty stereotypical Asian-American kids. Aside from the academic stuff, we never dated in high school, never rebelled or disobeyed our parents, but according to my mom, it’s not because my parents were super strict and hard core. Sure, they made us go to Saturday test preps courses for 3 years, both for high school entrance exams and the SATs – pretty much every Asian kid did, but from my honest recollection, I’d have to agree with her. And yet both my brother and I were really hard on ourselves. I can’t totally speak for him, but I don’t think either of us would have settled on less than being “the best”. I was a competitive, type A all the way student who would dwell for days on the rare event that I got an A minus or slipped a mistake on a piano recital.

So where does this come from if it doesn’t come directly from our parents? I don’t recall it being touched upon in any of the discussions I read that followed the Tiger Mom crap, but I think there is this whole other universally larger, culturally and genetically ingrained Tiger “gene”. I think it’s 1 part fear of being seen as a cultural failure – you know, that 1 aberrant Asian kid who gets bad grades in school, 1 part fear of disappointing our parents, and 1 part peer pressure from all these stereotypes. We’re Asian. We’re expected to get good grades and play the piano because everyone tells us so. The media tells us, our family tells us, every Asian kid getting into Harvard tells us. And so even if my parents didn’t adopt the Amy Chua style of extreme Asian parenting, the undercurrent of all that it represented was there. My brother and I just happened to be the ones to discipline ourselves into more practicing and more studying. I guess the key thing here is that we *didn’t* want to find out what would happen if we brought home bad grades. Even if my parents weren’t the ones to strictly enforce it, the pressure to excel was still there.

Even with all that internal pressure that my brother and I put upon ourselves, I commend my parents for recognizing certain signs and not pushing us in directions that would have otherwise been too much. My brother went to a state university, albeit a very good one, and it was a conscious decision on my parents’ part to not push him into going to an Ivy League college even though he had the grades to make it. I think we all recognized that the pressure might just be too much given how so intensely hard he was on himself and that he would fare better in a smaller, SUNY school. Later on, when he was more mature, he did apply to all the top Med and Vet schools and attend an Ivy league University, but he was ready.

On my side of the story, my parents were always very supportive of my choice to study art, but I did what most Asian parents would consider the cardinal sin of Asian-ness: drop out of school. It took me 3 years to do it and the only reason why I stuck around for so long was because I was afraid of my parents’ reaction. When I did tell them over the phone that day in April, right before the finish of my 3rd year at Cooper, they were relatively calm. They told me to come home in a few days to discuss it. (Oh, and I also told them I was leaving NY as well to go “traveling”. Shazaam! Double doozy!). My parents sat me down at the kitchen table and my dad, who remained calm after avoiding me for a day while I was home, just made me promise that I would go back to school and finish my degree. I’ll still remember the day my dad and I had that talk. I’ll also never forget the day that I left NY and into the unknown for the 8 months of traveling I did before I went back to school. I went to say goodbye to him at his wig store in Midtown. He had tears in his eyes. I hadn’t ever intended to go back to school prior to that point, but at that moment, I decided that I would, and I did, and even got a graduate degree later on. I honestly can’t say that my dad really contributed to our parenting, but he was definitely of the school that you disciplined your kids through fear. The fact that he didn’t beat my ass when I dropped out of school spoke volumes, and this is why I went back.

All of these experiences shape you as a parent. There are things you vow to do differently and there are things that you admire your parents for and want to adopt. I’m definitely not a Tiger mom, but my mom does seem to think that I’m a little more strict with the girls than she was with us. To be honest, I’m sort of surprised at how mellow I am on the parenting front – I’m not rushing to get my kids tested at age 5 to see if they qualify for the Gifted & Talented schools, for example. I barely batted an eye over that one, but it remains to be seen whether or not I’ll continue the Asian-American tradition of enrolling my kids into multiple years of SAT test preps (just kidding, girls. ok, maybe just 1 year). I’m not even stressing yet over the fact that Mia seems to have a lackadaisical attitude about homework (she hates it) and wants to throw in the towel too fast when something’s too hard. Tiger mom would have already dished her a verbal beat down. What I’m taking away from my own upbringing is that it’s okay to gently nudge, to set expectations high, but ultimately let the kids lead their own way, with guidance. I can even argue that Mark had a completely different upbringing and childhood than I did, but in the end, we kind of ended up in the same place as adults. Even if I did have a few years of “crazy” behavior after high school, which I’m sure my mom would rather prefer not to remember, I ended up ok. My kids will too.

