When one door closes...

Moving Day and all I can say is man, this all feels so surreal.  Sitting at our neighborhood Gong Cha having chocolate milk bubble tea, while the movers pack up everything at home (how have we accumulated so much?! -- all we came here with were four suitcases we traveled with)...

Tyler borrows a Hemingway quote when people ask how it feels to be moving.  "It's like the quote about how you go bankrupt", he says.  "Gradually and then all at once."

It really felt like we had SO much time -- even coming back here from Christmas in NY.  I would finish Elliot's first year scrapbook!  Learn tagalog!  Learn how to make arroz caldo!  Write 50 blog entries!

And now the movers are here.  It's one of the first sunny spring days here in Seoul (the magnolias outside are blooming!), which gives everything a feeling of newness and possibility.  But it's bitter-sweet to be sure (for me, more bitter; for Tyler, more sweet).  We toasted last night to Tyler never having to take a bus to work again, never having to worry about whether he accidentally took the security sticker off his camera phone over the weekend, never worrying he's broken some security rule...

And I'm happy too.  Coming back from Kenya and the Acumen Fellows Gathering two weeks ago, I knew in my core that our life in Seoul is very comfortable.  But safety and comfort alone are not what makes my soul sing.  I've become even more convinced that each person's purpose is to shine their light bright and to play big to serve the world... and for me, Seoul isn't the place to do that.  Heck, I can barely even communicate with folks here, let alone shine bright by communicating and sharing messages that most matter.

But I'm sad as well.  We started our family here, and by family, I don't just mean Elliot.  Jhona has become family too, and it makes me beyond sad that we have to leave her behind.  Tyler and I came back last night to her puffy-eyed and crying, hugging Elliot's clothes that she was packing for our flight home.  To say I will miss her is an incredible understatement.  For the last ten years, Catherine and I have written in a book every time we see each other somewhere around the world (incredible looking back and seeing entries from Nairobi, Hyderabad, Accra, NYC...)  One of the questions we ask is: "who inspires you?"  This time I wrote Jhona... the way she plays with Elliot with her whole heart and with such presence.  It's something I aspire to.

This last week has been incredible.  Easily a month's worth of fun crammed into one technicolor week.  "A Day in the Life" photo shoot with Dylan Golby, where he followed our family from 6am - 6pm... discovering the little-known and my now-favorite Changdeokgung Palace... champagne playdate with Tesla and Sena... dressing up in hanboks and doing a traditional matcha tea ceremony with my girlfriends... incredible night food tour with Ongo (complete with learning drinking games and eating live MOVING octopus)... hike along the spiritual Sansa Trail at Samgaksan Mountain... Korean BBQ at Maple Tree with the noraebang crew...)

Thank you, Seoul, for the last 2.5 years.  It's been in living here that I finally learned to live in balance, presence (a work in progress!), and focus on what most matters.  I'm truly grateful for our time here.

And now...

Onwards!!

Soul Sunday

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale… 

When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for."

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My birthday gift to the world, my birthday gift to myself

It's my 38th birthday today!!  Here's my birthday gift to help make the world a better place: gathering my incredible friends and network together to sponsor 38 high-income, low-achieving high school students through Minds Matter:
https://www.crowdrise.com/sponsor-38-kids-for-my-38th-birthday

Here's the story:
Like many of us, the current political climate has me doubling down on causes that matter most to me.  78% of students served by Minds Matter are immigrants or first generation Americans.  All donated funds are sure to have high impact: Minds Matter has an ROI ration of 17:1 -- every $1 of donated funds results in $17 in impact (just incredible!!) So please consider donating $10, $25, $50 to sponsor 38 kids with SAT prep books... I promise it will make you feel good (and make me feel better about turning 38 :)

And here's my birthday gift to myself: I give myself permission to stop the people-pleasing hustling that has largely defined the first three decades of my life.

