miss you, sushi

i wish i was a better blogger because the best blogs that i follow are those that have new posts every single day. and if they are witty, funny or thought provoking, even better. which is probably the reason i don't post everyday, i don't have much of interest to say. or i'm lazy. it's a toss up.

since being pregnant, there is a ever growing list of don'ts. here are the ones i miss:

*top on my list has to be sleeping on my stomach. oh the warmth, the coziness of snuggling into myself and shutting out the world.

*next is sleeping on my back. you see i can't sleep on my stomach now for obvious reason of smashing my little baby boy, but apparently sleeping on your back puts the weight of baby on some important artery or veins to your legs. to that i say, who needs blood in the legs while you sleep? as my little burrito is still under a pound, i sneak onto my back every once in while to get some good sleep. i love sleep!

*this prohibited food is hard for me to believe is so bad for the baby. i mean women in japan have been eating sushi for hundreds of years and surely they still have healthy, smart children. it makes my mouth water just looking at that picture. spicy tuna, unagi, salmon, wonderful rolls with raw fish goodness dipped in that salty deliciousness. enough.

*red red wine. do i need to say more?

*running. now this one is up for debate and i have looked at plenty of websites that say running while pregnant is fine as long as you were a runner before you got knocked up, which i was. the problem is that this is the everlasting belief that a pregnant woman should relax and not overexert herself is widely held by most physicians, husbands, and women who write pregnancy books. yes my husband does not think i should run anymore until after the birth because of high heart rates and physicians. i might need to do more research to support the run through pregnancy theory, but think about women crossing the great plains or crossing the rocky mountains in a covered wagon, i'm fairly confident that on a daily basis their heart rate got well over 140 bpm. (note: i'm not saying i want to train for a marathon, i just want to continue running 3 miles even if it is a little slower than my regular pace).

*white wine with some cheese and crackers

*semi raw, uncooked food like medium rare steak with a nice glass of red wine or cookie dough or deli meat or slightly undercooked scrabbled eggs or a poached egg. something about salmonella and weaken immune systems. blah blah blah.

*touching my toes. ok i can still reach my shoelaces, but i foresee that being a problem very shortly and i don't want to lose mobility. peter likes to joke that no one tells me what i can and can't do which is true so this altering my life for my baby has been hard.

all that to say, i love my baby and i will do whatever it takes to have him healthy in my arms.

20 weeks

today is my halfway mark and time is moving both slow and fast. i think i'm ready to have my baby boy in my arms, but i know mentally and physically I'm far from prepared.

today we have our first midwifery appointment. picture old shed in the forest, with a wood burning stove and an old woman with buck teeth like Little House on the Prairie or even Anne of Green Gables time frame. Ok not really, midwifery has since advanced and even has a working facility in the University hospital. Of course women still have the option of giving birth at home, but we have chosen to give birth with midwifery center that is located in a hospital so we have some peace of mind in case anything abnormal occurs.

i love that women have so many options these days when giving birth and each woman has one that is perfect for them.

it's a BOY!

Here are belly pictures of 19.5 weeks, I'm almost at the the midpoint.

not quite white

remember this post? it was the beginning thoughts on adoption. and quite recently there was this article titled "Adopted from Korea and in Search of Identity" in the ny times. the article has the perpections of multiple korean adoptees who quoted thoughts right out of my head about growing up asian in a white family. many felt they were white and surprised themselves when seeing their asian eyes in the mirror. and when faced with koreans who grew up in a korean family, there was a sense of outsider as well.

i wanted to be white and even now i catch myself thinking i'm not a minority.

i knew i was different at a very young age when kids in pre-school would pull their eyes back and yell "kong chong wong tong!" at me. i flinched when girls would mention my oriental black hair. and i have to admit telling people i was adopted makes me squirm.

going to south korea last august didn't really help resolve anything. it just confirmed i'm not really full korean either. often the locals would look at my puzzled as only english words could come from my mouth.

you might think that it was easier with 2 asian adopted brothers and 1 korean adopted sister to find an identity. honestly we were kids and just sort of went at it alone, never really mentioning out struggle with rasism. i thought rasism only had to do with blacks, that the unconfortable feeling i felt when someone would pull back their eyes was my issue and no one elses.

