There are a few benchmarks in your life that are like markers of adulthood. I remember when we first bought that round dining room table 7 years ago. We were still living on the top floor of the brownstone apartment we lived in when we first moved to this neighborhood. We lived without a table for years. We couldn’t fit one in the studio apartment we lived in on 12th Street in the East Village and even when we moved to that Brooklyn apartment with a dining room 12 years ago, we always opted to eat on the couch.

We bought this table when Mia was a few months old and immediately felt like grown ups. A baby AND a dining room table? The table wasn’t cheap for us at the time (and I’m sort of shocked to see just how much it did go up in price over the years at Design Within Reach), but we saved for it and it looked great in that space.

When we bought and moved to the apartment that we currently live in now, the table came along with us. It was great with a little toddler around. No sharp edges or corners. The table was solid. It worked for the 3 of us. Then we added another baby to our family and the girls started growing. One day, the round table felt too small. There wasn’t much room when we’d have friends or family over. The table started to become filled with homework, papers, drawings and markers. It wasn’t big enough when I needed to trim paper or do a project. We needed a bigger table. Luckily we had the space for one.

I think I started looking for a new table 2 years ago. It’s one of those big purchases that you need to be sure of. Depending on how much cash flow we had, the table search would intensify or die down in spurts over the years, but it was in full force in the Fall. I eventually put it off again after so many of my work projects got postponed and cash flow felt tight. Besides, I couldn’t find the right table and I was undecided on the chairs. In December, however, we decided that we were going to do it. Holiday sales were good so the search was on again. After having looked at SO MANY tables and even considering getting one custom made, I settled on this one that I kept going back to. I also bought 6 new chairs after much deliberation. These are Tolix reproductions, but they are pretty damn good reproductions and they were on sale. A few days later, the chairs shipped (you can see them stacked in that first photo), but I was told the table was on backorder. I can wait though, right?

But the table came today ahead of schedule and it’s here!

It’s a bit darker and the wood has more variation in color and grain that what appears in the photos, but it’s so beautiful and actually fits in with the apartment better than maybe a lighter table would. I think the chairs really work with the table too. The old dining set was too much of the same beech wood color and it was too close to our floors. This new set gives the space more texture and variation. It’s just rustic enough to work with our not so rustic looking apartment. The vintage George Nelson lamp works much better with this set up as well. The longer table also defines the kitchen area from the living area in the open floor plan so much better.
 

I don’t know…can a new dining table feel life-changing? Because I kind of feel like it does! And if our old dining table made us feel like adults then this table makes us feel like grown ups even more. I mean, we can have placemats! I have all these beautiful placemats that my friend from Dwell Studio gave me a few years back but we could never use them because they didn’t work with our round table. Oh, and centerpieces. Woah. This is like a whole new aspect of decorating that I have never even considered. A fruit bowl? Candle sticks? Maybe we need a candelabra! I’m thinking back to that epsiode of Ellen when she first came on the TV scene with that sitcom, remember? She was responsible for getting table decorations for Thanksgiving (or was it Christmas?) but she ended up dragging palm fronds from the street because nothing was open and the whole table was piled with palm fronds (does anyone remember this or did I just totally make that up?). I don’t know…the centerpiece and table setting possibilities are endless.
 
And so we are selling our beloved old table. Maybe you are interested? We have so many good memories so it’s a little bit sad, but since our apartment looks like a furniture showroom right now with 2 dining tables, we need to let it go. It’s been well loved – the table top has a few light scratches in it – but it’s still in great solid condition and it needs a new home because…new table NEW TABLE!
 

Did you have a good 3 days weekend? The girls are back in school today, but we mostly stayed at home this weekend while Mark worked all 3 days. It was cold! The first string of frigid days we’ve had all winter, but despite snow falling everywhere else in the country, we are snowless so far this winter except for that freak storm back in October.

Much of what we did all weekend is what you see above: lots of coffee, looking at books, playing with all of their little calico critters, and drawing pictures. Mia drew the picture in the 2nd photo, but both girls have been drawing these houses on top of hills with these elaborate paths and mazes. Another favorite subject of Claudine’s is our family (last photo). We have endless sheets of paper with portraits of our family and in every drawing, she never fails to include Tobi, our cat who passed away last summer. The girls still miss and talk about him all the time. You gotta love the heart pointing to his butt.

