shiso mama

Here’s a shisomama first: a collaborative project between F and me! A little while back, F had this brilliant idea to create a fishing game for Otis. The kid adores sticks and always picks them up on our walks (he even has a bucket outside the door for them), and he often tells us he’s “fishing” with them. So hey, why not make him a game that enables him to wave long sticks around the breakable things INSIDE our house? It was fun working on a creative project together. Here’s what we did (Sorry for the poor quality of many of the pictures - it was relentlessly rainy while we were working this past weekend. Though I guess you could say it’s the perfect rainy day project.):

F bought two 3/8″ dowels (so that Otis could play his game with a friend) and used a hand saw and cut them down to about 28″ inches. Then he used his drill to make a small hole at one end.

On the other end, he used blue duct tape to create a “handle.” (You can also use bicycle handlebar tape, which comes in a variety of colors.) To make it look nice, he cut a circle out of duct tape and then notched it so that it would look streamlined when it was smoothed over the sides.

Then he cut a long strip of duct tape and wrapped the “handle” in one long piece.

To make the “fishing line” he ran a piece of embroidery floss through the hole that he drilled and tied a couple of knots to keep it in place.

At the end of the embroidery floss, he attached a small stack of 1/2″ magnets to create the “bait hook.” He covered them with duct tape as well, using the same notching method as the handle. On the top of the magnets, he slit the duct tape to the middle, to allow for a tidy look where he ran the embroidery floss. After taping the top and bottom, he trimmed a piece of duct tape to wrap around the sides as well.

For the fish, I drew a very basic fish pattern and cut it out in several different fabrics. I stitched them together, leaving a 1/8″ seam allowance and turned them inside out, with the tails open. In each fish, I inserted a 1/8″ x 1″ zinc washer (I chose the ones with the smallest holes to allow for more surface area for the magnets to adhere to).

I tacked the washers in place by stitching a french knot on both sides of the fish, where the eyes would be. (Here’s a great tutorial; I wrapped my floss around the needle 3 times rather than 2 to create a bigger “eye.)

I stuffed the fish and then stitched a decorative tail to close up the fish. You can be as plain or as fancy as you want, though I left them quite simple.

I decided to make a “fish pond” by cutting out a large circle out of my trusty Marimekko fabric (it’s about 21″ in diameter) and zigzagging it onto some nice, thick canvas. And here it is, finished!

We’ve been testing it out, and even with the stuffing, the fish can be caught quite easily by the magnet “hook.” It’s a challenging game that’ll take him a while to get the hang of, and we hope we enjoys it. We’ll be giving this to him as a birthday present, and it may sound like we’re super organized since his birthday is not until late March, but that’s only because we couldn’t get it together to give to him as a present from Santa Claus.

Hey, it just occurred to me that we’re totally this generation’s version of the granola parent - you know the parent who makes their own granola and sprouts when all the kids really want to eat is Twinkies. We’re forcing Otis to play our handmade game when probably all he wants is a Tickle Me Elmo. And unfortunately for him, I make my own granola as well.

Here’s a video of F and me, playing the game. I’m not making excuses here, but let me just remind you that I was holding the camera here:

Thanks to GoodyBlog (the blog for Parents magazine) for the mention today. Also a big belated thank you to Jules for the mention on IkeaHacker of our chalkboard art table. Have you folks checked out this site? It’s got great ideas for changing and personalizing Ikea products. Love this and this.

Thanks, friends, for waiting patiently for the news.  We’ve known for a little while now, but we wanted to wait until our friends also had their ultrasound a week later to make our news public.  Maybe it’s silly, but somehow, I thought that my own reaction could or should be affected by the results of their ultrasound, since it feels to me like our pregnancies are so closely linked - two kids close in age, some of the same hopes and fears.  How could I feel ecstatic or depressed if they felt the opposite way?  Is that weird?
But anyways, you don’t care about that, so… dramatic drumroll, trumpets blaring: we’re having an Otis-ette.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what we’re going to name her.   You guys like it?  Maybe Otis-ina is better?

I was so nervous and anxious the day of the ultrasound, having tortured myself for days, nay ages, that I couldn’t eat and I felt quite ill by the time we were sitting in the ultrasound room.  Then the tech inadvertently prolonged our torture by asking if we could tell the gender of the baby while we squinted and tried to differentiate between holes and pointy parts, so when she finally pronounced our baby a girl, I promptly burst into tears.  At which point our rather cheerful and chatty ultrasound tech grew rather quiet.