being a transracial adoptee is isolating. i felt like the only one, no one could relate to these identity issues, not my white parents or white friends. it was better to just try to fit in as quietly as possible.

now i continue to search for my identity as i am about it give birth to flesh of my flesh. i think about who am i. who of myself am i passing on to someone else? will he/she struggle as mixed korean and white? i hope not. i truly hope for a diverse and accepting upbringing.

don't look too far ahead

today i'm 16 weeks and the fetus is the size of an avocado, i love avocados so this is a good stage. i was just reading "your pregnancy week by week" (thanks gretch for the books), but i accidentally flipped too far ahead and freaked myself out. i saw this picture:
now this picture freaks me out on so many levels. dear God my baby cannot possibly fit through my pelvis. and this will surely hurt. and my belly/baby has to get so much bigger than an avocado. and 10 centimeters is the size of my thigh (at present anyway) which is much much larger than where i usually shove a tampon. and i picture myself yelling during labor, "it won't come out!!!"

that's why you don't flip ahead class. enjoy the avocado stage. relish in still being able to move with ease. right now ignorance is bliss.

mommie club

just got back from my first highlands mommies outing. highlands is the neighborhood i live in and there are about 2000 "mommies" in the club. my sub-group has women due in the first half of 2010. tonight there were 9 of us eating dinner, swapping pregnancy stories and who's due when and where we are delivering and what classes are you taking and have you registered... oh my!

i'm excited to have a built in support system as i wade through all things babies, but everyone must tread lightly. for as many mommies, there are just as many opinions and paths on this journey. we found that out by where each of us is delivering and how we are delivering. you might think that we all live in a 10 block radius that surely there would be an obvious hospital nearest our home. nope, i heard 6 different locations for delivery.

as we begin to have our babies, we will start play groups and outings and use the site to ask questions of other experienced moms. what a great resource!

first snowstorm

it's been snowing none stop for the past 2 days, but snow days
are not quite as fun as when i was a kid. peter and i worked from home unfortunately we were really working. the good old days a snow day included sledding, snowball fights and building an igloo.

we did enjoy a nice walk around our neighborhood yesterday and i ventured out to a yoga class today. i think we might get a long winter with lots of snow. hopefully not 18 inches with every storm.

15 weeks

oink oink, cough cough

no i don't have h1n1 flu... yet! but everyone around me does. how's a pregnant lady suppose to stay swine-free when everywhere i turn someone has a fever or is coughing? so i've decide to self impose a quaratine and work from home.

drastic measure for drastic times, but my coworkers seem to need a lesson in illness etiquette.

• if 2 out of your 2 children have confirmed h1n1, do not come into work the next few days... we will not miss you.
• if 5 out of your 5 children have some sort of flu and they go to public school, assume they have h1n1 AND assume you will get it as well and work from home... we will not miss you.
• if both you and your spouse are very sick and said spouse is a in physician assistant's school, assume you have h1n1 and take sick time, ALU pays 90% of salary on sick days... stay out a week.

The moral of the story is stay home if anyone in your household is sick because it is most likely swine flu and it takes 2 days for you to show symptoms. So you could have it and not know.

Stories like this in the New York Times make me want to avoid it like the plague.

So wash your hands, cover your mouth and stay home... you won't be missed.

MIA with a purpose

so i've been away for quite some time, my faithful readers... all 3 of you. but I'm back to announce that I'm almost 14 weeks pregnant! peter and i are so excited and a bit nervous. i never expected to be scared, but now I understand the thought of carrying around a little human inside of me. at the same time, i sometimes forget that i am with child since i had a very mild 1st trimester and i'm not so much showing.

yesterday i was in gap looking at maternity clothes and i felt silly, like everyone was sizing me up, thinking "what that girl doing in that section of the store?" i probably need to wait a few more weeks/months until i really need to start shopping there or i'll just buy stuff online so i don't have to be sized up.

i feel a weird tension concerning weight gain. part of me really wants to start showing so i can start feeling pregnant, but i also like that i'm not showing yet. it's hard in a culture that tells women that beautiful is 5'10" size 0. our culture should be celebrating a pregnant body as that is what our bodies were made to do. weird to think that since the age of 15 (yes, i was a late bloomer) my body has been ready and willing to host a baby. now it is actually getting to do what it was designed to do, amazing.

so check back more often as I hope to be more diligent about posting pictures and thoughts on this journey.

i'm back, at least for today

it's been crazy around here and you know when there is so much to blog about and end up not blogging at all? but thank God for fridays and working from home which is code for being able to surf the web without feeling guilty. here's a splattering of happening around here:

- we aren't building in golden anymore! what a relief, so much stress.

