Ethan (21 months)

Dear Ethan,

This month, we moved to our new house as your sibling is coming along. Simply for this month, I already deserve all of you and your future teammate’s love. Not to mention how I pulled poop hanging from your bottom, how I was assaulted emotionally by your hunger strike, and how I was put on the verge of collapse when you broke your arm.

I’m 6 months pregnant now. Means I have a huge belly attached to my body which could break my back bone and block my airway if I don’t keep myself as motionless as possible. Normally, I should be taking rest all the time,  having your father to do all housework and get me food that I crave for no matter what and when. However, I’ve never requested that, because I’m not only a good mother, but also a good wife. I would never ask your father to get me Church’s chicken in the middle of the night cause I know he would ignore me and instead just open a can of chicken soup for me. Not that your father is not helpful nor considerate. Without him, we will not be able to pack up all the stuff we had in our old house into hundred boxes. Just he’s slow, no sense of urgency. When I want to have everything unpacked and have our house ready now, like this instant, I will have to do it myself or it will never be done. Therefore, I was off from work for a week and took up the tasks of cleaning the house, organizing the kitchen, bedrooms, closets and den, plus laundries in-between. Reminder: HUGE BELLY! VERY PREGNANT! SUMMER HEAT! Only my will power to you kept me alive. You might wonder what left to your father was minimal. But NO! It’s not. In fact there were still tons to do,  like re-painting the den which took him 2 days to finish, and the garage which has not become a real garage until recently, cause when I pulled in my car there before, I would either need to smash the bicycle or the boxes scattered around so my car would fit in the garage and not get chopped up at the back by the garage door. All of these may not do much with your development this month, but you have to know it now so you know who you should love more. I know I’m not able to beat your grandpa though.

Speaking of your evil grandparents, you were at their house most of the time when we were moving. First, I don’t think you touched the ground at all when you were in their possession after being passed from grandma to grandpa to grandma to grandpa. The reason for that is not because you love to be held, instead you love to be taken up to ring the door bell, rattle the chandelier, turn on the kitchen ventilation fan, switch the light. The only time that you ever ran on floor was when they brought you to the mall where you could take the escalator up and down continuously like 20 times. And this is just GREAT!. Because besides the 900 light switches in this new house for you to play with, there is also a huge chandelier hanging up over the stairs. I believe very soon your grandpa will come up with the idea of standing in the middle of the stair case with his shaken legs, tossing you up as high as he can, until he hears the sound your skull makes as it hits the floor.

Recently you’ve been imitating every move we make, every cough, sneeze and yawn. You observe our daily routine and our conversations. You love to roar when you see your father blow his nose. That evening you came back from your grandparents’ house, when I was combing your hair before bedtime, you kept speaking the dialect that they use to communicate with each other. I did wonder if I had adopted a kid from some remote area in China. We’ve been teaching you how to slow down eating or drinking to avoid choking yourself by telling you “Slow down, Ethan.” Usually you will imitate us saying, “Sloooooow”. One morning, when your father was wiping your nose, which is not your favorite thing, at one point you shoved your face off him shouting “Sloooooow”. I have to admit, it’s the most convincing way for you to let us know you couldn’t have known better how to slow down.

This month has probably been one of the toughest in terms of parenting because GOD you never stop. You don’t stop demanding, whining and complaining. At this instant, you want to go outside, you want to brush your teeth, you want to reach up to the magnets on the fridge door, you want snack, my keys……RIGHT NOW, THIS SECOND! Or you will collapse on the floor crying at my feet trying to ruin my persistence. And that is the whole thing about “Being manipulated by a not-even-2-year-old”, cause usually I will give in as long as what you want is not getting you killed. For the first few days we were living in this new house, we didn’t have a right size of gate for stairs. Whenever you came close to the stairs, we grabbed you and returned you to a safe spot, and then you ran over there, and we took turns to get you back again over and over and over. At one point, you reached to the top of the stair case, looked at us with an evil grin trying to say, “Look, I don’t actually need to wait for grandpa, I think I can roll down from here and make funny sound by breaking my bones.

I’m so glad that you are adapting to the new place pretty well as you haven’t had any problem sleeping in your new room. You seem to enjoy the bigger space we have now as you keep running around the house playing hide-and-seek and pleading us to take you out to the backyard. For the first week we moved here, you were so eager and curious yet skeptical to explore every rooms and corners in the house. When you reached somewhere unfamiliar, you would look for us, hold our hands before you explored further like you realized with us around everything would be fine. And I believe that’s what I’ve been hoping for as a parent – no matter how far away you go or how difficult the situation you face, when you see my face, you will find strength.