I’ll end this super long post now, but I do want to leave you with one quote from Betty Liu, a Journalism Professor at NYU, who recommends reading the memoir of Zappos’ founder over Tiger Mom’s:

“…there’s a dirty little secret about these lunatic, prestige-whoring Chinese parents that Chua represents. For all their lusting after the elitism of Ivy League degrees, what they admire more than anything is financial success.”.

Oh lawd, I never laughed so hard…because truer words have never been spoken. Look, Tiger Mom isn’t stupid. Defensive back-pedaling or not, that article made news, BIG news and the book is selling like gangbusters. Tiger Mom is laughing all the way to the bank.

Parents of babies, listen up. See that sweet little tiny person over there? They grow up. Yeah, that impossibly cute, babbling, toddling creature grows up to become a little lady. Exhibit A:

And as each year passes and your baby grows that much closer to independence and adolescence, your little one’s birthday feels a little like your birthday too (I mean it’s only fair, right? You were there, in a big way, when it happened).

So the first night of birthday celebrations has passed. A pre, day-before birthday dinner with the grandparents (and one of her birthday wishes came true: a real gold necklace!). Opening cards, having the first of 2 birthday cakes (the supermarket cake from my dad seems to be like a funny tradition now) and maybe really understanding this year what that annual college savings check from Grandma really means.

Before the week is over, they’ll be a party and cupcakes at school, but today is family birthday night. Just the 4 of us. Happy birthday Miss Mia.

It’s 1:30am. I know it’s technically Tuesday, but the week already seems impossibly slow and long. It’s a holiday shipping week (Valentine’s Day), so it’s nothing surprising. We’ve been through this before, but some days wear you down. Mark has a whole week of long days ahead of him. It’s days like this where we think we’re really stupid not to have hired help or an intern from a culinary school, but it’s one more thing on our long list of things to do. We just haven’t gotten to it yet.

On my end, I’ve been juggling a couple of projects, including our W&S website redesign. There are a bunch of things brewing too, some projects that will pay the bills, others that I’m crossing my fingers for. I rarely ever get excited about design jobs – I mean really truly excited – but there is one that I’m really hoping will happen. I’m grateful to be busy these days, but I do sometimes feel like I’m scattered all over the place.

And then there are projects in my head that I want to do for fun. My only enemy is time.

In other news, Mia’s got a new hobby that she learned from one of her classmates’ parents at school – finger knitting. She’s been making scarves for her dolls and for some of her friends (saw our neighbor kid wear one to school today when we picked her up in the morning. So sweet). She says she wants to make a bunch and sell them at craft fairs. She named her business, “Knitting Delights”. I gotta say, it’s a step up from what she declared she wanted to be a few years ago – a cleaning lady.

Funny how I started the new year all proud of myself for making good on my promise to go out more with friends last year. It’s been all downhill since then. Maybe it’s my work schedule, maybe it’s the snow, but I feel like I spent January hibernating. Had a nice weekend though – hanging out with neighbors Friday night, taking the girls to a concert on Saturday, and a 3 hour brunch in Dumbo in a fire lit private room for an old friend’s 40th birthday. Tomorrow I meet a friend for breakfast in the East Village. It was (relatively) warm today. You could hear the drip drip sound of melting snow wherever you walked. The icicles that had been hanging down over our balcony were gone by afternoon. It almost made you believe that the groundhog was getting it right this year – Spring may be around the corner (maybe hopefully oh please yes).

There’s a lot of drama with Miss C lately. A lot of slammed doors and huffy faces. She storms to her room and slams the door at least once a day. She doesn’t like to be reprimanded or told what to do. It’s a different sort of attitude than the kind we see in almost 7 year old Mia, though I imagine some of it is imitated from her sister (remember this post? Those pictures still slay me). I’m at least guessing it’s because Claudine has an older sister whom shes learns this stuff from because I don’t ever remember Mia being so dramatic at 4.

But let me tell you something she did the other day that stunned us. She didn’t like the fact that Mark picked her up from a playdate with our downstairs neighbor and brought her home. She made angry faces, fiddled with the front door and when she couldn’t open it, stormed to the couch and buried her face in the cushions. Just a few minutes later, she walked off down the hallway to storm into her room. Or so I thought. But I heard a door slam and it wasn’t the door to her bedroom. We have a back door to another stairwell in our bedroom hallway, but….no….there is NO WAY she could have….oh hell nah…WHAT? Are you kidding me? She opened the door, let herself out and slammed it behind her???

OK, Mia has never done that. Neither of the kids have ever tried to leave the apartment. I mean sure, I GUESS it was always a possibility. I mean we do have 3 entryways into this place, including an elevator that opens right into our house, so there’s lots of ways to get in and out, but they all have deadbolts and…OMG, I can never doze off while working or take a quick shower or be in a different room than her ever again!

