Apparently A Parent

With less than a month to go before the due date of my very first child, I’ve been spending these remaining days getting ready for the baby while trying to rest up as much as I can. As I just hung up some cute artwork I made from old boxes and the adorable animal print wrapping paper my parents had used for their gifts to the baby, I couldn’t help but think that this is it. I’m finally going to be a parent. And part of it overjoyed me while the other part of it terrified me.

Life as I know it is ending and a new, wonderful beginning awaits. But part of me is completely freaked out. I’m going to be someone’s mom. Me. The girl who has only held 2 babies ever in her life. The girl who has never changed a diaper. The girl who once upon a time used to get so intoxicated she hoped to wash away every thought she ever had. 

Apparently, during this time, I somehow grew up for good. But I know I can’t sit here and dream of going back to when I was a kid. Now I will have a kid, and I’ve got to give him or her the very best life I can. I had such an amazing childhood. My happiest memories are of my when I was little; playing with my brother and my cousins.  For this reason, once I got into adulthood, I realized I really wanted to have children of my own. We found out we were pregnant 8 weeks in and we were so overjoyed, we got married.  As if I wasn’t delighted enough by marrying such an incredible man and having a baby on the way, when I went for my first ultrasound, I was just smitten. As soon as I saw my baby on the screen, I burst into tears. It was an overwhelming feeling of pure happiness. That’s MY kid! Right there! And I could hear the heartbeat. And from that moment on, I have been completely head over heels for this little person who has been kicking me and causing me quite a bit of discomfort over the last 9 months. 

Yes, I’m becoming a parent. Thirty-four years is quite a while to have enjoyed life on my own selfish terms.  Ready or not, here it comes!

Fashion Design By My MIL

If Seoul is the new fashion capital of the world, then this place is its polar opposite. True that the younger generation in China seems to be grasping the concept of dressing to impress, or at very least, dressing in such a way that didn’t look like you left the house in an urgent hurry to escape a fire (or say, a random visit from your MIL), older women have little regard for dressing up. Or even just wearing something that simply matches. My MIL, as you have seen in previous photos on this blog, has no fashion sense. From what she wears to how she styles her hair, it’s as though she takes no pride in her appearance. And that is just fine if she wants to dress herself like she let a pack of blind, homeless people pick her wardrobe and cut her hair. But it’s not ok if she wants to pick out clothes for my husband, my baby or especially me. 

Let’s take a look at some of these vile items she’s chosen for us, shall we?

First up, this hideous long-sleeve shirt she bought for my husband during winter. To his credit, my husband had cleverly stashed it in the closet in what is now the baby’s room, thinking it would never see the light of day. It was a nice try, I’ll give him that. But when we cleaned out the clutter of extra items his parents had stored in there (despite their pleas as they so wanted to still be able to stay over in the extra bed whenever they felt like it to invade our privacy further), my poor husband had to play dumb like he’d forgotten all about the atrocious, grandpa-style shirt she bought him. My husband can rest easy though…I have taken the liberty of hiding this alleged garment in the back of one of our drawers in our dresser, where her presence is forbidden, thus ensuring he will never, ever have to wear it.

Next, this cheaply-made sleeper for the baby. IN PINK. Because despite her thinking that she truly believes I’ll be popping out a boy, she just had to get something pink. With ugly (almost frightening) cartoons on it. And you might be able to tell from this photo how the crotch area is just open. Yes, for some reason, in China, they love having the diaper hanging out. What, you couldn’t get something with some fucking snaps on it? I don’t want my kid’s diaper dragging around on the ground, thank you. Fortunately, this is the only baby garment she bought in this style because I told her I preferred snaps at the crotch instead (another big thanks to the Google translator for that one). So, to my soon-to-be-born baby, Mommy promises you that whether you’re a boy or a girl, I will not dress you in this awful outfit unless: 1) you poop and/or pee on everything else and it is the only clean item 2) Grandma wants a picture of you in it or 3) I leave you with Grandma and she dresses you up in it (and if she does, I’ll inquire about changing the locks once and for all). And I will never let you leave the house in it either, Mommy swears!