It all started when my mom planted the idea in my head that we should get a piano and that maybe we should take the one I grew up playing, although it has gotten out of tune. Mia has expressed interest in piano lessons and likes to tinker around with it whenever we are at my mom’s. Mark’s even taught her how to play a melody or three with her right hand and surprisingly, she’ll remember how to play it even if a month goes by. Maybe the kids have skills! And I do have to admit that for whatever reason out of the blue, I’ve been sort of wanting to play again. But it’s always been rather difficult to imagine a piano in our apartment. Our downstairs neighbor has one and you can hear her play – not loudly, but you can definitely hear it. But more importantly, where would we put it?!

Our apartment isn’t that small. 1350 square feet might not sound like much space for 4 people to anyone outside a big city, but it’s actually a decent size apartment for NY. But even if you strive to live minimally – and I do, I’m very good at purging – you still manage to fill it with all sorts of crap, particularly if you have kids.

Last Tuesday my mom called me about a piano that was for sale from a friend that she was going to check out. By Thursday we were taking books off shelves, moving things around and measuring walls to see where we’d put a piano and by Friday, it was in our apartment. My mom works fast (I think she couldn’t bear the thought of her half-Asian grandchildren not taking piano lessons, haha). The morning the piano was being delivered it occurred to me that I had accepted it without seeing it first. What if it didn’t fit with anything else in our apartment? What if it had gargoyles carved in the wood on the sides? Or worse…what if it was glossy white?!? I hadn’t really asked. I mean a piano is just…a piano.

Soooo…the one that was delivered on Friday isn’t exactly what I had hoped. It doesn’t have gargoyles, but it does have scroll-y things and French legs (Mia came in from school and said, “oooooh, it’s SO fancy). I sort of fretted about how big it was and how loud it was and how not minimal it was, plus it threw my whole search for a new dining room table for a loop because the piano sits behind the dining area. It’s definitely a tight fit, space wise. But then we put a few of our things on it and put the books back on the shelf and it’s actually fine now that it’s integrated with everything else (yeah, alright, I still don’t love the legs).

What is it about a piano that makes a home seem more like home? Claudine likes to sit next to me when I play. I stopped playing 15 years ago because I developed bad carpal tunnel from playing many hours a day when Mark and I were music majors at school. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I hadn’t lost my ability to sight-read music, although it’s happening more slowly. I’m not saying I’m good and I didn’t expect to be, not after 15 years, but I was just glad that I didn’t forget everything. Part of the deal with getting a piano is that I’d teach the girls myself so we can save money instead of hiring a teacher for another instrument like the violin. Sounds like a smart idea, but oh my, I see lessons in patience in my future. Let’s see how long it lasts!

Going back to Mark’s mom’s house in Olympia, Washington is just about the closest thing to going back home as we can get. Certainly for Mark, as he lived at that house during his high school years, but in some small way for me as well. When we drive to my parents’ house on the weekends, it’s not to the house or neighborhood I grew up in. There are no childhood relics or memories there, so I suppose in one sense going back to this house with the red door, a place that I have also lived in briefly on 2 separate occasions, is the oldest “home” to go back to.

Oh Olympia, you are a sleepy little town, but you have an impressive Farmer’s Market, a nice waterfront, and our favorite coffee roasters. It’s funny how huge the scene felt back then in the early 90s – the birthplace of Riot Grrrls, the indie record labels, the music and the aftermath of Nirvana. I guess you could say that about many of the indie college towns back then. Of course we didn’t really know it at the time, but is stuff like this still happening in college towns? Or am I that out of touch and talking like an old person?

I have so many more photos to post from our trip still, but we’re home now. It’s always disorienting to come home from a long trip. It’s like hitting the un-pause button and everything that was on hold rushes back around you. It’s also never easy saying goodbye to family and friends that you only see once or twice a year. So many goodbyes.

Mark told me something yesterday that really broke my heart. He went by my grandmother’s apartment to catch a ride with my uncle to my mom’s house to pick up our car which has been parked there during our trip. My oldest aunt, the only one who still lives in Korea of my mom’s 4 siblings has been visiting our family in the states for 3 months. She leaves this Wednesday. Mark told me that grandma was sad when my uncle came by to pick her up. It then occurred to me that this is quite possibly their last goodbye. Both are too frail and old to make the long journey to either Seoul or NY. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to your mother or your own daughter with the knowledge that you will never see them again. It’s incomprehensible, really. It shatters my heart every time I think about it. I wish all our family was near.