- we are trying to fix up the existing house to rent out in golden. more stress as we figure out how to be handy with a hammer.

- there is house under contract with our name on it! berkeley area, here we come (aka an extension of west highland, aka west of downtown denver).

- this house is turnkey which is music to my ears. maybe a can of paint later on down the road, but we won't do a thing to it before moving in (well maybe clean everything since it's been vacant for the past 6 months).

- new house means packing, agh. less is more as i purge myself of junk.

- escape from my crazy life has been Sarah's Key, quite the page turner.

There you have it, just a taste, more to come later.

beautiful roses

thank you, my love.

mac 'n cheese?

have you ever made fetttucine alfredo? i knew that it wasn't good for you, but i didn't know it could taste so good. so sinfully delicious with full fat cream, lots of butter and parmesan cheese. it was like eating mac n' cheese for grownups. i mean i've eaten this stuff in restaurants, but have you ever felt your waistline grow by an inch as you continue to put forkful after forkful in your mouth? and not care. i can't stop myself.

fortunately my husband is out of town so i get all the leftovers to myself, ahem i mean i don't get to share this amazing recipe with him. comfort food makes me feel better when he's gone, but let's be honest, i love comfort food when he is home as well.

i got the recipe from the pioneer woman who is a crazy blogger with lots of recipes and photography and stories of life on a farm.

i highly recommend halving this recipe and don't skip the pasta water step as she isn't kidding about the thickness of this dish. this picture is my first attempt at this new staple, notice the empty plate in the background. i had to eat my meal before i could even stop to take a picture, it's that good.

dream

the weather has been cooler the last few days which has brought some interesting storms. here's a picture i took out the back window at about 8pm. the rain was falling the sun was setting and casting such a bright glow over our neighborhood. i like how the rain on the window blurs the image a bit to make it feel like a dream. by the way, i did not edit this picture at all so the color is pretty close to what i saw.

treeless mountain

my heart melted when i saw the trailer for this movie, treeless mountain.

it's a story of two sisters who are dropped off at their alcoholic Big Aunt for the summer as their mother goes to find their estranged father. it is set in south korea and was written and directed by a south korean. the movie has won numerous awards.

it's playing at the starz filmcenter in the tivoli until thursday. i'm going saturday night.

sights & sounds in denver

happy friday

picture i took in Duck, NC.

my inner domestic diva

i have been busy as a bee around the house.

i decided to be crafty and make my own onesies for all the babies coming into the world. i love how they came out!

the chairs i spray painted because i was sick of the light beach color wood and then put new fabric on. and brand new chairs.

who doesn't love apple pie? it is the first one i have ever made and it was so simple. (coming soon pictures of the garden)

brother-in-law's family

it took a week for the boys to warm up to me, just about the time they were about to leave for home. you can tell they were none too thrilled with me in the family picture.

happy thoughts

This is my new desk top wallpaper and it makes me happy when I look at it. I got it here where you can download other wallpaper to make you think of summer and trick yourself into thinking that you are not stuck in a office all day. Or maybe that's just me. Happy Friday!

If I could have a do-over today...

There was a knock at my door while I was talking to my friend on the phone. I rush downstairs thinking it is probably my landlord dropping off a new push lawn mower. Instead is was a disheveled man, homeless with slurred speech. I understand 1/2 the sentences, but put it together he wants money. It is the middle of the day and I'm home alone with a large man standing at my door. I immediately feel uncomfortable. My guard goes up. After he gives me his story I say
"I'm sorry no thank you" and try to get him off my front porch as soon as possible. He begins to beg and yell at me, telling me how hungry he is. I close the door and lock it.