I think, however, we sufficiently scared her into never doing this again. By scare, I mean explaining that the door self locks from the outside and she’d be locked out of the house and stuck in the stairwell, maybe for days without food or water or a cat to pet. There may have been a mention or two about the boogeyman. Maybe.

But you know, it must be hard being 4. I certainly can’t imagine what’s going on in her head. We had Wii family game night that very evening, a few hours after “the incident”. We played a pleasant round of bowling. That was fun. Claudine wanted to try skydiving. Cool. Then Mia wanted to play this sword fighting game where it was her against all these sword wielding characters coming towards her, Indiana Jones style. But you know, those Wii characters are cute, not scary. The game takes place in happy, resort-type settings. It was funny to watch Mia spaz out, knocking all the little figures off the bridge (her strategy is to just keep swinging the sword non stop, even if you don’t have any opponents coming towards you). Claudine wanted to have a turn at this game too and there was laughter at first, but then the laughter turned into crying. We tried to get her to stop playing, but she wouldn’t stop. She just kept swinging her arms and her sword, eyes fixed to the screen, crying hysterically. You could feel her stress level escalating every time more characters emerged from the woodwork towards her, and when she had successfully knocked off the last character and won the game, she burst into fresh tears. I had never seen anything quite like it.

The sword game had been too much for her. She couldn’t distinguish between reality and fantasy game play. It was as if she thought those characters were really coming for her, not her game persona. Lesson learned and there were a lot of hugs and cuddles when the game was over. Miss C may think that she’s bigger than her britches and may have that door slamming routine down like a moody 14 year old, but she is only 4 after all.

This photo might be my favorite of me and the girls. You may have seen it on Apartment Therapy’s OhDeeDoh yesterday (oh hi, new readers) and you may see it again in another yet to be published interview. We took them last Fall specifically for these features because, well, there just aren’t that many of me and the girls. Sometimes it takes 50 shots before you get one that captures that special something and I think this one nailed it (you can see a few outtakes below). Mia’s expression is so perfect – it’s so her, and I love Claudine’s dreamy face looking out the window.

So with me usually behind the camera, it’s up to Mark to take these rare photos of us. It’s not that he can’t take a good photo, but sometimes I’ll hand over the camera, we’ll take some pictures, I’ll go through the shots and…they’re all blurry. Or blown out. “How are they all so blurry?”, I say, “It’s autofocus!”. So there’s usually a lot of post production Photoshop work when Mark takes a picture, but whatever. Sometimes it not about perfect lighting or the perfect exposure or the sharpness of a photo. The most compelling photos are ones that make you feel something and when I look at that photo I just want to go give bear hugs to those girls. And maybe pinch those cheeks.

Speaking of photos and image quality, I’ve been agonizing and going back and forth about upgrading my camera to a better, but more expensive model for the past couple of months (and getting another lens too). I started taking better pictures when I bought this camera, my first DSLR, but now that I’ve been shooting with it for 2 years, I see the limitations and it’s been frustrating. I haven’t been able to pull the trigger though. I’m not a pro photographer and it’s hard to justify spending that much money on a camera (but write offs! I need tax write offs for 2011!! But OMG, it’s soooo expensive) We’ll see. Mark is the enabler of the family, however, and he’ll tell me to buy just about anything even though he doesn’t spend any money himself (seriously, dude does not buy anything at all). I’m sort of split on the money spending. I can horde money and be afraid to spend it (because see? Our health insurance premiums!), but I can definitely spend (damn you, those stupid JCrew 30% off sale emails that land in my inbox).

But I have to say, I do like Mark’s philosophy: “Sometimes people should buy the things they want, not just the things they need”.

um. ok.

I know I just wrote a post a few hours ago, but too much seriousness so far to start the week. Health insurance, how boring. They say we’re going to have an ice storm. I look outside, but so far see nothing. I keep telling people, no, this weather is unusual. It’s never snowed this much, ever, but I recall saying the same about how cold it was last winter, how hot it was last summer. Maybe this is the norm now. I hope not. I worried about how Claudine would fare during the winter when the school year first started. Maybe it was a lot to expect a kid who just got out of the stroller in June to walk three quarters of a mile each way to school just a few months later. But surprisingly for just having turned 4, she has done well, keeping up with the older kids on the walk to school, being a trooper through rain, snow, and supposedly tomorrow, freezing rain. She’s tough. She’s from Brooklyn. She can tell stories one day about how her parents made her walk miles to school in blizzard conditions and all kinds of inclement weather when she was but a mere lass of 4.