Some dumpling making action over Thanksgiving weekend with my mom and the girls.
 
My mom claims that she hasn’t made homemade dumplings in 20 or so years. I do remember making them with her and my grandmother. She was telling the girls that when I was a kid, there weren’t that many Korean grocery stores and that they would have to make all the foods that are readily available now at stores, like dumplings and sheets of salted, toasted seaweed – you know, the kind that you can buy now already cut up in 2″ x 3″ rectangles in a foil packet. My grandmother would brush sesame oil on each large piece of seaweed, sprinkle some salt and then turn them over the fire on the stove to toast each side. She’d then cut the stacked toasted sheets into smaller pieces with a knife and store them in tupperware containers for the week. Sometimes I would help brush the sesame oil on the seaweed or snip off the roots of beansprouts before they would go into the steamer.
 
The girls were super into making dumplings especially since it’s Mia’s favorite food. Claudine, not so much, but making them appealed to her meticulous nature and they could have made dumplings for days. I don’t know if this happens to you, but sometimes I see flashbacks of when I was a kid when I see the girls with my parents. Making dumplings with grandma…just like I used to as a kid.

us, circa 1996.

It’s pretty funny to have all these old photos of us together when we were much younger. It’s more interesting still to witness how we’re both aging over the years (why do guys in general look ok with the grays that come in? So unfair).
 
Friends, I had a much sobering moment over the weekend when my back started acting up. Though it’s not officially diagnosed, I suspect I have a possible herniated disc brewing back there. I have bouts of sciatica. My childhood scoliosis probably doesn’t help (yes, I wore an awful plastic back brace for 5 years). It’s never really terribly painful, but the pain is annoying and just there. I’ve managed to keep things under control by not lifting anything at all anymore, but it is a bit sobering to see how much this affects the every day details of my life. I’ve also now realized that the decisions I have made in my early 30s have all helped shape the life I live right now where I can manage my back issues from getting worse – the fact that I had children when I did and not later in my late 30s (and no doubt my back issues became exasperated or maybe even caused by carrying, lifting, and pushing around 2 big babies for so many years). The fact that I decided that office life wasn’t for me since it’s physically hard these days to sit in a chair all day (when I am working at home, I lie as flat on my back as I can with my laptop since that puts less pressure on my lower back).
 
All of these things I know. But over the weekend while Mark was gone I sort of had a freak out moment when I realized I was so dependent on him to do all those little things I need to avoid to keep my back in check. I can’t lift anything more than 10 pounds or stand longer than an hour straight without feeling it in my back and legs the rest of the day. This is why he does all the grocery shopping. This is why I can’t work in the kitchen baking cookies or lift heavy pots of water. This is why I can’t take out the garbage or carry packages to the post office. So many little things that I can’t do.
 
I look at my mom and see how in many ways I am becoming her. When I realize that she was only 6 or 7 years older than me when she had the first of her 2 back surgeries it makes me feel really old in a way that I have never felt before. Watching your parents age is like watching a play unfold – everything is written on the wall. You see how some of their life choices are catching up with them now, or you see how some of the choices they made 20 years ago, like quitting smoking (my dad) or switching careers from a less physically demanding job (nursing) to a desk job (real estate), have made a difference for the better. The things that we do when we are younger really do affect our lives later on. You can’t see this or care about it when you’re in your 20s (we thought we were invincible back then, didn’t we?), but man, when you turn 40, suddenly all those issues are right there in your face.
 
Still, there are no regrets, but I feel like we are at a critical age where the things we are doing now will affect the rest of our lives. Our parents are a daily reminder of that, though I think we are better equipped with knowledge than they were about so many things. We can’t be in control over everything, but we are in control of some things. Make smart choices. Make everyday count.

If you haven’t taken a look at our etsy print shop lately (and why would you? I never talk about it here!) there are a ton more new kitchen conversion poster and print colors (like hot pink!).
 
Also in the shop are a bunch more photos, some from our travels to the Outer Banks for those of you who’ve asked, and a few more you might recognize from around here.
 
Use code: BLACK11 for 15% off until Sunday.
 
Did you all have a nice Thanksgiving? Are any of you crazy enough to get up at 4:30am to go shopping at the mall? I think I’ll sleep in…zzz….

It’s no secret that the girls are very attached to Mark. It might be because he is the cook, the baker, and the bedtime story reader, but the “traditional” roles of mother/father are fairly blurred at our house. I don’t think you necessarily plan out these roles when you first become parents. Maybe subconsciously these roles are shaped by our childhoods – certainly, neither Mark nor I grew up with fathers who were so involved; our mothers were our everything – but over the years these roles naturally and organically settled in.
 
