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 is a decent size for NYC. 1350 square feet might not sound like much space for 4 people to anyone outside a big city, but for the most part, it works for us. But even if you strive to live minimally – and I do, you can still manage to fill it with all sorts of crap, particularly if you have kids. And a piano? Requires some serious space planning.

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…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 scrolly 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.