Shutterbug Mama

...my cough-induced migraine did not let up until about midday today, and i still feel a bit of a bruise in my right temple every time i cough. i didn't go into the office again, although i did do some work this afternoon when i felt better. i'm glad i stayed home, though, because i've been coughing up a bunch of greenish yellowish mucousy stuff all day, and it would have been pretty gross to be doing that in the office. cadence thinks it's hilarious everytime i have a coughing-spitting-up-phlegm fit, but i have a feeling my coworkers wouldn't be as amused.

...i think cadence has really liked having both her P's around for over a week now. i'm not sure how she'll react when i go into work tomorrow. at least it'll be friday, and she'll have me for the weekend again. next week will probably be harder on her. it's hard on me, too. if it weren't for things like the mortgage or utility bills, i'd love to stay home w/ cadence full-time.

i seriously need to start playing the lottery.

...cold. migraine. been sick pretty much the whole holiday weekend and beyond. our whole family's been sick, actually. i'm afraid we may have passed on our germs to uncle charles and auntie ali who were visiting with us. i seem to be suffering from a meaner, nastier strain of the cold virus than ted or cadence as i have nearly hacked out a lung and given myself a migraine from all the coughing, while the other two have mainly runny noses. my head feels like it wants to explode. i'm actually blogging with my sunglasses on because i can't stand to look at a computer screen. so this is going to be a short one.

...although being sick put a damper on the weekend, it was still lots of fun having charles and ali with us. it's always sad to see them go because we know it'll probably be another year before we see them again. next time they see cadence, she'll be talking in paragraphs.

...cadence loved all the family time she got to spend during all the festivities. despite being sick, she was playful and happy most of the time, although her sleep got severely disrupted for a couple days when there was just too much excitement for a proper nap.

okay, i'm getting really nauseous, so i should probably stop now...

Conservative Christians Boycott Wal-Mart.

ok, at reading just the headline, my initial thought was, 'finally! conservative christians doing something sensible!' and then i read WHY they were boycotting wal-mart: the radical homosexual agenda.

i cannot tell you how much that makes me laugh every time i hear a christian use that phrase. it makes me laugh so hard until i cry and then evenually i just weep inside.

i cannot post on this subject coherently at this time as i would like to maintain some semblance of sanity for all the family events coming up this weekend. i have never 'come out', so to speak on my personal blog about my thoughts on this, (although i have been posting aplenty elsewhere) primarily because i don't want to upset or worry some people i care about. but i think it's time. i've got to come clean. more on that later...

for now, i officially start my thanksgiving extended weekend. no more work until tuesday at noon! cadence's uncle charles and auntie ali are coming in from seattle, and i plan on enjoying myself.

Labels: christianity

bokumbop has tagged me for the meme thing, so here goes:

10 shallow things i'm grateful for (in no particular order)
1. metropolis lattes--have saved me from many a potential migraine.
2. chocolate--in any shape or form in mass quantities, preferably of the belgian persuasion.
3. ebay--i am a sinner, what can i say...
4. classmates.com--hey, it's how i reconnected w/ josh, and if i hadn't, he and olarn and connolly wouldn't have been around to save my ass when cadence locked herself in the bathroom. so don't judge me.
5. work-from-home-wednesdays. which is tomorrow, yay!
6. metra--it's the way to really fly cuz everyday can't be #5.
7. my babyhawk mei tai--kicks ASS.
8. trader joes--provides food on the table PLUS employment for the hubby to pay for said food on the table. not to mention all the CHOCOLATE in various shapes and forms in MASS QUANTITIES, many of which are of the belgian persuasion.
9. jane austen novels--i LOVE empire waist dresses with a plunging neckline!
10. babylegs--stylish AND practical.

10 deep things i'm grateful for
1. cadence--if i need to explain this one, you must be a stranger around these here parts.
2. ted--he takes care of our daughter while i'm at work, cooks, cleans, does laundry AND brews some mighty tasty beers!
3. our family--we've got some good ones. esp my mom who comes over to watch cadence every wednesday to make Shallow List #5 possible.
4. our church--the folks there have been so good to us this past year. it's nice to get back to my wesleyan roots.
5. our friends, near and far--you know who you are...
6. music--esp. elizabeth mitchell and all the other music that keeps cadence happy in the car and lulls her to sleep at night.
7. attachment parenting--i really believe that parents can change the world.
8. other bloggers--i believe that bloggers HAVE changed the world.
9. my motherland--she is beautiful and i miss her.
10. the chronicles of narnia--i believe in narnia. i am so not kidding.

and to complete the meme, i am tagging lori, lauren, and da boyds.