So yes, I feel relieved and now have the luxury of feeling apologetically embarrassed about my previous emotional outpouring and ever so slightly sad as I sift through all of Otis’s old clothes, deciding which to give away and which to keep (which I insist on doing even though F will not stop laughing at my pretense of setting the old clothes aside for the new baby to wear).  Most clothes will be given away (anyone living close by having a boy and doesn’t mind dressing him in tights?), some I’ve set aside to save for ever, and some I’ve set aside, thinking that I’d make a quilt for Otis (though the thought of cutting them up makes me cringe a little).

The weirdest part of this whole thing?  I suddenly am not finding pink as vomitous as I used to.

As much as I wish I were lazing about, eating bonbons and having my feet rubbed (uh, my birthday IS coming, hint hint), I’m trying to take advantage of these sad, last days of my mother’s visit by cleaning, organizing like a fiend, and working in the studio. Here are some recently completed projects:

It seems that every boy in our lives receives a baby man-purse for one birthday or another. This is one that I just finished for our friend named, well, you can guess:

My mantra while making this: “Do a good job on this one, because his mama sewed Otis an excellent quilt which lies draped on his bed at this very moment, and his grandmother is an accomplished seamstress and knitter who seems to make everything cute that he wears. Plus, you are harboring a not-so-secret hope that she will unlock the secrets of Korean cooking for you.”

I tried my hand at embroidery for this project. It was shaky at first, but it got better. I think I actually rather like this project. Do you hear that, Gods of Self-Doubt? I defy you! Here’s a closeup. You can also see how my poor mother has been spending her days: sculpting Playdoh hats for each and every one of Otis’s animals.

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A scarf for a friend, who’s going home to a very cold place.

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A bib for sweet baby Hazel, whose parents run one of the tastiest establishments in town.

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When it was almost time for our friend, Emmett, to celebrate his third birthday, we asked him what homemade present he wanted. “A black scarf, like Mama and Baba. But with animals.” I was happy to oblige, and even happier that he made such a specific request:

It’s two rows of animal appliques on fleece, which is a material I feel conflicted about, but which seemed like a good idea for its washability. I was trying designs out, and ended up with enough materials for an extra for Otis:

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A denim man-purse for Jack, who’s a big fan of trains (there was a tremendous homemade train cake at his party and everything!):

There are still other projects I’m working on. I’m hoping to get as much done as I can while I still posess my sanity and my nerves. It’s felt good to make some things with my hands, but you know, I still feel a little weird about making presents sometimes. I was talking with a co-worker, and she told me the story about a friend of hers, who wasn’t sure how to tell all her crafty friends that their taste just wasn’t her taste, and would they quit it already with the crappy presents. Sometimes I feel the same way, when I receive a lukewarm response to a homemade present. Now, I mostly ask what a person would prefer, or make things for people whom I know well know to know that they’ll appreciate it, or who have hinted to me in the past. What do you guys do/think about homemade presents?

Boy, do I look pregnant. Yessireebob, there’s no denying it any longer. I’m huge. As my mother keeps repeating in her inimitable Chinese Mom way, “When we arrived, your belly was flat. Now, you’re HUGE!” How did this happen? I mean, I know how this happened, but the appearance of this belly is so sudden that it’s almost like it’s happening to someone else. You know, like you got back from vacation expecting everything to be the same and that weird, somewhat creepy guy who works down the hall shows up with a mustache, and you furrow your brow and feel vaguely uncomfortable, but you say, “Oh well, what am I gonna do?”

And here’s where I get rather counterproductive. Our good friend, Lynna, is also pregnant. She’s due a couple of weeks after I am. I’m already envious enough of the fact that she has suffered no nausea, no pregnancy aches and pains, and has been eating with her usual great gusto and appetite. But really, I ask you, is it fair that I should look like this:

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while she looks like this?

Yeah, you’d totally hate her too. She’s exasperatingly cute while I am excruciatingly large. She is a graceful swan while I am a lumbering warthog. Sigh. It’s totally unfair.