I spent my luxurious morning listening to Brene Brown talks.  I was searching for one quote in particular that I knew I wrote down in my journal, but is lying somewhere already packed in a box.  On a podcast with Tim Ferriss, she gave her advice to her 30 year old self, saying that the "30s is such a time for perfecting and proving... STOP HUSTLING."  She then talked about the liberation that came in her 40s.

This was good stuff, but wasn't the core of what I was after.  After a bit of searching I found it.

Sitting with Chase Jarvis, she answered an audience member's question in a way that so resonated that the first time I heard this, I literally gasped and there were tears in my eyes.  Asked by a young man what her advice to her 25 year old self (with all its gremlin voices) would be, she said:

"What I would tell my 25 year old self is this: All the pleasing and proving and perfecting that you're doing is getting in the way of what you're supposed to be doing.  I would have just grabbed myself by the shoulders and shook myself and said: You can never live the life that you want to live and NOT disappoint other people.  You'll need to choose NOW."

Indeed, the first time I did a 10 day silent meditation retreat (in India when I was 29), I was shocked how much all the stuff coming out of my head was all about guilt and regret about disappointing other people.

She goes on to say that you're going to piss people off and are going to let down people if you're yourself.  I laughed knowingly when she said the "30s is notoriously difficult for this: 'I think I can be me and authentic and make everyone around me happy.'" (no, but really I can!! :)

Similar to her talk with Tim, she says that the big gift of midlife is understanding that "Something's gotta go.  And it ain't gonna be me."

So instead of feeling like I'm old and "behind" on things today, I choose to be early on this one and not wait until my 40s for this change to take place.

My birthday gift to myself is to finally shed my pleasing and proving and perfecting that have largely defined my first 37 years... when I think of how much energy I had been using in all of my personal interactions... trying to understand what might make others "like" me and then contorting to that... Well, without going into the shame vortex of that, all I can say is that I'll now have a tremendous amount of energy moving forward towards doing the things that truly set my soul on fire.

And that may be the best birthday gift to myself I can think of.

Happy One Year Birthday!!!

Happy birthday to Elliot!!

Taking after his mom and embracing #longbirthdayweekend, here's the first of a few celebrations to come.  For his part, I think he is entranced with the candle and the cake (and finally eating some of those strawberries)...

One thing's for sure: I will certainly miss these kids cafes in Korea... and much more importantly, these gals, who have made new motherhood in a foreign land feel so much more like home.

Last day of the first year

Our Mr. E turns one tomorrow!  New suit arrived from Lolo earlier this week (yup, that's right, a proper suit; our son is 1 going on 70...)

Which means I have four more hours to write his 11 month update.  Reading my notes hastily written in my iPhone when we were in the US, I can't believe this was all just a few weeks ago... it already feels like so much has changed in his world since then.

But here goes!!  11 months... made special by his celebration in NY (all credit for the two mini-cakes to spell out "11" goes to Lolo, who also continues to send Elliot the most elaborate birthday cards every month on the dot).

Stats: (a bit of an overachiever)

• Height: 2 feet 7.89 inches (99th percentile)... he is now literally up to my hips when we both stand up... 
• Weight: 25 pounds 10.58 ounces (97th percentile)
• Head circumference: 47 cm (83%)

Words:

• Mama (though we have since come to realize that "Mama" refers to both me and "I want to eat" -- which I guess is basically the same thing)
• Bapa (his word for dad... though I feel compelled to add that he did call him "Buba" one time)
• Hi (said as he waved to the cat out on our patio)
• Yum yum (said after eating sweet potato... that's my boy)

Number of teeth: 10 (we had first visit to the dentist this past month)

Favorite foods: just about everything for this Paleo-baby, but particularly:

• Avocado (nothing beats him dancing once he's had some avocado, except perhaps giving us a high-five afterwards)
• Chicken
• Broccoli 
• Spinach
• Salmon
• Sweet potatoes
• Pumpkin
• Oranges (only later did I read you're not supposed to feed babies oranges... oops)
• Peanut butter (woohoo! not allergic! didn't take after mom on this)

Favorite songs:

• In NYC: "Little Drummer Boy" (he dances during the "parampapampam")
• Back in Seoul: "Tatlong Bibe" (3 ducks) -- singing this can stop a meltdown

Best friend:

• Without a doubt, Ate Jhona.  No one can make him laugh as much as she does (Tyler's been gaining lately, but neither of us comes close)

Nemesis:

• Napping and all things involving laying down (in fact, I've since learned to change his diapers with him standing up)
• Sleeves

Favorites:

• Baths
• Waving at cats outside
• Morning snuggles
• Brushing his teeth (seriously)
• Brushing our teeth (he finds this HILARIOUS)
• "Helping" mom pick out her clothes every morning by emptying out and throwing all clothes in my dresser onto the floor
• Downing his bottle and throwing it down, drop-the-mic style

What he laughs at:

• Peek-a-boo (he started initiating this lately)
• Tyler imitating his grunts
• "Oops"
• "Ouch"
• Tyler's electric toothbrush

Favorite toys:

• Balloons
• Car from Ate Jhona
• Singing book from Lolo
• Pomelo fruit from Lola and Lolo's fruit bowl that he enjoyed far more than the boxes of toys bought for him

What he gets mad at:

• When he waves to people and they don't wave back
• OR they wave back but they lose interest after the fifth time going back and forth

New skills:

• Clapping
• Crawling up stairs 
• Turning around and getting down from the bed when we say "Edge!!" (Tyler is particularly proud of this... he's been teaching him this since reading about it online... hadn't seen him incorporate it -- in fact, "Edge!" seemed to become a game where we would smile and dive down into our arms from up upon the bed).  All seemed to come together in NYC! 

Trips:

• Tokyo
• Taipei
• NYC
• Manila

Good night, Seoul

It's 7:35pm as I write this and all is quiet in the bedroom... in fact, all has been quiet for the last twenty minutes, as Tyler put Elliot to sleep.  The fact that I'm even on my computer now is amazing, since basically for the last six months, Elliot has been waking up to nurse literally about 20 times per night (micro-nurses, mind you... maybe for 5 seconds and then back to sleep... meaning I've been pretty semi-permanently awake (or semi-permanently asleep, depending on how you look at it) since July and our first trip crossing over multiple time zones.

Finally at some point in mid-December, we made the decision to start thinking about sleep training.  As we do in most things on our life: we research for a bit, and then fairly quickly decide to outsource.  And so it was with sleep training.  We found a seeming miracle woman (in NYC, where else) who essentially guarantees she'll have your baby sleeping through the night in two nights -- she spends the full 48 hours with you, 24/7.  On the flip side of this, it feels a bit mercenary: going from a snuggly family bed to his own crib in his own room, crying it out until he gets it right.  It also doesn't come cheap: $5000 to essentially sleep train for you (she says that while she offers parents the opportunity to monitor the baby-cam with her, most just put on headphones and go get much-needed sleep).

In what's quickly becoming a Tale of Two Cities, the next day, I found a sleep consultant in Seattle who works with families who want to still co-sleep, using the "gentler" sleep method of basically doing everything else to get the baby to sleep -- besides nursing, rocking, or bouncing (our holy trinity in getting Elliot to sleep for each and every nap and evening.)

We had our first call with our Seattle consultant last Saturday, and essentially literally laughed in her face when she said that Elliot should be getting 11-12 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night (remember, he was waking up EVERY HOUR!)  And kindda rolled our eyes when she suggested patting him when he got upset and wanted to nurse.

I have to hand it to Mr E, though... the first night was certainly not butterflies and rainbows, but it wasn't awful either... maybe only five minutes of intense crying, twenty minutes of light to medium crying, but really just rolling around snuggling on both of us, until he fell asleep on Tyler.  By the third night, he was already meeting the definition of "sleeping through the night" (6 hours).  The fourth night (which she warned us would likely be the worst night) was actually the best -- no crying at all -- just crawling on us until he got tired and fell asleep.  By the sixth night, he was sleeping a solid 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep, which has gone up to 11 hours now.  Un. Real.  To say we had no idea it would be this easy is the biggest understatement.  In fact, I've started to really look forward to the 30 minutes in bed with E before he falls asleep -- basically one big snuggle and tumbling-fest accompanied by the Sleep Sheep playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (ah, these magical moments).