And here we have what should have been something lovely that turned horribly, horribly wrong. In Chinese tradition, the new bride (that’s me!) is supposed to go with her MIL to get a jacket made for the Chinese new year. If you’ve ever seen those gorgeous Chinese dresses (pictured just below), the jacket is supposed to be something similar. Emphasis on SUPPOSED TO BE. This should have been fun on so many levels what with the shopping and designing of a garment that would be made just for me. But it wound up being absolute torture.

(gorgeous Chinese dress):

For starters, my in-laws came over the night before for dinner and stayed the night. I wasn’t pleased by this but I married a Chinese man and I didn’t want to complain about the tradition of a family dinner together for the Chinese New Year. This meant that, unfortunately, they would have to stay the night because they live a bit far from here and the bus to their home wouldn’t be running by the time we finished eating (the good news these days is that now that we’ve decorated the baby’s room and removed the extra bed, they can never again stay over here EVER!). As my husband and I lay in bed reading, with limited privacy from that damned 70’s curtain, he tells me that instead of his parents leaving first thing in the morning when he leaves for work, his mom will be taking me to get fitted for this traditional wedding jacket.  I’m about in tears over this. I just want them to go away. I don’t want to be seen in public with her, even if we are going shopping, something I absolutely love doing with my mom (perhaps because my mom doesn’t dress like she’s 102, has beautiful hair and doesn’t even look close to her actual age). But this is important to Xiaolong and I love him. So I put on a brave smile and tell him I’ll go and he promises to make it all up to me (which he did, incidentally, with jewelry and a wonderful trip to Shanghai). 

Despite my trepidation of what kind of store she would possibly take me to, we walk into this fabulous place. It’s filled with rolls and rolls of fabric, most of them quite gorgeous. And there are sample dresses up on the walls and all of them are incredible. I’m mentally taking notes on them so that I can have my husband buy them for me after I have the baby. Suddenly, my MIL comes to a halt in front of one roll of fabric. It feels cheap and looks so ugly, I wouldn’t even make a table cloth out of it. I tap her arm urgently, pointing at 2 different rolls of fabric just adjacent that are of fantastic quality and design. But no, she’s made up her mind. My MIL has decided she wants to dress me like a 90-year-old waiting for death rather than a 34-year-old about to be a mom.

Next, they must take measurements so the jacket can fit me perfectly. Now I’m unhappy as can be. I know all too well what this will end up looking like. I have a brief glimmer of hope when the lady measuring me points at the mannequins behind me and gives us style options to choose from. Yes! Maybe we can save it after all! I point to one with these beautiful Chinese-style hook buttons that are sewn in a wrap-effect way across the chest, giving it something more than just the straight-down look, which would also be more flattering with my ever-growing pregnant belly. But as quickly as my hopes rise, my MIL ruins everything and insists on the straight-down look. I’m blatantly frowning at this point but she’s oblivious. To top it off, I just want to stab her and everyone else in the store from being subjected to the horrid Chinese New Year music again.

Several days later, the jacket is ready. This time, my husband goes with us. And I show him all the dresses I like. And then, we pick up the jacket. And my husband begins to laugh. I’m not laughing though. I knew it would come out looking this awful. It looked like something an old woman would love to wear. Or perhaps servers at a fancy Chinese restaurant would be forced to wear as a uniform. This poor jacket never stood a chance with my MIL as the designer.  As you can see from the photo, it is hideous. My husband even said something to his mom, telling her that she should have let me pick the fabric and style and that I have impeccable taste. But it was clear she wanted to be in charge of something. He promised that after we have the baby, he’d take me back to get one of the dresses I liked made for me. Until then, he said I could shove that in the back of our armoire and that is where it is and shall be unless I am forced to be photographed in it.

And finally, the worst for last!