...different outfit, same sassy attitude...

...she is totally yelling at me to put my camera down...

if you've read my post from august 7th, you know how i feel about breastfeeding. i know i've said before i don't consider myself a 'lactivist', but maybe i'm just in denial.

because when i read about this following news story, i got really pissed off:

'A New Mexico woman who was kicked off an airplane departing from Burlington International Airport after she breast-fed her 22-month-old daughter has filed a complaint against two airlines with the Vermont Human Rights Commission...

...Gillette said she was seated in the second-to-last row, next to the window, when she began to breast-feed her daughter. Breast-feeding helps babies with the altitude changes through takeoff and landings, Gillette said. She said she was being discreet -- her husband was seated between her and the aisle -- and no part of her breast was showing.

Gillette said that's when a flight attendant approached her, trying to hand her a blanket and directing her to cover up. Gillette said she told the attendant she was exercising her legal right to breast-feed, declining the blanket. That's when Gillette alleges the attendant told her, 'You are offending me,' and told her to cover up her daughter's head with the blanket.

'I declined,' Gillette said in her complaint.

Moments later, a Delta ticket agent approached the Gillettes and said that the flight attendant was having the family removed from the flight.

Gillette said she didn't raise her voice -- not wanting to make a scene in the current jumpy air travel atmosphere -- and complied with the ticket agent, crying as she exited the plane.' ~Burlington Free Press

you see, that woman could have been me. that family getting kicked off the plane could've been our family. i have nursed cadence on every flight we've ever been on, and there's no way in hell i'm using a blanket to cover up. why? how would YOU like to eat your meal with a blanket smothering your face? when you're nursing, one of the orifices you use for breathing (your mouth) tends to be occupied, and therefore you have mostly your nostrils to depend on for your oxygen intake. even if i WANTED to use a blanket, cadence would just pull it off. even when i try to cover my boob to be discreet while we're in public, if my shirt or sweater covers her nose at all, she'll pull that sucker right up and turn her mommy into an exhibitionist.

...the really stupid thing is that had the mother NOT been nursing her toddler, there is a good chance that toddler would've been crying and fussing and disturbing the other passengers at takeoff, esp. with the pressure changes. that mom was doing those around her a FAVOR by nursing, not to mention doing what was best for her child.

i know i may be boring some of you who cannot relate to the nursing mom's dilemma, but i feel it is important to do my part to let ordinary folks like you (sorry if i offend by calling y'all ordinary...) know what nursing moms experience. until flight attendants like the one on that delta flight are not offended by the sight of a breastfeeding mom and child, until the average jane and joe can look at a nursing mom and child in public and think nothing but positive things about it, until the public can see nursing as being the most natural thing for a mom and child to be doing, i'm gonna keep talking about breastfeeding, lactation, boobs, nipples, sucking, lansinoh, breastpumps, nursing bras, proper latch, let-downs, antibodies, extended nursing and child-led weaning.

and it's not that i'm trying to get y'all to agree with me, per se, but to get y'all merely used to the idea of boobs being used for nourishment and that being perfectly natural. i don't believing in guilt-tripping women into breastfeeding. there are reasons women don't and can't breastfeed. however, i believe strongly that women should make the choice based on correct information, and i believe that the current environment in our society and workplaces does not promote breastfeeding.

alrighty, i'll get off my soapbox now...

...what you see above is my 4th grade class photo. yes, i am old enough to have had a teacher who wore glasses like that. and lucky me—my photo is right next to the teacher’s. it's hard to believe that 25 years have gone by since 4th grade. i still remember coming home from school on the last day of 2nd grade thinking to myself how OLD i felt now that i was entering the 3rd grade. i must have felt ancient by the time i sat for this photo.

i recently got back in touch with my childhood friend jin. she's the cute girl on the very bottom right of the photo. she organized a mini-reunion this saturday night at her place. it was fun to see old faces and to catch up with jin and the others. except for jin, all the others there were parents of teenagers by now, so i couldn't help feeling a little bit behind the curve. then again, i can't imagine parenting a teenager at this point in my life. a two-year old is challenging enough!

we've come a long way since the days of singing along to lionel richie and wham! on B96 and watching duran duran videos on MTV. back then, we couldn't wait to finally be all grown up, while at the same time never believing we'd actually grow OLD. now, we look back on those years with fond memories of our innocence and simpler times mixed with horror at our hair and wardrobe.