The girls have been saying that phrase often since we’ve been home. “We’re never going to see Tobi again”. Claudine had a hard time sleeping on our first night home. If you know our kids, then you know how easy bedtime is for the girls, so it’s saying a lot that she kept getting up every hour from 8pm-midnight. She kept saying that something was bothering her, that she missed Tobi. They both woke up in the morning and wanted to draw pictures of him (C’s is on top, Mia’s on the bottom). This isn’t the first time I came home from a long trip to a cat-less house. Unbeknown to me at the time, I lost my first cat to feline leukemia while I was traveling during the summer of 1991. I was so excited to come back and see my cat, a kitten that I rescued in Minnesota just a year before. He traveled to the West Coast with me perched on the top of my backpack during long hikes through the Redwoods and Mt Shasta before heading back East. This was a time without cell phones so I had no idea what was going on, only that I came back to no cat in sight with his things stored neatly in the closet.

I don’t know which is worse. There doesn’t seem to be any closure this way. The girls keep saying that they hear him meowing and I do sometimes feel like at any time I’ll see him sitting at one of his favorite spots around the house. His absence is felt every time I do something that I wouldn’t have normally done because I had to make our place cat proof…leaving the toilet seat up, moving a plant to a windowsill or kitchen counter, making the bed and leaving the good sheets uncovered…

It’s the laundry, always the laundry. For being such a neat freak (and a bit OCD, I admit), folding and putting away the laundry is my least favorite chore ever. I’d rather scrub the bathrooms than deal with the laundry. See that pile there? It’s full of clean clothes. It’ll sit around unfolded in the basket for days, even a week. Once it’s folded, it can sit around some more before it gets put away. Can’t always blame it on being busy; it’s just one of those things that gets procrastinated on. I have a theory about this too: people who hate doing laundry also hate unloading the dishwasher (hate hate hate). True or false?

I am so very glad some of you tried the quinoa recipe! Actually, we’re always pleasantly surprised when people try recipes and report back here. Can I let you in on a little secret? It sounds kind of bad, but it’s just a testament to Mark’s chefness. Sometimes when we post recipes, Mark won’t remember how he made something so he’ll ask to see a photo and improvise in his head. It’s only because he won’t get to writing it down for days. He’s definitely done this with some of our more popular recipes that we’ve gotten feedback on, so don’t worry, we’re not sending you down some wayward road of culinary disaster. But as we soon learned from a friend who tests recipes for cookbooks for a living, sometimes chefs are the worst at writing recipes down for “normal” people.

Claudine and I have spent the whole week together as she was done with camp a week before Mia. It’s a lot easier when the kids are home together because they occupy each other so well, but when it’s just Claudine and me, she tends to follow me around the house most of the day. I took her on a girly date with me in Soho yesterday and we had a blast. She was a very good companion and we had a lot of fun trying on headbands and necklaces at J Crew and browsing through lipstick and nail polish colors at Sephora. You ever go shopping with a 4 year old? If you didn’t already know, they have a lot to say about these things.

I think you know by now that my bedtime is late. It’s recently teetered over to the ridiculous hour of 2:30am again, sometimes even 3. Insomnia aside, I have a hard time making myself go to bed. I treasure those quiet hours when everyone’s asleep. I get most of my work done then too and it’s been this way for years.

So what happens in the morning? On school days I push my wake up time as late as I can, sometimes to the dangerous brink of being late for school, but in the end we never are. Still, it’s often a mad rush to get the girls fed, dressed, lunches made and out the door in 30 minutes by 8:20am. On days when there is no school, or if Mark decides he can go to the kitchen later rather than the early crack-of-dawn hours that he prefers, I can steal more sleep. I’ll admit there are days when I get up at 9. The girls wake up sometime between 6:30 and 7:30am. Since they share a room, I suspect they wake each other up, though Mia claims that she doesn’t if she sees that Claudine is asleep in her bunk. Sometimes Claudine is awake and playing with with her stuffed animals in bed, but Mia saids she is always the first to climb out of bed.