I walk upstairs to finish my phone conversation. And then I think about what just happened to me. What would it be like to be so hungry that I'm willing to eat my pride and walk door to door asking for money? What would it be like to set aside my self-preservation to help someone else in need? I could have offered him food since I don't feel comfortable giving money. I could have told him I would be right back and shut the door momentarily while I went and got something from the kitchen. Instead I shut the door...

outer banks

So I'm having issues with formatting my blog right now. these are random pictures from our vacation last week. the G clan stayed at a huge beach house with a private pool and tons of bedrooms. the beach was about 200 yards from our front door and the evenings were spent on a huge covered deck.

kitchen herbs

the beginning...

Homemade apron

my first apron that i sewed. i took a class at Joann Fabric which got me started in the right direction and i finished it, but actually this isn't the first apon. i followed the pattern exactly and it was huge. so this is actually the second apron.

Outdoor Films!

It's time for summer evenings in the park, picnicking and watching movies. Here's the links:

Cherry Creek North does Thursdays July and August. No schedule posted yet.

Confluence Park (across from Denver REI) Thursdays August.

Denver Parks has 10 movies at various Parks around Denver.

City of Golden shows films Fridays in August with the picturesque Table Mountain in the back ground.

And Jazz in the Park at City Park on Sunday evenings.

warm milk

i've heard the old wives tale about drinking warm milk before going to bed helps you sleep. well i'm pretty sure it works to soothe my soul as it is now my nightly ritual. it quiets my brain from racing and a little bit of syrup helps it go down.

the next thing on the list

we read this book for book club and it was definitely a beach read book, but it got us thinking about lists. you know the bucket list, things you got to get done before you kick the bucket. and it could be thought of narcissistic, all the things i have to do in my life to be satisfied and really felt like i LIVED. but it could also teach us to live intentionally which i do about 5% of the time.

i like lists, my husband makes fun of me because i really would like a list for each day so i feel focused and motivated. without a list i'm aimless with my day, i fritter away hours on the computer or in front of the tv or just napping. if a have a physical, written out list, things will get done, but if it's ambiguous list in my head, forget about it.

so i've started to think about what i need to do intentionally with motivation and focus, the life goals. here's the beginning of my list, a work in progress!

• run a marathon and finish
• knit my husband a sweater that's cool enough for him to wear
• be a good gardener so that i can make a salad completely from my bounty
• go to alaska
• love until it hurts (cannot quantify this, but pretty sure i'll know when it happens)
• master forgiveness
• really know my neighbors
• show each member of my family how much i love them
• learn to sew well enough to make an apron
  
• learn photography

what's on your list? anything i need to add?

house update

so i have dreams of a separate blog with our journey to build our house in golden and someday i just might do that, but for now here's what i have.

my husband and i bought land in november 2007 in golden. it's actually not land, it is a foreclosed house, 2 houses and a garage to be exact. the 11,000 square feet property has a traditional house built in the early 1900s and right next to it sits a house that is 80% underground. Looks like the wicked witch of the west dropped the house from 500 feet above and it sank 10 feet underground with just the pitched roof visible. sad that house has to go, but hopefully we will build something so much better and above ground too.

this week i've been shopping construction loans, soil testers, and surveyors. right now we are leaning towards Compass bank for our loan as they seem to be very experienced and great rates with a single closing and option to float down. all the other banks haven't even come close to having a competitive loan option. fyi banks, don't lead off to me by saying it has been a really long time since you've done a construction loan, that does not instill confidence in your product or your services.

i'm learning that not a lot of people are building right now, everyone is scared of the economy and people are biting at the chomps to get any work. some contractors are adjusting their prices accordingly and others seem to be holding out at their higher rate. guess what? i'm choosing the low cost option over those over-confident contractors who don't budge because they think their service is worth it.

stress seems to be my constant companion these days. so many decisions and little details and budget questions. i just have to picture our dream house with awesome views, room to raise a family and a place to host friends and family.

book bag

so easy to make this cute bag and the options are endless. initials, monogram, name, books, toys, yoga, etc. just follow this blogger's tutorial here.

let me know if you make one for yourself!

tension's tight grip

lately i've had this terrible tension in my chest. i think it's stress related, but i don't know what's causing this internal knot. i mean my husband got an in town gig (well with a bit of travel until june, but the end is in sight) and that's something to celebrate. maybe it's the reshuttling of life and schedules and how we interact with each other. don't get me wrong, i LOVE having my husband home, but i got into a routine. not a good routine, i'll admit, actually an awful routine. i watched a lot of tv and moped around and felt sorry for myself.

the grip on my chest has loosened ever so slightly which might be due to my ability to run again. running is my outlet, my sanctuary of sorts where i pound the pavement and release stress and my brain just wonders. i push my body to the limits sometimes just to remind myself that pain feels good, it makes me feel alive.

it loosens as we realign our lives to each other and spend time with good friends. and so i breath deep as i loosen my grip on control, status, future plans, money, materialistic ideas, american culture, economic worries. open hands...

