I am starting to recover from the busy and super fun holidays.  Because we live close to both my family and my husband’s family, we are fortunate to celebrate with all our families and this year we had 4 Christmases.
Christmas Eve we celebrated with Grouchy Husband’s family in the Berkshires, Massachusetts.  The girls opened one present before we left.

Christmas Eve was also the first night of Hannukah.  It was special to watch Uncle Mark and Aunt Bernice’s family light the first candle of the menorah and say a blessing.

The girls played high-stakes backgammon with Cousin Jill and Scott.

They also decorated their 7th gingerbread house of the season.

We stayed one night in the Berkshires, came home, unpacked, took showers, got dressed, let the girls open the rest of their presents from Grouchy Husband and I, and then drove to Brooklyn to celebrate Christmas with my family.  It was a busy day.

My 9 cousins and I use to take a photo each year in from of the Christmas tree.  We can hardly see the tree now.  Our families has grown a bit.

My sister and her family came into town the day after Christmas.

My mom hosted a dinner that night and invited my grandmother and the rest of her family to celebrate another Christmas.

There were more presents to open.  This is 3 consecutive days of present opening for the girls and it was as exciting as the first.

We also celebrated my uncle, grandmother, and brother-in-law’s birthdays.

Our 4th Christmas was with my sister-in-law’s family.  And if you were wondering, yes, there was present opening.

Cheers to 4 Christmases,
The Dumpling Mama xo

This year my brother hosted Cousins Dinner on New Year’s Eve.  My cousins don’t all live close so I very much look forward to this time with them eating comfort food and drinking champagne.

I brought a crudités plate and cut heaping piles of vegetables to help counter-balance the fried chicken for dinner.  I also brought Cheetos because it is our party food must-have.

We all had a champagne bottle (or two) of our own to drink.

The night starts out with lots of time catching up.  My cousin Karyn (on the left) came in for the holidays from California.  My cousin Cheryl (on the other side of me) dyed the bottom of her hair purple.  So cool.

My cousin James is on the left.  We called him James-y growing up and now we call him J-Poo.

My cousin Karyn is a newlywed and this is her husband Josh.

This is my cousin Artie and his girlfriend Nadya.  She lives in Russia.

Nadya made a Russian salad for our dinner.

This is Grouchy Husband.  He thinks my cousins are crazy but wouldn’t think of missing Cousins Dinner.

Dinner is A LOT of eating and drinking.

Lots of story-telling.

Lots and lots of laughing.

And more laughing.

Then things start to get silly.

And our pictures get a little off balance.

Then things get a little crazier.

Happy New Year from the Wong Cousins + Sami on FaceTime!

Cheers to family, health, and fun,
The Dumpling Mama xo

This year, the girls chose a vacation for their birthday instead of a big birthday party like they’ve had in previous years.  Grouchy Husband and I still wanted them to have a small celebration with their friends so we hosted a small party at his hot dog shop.  I love birthdays (especially my own), so even though it was going to be small, I wanted it to be so much fun.  After hours of Internet searching, I put together a list of games that looked like fun and games I loved to play growing up.

First game was called “Junk in the Trunk”.  Everyone puts on a belt that had an empty tissue box filled with ping pong balls strapped to it.  Princess’ team were the Big Kids.  Baby’s team were the Little Kids.  The team that shook all their ping pong balls out of the tissue box hole first won.

The kids had a blast shaking, jumping, dancing their ping pong balls out.

Next game, balloon darts.  I taped balloons to poster board and taped a tack behind each balloon.  Big Kid and Little Kid teams were given bean bags to throw at the balloons and push them to the tacks.  Whoever popped all the balloons on their board won.

This game was crazy fun!  The kids got really into it and were throwing the bean bags so hard.

It ended up being a tie because the last 6 balloons were taking a very long time to pop.

The cotton ball and spoon game was an oldie but a goodie.  With a spoon in their mouths, kids had to scoop cotton balls from one bowl and walk it to another bowl.  If they dropped the ball, they had to start all over.