...on sunday, we trekked southward to downers grove to attend the open house for auntie becki's mom’s new custom lampshade business called shadygrove lampshades. it's a joint venture between linda (becki's mom) and her friend cheryl. we saw some really pretty lampshades and ate the yummiest cookies EVER (cookie bakers RAWK).

...besides lounging around and eating cookies, cadence got to goof off with uncle dave. for having napped for only about half an hour on the ride down, she was in an unusually good mood. she danced around people's legs singing cheerfully and charming everyone she met. something tells me she's NOT an introvert.

...as long as we were in downers grove, we had plans to meet up w/ some old friends of mine, greg and michele kus, whom i hadn’t seen in like at least 5 years. we still had a bit of time to kill before heading over there, and so we stopped at a school playground we saw while driving. we know how restless cadence gets when she's stuck in a car or indoors all day, so we thought it would be a good idea to let her get some fresh (albeit COLD) air and run around to her heart's content. even ted and i joined in the playground fun on the swings. we froze our butts off, but it was worth it.

...we had a lovely visit w/ greg and michele and their adorable girls anna (3) and emily (9 months). michele is a a cerified Montessori paraprofessional, and we got a lot of great ideas for fun things to do w/ cadence at home to promote play and learning. cadence and anna got along great, and little emily was the sweetest little baby—happy and content and so mellow. greg and michele are also attachment parenters, so it was a treat for us to be able to share stories and talk with folks who have similar parenting philosophies as we do. i love my non-AP mommy friends, but sometimes i can't help feeling like a freak for some of the choices we've made in parenting, such as cosleeping and extended nursing and gentle discipline. ted and i still struggle with being consistent in these choices, and seeing greg and michele and how they interact with their girls gave me the reassurance that these were in fact the right choices for our family. i just wish they didn't live so far away!

earlier in the day, we had happened to pass the new emmett's ale house in downtown downers grove. there's an emmett’s up in west dundee, really close to ted’s parents’ house. emmett's is a brewpub with some award-winning beers and pretty good food. naturally, ted could not resist the opportunity to drink some good beer, so we met up w/ dave and becki and becki's parents cal and linda for dinner there. we happen to really like becki’s parents, so we were quite happy with the arrangement. luckily, cadence was still in an unusually good mood for having barely napped all day. she even ate her green beans and carrots even when she'd asked for peas and corn (which the kitchen didn't have that day). she stayed seated for the entire dinner with minimal whining, even though we were there for a couple of hours, and was generally a delight for most of the evening.

oh, on a side note, some of you know that ted's passion for beer has not yet had much effect on my own tastebuds and aversion to most beers. well, a little while ago, i prayed a silly little prayer asking god to help me like beer because it would mean so much to ted. would you believe that of all the prayers he could have answered (world peace, eradication of poverty, winning the lottery), god chose to answer this one? it may be too early to tell for sure, but i have to say that all the beers i tried last night were downright yummy! from the victory pale ale to the 1A.M. english ale to the dunkel lager, it was all so good i could have guzzled 'em like soda. i don't know if it's just emmett's or if i'm finally acquiring a taste for all things hoppy, but if this continues, it will definitely make ted happy. and that makes me happy too.

...sometimes, when you have a feeling you should do something, you should take that as a warning and go ahead and do it. case in point, just last week, i had the feeling that we should remove the lock from our bathroom door before cadence locks herself in there. that thought went in one brain cell and out another (such is the plight of a working mom who has no interest in being an ALPHA working mom). well, sure enough, we had some of my high school friends over last night, and while all the grownups were busy yakking away, cadence managed to shut herself in the bathroom and turn the deadbolt.

i managed to hear her banging on the door and yelling for me, so i went to see what the ruckus was. at first, i thought ted was in there with her, as he hadn’t been w/ the rest of us in the dining room. then when i saw that he was in the living room doing magic tricks for my friend jen’s 5 year old son vinnie, i knew we were in trouble, everybody, which included my friends josh, connolly, olarn, jen, her son vinnie, ted and myself, immediately crowded around the area outside the bathroom door.

