I am done playing Santa today, I have two breast pump horns stuck on my boobs, I’m exhausted and have caught Matthew’s cold, and there is so much laundry to do I can’t even begin to think about it.

We leave for California tomorrow morning. O holy shit, am I exhausted.

Dear Matthew,

We are counting down the days to your first Christmas and we can’t wait. You are growing so fast every day that your baba and I comment to each other how little and big you are all at once.

This past month has been action-packed for you! Not too long after your 4 month well-baby visit, I took you to get allergy testing done and we thought we were in the clear! But then we found some other indications that you might be allergic to something I am eating that you’d be getting via breastmilk, and so now I am not eating anything with dairy in it - we suspect you might have a cows milk protein sensitivity. We are still working with the doctor to figure out what it is that’s causing some unpleasantness in your diapers, and I’m sure we’ll get down to the bottom of it. Ha! Bottom! Anyway, cutting out dairy has been difficult, but nothing too drastic. However, when you’re thirty and presumably no longer sensitive to cows milk protein, you are ordered to take Mama out for ice cream. And lasagna. And tacos with queso fresco. Unfortunately, this sensitivity means we will have to discard or find someone to donate the vast amounts of breastmilk we have stored for you, as at this rate, you won’t be having any dairy until after your birthday. Despite all of this, you are exceeding all weight expectations for babies your age - you are the size of an average 1 year old and in fact, you are now fitting 12 month clothing quite comfortably.

You hold your head up so well now and lunge and twist as if you will turn over… but you haven’t yet. We’re not worried - your weight and heft makes it difficult for you to do so now. It’s okay. You’ve got time. You arch your back during diaper changes, and last night when we got you ready for bed, you arched your back up and stood on your toes - a backbend of babysorts! You love standing up on our laps and your legs are so strong. Before too long you will be running around.

You are charming the pants off of everyone you meet. Strangers come up to Mama and Baba all the time and tell us what a cute baby boy we have - and we have to admit, we do. We flew back to Connecticut again to visit Grandma and Great-Grandma Yu for Thanksgiving, and you smiled and cooed and laughed at the flight attendants - and got your very first Southwest wings! You are a frequent flier for sure, and a pro at long-distance travel.

One of your favorite pasttimes now is blowing raspberries. There were a few days this month where you just sat on Mama’s or Baba’s lap and blew raspberries for minutes on end - getting Mama’s and Baba’s hands covered with drool! Every day, you and Baba read books together, take Ava out for a walk and spend time playing. On the weekends when you and Mama hang out while Baba works, we go shopping together (’tis the season!) or, Mama’s favorite, nap together!

I won’t jinx it, but it looks like your napping may be improving, slightly. Ever so slightly. You are the Master of the 45 minute nap - it’s like there’s a little alarm clock buzzing inside of you around the 40 minute mark that wakes you right up at 45 minutes. But for the last few days you’ve lengthened that, which is very nice indeed. We have changed night time routine around a little bit - we do a bath, nursing, book (always Goodnight Moon), and then Mama rocks you to sleep.

You are so lucky to spend your days with Baba - not all babies have that opportunity to do so, and it’s not really common nowadays (although here’s hoping by the time you’re old enough to read these letters things will have changed). Sometimes people make comments to your baba about how he’s babysitting you or how you are adopted because in many ways you resemble me more. It makes the two of us sad and angry that people say such rude things. Know that what they’re saying isn’t insulting you - it’s insulting them. It’s sad that they don’t seem to think that a white man can be the father to a beautiful Chinese boy - and it’s sad that they lack the tact in their upbringing to even say such offensive things to people. My greatest hope for you as your mama is that one day when you are confronted with this, you will be able to be the bigger person and be proud of your rich heritage.

In less than a week, we go to visit your other grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles. California, here we come!

Love,
Mama

Raspberrying with Mama:

More raspberrying:

Oh, sweetie, you really, really don’t want to pull Baba’s finger.

One of Mama’s favorite pictures:

I’m the King of the World!

3 days of 3 racist events, one by one, marching in like little ants.

Today is my divisional holiday party, and Josh’s class was having one too at the same time, so we traded the baby - meeting halfway at the train station. As Josh brought the baby to the train station, a woman approached him and asked, “Aw, what a cute baby. Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Thank you. He’s a boy.”

The woman continues. “Wow, they don’t let a lot of boys out - mostly girls, but not many boys!”

It took me a second to realize when Josh called me, with the Rage, that this woman thought Josh adopted Matthew. That it is impossible for a white man to be the father of an Asian baby.

Even if we adopted Matthew, in what fucking world is it remotely appropriate to say this? As if an adoptive father isn’t a father at all? And since we did not adopt Matthew, does this bitch even realize how much that one phrase hurt? No. I only wish it would make me remotely feel better if she went up to white babies and their parents and said the same sort of shit, but it wouldn’t.

I don’t exist. I am silenced. I am insignificant. I am minor. I don’t count. My experiences don’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

If you would like to see an article that talks about how Americans view racism and how that very article indicates a racist institution, this is the article for you.

On its surface, it talks about a poll conducted for CNN about how serious a problem racial bias is in the United States. And then the article only discusses racial relations between whites and blacks. There are no mention of Asians. There are no mention of Hispanics except in relation to whites, i.e., “non-hispanic whites”. A highlight of this article says:

Only a few of either race say they are racially biased themselves.

Yes, because there are only two races. There are only two major ethic groups affected by racism in the United States, and the one other that is mentioned is in relation to the first! What about biracial people? What about everyone else in this fucking country, because all of us, not just the whites and the blacks, are affected when racism permeates things like the media?