The licorice and marshmallow game is one of my favorites.  I played it at almost all of my birthday parties growing up.  I hung a marshmallow on the bottom of a licorice string.  Without hands, the kids had to eat from the top of the licorice to the marshmallow.

This game has no age limits.  Big Kids and Little Kids had equal amounts of fun.

Princess lost her front tooth a few days before the party.  Some say this was an advantage.

Last game was a memory game.  I brought out a tray of things and named them all for everyone.  After a couple of minutes, I hid the tray of things and the kids have to write down what they remember.  This game was messed up because I had a separate tray for the Little Kids and handouts with pictures so they just had to circle the things they remembered because they can’t spell but I left home in a rush and forgot it all.  Oh well, thankfully the fun of the previous games hid this mistake.

After the games, the kids put their hot dog orders in.

The macaroni and cheese hot dog was the favorite.  It usually is.

The kids ate picnic style.

The party was totally chaotic and crazy but I think everyone had a good time.

The overflow of parents stayed outside where it was quiet.  Yes, that is Grouchy Husband out there also…

The girls had so much fun with their friends, it was worth the crazy hour and a half.

Happy 5th and 8th Birthdays girls!  Mama loves you always xo

 

Tomorrow is my 10 year wedding anniversary.  If I were ever asked to list my greatest accomplishments, this would be at the top of the list.  An overview of my marriage would go something like this: first year awesome, followed by 2 years of good, then 5 years of bad and really bad, then 2 years of getting better.  Grouchy Husband and I are very different and we have little in common.  Our love is not perfect but it is true.  It was my American heart that married my husband.

Here are my greatest learnings from 10 years of imperfect love:

Differences keeps things interesting, makes you independent, and also creates distance.  Grouchy Husband and I are different.  I like to talk and ask questions, he stays pretty quiet.  I like to eat nutritious food, he rather not.  In stressful times I’m at my calmest, he is an erupting volcano.  Our work is different, we like different TV shows, and the list goes on and on…and on.  I like my independence so I appreciate our contrasts but I have to be mindful that living in my world too long can push us too far away from each other.

Time together matters.  Life gets busy when you have babies, raise babies, work, start businesses.  When our schedules are at their busiest, we can see each other once a day in passing.  He works midnights as a police officer so I don’t even spend time with him sleeping.  Long periods of time apart is what creates the most distance in our relationship.  We don’t need vacations in secluded locations to keep us connected.  A little goes a long way for us, right now it’s a 1-hour Thursday morning Crossfit class we take together.

Loyalty.  Grouchy Husband is very loyal.  I, on the other hand have spent more then half the days being married with thoughts of divorce.  It’s the American in me.  This probably never crossed his mind, or not as many times as it did mine.  If he was like me, we would not be together.  I’m grateful and blessed he is not.

Demand excellence.  The Chinese in me has very high standards for my Grouchy Husband.  Everything from career and wealth to his friends and how he acts towards my friends and family. Being in a relationship means you motivate and encourage each other to be the best they can be.  I am Grouchy Husband’s biggest cheerleader.  I know his potential and will push him to achieve it.  I hope he does the same for me.

Speak your mind.  We are Chinese, a culture known for suppressing emotion.  It is in our DNA to not share emotion, good or bad.  I tend to speak my mind through text messages because it’s easier to communicate when someone isn’t talking back.  I’m working on this.  We got through our really bad times by painfully talking through how horrible our relationship was.

Respect.  This is my biggest struggle in our marriage.  Our differences, time apart, disappointment, can snowball and respect is lost.  You cannot be in a relationship with someone you do not respect.

Cheers to 10 years of imperfect love,
The Dumpling Mama xo

My time with Gung (公), maternal grandfather in Chinese, will always be like the picture above; stoic, asking if I’m hungry, laughing at my broken Chinese.  Gung is 92 years old and the last couple months he has been in the hospital and rehabilitation center.  His health has declined during this time and is weak and sometimes hallucinates.  I just visited him last week after he had been away from home for over a month.  I convinced myself it was because life has been busy.  There was talk of organs starting to not work and no more the doctors could do.  I didn’t know if I would visit him, I didn’t know if I wanted memories of him in this fragile state.