by this time, cadence was hysterical and screaming and crying in a way that almost made ME lose it. she just kept banging on the door and desperately rattling the doorknob, even though we kept trying to get her to turn the lock. she just didn’t understand what we were saying, or was too frantic to follow instructions. i’m sure if i’d been on the other side of the door, she would’ve just played around until she figured out how to turn the lock again. i guess when a child is that little and that terrified, they just don’t think straight, and i don’t blame her.

in the meantime, we tried unscrewing the doorknob, which did no good as there was no keyhole behind the encasement of the knob. we didn’t want to kick down the door (like they do in the movies) because cadence was on the floor right behind the door, and we didn’t want to hurt her. i called my downstairs neighbor diane who used to own the building to ask her if she had any idea what we could do, but it being a deadbolt, she didn’t have any suggestions. we decided the only thing to do was to tear the doorframe away, so connolly and i ran down to the basement to find a crowbar. i don’t know what i would’ve done if connolly hadn’t been w/ me, as i was so frantic that i couldn’t even find the light to the tool room. connolly found it, thank goodness, and he had the presence of mind to locate the crowbar too. i didn’t even know what a crowbar would look like, let alone locate it in a tool room i’d been in a total of once before.

cadence had exhausted herself and fallen asleep by this time, as evidenced by a lack of response from the other side of the door. of course, being the paranoid freaked out mommy, i was ready to jump out of my skin because i couldn’t somehow walk bodily through that door like a ghost (or jesus) and scoop her into my arms and make sure she was actually alive and breathing. well, with the help of the crowbar and the sheer muscle power of my friends and after what seemed like HOURS, we finally managed to pry the door open.

i rushed into the bathroom and found little cadence, asleep facedown on the cold tile floor right behind the door. i gathered her up into my arms and she woke up and immediately resumed her hysterics where she had left off. i started crying too and had to go into the living room to compose myself. she sounded so sad as she cried in my arms—a mixture of residual fear of having been abandoned and relief at being reunited with and reassured of mommy’s love. she soon calmed down and kept saying over and over, ‘i’m okay. i’m okay. the door. the door. i’m okay. i’m okay.’ she told us in the few words she had that she’d been sad but now she was okay, and she was so sweet and tender with everybody who had taken part in the rescue. she even kissed the door as a gesture of goodwill and forgiveness before going to bed that night, telling it she was okay now. i swear, that kid KILLS me with how sweet she can be sometimes...

...in retrospect, i am intrigued by how primal my urge to claw through the door was. the helplessness i felt at the time was just devastating. i knew that cadence was safe and that we’d get her out, even if it would mean calling in the fire department. still, it was unbearable to me that she would think we had abandoned her and that we wouldn’t be coming to scoop her up into our arms and that she was being LEFT. ALL. ALONE. we have never let her cry-it-out for sleep training purposes, and she has always had at least another comforting adult (grandma, uncle, church friend) to hold her if we weren’t around when she was crying. so this was literally the first time she’s experienced a sense of abandonment without the availability of a shoulder to cry on, which i think would have made a world of difference.

...anyhoo, i am so thankful that my friends were there to help keep me calm and to reassure me that it was all going to be okay soon. i’m sure if it had just been ted and me, i would’ve been absolutely no help. most likely, i would've assumed the fetal position on the floor and rocked myself back and forth until the whole ordeal was over.

suffice it to say, that lock will not be going back on the door…

Labels: cadence

...on most work days, i take the metra train to and from my company out in lake forest. coming home, the train is usually so crowded that people who get on near the end of the line have to stand in the aisles and vestibules. yesterday, a young woman got on at the evanston davis street station. by this time, it was starting to feel like a can of sardines on the train, so she cheerfully asked a hispanic woman and her two young boys if she could squeeze in with them. they were sitting at the front of the car, where two seats face each other. she sat down next to the mom and faced the two little boys.

as soon as she was seated, this young woman began talking to the boys, who were bashful and somewhat puzzled at being paid attention to by a complete stranger. the younger boy didn't understand english too well, so his brother spoke for the both of them. for the next eight minutes until the boys and their mom got off @ the Rogers Park station, this young woman asked them all kinds of questions, like what they were for halloween, did they get a lot of candy, did they go to school, etc. etc. she didn't speak in an exaggerated high-pitched condescending voice like some adults do w/ kids. she spoke to them like they were her fellow human beings, and as deserving of attention and respect as her peers. she didn't ask questions just to ask questions. she actually listened to the answer and commented. in other words, she actually held a conversation with these boys.