There’s been a new routine in the morning at our house the last few weeks. By the time I wake up, the girls will have already eaten breakfast. Sometimes the evidence of dirty dishes is in the sink, but often they’re left behind on the kitchen island counter, the dining room table or their art table. Mia’s been making breakfast for the two of them every morning, usually frozen waffles in the toaster, or cereal with milk or granola with yogurt. She’ll pour cups of milk and water for the two of them. She’ll drag a chair to reach the cabinets and the freezer. I know this because when I do get up and wander to the kitchen, the chair will always be left there; she never remembers to drag them back.

Sometimes I think that the kids probably gave up on me in the mornings and got too impatient and hungry while waiting for me to get up. Some mornings I’ll hear one of them come into the bedroom and say, “it’s time to wake up, mommy”, and I’ll mumble something like, “5 more minutes”, and then I can hear her report to the other, “mommy says 5 more minutes!”. But even if I were to wake up earlier and make them breakfast, Mia wants to do this herself. She says she looks forward to it every morning and she likes taking care of Claudine (at least in the morning. Other times? Not so much). It might just be a phase – I remember she started fixing breakfast for a week last year, but if it is, it’s lasted much longer than the first time around. Hey, I’m not complaining. Isn’t this one of those moments we wait for, as parents?

No matter how long or short a break from work is, it’s sometimes really, really hard to get back into the swing of things. I had a hard time getting back into the design mind frame today. I started a new, rather sizable client project and spent most of the day staring back at a blank screen. I wasn’t feeling it at all. So I think I will close that page and start new tomorrow.

What I have been doing on my days off the last four days is organize paperwork and think about all the things I wanted to change and add around the house. I desperately need a lamp on my corner of the couch, but I can’t settle on one at all. I’d also like to change the overhead lighting in many of the rooms and get some new curtains. One evening I climbed high on a stool and lowered our Nelson Bubble lamp that’s hanging above our dining table because I thought it was too high after reading somewhere on the internet that the ideal height between the bottom of the light fixture and table should be around 30 inches. I’d also like to get a really long dining table and some new chairs too to replace the round one that we’ve had for over 7 years. I don’t know. I guess I’m really bored with our space, but I can’t commit to the money I need to spend to do this, except for a new clock for our wall and a new shower curtain for our bathroom. So for now, I’ve changed around and moved most of the art in the house. I finally, *finally*, printed some of my photos in large format and hung it in the livingroom and hallway. It already makes a huge difference to see something different on the walls and to look at some of our favorite memories.

Some random things:
The glasses on the nightstand next to our bed is Mark’s. Did you know that he wears glasses? He’s like, practically legally blind.

Claudine, at age four, still takes a nap. Not everyday, but a few times a week. I don’t think Mia napped a day past her 3rd birthday. Not that I’m complaining, but sheesh, the girl likes her naps, what can I say? She’ll sometimes, but rarely, climb into her bed and nap. Most of the time she’ll just lay down on the couch to “rest a little bit”. I think she likes to sleep next to me while I work.

The list is Mia’s birthday wish list. It’s an eclectic list if I ever saw one. Like why does she want seeds in a jar? What is that? The globe is a cool idea, but I’m just not sure where we’d put it and I’d definitely want to get a vintage one. I’m not surprised about the keyboard since she really digs playing the old piano I grew up playing that’s at my mom’s house. Not surprised about all the American Girl doll accessories either. What I am surprised about is that the dolls are still holding their interest. She puts the doll to “bed” every night in the armchair and often puts her in the vintage doll highchair pulled right up to the dining room table at dinner. Real gold necklaces? Um, what?

It’s a sad day here at our house. Now that I am back home after a meeting earlier this afternoon, I’m trying to keep it together. For the girls. Today is our PT nanny’s last day. For the past 6 years she’s been coming every Tuesdays and Thursdays since Mia was 3 months old. It was inevitable someday…kids grow up and they go to school…the needs of a family change…but it doesn’t make it any easier when your heart and emotions are involved.

Claudine understands that today is Mala’s last day with us, but she doesn’t fully comprehend what that means, not at 3 years old. I was trying to take these photos this morning, but she was being a complete clown, unlike Mia, who was much more subdued. I suspect she may ask why she’s no longer coming at some point, but for her, today is like any other day. Mia, on the other hand, has been taking it rather hard. Sometimes I’ll see her get real quiet and tear up and I’ll know that she’s thinking about it. It’s a big change for all of us and a big change for Mark and I too as we go into uncharted territories of not having 2 solid days of babysitting that we could always rely on. If we were juggling with work and and the kids before, we’ll be juggling even more now. But I can’t imagine what Mia must be feeling through all this. At 6 years old, some things in her world have changed through the years – new schools, friends moving away, and even new homes, but the one constant has been her nanny.

