Super Lazy Apple Cake

I found a bunch of “easy apple cake” recipes online, but they just weren’t easy enough for lazy old me and my unstocked kitchen. I just wanted something that I could make anytime without having to prepare for it, so here it is:

Ingredients

1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c granulated sugar
2 apples, cored and peeled
1/2 c butter (1 stick), melted
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

OPTIONAL:
1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp lemon juice (about a 1/4 wedge of lemon)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350℉, spray a 8x8 baking dish.

2. Either thinly slice or cube the apples. Add sugar and toss, let sit until the juices come out. Option here to add a bit of lemon juice and honey for taste.

3. Add butter, egg, and vanilla extract to apple mixture and stir to combine.

4. In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Once combined, mix into the wet ingredients until there are no more flour clumps.

5. Bake in oven for about 40 minutes, or lightly brown and knife comes out dry.

3 Mommy advice that we need to start giving each other

Ok, I'll admit it, one of the most surprising and aggravating parts about parenting is advice from other parents. But hear me out, I think the reason why they're usually so annoying is that they're utterly useless most often than not, amiright? Oh really, we need to be patient with our kids when they’re throwing a tantrum? That is such a revolutionary idea Kim, I’ve just been screaming at them as my first line of defense up til now but let me go and give that a whirl! Fuck me in the asshole.

But as I'm knee-deep in toddler years with my first (hello, two-year-old-tyrant-opinions!) and about to embark on a second go-around with this whole child-rearing thing, I couldn't help but think of all the lessons I had to learn in the trenches of baby shit (both emotionally and literally) that I wished were more mainstream so that moms could stop feeling guilty, helpless, and just miserable.

So here are some advice that I want us to all start giving each other so that we could all cut ourselves some slack around here!

1. Set your priorities straight: if your baby is alive, you're doing fine

I really wish someone told me this before I found myself on the couch pumping breastmilk naked while crying uncontrollably in those early weeks with my first. I'm pretty sure my husband walked in on me and gave me an expression I'd never seen before, like an "oh shit" mixed with "what am I supposed to do with this?" I know you're not reading this babe, but sorry.

Yes my hormones were raging, and I was pretty okay for the most part, but the thing that dropped me in lows like that was this overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. It's super cliché but I just fell in love with my son the moment the doctors plopped that little gooey cottage cheese covered monkey on my chest in the delivery room, and for the first time in my life I felt like my heart was bursting at the seams with the type of love that felt familiar but so much more intense than anything I’ve known. That sounds all rainbows and unicorns, but what followed was anxiety, fatigue, and doubt, which is a disaster cocktail that keeps fueling each other into a dumpster fire of emotions.

Every little thing made me feel like I was failing him somehow because he wouldn't latch or he didn't like to be swaddled or I was worried he'd never learn to speak because I was a negligent mother who didn't talk to him enough, back from the days he was in the womb. But the fact of the matter is, we as new parents deserve a fucking gold star at the end of the day for keeping the damn thing alive. It literally CANNOT survive on its own because it's utterly useless (adorably so, but still quite incompetent at pretty much everything that is required of it to stay alive). Didn't change the diaper right away because you happened to drift off to sleep? It's not going to die. Didn't realize that the mitten fell off and they scratched their eyelid? The red mark will be gone by tomorrow, their skin is like Wolverine. And yea, it’s going to be fine.

Call it lowering the bar if you want, but I call it setting realistic expectations. Because as a parent you realize that while you had all these dreams about your baby becoming great one day or change the world, when you look at their little face you realize you are going to love this thing even if it never does anything worthy of an award or recognition. You’re just happy for them to be alive. So yes, that is literally your only job too.

2. Look to other cultures for "norms"

This was a big one for me. Luckily I'm bilingual in English and Japanese and grew up with a mom who is SUPER Japanese (just imagine what that means, and you're probably right). I think my fellow children-of-immigrants can relate to this, or in homes that are multi-ethnic. I won't lie, it also leads to a lot of heartache and conflict and full-on hormonal screaming deathmatches with your family too, but when the dust settled from these fights, it made me realize that there is no right way to raise a child.

So when I would obsessively Google what I'm supposed to do when my baby refuses to sleep without my boob in his mouth, or stressing out about what to feed him once he started solids, I also Googled the same query in Japanese. This completely changed the way I thought about parenting best practices, the things "you have to do or your baby will be fucked for life," and the like because I would see completely conflicting information in Japanese culture. It was especially true for those hot-button topics that are so divisive you'd rather discuss abortion laws or whether 9/11 was an inside job (I'm talking things like breastfeeding, co-sleeping, sleep training... you know them). For example, Japanese people don't expect kids to sleep alone until they start elementary school. Yea, that would take a shit ton of pressure off of moms who have kids like mine who refuse to sleep alone.