The wedding jacket was definitely one of the worst things ever. But there is one thing even worse than that. And she got it for ME. How lucky I am! Again, it is from the little old lady collection of clothes. She bought this in winter when she would come over and get upset that I wasn’t wearing long sleeves inside our HEATED home. With flannel pants on, I was just too hot and would sweat, thanks to my hormones, from wearing long sleeves. So she picked up this old lady vest to give me an extra layer without making me too hot. The pattern…the colors…the cut…oh, there are no words.

It is painful to look at, isn’t it? With my husband’s blessing, this too has been tucked away until we can send it back to the vortex of all things old lady where it properly belongs.

The 10 Most Irritating Things My MIL Does

I should start off by saying that I don’t hate my mother-in-law. I really don’t. She’s a very nice person. That being said however, I find her impossibly difficult to deal with at times. I know, I know...I should be grateful that she is so nice and that she didn’t forbid her only son to marry a non-Chinese woman. And to her credit, she really does try hard to adapt to having an American in her family. But some of the things she does truly grates on my nerves. Maybe my tolerance to her is low due to my pregnancy hormones. Maybe it is the language and cultural barrier. Or maybe she really is as annoying as I think she is. With my due date fast approaching, one thing is for sure, we’re about to find out! 

What does she do that drives me so crazy? Oh, let me count the ways:

1. Putting perishable foods in the cabinets. With the dishes. Yes, she does this. She does this much less than she used to but I swear, if she comes over and I don’t check our kitchen cabinets where the dishes go, I can almost guarantee that she’s stuck the remainder of a fish she cooked for lunch in there. 

2. Storing perishable food outside on the window ledge. While I have to hand it to her that in winter when it is freezing outside (and sometimes snowing) this is pretty clever. It is definitely cold enough here to do such a thing. Though I’m not wholly on board with it, being brought up in a country where you put things that need to be cold in the refrigerator or freezer.  I let it go initially, since it was so cold outside, most of the items froze. Until one day I saw a bird come up and start snacking on everything. Then I asked that her outside ‘refrigerator’ be removed permanently.

3. Buying inappropriate/stupid items for the baby. In China, it is against the law to reveal the gender of a baby to an expecting couple. This drove us nuts at first but with so little time left, it’s kind of neat not knowing. As you might have guessed, my in-laws are quite excited for their first grandchild. However, my MIL will go and buy clothes that are pink. HOT pink. While blue could work on a girl, I’m not so keen about putting a boy into bright pink without his expressing a fondness for the color.  Even worse though is how she tried to tell me there are no mattresses for baby cribs in China. THEY MAKE THEM HERE! Despite my conversation with her (aided in part by using the Google translator) where I told her that babies cannot sleep on soft items and need firm mattresses, she continued to epically fail in this area. She MADE a ‘mattress’ which was nothing more than a large blanket. A blanket too large for the crib. And too soft for the baby too. I had to suppress the urge to scream. She also bought a pillow for the baby. I had to suppress the urge to cover her face with it.

4. Completely demolishes my good housework within minutes. See my previous entry including photographic evidence of how she fucks up my clean home, particularly my kitchen.

5. Cooks the same things all the time. I love to cook. Love it! I feel creative and fulfilled when I do. And nothing makes me happier than to see my husband’s face fill with pure satisfaction when he takes the first bite of something I make. I’m not my mom, that’s for sure, but like her, I have the ability to combine various ingredients into different dishes. And I try not to make the same thing every day, or week for that matter. My MIL surely can make dumplings which are quite tasty. But she’ll make them too often. It would be like my mom making her signature dish every day. I doubt my dad and I would be so happy to eat it if it were served to us with such frequency. Other times, she just makes everything too salty. Cuisine here is quite different than the Chinese food you get “Americanized” in the states. For one, at Chinese restaurants in the states, many different regions are combined on the menus. Sichuan and Cantonese, for example. But my MIL only seems to know how to make things with brown sauces. Mostly soy sauce. And often, she fries everything. So in the rare chance that it does taste good, it’s not healthy. But mostly, it’s the same shit, different day, and hence why I cringe when she insists on coming over to cook for us.

