Saying "I Love You" Through Food

Growing up, my parents never really told me or my sisters "I love you". I actually didn't think it was weird that my parents didn't say it until I went to college and everyone would hang up the phone with, "bye mom. I love you too!" The way I end my phone conversations with my mom is usually, "okay, okay, okay" *click.

So of course when I told my friends that my parents rarely say "I love you" to me, they were all, "oh my gosh.... I'm sorry..." But then I realized that my parents do say it, they just say it in their own way. My parents version of "I love you" is..

What It's Like Being the Single Sister

The one great thing about living in NYC is that it's full of single people.

Oh, you're single and have been an adult for many years?! I'm single and i'm a new adult! 

And so it's great living in NYC because you get all this 'single power'. That's when you feel even more energized and powerful and independent because you're a single female.

BUT there's nothing like spending a week with family to reel you back to life outside single-full-NYC and remind you what it's like to be THE ONLY single person in your family. AND now that sister #2 has a baby of her own, I'm starting to notice subtle changes in the way life used to work:

Battery Park Friend Date

Good friends are hard to come by. Thankfully I have one right here in nyc! It's funny because we knew each other back in middle school. We always rode the bus together (though now she claims she doesn't remember our sacred bus rides...) and we were neighbors. A year later she moved away and we kept in touch here and there through AIM and later facebook. It wasn't until 11 years later that we met again in Korea and then again when we both moved to NYC.

She's one of those friends you know is meant to be in your life :)

Here's some pictures from our little friend date in the park where we watched the sunset!

What Being a Third Child is Like

This past weekend I babysat my niece who had a complete meltdown and scared me half to death with weird sobbing and twitching-like spasms. So obviously I consulted the higher power of the internets to see whether or not this was normal, to which I found a thread that basically read like this "my first kid did it, freaked out and went to the ER. My second kid does it too. Nothing to worry about."

Which got me thinking to how differently parents raise their kids as they become more comfortable at being parents and immune to "firsts" (love the commercial above).

Below is a snapshot of how my parents responded by the time they became pros at parenting and my two older sisters had allllllll been-there-and-done-that:

Computers and Mothers

Yesterday i spent 2 hours on the phone with my mom trying to help her buy and download MS office on her computer. And in the end, I'm for certain that the reason why we have technology is not to make our lives easier, but a way for us to pay back our parents for all the times we were annoying to them...

Here's what 2 hours of my life was like last night:

Crazy Beliefs From Korea :)

Sister #1 is total obedient, first child syndrome to the max, kind of person. which means that after she had her baby, she's abiding to several of the korean post-baby delivery rules. As i was explaining to my coworker some of these traditions, we got into the topic of other weird beliefs from around the world. And surprisingly, some of the beliefs from AFrica and Korea were similar! Anyways, as a Korean, I thought i'd share some crazy korean beliefs.

My First Stab at Changing a Diaper

Now that i'm an aunt (huzzah!) today i changed my first diaper! Kind of. sort of? okay not really. But it's a learning process!

A started crying and my sister who was napping asked "can you change her?" And i said "sure!" So i placed A gently on the changing table and undid her diaper...

What's In a Baby's Name?

Sister #1 is having a baby girl very very soon! Coming from a very opinionated family of mostly girls, my sister is having trouble deciding a baby's name. She has about a month left before the arrival of my niece, and she's still struggling with the whole thing! So i asked her to write about what she looks for in a baby's name.