The kids are out now with our nanny, but I’m anticipating a lot of tears when they get back home in an hour or two. Mia needs to be brave, we all do. Mala’s new job is actually only a block away so this has comforted us during this transition as we know that the girls will still be able to see her once in awhile. Still, I know it’s not quite the same.

*ps. damn…that was hard.
*pps. OMG, it just hit me. We don’t have a babysitter anymore. We are so screwed.

But getting it wasn’t exactly easy. I always thought that if you wanted to buy something, you could just go to the store, purchase it and take it home. But for some reason something so deceivingly simple as buying a TV took a whole day and trips to 4 stores, including 1 very hellish experience waiting for a full hour at Best Buy with 2 overstimulated and whiny children, only to be told that the 3 models we were interested in were sold out at the store.

And something really odd happened in the buying process. We didn’t really know what brand, what size, what model, but as we were staring back at the wall of TVs, first looking at 37 inches, and then 40 inches, we kept looking at bigger and bigger TVs trying to convince ourselves that maybe what we really needed was a huge 47 incher or the newest LED technology and this, that and the other new thing – hell, we just didn’t know it yet! But eventually we did come back to earth and kept focused on our goals: to replace the old, hand me down tube TV that, as massive in size as it was, was really only a 28″ TV.

After a very frustrating and unsatisfying morning, we ended up with a most pleasant, last minute decision at PC Richard at the end of the day and was assisted by my new best friend, the PC Richard TV sales guy. He and I joked around, traded small talk and got along famously. When the TV of our choice looked like it was out of stock yet again, he whispered that he’d make us a deal and sell us a brand new model of the Samsung 40 inch TV that wasn’t yet on the sales floor. And magically, our TV appeared.

We took it home and despite the speedbump along the way (oh, you know, where our car died on us driving home from Long Island), we had our new TV.

Now, the funny thing about kids is that sometimes they don’t really like change. As Mark got down to unpacking and setting up the new TV (which, by the way, is plenty huge in our living room and any bigger would have entered into the realm of the ridiculous – what the HELL were we thinking? 47 inches? Psshwtt.), the kids were skeptical. “We don’t like this new TV, we like the old one!”, “Are we going to be able to watch the same shows on this TV? ‘Cause the old TV has all our favorite shows!”. We assured them they’d be able to watch all their favorite shows and as proof turned the TV on.

The other funny thing about these newfangled LCD HD TVs is that if you don’t have an HD cable box, the picture, especially on some channels, looks like…you know, crap. Well, we don’t have an HD cable box, but after a day or so, you kind of get used to it and you think to yourself, eh, I could live with this. Yes! We ARE that cheap that we are unwilling to shell out the extra $12.95 a month for digital cable after buying a $900 TV! Pathetic!

So the most stressful part of this whole TV buying ordeal was getting rid of our old massive set. I don’t know. These are the kinds of things that stress me out and make me anxious. We put an ad out on Cragislist and our local Yahoo group for a free TV. I was skeptical that anyone was willing to take away a massively heavy old-school TV and I worried that we’d have this thing, that was now sitting on the floor in front of the window, here forever. But we got 2 serious inquiries. The first inquiry completely flaked and was a no-show (HATE that), so we went to our next guy. He came the next day, was punctual, and seemed thankful to cart the TV away. “My kids are driving me crazy!”, he said. “They need their own TV for their video games!”. Cool.

Our TV taker was Korean (it’s clear from the name on his email). He was older than us, maybe by 10 or so years. Apparently this is the conversation that went down between him and Mark in the elevator as Mark helped him take the TV down to his car.

TV taker: “Oh, your wife is Asian? Korean, huh?”

TV taker: “Korean women cook good!”

Mark: “I do all the cooking.”

TV taker: “Wha?” (pause) But…Korean women cook good. Hmmm.”

TV taker: “Does she speak Korean?” (pause, then answers the question to himself) “Probaby not…”

Awesome! TV taker for the win!