6. Pees with the toilet seat up. This is a Chinese woman thing. They use these horrid squatters here, which, if you’ve never seen one, are like porcelain holes in the ground as you can see in the picture below (from the Google Picasa album). But in homes, many people have toilets. If you’re out in public and have to use the bathroom, you’re lucky if you find one with a toilet and not a squatter. And whichever one you do find, you’re luckiest of all if the bathroom happens to be clean! But you’ll note that many women here will leave the seat up if they use the toilet before you.  They actually squat over the toilet! They are worried about the dirtiness of the toilet which cracks me up since people here don’t exactly do the best job cleaning things. Still, in our own home, she shouldn’t be afraid of germs especially since I’m the one that cleans the toilet. Especially since I’m the one that actually bought toilet bowl cleaner to clean it with. She never once used any cleaning agent on the toilet (or the sinks, or the floors). That would explain why it took me forever to polish everything to a shine the first time I cleaned our home.  Oh, and she also doesn’t flush the toilet either…she throws a bucket of water down it to flush it which means she’s splashing pee all over my bathroom. Thanks, MIL!

7. Chews too loudly. Maybe I’d give her a break on this one if I weren’t pregnant. But the sound of her gnawing on food is enough to put me right into a murderous rampage. My father-in-law is also guilty of this offense.

8. Uses the last of a vegetable or meat I had planned to use for our dinner. For weeks, she kept either using all the spinach or all the mushrooms, thus thwarting my plan to make stuffed mushrooms for my husband. It almost became funny to me. Almost. Being this pregnant and new to the Chinese language, going to the market alone is a bit too difficult at this time. Thankfully, my husband ran out one day after she’d pillaged my kitchen and I was finally able to live my dream of making stuffed mushrooms. And they kicked ass.  Just today though, she wasn’t even here and threw a giant wrench into my cooking plans. She used ALL the garlic. All of it! By the time we discovered this, the market down the street had closed and I had no choice but to go on without garlic. Dinner tasted quite good despite her inadvertent sabotage but it would have been absolutely perfect with garlic.

9. Is frugal to the point of being ridiculous. I get it that here, we’re in a developing country. And my in-laws are more minded like my depression-era grandparents were than how my own parents are.  Sure, it’s wise to save money but to not spend any money at all makes all that hard work pointless. What if you got hit by a bus tomorrow and died? I know, grim, but the way people drive here, it is a daily fear of mine. What if you saved every penny and never once went out to eat, even at a cheap restaurant? My in-laws never do anything to enjoy the fruits of their labor. And they pick the wrong things to be cheap about. When they designed this apartment (long before giving it to us as a wedding present), they decided to try to save money by NOT having hot water in the sinks. Yes, that’s right. They thought it was perfectly acceptable to wash dirty dishes with cold water.  Um, just because you can’t SEE germs does not mean they don’t exist! My FIL, being very handy, was also to blame for many potential fire hazards in our home. We recently replaced some old power strips in our home thanks to one shorting out. Xiaolong and I decided to just replace them all. When he dug back behind the entertainment center, he came out with a tangle of wires. My FIL had tried to retape the wires back into old power strips. I should have taken a photo of this but I was too stunned at the time. The next time my MIL showed up and saw it in the trash, she actually tried to dig it out of there! Augh!

10. Has the worst taste in fashion and home décor. No doubt if you’ve read my previous post about her demolishing our clean household, you’ve seen some of her decorating choices. The grandma-floral patterns. The stupid open wall. The ugly artwork. But I’d rather let her choose the pattern of our linens than to ever let her choose clothing for my husband, baby or me. Again, I do recognize she means well. But a fashionista she is not. Actually, this is so awful, it deserves its very own post so stay tuned!

Photographic Evidence of My Mother-in-Law's Destruction: A Repost

For those of you who enjoy my rants about my mother-in-law on Facebook, here is a repost of my photographic documentation of how she makes a mess out of my house, particularly my kitchen. Thanks to everyone who gave such positive feedback. This blog is for people like you.