So when Mark told the kids that he had to drive upstate to visit grandpa who was sick in the hospital again and that he couldn’t spend Thanksgiving with us, the first thing the kids asked was, “who’s going to cook dinner?”.
 
I found that both hilarious and kind of sad. Truth is, we are never away from our kids. The first time Mark traveled away from the girls was last year, to visit his dad in the hospital the first time. Do you remember this? It was awful, only because I was suffering from a 6 week back to back bronchial infection and I strained or cracked a rib from coughing so hard. I could barely move let only take care of the kids, but we all survived. I’ve only ever been away from my family once, when Mia was 18 months old, to attend the CES trade shows in Vegas for 4 days (incidentally I was miscarrying a baby on that trip, though I didn’t know it for sure at the time). That was it though. Not surprisingly the girls get nervous at the thought of either of us going away. I’m not sure what they’d do if we went away together without them. It hasn’t happened yet.
 
Maybe it might surprise you to know that it’s Mia, and not Claudine who stresses out the most on the rare occasions that we do leave them with a babysitter at night. She gets really nervous, frets and cries during the hours leading up to our departure. She is usually fine a half hour in after we leave, however she gets very stressed the moment she knows of the plans. Sometimes I think the kids need to get over it because they should feel lucky that we spend so much time with them, but really…it’s no fault of theirs…they don’t know anything else.
 
Mark left this morning after dropping them off at school. Surprisingly they took it well, though both teachers told me they talked about it, often. They spent the evening writing notes for him. That is something sweet that they like to do, whenever I go out for the evening, they leave a good night note and place it on my computer.
 
So far so good…till Saturday…happy thanksgiving.

It’s not uncommon in grade school for each student to be assigned a class job that rotates every week, but some of the jobs in Claudine’s kindergarten class have been a bit unusual. See her up there at a recent field trip to the park to sketch some trees? She’s the “class comforter”. What’s that you ask? She comforts her fellow classmates when they need comforting, of course. When I asked her what the job entailed she told me,”well, I take care of them if they are crying or sad and pat them on the back and say ‘it’s ok’.”
 
Damn. I think we all could use a class comforter by our side right about now.

Sometimes you just have to give into your cravings. There is just no other way.
 
Did you have a good weekend? Ours started off well: a long overdue visit with some old friends of ours and the last outdoor Brooklyn Flea Market of the season before it retreats indoors for the winter. Today has been a confusing day though and I’m not sure what the week will bring. It’s Thanksgiving week. A big change of last minute plans. We won’t be together this holiday…still…need to think about the things we are thankful for.

I know when the trees are bare and the weather turns cold for good (and the today did indeed feel like the season had finally taken its turn to more wintry temperatures) I’m going to miss these blissfully mild Fall days with its golden leaves. As dark as it gets early now (pitch black by 5pm, how dreadful!) the days seem to filled with more light, maybe because the trees are shedding leaves and allowing more sun to filter through. Let’s burn these days into our minds, shall we? We might need it for the cold days ahead…

I think for the very first time since I’ve been writing here, I’ve found that I don’t have much to say lately. I blame some of that on a recent crazy work schedule, but that has subsided for now. I don’t know whether it’s writer’s block, a sudden self consciousness about oversharing our lives on the internet, or really, that life is just chugging along with nothing out of the ordinary to report. Or maybe I just don’t feel like writing. Well, whatever it is, I’m sure it will pass.

New Yorkers, we’ve been spoiled by the weather, haven’t we? Mild temperatures in the mid 60s, sunny, the fall foliage at full peak. Sometimes the neighborhood feels like a movie set. How has Fall been in your neck of the woods?

Now that Miss C is in Kindergarten, this is the first time Claudine has had friends of her own – not the little siblings of Mia’s friends or neighbors in the building, but friends of her very own. For the past 3 weeks she’s been telling Mia all about them, planning her little gathering of a few friends from her class and drawing their names and pictures on paper over and over again. Being as shy as she is, it’s sort of a big deal to watch her pal around with her new friends at school, seeing her run to catch up with another girl, and walking and talking about whatever it is two 5 year olds talk about.
 
All day before the party Mia kept saying “I can’t believe the house is going to be full of little Kindergarteners! They’re so cute!”. You kind of forget how big a deal age is when you’re a little kid. Even being older than someone by a few months means that you’re older than them.
 
As it turns out, it was pretty cute to have a bunch of kindergarten girls in the house. We made tiaras and bracelets, iced and decorated cupcakes. It was Claudine’s first real birthday party where she chose the guest list. A pretty good makeup birthday to Miss C’s original sick birthday, an illness that lingered for the better part of a week and one that both of us can’t quite shake off. In the end, maybe the excitement was a bit too much because she sort of broke down at the end of the day, having missed a nap that she’s been taking every day since she’s been sick. Early bedtime. Another day of being 5 tomorrow.