100 Days Celebration (AKA Baek-Il)

As many of you know, I am a Korean-American and still value my Korean traditions. I was born in Korea and came to the states at nine years old. I grew up with huge traditional celebrations, which always involved feasts that my grandmother prepared. Although I've been Americanized and most of the people I meet think that I was born here and think I'm more American, I still want to (and still practice) some Korean traditions because of my memories of my grandmother. The 100 days celebration, AKA Baek-Il, is a Korean tradition that celebrates the 100th day of the baby's life. Traditionally, the mother and the baby are home bound for 100 days without going outside or having visitors to avoid illness and for recovery. The mother eats seaweed soup for 100 days (I couldn't do this... partly because I didn't have the energy to make it and partly because I was sick of it). And the Baek-Il celebration is meant for family and friends to come over and finally meet the baby and have yummy food together. And the family of the baby is supposed to send out rice cakes to 100 people, and the receiving family sends out a gift for the baby (money for wealth, yarn for longevity, etc.). However, if the baby is in poor health the 100 days celebration is not mentioned and is passed as just another day.

I started planning Alex's 100 days celebration about the month before his 100 days. I started looking for venues since our house is not big enough to host many people. I asked our army band family members for suggestions and the Engle family offered their home to us for our son's celebration. I cannot express how grateful we are to them for doing this for us. So with many nights searching on naver.com (the Korean version of Google) and on pinterest, I successfully planned his Baek-Il. I couldn't possibly prepare a main course and traditional Korean foods by myself, so I just had a traditional table for Alex and a dessert table with some finger foods. 

The cookies, cupcakes and the oreo cake was made by me (thanks to pinterest!). We bought the chocolate fountain just for this occasion and was a hit ^_^ 

It was Alex's nap time, so he wasn't very happy about sitting in a bumbo that was too small for his chubby legs. But he seemed to enjoy the feel of the rice cake on his feet. We didn't eat that part, only because the rice cake was huge and we ate maybe 1/6 of it. He must've been really tired because he fell asleep in arms of people he's never met before. 

All the decorations, and his outfit, were sent from Korean by my parents since I couldn't get them from the states. The banner says "congratulations 100 days Alex". The table cloth is actually the cloth you make Korean dresses out of. I wish I could've gotten a Korean dress for him to wear, but you can only rent them.. they don't sell Korean dresses that small. Well, he gets to wear the Korean dress for his Dol (his first birthday) so it wasn't a biggie. I think my favorite is the cutouts of his face! I'm going to keep those out as decorations until Alex finds them creepy one day. 

We waited many months to find the perfect occasion and company to break this open and we thought this was the perfect time and company. Honestly, I'm not much of a straight liquor drinker... and couldn't appreciate this $200+ bottle as much as I should have. 

Alex's 100 days celebration was awesome and I'm so glad that our Army family were able to come celebrate with us. 

Allergic to breast milk...?!

I've been so busy keeping up with baby Alex that I didn't have the time to write a new post! Alex was born on June 2nd and weighed 7lbs 12oz.

For 7 weeks i exclusively breast fed him with no major problems. But one day we found streaks of blood and mucus in his dirty diaper.

So now we're on a dairy and soy free diet so that I can continue with breastfeeding. We did try a dairy and soy free formula for him, which he hated and gave him a tummy ache. I will just have to sacrifice a little longer. It's crazy how many products contain soy and/or dairy. Apparently soy is a cheap filler, so a lot of foods contain soy. I pretty much have to prepare all my meals from scratch, using fresh meat and vegetables. I feel amazingly healthy and I am already 25lbs below my pre-pregnancy weight. But I do miss ordering take out or eating out when I don't feel like cooking. 

I'm not sure how long I will be able to keep up with this diet but I hope to make it to a year. 

Getting ready for baby Alex

It's just a few days before I get induced to have our first baby and I'm anxiously waiting for my labor to start spontaneously. Because of my history of chronic hypertension they feel that it's necessary to induce me, which is fine with me! Just the idea of knowing when he will be coming into this world (well, an estimate) makes me feel so much better. But now every cramp, movement and discomfort puts me in an alert state thinking "maybe this is it". A couple of weeks ago when I went in for my routine fetal monitoring I was having frequent contractions (although I didn't feel them) so they hooked me up to an IV and put me in a labor room! And my husband, who was out on the range to qualify for his weapon, came back without even getting to shoot. It was quite the excitement. Anyway, the contractions eventually went away and here I am today, starting this blog in hopes of documenting these little memories so that they will not be forgotten.

So we finally finished the nursery, the week before his arrival. Better late than never right? Well, I guess technically it's not late since he's not here yet :) We wanted to do something that he can grow into, and something that's not so babyish. Although I thought all those little nursery themes like elephants really cute my husband didn't seem to excited about those. It didn't really excite me either. And while looking through Amazon for wall decals (because we can't paint.. Well, we can but we have to paint it back. Laziness...) I saw the Mario brothers decal for like.. the third time. I never thought to actually go with the mario theme but my husband told me to get it. And it helped that it was half price since the last time i looked! Anyway, with a little googling and imagination I came up with (what seemed like) a simple plan. The shelves were ordered from Amazon (I absolutely love Amazon... can you tell?). I wanted to find a shelf that was already painted like Mario blocks but couldn't. So we painted them ourselves... which didn't seem like it would be a difficult task. But, due to my lack of research on painting furniture, when we finished taping and painting 2-3 layers of paint onto the shelf it started peeling! The nice man at lowes told me (after we finished painting for a week in 90 degree weather!) that unless we use primer first, paint wouldn't stick onto the laminate! At this point we were both sick of painting and decided to spray some clear paint on top and hope for the best. We'll paint it again properly someday...

 I accidentally left the parts for the ? door in the box and my husband threw them away. So we drilled holes on top and bottom and used little wooden stub thingies so it swings open. We'll add the little knob later..

 The decals turned out to be really cute and we really enjoyed creating our own little mario world on the wall! There were a few pieces that we ended up not using because it would've looked too crowded. I loved that there were enough pieces!

 These cubes were not meant to be mounted on the wall.. They have this thin board for the backing so we couldn't use that to mount it onto the wall. So we got a long piece of wood and nailed it on the back, then into the wall. Even then it was tilting forward a little bit. So we got these support bracket things to put under them.

We absolutely love how this nursery turned out with a small budget and short amount of time! I originally wanted to make a yoshi mobile as well but I heard they only use the mobile for a little bit. Plus he has a mobile in the bassinet. I wish I had time to make Mario baby blankets and sheets. Maybe that'll be my next "big" project ^_^