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Otis received a guitar for Christmas. Although he seemed quite content to use a cardboard box forever as an instrument, he became positively ecstatic when he opened the box and found a real, live guitar. Here is what he composed on Christmas Day. We fondly refer to it as the Parrot Song, with brief bluesy interlude. It’s no masterpiece, but he sure seems to enjoy it.

Now there’s also the Alligator Song (”Alligator opens his mouth…”) and the Bear Song (”Bear walks slowly….”) among other animal songs.

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*Alright alright, don’t get all alarmed, that picture was taken when I was 9 months pregnant with Otis, and the only joy in my life was to force F to take all kinds of pictures of my belly like this. But that picture of Lynna I just took this weekend.

I know this little mini-surge of collages smacks of New Year’s Resolution, but I swear it’s not true!  It’s just that I woke up New Year’s Day, with my belly still full of fried foods, and felt inspired to kick F out of bed to move Otis’s dresser into my studio for me.  Now I have a more organized, workable space (although Otis’s closet looks like I’m holding a sample sale in there).  And now, with my mom visiting, I’m suddenly finding myself with more time on my hands, leaving me free to run away and hide while my mom is chased around the horse by a passel of plastic animals.  So you see, I’m not that disciplined after all.  

When my mother asked if she could bring anything from Asia for me, I jumped at the chance for her to buy some of these soft Japanese infant clothes that are sold everywhere in Taiwan. They are made of the softest gauze-y cotton, and they just scream baby to me. She bought a few with button-up legs, more like the traditional one-pieces that you find here, and many of the hadagi that you see above, which close and tie like kimonos, and allow you to dress and undress the baby without pulling something over his/her head. But when I asked my mother, “How, exactly, would you wear this?” explaining that I remembered many a messy diaper that ran out of Otis’s diaper and up his back, the only thing saving my lunch being good old American crotch-snap onesies. Her answer was vague and dismissive, suggesting to me that perhaps babies in Asia do no such disgusting things. Hmm. Anyone else have any ideas about this? Or should I mostly stay with pieces with attached bottoms?

I’m feeling terribly conflicted in these last days before our 20-week ultrasound.  We’ll be able to find out the gender of spawn #2, and we will, of course.  We’re much too impatient to wait, and we found that knowing the sex of the baby somehow makes the baby seem less like abstract, especially for F, who can’t feel all the kicks and hiccups.  Plus, I think I’ll need the time to prepare myself mentally.

As many friends and long-time readers may know, I’ve always wanted a daughter.  And although this desire may manifest itself as superficially as a longing for girly dresses or hair clips or tights, it’s really about something much deeper.  I don’t think girls are better than boys, and I certainly love Otis every bit as much as I would love a girl, but I think there is something unique about the relationship that a daughter has with her mother - something that my mother and I share, and something that I would mourn if I never had the chance to experience.   I have fought this feeling, felt terribly guilty about it, but the desire is still there.

So I have been spending these last days feeling anxious and excited, and mostly a little scared, to know the answer.   I know I will love this baby equally no matter what, but a small, ugly voice inside me persists in asking, “But what if you can’t love this baby as much?  What if it is a boy, and you always think of him as your last chance, as the boy who wasn’t a girl?”

Many of you will surely have no sympathy for me.  F is comforting and supportive, but even at his most empathetic, he surely feels a little puzzled at how I feel since he honestly has no preference.  Of course all that truly matters is that the baby is healthy.  And I know, intellectually, most of the other things you could say to comfort me.  But the emotions, they are hard to deny.

We started off the year like the gluttons we are. We cooked and ate all night on New Year’s Eve. We started off with chopped liver on this bread that everyone’s been making and now we know why: it’s sheer genius - so easy and so soo sooo good (if you make it, definitely read the update). Then we served up steamed mussels before we moved on to the fryer and fried up some potatoes and panko-crusted portabellos and zucchini to go with our homemade aioli. We didn’t even get to our ragu and fresh pasta until 11. We were so stuffed that we had to wait until the next day for our friends to come back for leftovers, round 2 of frying (onion rings, mushrooms and more zucchini) and this chocolate pie from the latest issue of Bon Appetit. Are you disgusted? Well, for us it was the perfect way to celebrate.

I’m generally not one for resolutions, since I have this vague sense of setting myself up for failure, but this year, I have made one: I am going to stop reading Perez Hilton. It’s such a bad habit, and I always feel a little dirty afterwards. Anyone make any good resolutions this year?