...i was amazed as i witnessed all this. these boys, who were around 3 and 7 years old, were usually somewhat loud and unruly, but this time they were polite and behaved beautifully for those eight minutes. i saw that their faces were lit up, esp. the older boy, who has probably been around long enough to have been ignored and belittled and barely tolerated by most unfamiliar adults.

as i walked home from the train station, i couldn't stop thinking about that woman and those boys. even though it was freezing outside, i felt a strange, sweet warm sensation inside, like i'd just partaken of a hot frothy latte from metropolis. i had a smile on my face, which is unusual for me by this time of evening when i'm normally pretty tired and grumpy.

and then it hit me, and it suddenly made sense. i had just seen JESUS on the metra, and he was a young woman wearing a diamond stud in her nose and gray and red striped textured tights on her legs. of course! jesus LOVES the little children! it's been his plan all along that the kingdom of god would belong to the smallest and weakest of them all!

...wow. sometimes, god likes to take the form of an old man to play skee ball on coney island, and sometimes he, or SHE, goes for a ride on the metra and talks to little kids. you just never know...

Labels: stories

...although i am not catholic (in the roman sense of the word), i do want to point out that today is All Soul's Day, which you can read about here in the Catholic Encyclopedia. i don't quite get the gist of the holiday from a catholic perspective, but i think any time is a good time to remember those loved ones who have passed on.

of course, the first person who comes to mind when i think of the dearly departed is my dad, but since i eulogized him quite a bit six months ago, i would like to take this opportunity to remember my grandma, my dad's mother.

it was almost ten years ago when my mother called me at work to inform me that my grandmother had passed away the previous night. i remember that phone call vividly because i basically lost it on the spot. i had never experienced the death of someone i cared about, so i wasn't prepared for how it would impact me. to make things worse, my grandmother had been suffering for a long time with alzheimer's and ill health, and a few days before, i had had a dream about her.

in that dream, she called me on the telephone, which may not sound all that significant except for the fact that she had lost her ability to speak some time ago due to a stroke, so when i heard her voice in this dream, and that voice was strong and clear and healthy, my heart sank and i asked something like, 'but grandma, how can this be?' and she answered me, 'i'm okay now!' and then i started weeping on the phone, because i understood that to mean that she had passed away, and that her bodily sufferings and limitations were no more.

i woke up from that dream disturbed and determined to go visit my grandmother as soon as i could. however, i waited a few days too long, and i got another phone call, this time in real life, when my mom called me at work to notify me of my grandmother's death. i was so upset that i hadn't gone to see her before she died, not to mention a little spooked at having that dream so soon before her death.

i wasn't particularly close to my grandmother, even though she and i shared the same room during much of my youth. there was a language barrier between us, as she never learned english and i forgot my korean. she didn't seem particularly fond of children, at least not on the outside, and she always seemed so stern. i remember as a little kid pining for a cheerfully plump snowwhite-haired granny wearing an apron and silver-rimmed spectacles who would bake chocolate chip cookies with me and pour me a tall glass of milk and tell me stories of the good ol' days.

...my grandma didn't have many good ol' days to reminisce about. she was born in north korea in the early 1900s. during an era when women around the world had few opportunites outside the home, let alone in a culture that expected quiet submission from its women, she managed to get an education and to become a practicing dentist. she lived through the fear and humiliation of a japanese occupation. after the end of WWII divided the korean peninsula between north and south, she lost contact with her family in the north, since she had married and settled down in the south. then after several years of peace and prosperity for her family (both she and my grandfather were dentists), the invading armies from north korea forced her family to flee to the south and to live as refugees. their prosperity was now reduced to poverty. during that time, she worried daily how she was going to feed so many mouths (including children from my grandfather's previous marriage, she had i think 7 kids or so to look after).

my dad told me that my grandmother's mother was the first person to convert to christianity in her village in north korea. she passed on that faith to her daughter, and she in turn instilled that faith in her own children, although a few of them didn't come around to it until much later in life. throughout her life, it was that faith that sustained her, through the violence and uncertainty of war, through poverty, through personal heartbreak and tragedies, through coming to a new country with unfamiliar customs and an unfamiliar language.

i wish i had more time with my grandmother while she was alive. and even though my faith today may not look a lot like my grandmother's own faith, nevertheless, her legacy of faith and fortitude continues to inspire me, and i am honored to remember her today.