Grouchy Husband and I had a conversation about it, there were a lot of tears, he couldn’t understand.  He has a stronger sense of obligation then I do.  I usually do what what my heart feels, it’s the American in me.

Visiting Gung would never be because of obligation.  I love my relationship with him.  It’s your typical Asian loving relationship where “I love you” is never said, it’s expressed through food and money.  He always bought my favorite fruit and had it washed and ready to eat when I would come visit.  If there were pits in the grapes, he would peal and take the pits out.  Gung use to be a chef for a rich family in Hong Kong and then a restaurant owner in Chinatown so he knew all my favorite foods and would cook them when I came to visit.  He bought my siblings and I candy, Hawaiian Punch, and had ordered cable television so he could record Disney movies for us.  Growing up and living 3 hours away, I would come visit for holidays and vacations.  After college I found a job in NYC, lived in Chinatown in the building next door and would visit Gung and my grandmother all the time.  I didn’t really have friends or go out until Grouchy Husband moved back to NY a couple years later, so my grandparents were my friends.  Spending time with Gung was never an obligation.

I went to visit him in rehab because I thought he might like company.  My mom has been visiting him each day and he tells her to go home.  Gung was known to everyone besides his grandchildren as a mean and stubborn man.  I never saw this.  In my broken Chinese we chatted about how much Grouchy Husband sells his hot dogs for at the hot dog shop.  He then told a story about the night before he was ringing the bell to get into the rehab, but no one came so he climbed up the wall and through the window.  My Chinese is not good and wasn’t sure if I heard him correctly so I looked at my mom and she confirmed he was telling stories.

I am happy I went to visit and I think he was too.  Seeing him and hearing the crazy story were hard reminders he is different but my mind is full of all of the time we spent together eating, eating (lots of eating), talking, walking, and the relationship that I love with my Gung.

The Dumpling Mama xo

I feel blessed to have great mothers in my family.  They took good care of me growing up and their amazing qualities inspire me to be a better mom to my children.

My mom is a survivor.  She immigrated to the United States at 16, got a college degree, found a job at a telephone company, moved 180 miles away to Upstate New York after she married my dad, found friends, learned how to drive, stayed home to raise 4 children.  She did all this, cooked thousands of meals and always looked pretty.

My grandmother is clean and neat, and always helping.  She takes cleaning very seriously, using certain cloths to wipe certain things and washing vegetables at least 3 times.  I think she is this way because she grew up in a poor village in China where there was no running water.  Things had to be kept clean to keep people healthy.  My grandmother even taught my daughters how to wipe their mouths to remove the most amount of grease and food.  She has a heart of a servant and is always looking to help.  When I also lived in Chinatown, she would cook me dinner, pack me lunches, buy my favorite fruits, and even tried to find me a boyfriend when I was single.

My aunt has never-ending kindness and patience.  She always made sure my cousins, siblings and I had everything we needed from sneakers to snow pants, to mending a hole in our pajamas.  She always remembers our very favorite foods.  At family gatherings, we will eat her amazing cream puffs, chocolate-covered pretzels, pizza bread, and her famous chocolate cake she only makes for Christmas.  Whenever we lose something, no matter how big or small, she would look until it was found.  I once lost an earring back and she found it in between the couch cushions.  Every year she always gives me a birthday present, and I’m 39!

This year, one of our Mother’s Day celebrations was dinner in the city at a French Bistro.

I over-committed the weekend not realizing it was Mother’s Day.  It was a very busy weekend, but we got through it!
My brother just came back from the Kentucky Derby so he bought the girls magic sets from the airport.  This kept them entertained for a while, practicing the trick, then performing them on everyone.

I had escargot for appetizer and Baby patiently used the clamp and small fork to get each snail out.  She was so proud of herself!

I hope you all had great Mother’s Day celebrations.