Coupon Clipper

Edited 2/16/2009 This site was closed down a day later, sorry!

I'm frugal and love coupons and not the 10 cents off 2 boxes of cereal. Come on, that does me no good. But I love the coupons that are $1 off. Well my mom has become a fantic coupon clipper. I kid you not, she gave each of her six adult children a recycling grocery bag full of tolietries for Christmas all of which she got for close to free. I don't think I could be that dedicated but here's a great site that posts good coupons everyday and there is no limit to the number of coupons you can print off of a single item. Today I just printed 10 Progressive soup coupons for $1.10 off each can! Is that a deal or what? Here's the link: http://allydeals.com/

Now go save some money!

Anyone else have some great websites to save money in this economic climate?

confessions of a semi-adult adoptee

warning: this post is a work in progress.

thoughts have been swimming around my head for the past year concerning adoption. for those who don't know me, i am an adult adoptee from south korea. i grew up in a family of six kids, 2 natural born and 4 adopted. of the adopted, 3 are from s. korea, including me and one from vietnam. i don't really talk about being adopted... at all. it is a weird subject for me.

i grew up in a very rural area, read all whites. all i ever wanted to be when i was little was a blond hair, blue eyes girl and if i could not be the dream girl, i would have taken non-slanted eyes. wow and my name didn't help the matters either, song. no one gets the name, i didn't get the name, why wasn't my name melissa or samantha, great for nicknames.

this is sad, but i sometimes forgot i was korean. seriously. until someone would say my name which was a constant reminder that i was different. otherwise i could fool myself into not looking into the mirror and seeing those slanted eyes. so i kept things in, the shy, quiet girl that was deathly afraid to be noticed else people would realize just how different i was.

and kids can be cruel. they will point out any difference just to fit in. but i didn't realize at the time that every kid had insecurities. mine just felt a little more out there for the world to see.

college was an eye opening experience with more asians and koreans on campus, a whole community that stuck together. freshmen year i was befriended by a korean girl down the hall who ate korean, talked korean, was all korean. and i did not fit in. somewhere along the way to becoming americanized, i never learned how to be korean. the duality of my life was apparent for the first time, i was korean on the outside, but american on the inside. i have stuggled with this duality probably from the very beginning, but this is when i could recognize it.

5 months ago i felt it again as i visited korea for the first time. i thought that something might click, that i would have an epiphany on my life there. nothing happened. i felt like a foreigner. i could walk around not saying a word and no one would know i couldn't speak a lick of my native tongue. no one would know i spent the last 30 years of my life as an american girl with american dreams. and then inevitably i would need something like directions or food or a restroom and i would need to open my mouth. so even in my homeland i felt like an imposter, a fraud. not quite american, not quite korean.

i could end the story here and you might feel bad for me or wonder how to do international adoption differently or how can we change media so that an asian girl can look at lucy liu and say she is pretty and i look like her. but that's not the whole story, it's just the plot.

i'm not the only one struggling with duality, i'm not the only one adopted. in a bigger story, we are all adopted children stuggling to live both as we were intended to live and at the same time live broken lives. how often do you feel that tug telling you this is not how it should be? i don't fit in here. isn't that the picture of the gospel? that we constantly live in tension. i sincerely believe that there will be a great ending to the larger story as well as to my smaller story. someone named god saw something amazing in an abandoned, unwanted girl in pusan korea and so he hand picked me for some great work, some great love.

i love adoption because it puts the gospel right in your face, you can't look away from something different, something unnatural, but so godly in its truest sense. it's mothers, it's fathers, it's family loving someone that was once unwanted and giving life and hope and love. isn't that your story?