The corollary to this is that WE have been getting exponentially more sleep than we have the last year (and for me, for the last two years... while I loved nearly everything about being pregnant, my inability to sleep was one of the big downsides).  We literally went from utter sleep deprivation to all three of us being the happiest I remember us being in normal day-to-day mode.  I don't think I've ever slept this much, well, EVER.  For the last 10 days, I've been essentially in bed from 7pm to 7am (an unintended consequence of this is that my back started hurting again; as Tyler said, "it's probably not super good to be in bed for half the day.")  Ha.

So what we've now discovered and have tested last night and tonight is one of us putting him to sleep and the other one... having a quiet "late" night (haha, to us, crawling into bed at 9pm is considered "late").  Amazing how the small things can feel so luxurious.

Of course, it would be all too easy for everything to be just about perfect now.  We're still getting there on naps (we were fooled with an insanely easy first nap after the first night of sleep training... ten minutes to sleep with no cries) -- with a pic to capture my disbelief (I love how E and the dog are basically in the same position).

We'll get there.

And so for now... good night, blogger.  Good night, computer.  Good night, smart phone.

Good night, Seoul.

The most wonderful time of the year

Since I've lived in Seoul, Thanksgiving has always marked the transition week from autumn to winter -- at least in terms of weather.  Literally, the winter puffy coat has come out on Thanksgiving each year on the dot.  This year, with the temperature hovering around freezing all week, has been no different.  More posts to come about autumn (my favorite season of the year!), but for now, a celebration of the holiday season, which officially kicked off yesterday!! (extra sweet this year since Thanksgiving fell on the same day as my mom's birthday)

Thanksgiving is always a bittersweet holiday in the life of an expat.  For the last two years, we celebrated "Friendsgiving" with possibly the most delicious holiday spread we've had (no offense family!!), hosted by our friend Alana, a pastry chef from NYC.  This year, we celebrated at WeWork -- which had an impressive spread including turkey, brussel sprouts, and of course, pumpkin pie (between a hungry Filipina and a former fat kid, you can bet there was a lot of strategizing taking place).  We gave thanks for our blessed lives, largely summed up by who was waiting for us at home:

Every year since the first year we dated (2007), we've been keeping a gratitude journal that we write in each Thanksgiving.  Of course, family tops the list every time.  Living abroad, it's easy to meet expats who seem to run away from family; we often remark how lucky we are to have found someone who's so close to family, yet still true to one's passion of international travel and exploration.  

I spoke to my family (parents, cousins, and aunt/uncle) this morning over FaceTime -- which of course has now become 0% about me and 100% Elliot TV.  While it's hard living so far -- especially during the holidays -- it's always nice knowing the rest of our families are together right now.  We got this photo earlier in the day from LA:

And in extra special news... drumroll... our Aunt Lori and Uncle Leo got MARRIED this week!!! -- you can see the happy lovey dovey newly weds on the right of the pic above.  CONGRATS Aunt Lori and Uncle Leo!!!  We love you!!!!

In fact, with the only possible exception of my dad, I don't know anyone who Elliot fell more instantly in love with than Aunt Lori.  As soon as he met her (this past summer in LA), he had an instant huge smile and reached out his arms for her to hold him.  For easily the next hour, all he wanted to do was snuggle next to her:

Of course, there was love for Leo too (I love this pic with Elliot's tiny hand on top of Leo's massive one):

For the whole time I've known them, Lori and Leo have always seemed married (when Lori told her mother Elaine (Elliot's great grandmother), she asked: "But aren't you already married?").  But it's always extra special to officially celebrate love and ever-after.  Cheers to Mr. and Mrs. Presley -- we love you guys!!