The Dumpling Mama xo

It was my 39th birthday at the beginning of last month.  I love my birthday.  I love the birthday wishes, the smile when someone finds out it is your birthday, how everyone is extra nice to you.  The weeks leading to my birthday, I go through a time of reflection because I am another year older, have goals and am driven to accomplish them. Every year, I’ve felt like I have been exactly where I want to be … 35, 36, 37, 38.  39 was different.  My children are healthy, my husband doesn’t hurt me, I love my family…I should be happy, right?  The problem was how I felt about myself.

Five years ago, I left a full-time career for a life where I could stay at home raising my kids, work part-time and be an entrepreneur.  Each year I’ve worked hard getting closer to this goal, figuring out how to be a mom, finding steady part-time work, starting this blog and launching a lucky envelope business.  I’m am so blessed to finally be here.  Instead of feeling accomplished, my mind is filled with time I can’t find in the day to help my daughter in math so she can get to her grade level, work projects I can’t work on because I’m part-time and how this is stunting my career growth, being discouraged when the house next to good friends finally becomes available and my husband says we can’t afford it.  I’m usually a positive person so it is uncomfortable to have so many negative thoughts.

I was in a place of self-doubt.  This time was challenging but it forced me to be present with my thoughts.  I was not happy because I lost my purpose for why I stay home with my kids, why I only work part-time, and why I stay up late writing blog posts.  I lost my joy.

After a few weeks of thinking and a beach vacation with my sisters, I found my way back to a place of purpose.  I am at home raising my daughters and working part-time around their schedules so that I can continue contributing to family finances, while spending the most time with them.   I author this blog and launched a business because these are my passions.  I want my hard work, obligation, and passion pursuit to be examples to my daughters.  There are sacrifices of time, corporate career growth, buying the house next to good friends and I have to be ok with that.  Some sacrifices will be harder then others but when I look at the relationship with my daughters, accomplishments on my work projects, and the community surrounding this blog, it is SO much more then ok.  I am so grateful.

Cheers to being 39,
The Dumpling Mama xo

 

It’s Spring Break and I’ve decided on a staycation because we were just in New Orleans a week and a half ago and there are so many things to do in NYC.  Today was family day at the American Museum of Natural History.

While Grouchy Husband parked the car, we waited in the Oceans exhibit.  The girls were scared of the scary black fish picture so they wouldn’t stand near it.

The girls really enjoyed the Amphibian and Reptile exhibit.

They thought the frog with the puffed out cheeks was so funny.

The snake skeleton was amazing.

They could not believe how big the Komodo Dragons were.  10ft and 200lbs!

The girls saw a dissected animal for the first time.

Baby had a hard time understanding that the exhibits were not alive so she would get scared sometimes.

My favorite exhibit was about bacteria and microbes in the body and digestive track.
The girls were really looking forward to the Butterfly Conservatory.  When we were in New Orleans, we went to one and they had butterflies come onto their fingers.

They saw so many butterflies and planned on using their experience in New Orleans to have a butterfly come onto their fingers.

Baby tried.

And tried..

She even got Grouchy Husband to help her try…but no butterflies landed on her fingers.  She left crying and it was heart-breaking.

We headed to see the dinosaurs and the Titanosaur, one of the largest dinosaurs and is 122-feet-long.  Baby lost her museum spirit after the butterflies.

Even with the butterflies, we had a great day together.

Cheers to Family Day,
The Dumpling Mama xo

As parents, when our children are young, most of their care is physical effort.  Once they can start putting on their own shoes and taking their own baths, the care changes from physical to preparing them for their lives.  Below are the 10 values I want to teach my daughters before they leave for college.  I hope I can get it all done in 18 years.

Relentless Dedication.  The only way you get good at something is if you spend a lot of time doing it. This goes for everything from tennis to baking a chicken.  Princess has started to play the piano and because I grew up playing, I’ve spent a lot of time practicing with her each week.  Every week she reaches a point of frustration usually because she cannot play the music correctly even after many attempts.  After encouraging her to practice a few more times, the music is perfect and her smile is ear to ear.