but needless to say, i fully support adoption and this is such a cool way to defray cost. this blogger is raffling a camera and all proceeds go to the exuberantly high cost to adopt their daughter who is still in korea (how did my parents pay for 4? mom says she paid for my sister's cutting coupons... that's a lot of coupons). check the blog out and donate for a great cause. http://asisterforthebean.blogspot.com/

things i like right now

space heaters
big sweaters
spring days in the dead of winter
the high after a long run
my comfy bed
drinking tea from my baby blue stanley thermos
knitting scarves
curling up with a library book
wii tennis
real bowling
the office tv series
tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches
bloggers who care about the poor, oppressed, widow, orphaned, sick and lonely

got community?

for book club we are reading The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner which is about happiness and what makes people happy. the author travels around the world to poor nations and countries that are statistically happy and various governing bodies to find out what makes people happy. i just started the book, so i don't have all the answers yet, but i'll be sure to post when i become enlightened.

something that did strike me in the book already was this:

"Trusting your neighbors is especially important. Simply knowing them can make a real difference in your quality of life. One study found that, of all the factors that affect the crime rate for a given area, the one that made the biggest difference was not the number of police patrols or anything like that but, rather, how many people you know within a fifteen-minute walk of your house."

community. do you have it? i'd like to think i do because i know a few neighbors from the community garden we tended to last summer. and i run toward city park a few times a week and i nod at my neighbor sitting on his porch as i leave and come home. but the fact of the matter is i live in five points, all be it a trendy block, but still five points. homeless wonder down the alley, packs of kids spray paint my garage door, 2 kids got shot at the park i use to run around. and do we ever got police patrol. there's police rolling by our house multiple times a week and those hoovering helicopters aren't checking on a car wreck during rush hour.

i live downtown in the midst of yuppies and homeless men and low-rent housing and hispanics and blacks. i know a few yuppies because i am a yuppie. i don't know the homeless, the helpless, the needy. how sad for me.

the quality of life would go up for everyone if we knew our neighbors, not just because we feel safe and can trust people, but because community (as an action word not a noun) is what we all desire, to be known and to know others.

the other day, we received a valentine invitation in our mail slot. someone is having a st. valentine's day tea and they have invited the neighborhood. i have no idea who the invitation is from, but i am going to attend, i am going to put my insecurities aside to know my neighbors and have community.

how many people do you know within a fifteen minute walk?

paper gifts for me

today is my 1 year anniversary and i feel proud and nostalgic and lucky and wiser. pride comes from the fact that i'm with the most amazing and patient man and that we made it 1 year in marriage. i look back on our wedding as such a special day, a day that goes down in my history book. thoughts of the past year bring me joy and embarrassment because there are definitely happy moments to remember. the big trips to tahiti for our honeymoon and the trip to china and korea. the simple moments of having dinner with friends or dinner he made for me. but i'm not so proud of the ugly time together fighting or pouting and the realization that marriage is a lot harder than advertised.

there should be a release form every couple must sign and read the fine print. marriage is the hardest thing you will ever do. you will be required to give of yourself daily and then when night falls, you must give some more. sorry's need to be abundant as you will be an ass most of the time. being right doesn't mean you are the winner. be forewarned that you will reveal the ugliest side of yourself and be constantly reminded how selfish and petty you are. it is wise to learn grace and forgiveness and grace. the most important quality you can pick in a mate is humility and the ability to easily forgive you because you will mess up A LOT.

marriage has been on my mind a lot lately partly because i'm not very good at it. i'd rather do things my way all the time. 30 years of relying on myself does not breed dependence, it breeds bad habits communicating and selfishness.

i'm lucky because i have an extremely patient husband. we're lucky because we won't give up on marriage or each other. life is better because i have him and because i'm being refined and reshaped, not by my husband but because i have a husband. and when/if we are blessed with children, get out the sandpaper or sledgehammer because more of self will be chiseled away. i guess this is what taking up my cross daily looks. no one should give the illusion it's easy, that it's a fairytale of happily ever after because that's sh!t. And maybe that's why the first anniversary gift is paper... toilet paper to whip away the loads of crap that we expected marriage to be like. paper to remind you that marriage isn't roses and gold necklaces.

divorce seems to be rampant today as more couples i know fall victim to it. and it scares me. so give me toilet paper for this anniversary as a sober reminder that there will be sh!t ahead, toilet paper needed!