The irony of this article would make me laugh if it didn’t really make me want to cry.

So, for the last two days, Matthew’s sleep has been completely fucked up. Well, sort of. Yesterday while I was laid out on my back, Matthew and I took a 2 1/2 hour nap! And then he took another hour long nap! For Mr. “I Like To Nap For Only 45 Minutes”, this was nothing short of a miracle. Then he went down to sleep for the night early - 6pm was out like a light and nary a peep until 11 and then a billion times afterward. We were going slightly insane this morning. Today, he napped for shit too, which didn’t really help him going to bed tonight. He’s been crying and cranky and just really unpleasant, sleep-wise today.

(Lots of laughs and giggles when he’s awake, so he’s forgiven for being a troublemaker.)

Anyway, in my research online about child development, one of the indicators that something major is going on developmentally with babies is disruption to sleep - that is, his brain is working overtime right now so sleep? Who has time for sleep? Not Matthew.

As I told Josh, though, if this kid’s going through a major developmental change, this shit had better be good. Like, I want him talking tomorrow or something. We’ve been through the pain. Now give up the gain!

1. I woke up late. Again. Because while I programmed my cell phone to go off M-F at 6:15AM, it doesn’t work when I don’t turn the damned thing ON.
2. I left the apartment at 7:50, not 7:30 like I should have.
3. Did I mention that Matthew was WIDE AWAKE and ready to PLAY at 3:30AM? He was. I was not. Raar.
4. I got to the train station and had to go back home because I forgot my laptop.
5. I didn’t have time to put on my contacts so had to wear my glasses.
6. My eyes water in the extreme cold so I took my glasses off and hooked them to the collar of my jacket.
7. It is -9F (with windchill). My legs are frozen still.
8. On the train, I bent down to sit and dropped my glasses to the floor. And stood up. ON MY GLASSES. They are insalvageable.
9. I was late to my meeting.
10. It’s only 10:42AM. I WANT TO GO HOME.
11. I spilled 2 ounces of milk all over my desk.

So, the verdict is in. Matthew is probably sensitive to cows milk protein - different from lactose intolerance. More information here. You don’t really want to know how we discovered his sensitivity - it’s in a previous entry, should you so be inclined. It involves things that I never thought I’d be talking about freely and matter-of-factly online - my son’s poop. It goes without saying that all poop is quite gross; Matthew’s was even more so.

Anyway, after an agonizing night on Thursday when I first discovered the latest development in Matthew’s diapers, and then an agonizing day on Friday when Josh discovered more of the same, I finally talked to his pediatrician on Friday afternoon when she recommended I abstain from dairy.

(Pity me moment: did you know that dairy is EVERYWHERE? Seriously everywhere. Most processed foods have some sort of dairy in it - casein, whey, other “flavorings” that may or may not have dairy in it because it might be in amounts too small to warrant a line item on a nutritional box. Veggie cheese in the produce section has dairy. McDonald’s french fries have dairy. ARGH.)

I was a little glum about it, and I think in some ways I still am, but I’m getting over it. I was really glum on Saturday before I took Matthew on a quick grocery shop for extra fixings for the turkey I roasted on Saturday (yes! I made a turkey! After Thanksgiving!) and picked up some things that were tasty and didn’t have any dairy - like bagel chips and whole wheat matzoh crackers. Saturday I ate oatmeal and turkey (with Grandma’s stuffing!). Sunday I ate more oatmeal (this is good for the fiber and for the milk supply), leftover turkey, and black bean soup, and today I’ve had (guess it) oatmeal, a big salad at lunch, brussels sprouts, and for dinner asparagus and red pepper whole wheat pasta salad. The good thing about this is, obviously, that I can eat well and I damn well may eat healthier than I have in a good long while.

The frustrating thing about this entire ordeal is that I have guilt. I think I was born with it etched into my DNA. We started having issues with Matthew’s poop (this is all the detail I’ll get into here, I promise) when he was 8 weeks old - Matthew’s pediatrician wasn’t worried about it, so I pushed it out of my mind. Then more problems crept up until Friday came along. I messaged Josh at one point saying, “I feel like no one is listening to me.” I knew, I knew, he was allergic to something I was eating. At his four month appointment, he was prescribed a medicated lotion to treat his eczema, and the doctor ordered a battery of allergy tests that all came back negative, but now in my research I found that those tests aren’t generally very accurate for people under the age of 1. It sickens me a little that he had to worsen to the point he did on Thursday and Friday.

The other time I knew something was up was when we were still in the hospital, the 2nd day after he was born. His eyes started looking yellow and I knew he was jaundiced. The pediatrician on duty checked his numbers (10.8 something) and said he was fine. Two days after that he was over 20 something for bilirubin, and we had to be readmitted.

I posted on my mother’s board I belong to and mentioned how crazy it made me that I knew something was up and yet it was like I was peeing in the ocean - no one noticed or took me seriously. And yet these two times I was right. One of the other moms posted, “A mama always knows.” Will I? Do I? Was I just lucky these two times?

I don’t know where I’m going with this, other than I’m writing it down so if there is, god forbid, a third medical issue and I have a hunch, I sure as shit am going with that hunch, no matter how paranoid or neurotic it may make me sound.

Tomorrow, we are going out and leaving Matthew at home with a babysitter. I am surprisingly not as messed up about this as I thought I would be, but I like the babysitter and it’ll be nice to get out on our own. It’s funny to think that before Matthew came along, Josh and I went out to places together.

Of course, I say that now. Watch this space tomorrow. I’ll be posting about how much Josh and I talked about the baby the entire time we were out.