A little background on this subject...after my mother-in-law (MIL) would come visit our home, I'd find myself completely annoyed beyond belief at how much of a mess she could make. Especially after I cleaned our house from top to bottom. I decided I should begin documenting just how she can tear apart a perfectly clean home to prove to my husband that I wasn't needlessly complaining about his mother. I should mention that I do think she is a perfectly nice person, but nice people make messes too. And I'm calling her out on hers. Now, I present photos of our home before and after a visit from the MIL.

Our bedroom, which despite the hideous old-lady flower vomit comforter (courtesy of the MIL), looks quite nice, no? This will likely stay nice and clean since I don't like her to come into our room.

My nice little computer nook.

My husband's computer area (to left) and beyond the 70's reject curtain from hell is our living room.

This stupid curtain is what gives us a smidge of privacy from the living room as my in-laws, in their infinite wisdom, designed this stupid wall with frosted glass panels. The wood cabinetry is pretty cool but I want WALLS (the other panel of glass does not close). Imagine trying to change or nap with annoying people on the other side of this ghastly curtain. Grrr!

Our living room and dining area.

Another view of the living room, facing toward our bedroom. You can see our happy little fish tank. Please note the decor of the world map (courtesy of my husband who just loves it for some unknown reason) and more old-lady style flower crap on the pillows (MIL!) are not my choice. I am debating throwing all those items out our window currently.

Our nice big TV (which only gets one channel in English, but my husband might get us some in Korean at least which would be a nice variety), our dry erase board (where I have written in Korean to be rebellious) and you can see the door to the kitchen (on the left) and the baby's room (on the right).

The baby's room! Still being worked on as we're waiting for a box from Singapore and I'd love it if my husband would kindly move those Chinese books from the top shelves over to the other shelves hint hint cough cough please. Thanks Honey!

A closet full of teeny tiny baby clothes! Awww!

Our one and only bathroom! For those of you who have never been to Asia, this is very typical to use the entire bathroom as a shower. The drain is on the floor between the toilet and the sink. It makes cleaning pretty easy in here. The ugly thing in the mirror is our washing machine.

Our kitchen which, when I moved here, was horrid. My MIL had vegetables all over the floors and counters and it was so dirty. My husband and I cleaned everything and organized it and this is how it tends to look when she's not here destroying it, which right now as I type this, she is, and she's making something that smells too. Stay tuned for photos of that.

See how clean everything is! Oh and sadly, she's wrecking it all right now! Gak!

There she is, my MIL making a mess in my kitchen. Note how the counter behind her is all cluttered with crap.

My counters still covered with a bunch of junk. Why can't she put things away? Also, she uses the ugly towel rod thingie to hang her big ugly and heavy purse. We have a perfectly good coat and bag rack right by the front door!

My floor! I sweep and mop each day to get this floor looking its best. Remember how nice it looked in the beginning photos?

More shit all over the floor along with smudgey footprints.

At least she is finally using the dish rack to dry the dishes before putting them back. Very creative stacking on her part here and love that she wiped the counters off in my presence but as you can see she just wiped whatever was on the counters around.

What, she couldn't clean up that little bit she spilled? COME ON!

She even got it on the window sill. I have no idea how.

She didn't even clean off the counters and put this stuff away. She just leaves it out and unorganized. The bananas indeed should stay on the counter but we have a refrigerator and cabinets for everything else. Yeesh!

No flash shot of the dirt from the kitchen floor after she left...

And with flash, a shot of the dirt courtesy of my MIL on our kitchen floor, taken after she left. Why didn't she just sweep this shit up?

A good shot of just how gunked up she left my kitchen floor.

And our living room floor, dirt shot after she left.

Since I originally posted this, I should add that my husband did kindly remove the extra books from the baby's room. Also, we changed the comforter to one that doesn't make our home look like it was designed entirely by Old Lady's Home Journal. And perhaps most comforting of all, my husband asked his mother to please not come over so early in the morning anymore (this destruction occurred after 10am on March 21st) and not to come over so often. Don't worry...I've still got more MIL stories to tell and she will sure as the sun shines drive me batshit crazy once again.