Actionable Compassion.  I want my daughters to have an open heart and mercy for others and proactively find ways to help.

Well-kept household.  Growing up my mom would always tell us to clean up and she would tell her friends how hard it was to keep a clean house.  My world was small back then so as long as I could find my own stuff, things were clean enough for me.  Now that I have my own household to manage filled with two kids, a husband, and my stuff, I know exactly where my mom was coming from.  It’s a lot of work but this is a place to put the extra effort.  I feel cleaner and happier when my home is in order and clean.  You also gain face from others when you have a neat home.

Managed finances.  I am not good at this so I want to make sure my daughters learn this.  It’s making sure you have money going into living expenses, fun expenses, and savings.  It’s learning to live unattached from material things.

Good hygiene.  This includes showering regularly, brushing teeth, combing hair, hair cuts, using deodorant, cutting nails, cleaning clothes, and anything else that will make you look and smell clean. Mastering this will help you get your dream job and dream boy or girl.

Love God.  Being a Christian protected me growing up.  God provides the foundation and guidance I need to raise a family and handle life.  I want my daughters to have this.

Time management.  I am at least a little bit late for almost everything.  I am overly ambitious with all of the things I want to accomplish in a day and it totally stresses me out.  I want my daughters to be better planners and have a better handle on the time needed to be present and do a good job.

Family values.  As the oldest child in my family, it has been my responsibility to make sure the family maintains (for the most part) good relationships and family events are a priority for my siblings.  It has not always been easy, but family IS important to my siblings and I.  I want my daughters to always be close and promote family togetherness.

Individualized Identity.  I want my daughters to have the confidence to have their own thoughts, passions, and likes.  Then use this confidence to be who they want to be.

Self advocacy.  As much as I would like to think I will be able to take care of my daughters for the rest of their lives, the reality is I won’t.  It is so important for them to speak for themselves and learn how to take care of themselves, everything from healthy eating choices to knowing their civil rights.

Anything else on your list?

The Dumpling Mama xo

Grouchy Husband completed his first Cross Fit Open workout a few days ago.  This is a five week event where every week a new workout is released and people are scored on the workout.  Even though Grouchy Husband has been doing crossfit for over a year and recently became obsessed with it, he was nervous to signup.  The American in me finds something so attractive about the sweat, effort, and outperformance in this physical competition.  The Chinese in me likes that the courage and strength to finish this extraordinary physical competition has not only gained face for my Grouchy Husband but also me, his wife.

Grouchy Husband was nervous about the workout and when he gets nervous he gets quiet and grouchier (hard to believe).  We know to give him his space.  My daughters and I even took a separate car to the crossfit gym to watch him.
He had some time before his heat so he did his best to keep himself focused but not too focused.  The workout was as many rounds as possible of 25ft overhead lunges, then 8 bar-facing burpees, then 25ft overhead lunges, then 8 chin-to-bar pull-ups in 20 minutes.

About to start.

Focused and looking strong.  The weight on the barbell is 95lbs! Everyone who had done the workout before him gave the recommendation to start slow and pace yourself.

Burpees are one of his favorites.  What kind of a person likes burpees?

More lunges.

His weakest part of the workout were the pull-ups.  He tried all different strategies during the workout.  Started out doing sets of 4.

So tired at the end, he was doing singles with an underhand grip.  I can’t do any chin ups and my coach said it would take me at least a year to train to do only one (yikes!).

Halfway through, tired but keeps pushing on.

Exhausted.

I cringed watching him pick up the 95lb barbell.

Finally, the finish line.  Every bit of energy went to every step to get there.

Done!

The girls made him cards when he finished.  I don’t even know if he could comprehend what they were saying at this point.

I am so proud of Grouchy Husband.  Loved that the girls and I could be there and see him push so hard and share in his overwhelming sense of glory and accomplishment.  Loved that he wasn’t grouchy after he finished.

A proud Dumpling Mama xo