Now look, I know that we don't live in Japan where they eat sushi during pregnancy, or in France where they drink wine whether they're pregnant or not—so our cultures are quite different, which means that parenting advice may not always translate. What's important is that those countries, despite having committed parenting sins that American parents would fucking CRUCIFY the shit out of you over, have raised healthy, smart, and capable children. That's why I've been reading a lot about how other cultures raise their kids, and it has been transformative. We need to tell more mothers to lean into their multi-ethnic background or learn about different cultures because American doesn't always mean best. In fact, some of our baby best practices have been built on consumerism, not science (are we really surprised?) so fuck all that.

3. Really dig deep and do some self-discovery before the baby comes

This one was like a sucker punch to the gut. If you don’t know already, I absolutely adore Brené Brown and if I ever saw her in person I wouldn’t know what to do and will likely just start sobbing, because she really changed the way I viewed myself and my own ego. I was always kind of weirdly convicted in my beliefs and strangely confident of them, and lived my life without much reflection. It’s not to say that I wasn’t self-aware, but I kind of didn’t care HOW I was doing things or examine that, because I thought I knew myself from my actions.

When you have a kid, and you’re ready to stand up for your beliefs, your decisions, your choices, your BEING, to impart that onto them, you realize that the paper-thin convictions and confidence you had feel cheap and not worthy of your child. You want something better for them. In fact, you want an attitude of flexibility and openness and have to be ready to agree to disagree. Because true confidence doesn’t come from conviction, it comes from a place where you know that there are more amazing ideas out there that you’re waiting to discover and learn from. And that’s really hard to do when you don’t really know who you are, or why you believe the things you do.

In the same way that you can’t love someone unless you love yourself, you won’t be able to know what you’re doing to your kid unless you know yourself. Your triggers, your tendencies, your weakness, your behavior habits, your instincts, your knee-jerk reactions. And it’s not to say that you need to know all of this in-and-out, but you have to start that work and commit to it and know that it’s going to be a lifelong practice for you to continue learning it. We all think that parenting is this external task, but it all comes from your own self first. So make sure the house is in order.

BONUS: Take all parenting advice like additional tools in your tool belt, not an end-all

This may seem like I’ve just negated everything I’ve said up to this point, but the truth is, it’s an attitude that could save your sanity. There is going to be so much information, opinions, studies, and “facts” thrown your way—more than you could ever imagine from the life you’ve led to this point. It is so easy to get overwhelmed at first and take everything as the gospel, but then you quickly realize that there is no universal truth, and sometimes these things contradict each other. So instead, take every new information as an invitation to look over the tools you’ve accumulated, and whether it has a place in your tool belt. Is it going to complement the tools you already have? Does it actually seem better than one of the ones you have, and will you replace it? Are you still unsure about it and will keep it close but not use it at this time? Know that your kid, your rules, and you and your parenting partner get to curate this tool belt together to fit the needs of your family.

Are there advice you wish you heard as a mom that you every one would start spreading?

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Before you call my baby a “Corona Baby” just kindly fuck off

Maybe it's my age, but within my social circle there have been 6 babies born as of mid-September and 7 are on the way to arrive this year and early 2021, one of which is my own. Whether we'd call the babies born in the first half of the year a "Corona Baby" or not will be up for debate of course, but the 7 that's coming up will definitely get that moniker. I haven't announced my pregnancy to the larger public yet, but I know that the "Ooooh l guess you bought masks but not the right kind of protection!" comments will roll in like a cockroach infestation when I do.

So before we go there, this is my public iservice announcement to say, kindly back the fuck off and just don't do it. I totally get it, because I myself have made that joke. When the lockdown started in late March here in California, the first thing I told my husband was that there's gonna be a baby boom this year and maybe we'll call them the "Pande-boomers" or something. As much as I hate to EVER willingly admit that my husband is right in public, this is just an example of what he said is true and how I'm not as funny as I think I am. (his words: "You're funny, just not... ha-ha funny.") It's not funny because it's a cheap shot. It's the equivalent of a joke that a comedian might make about a club guest that makes the rest of the room cringe and want to shrivel up into oneself. And it's especially not funny when you make it about someone else's baby.

Let me translate for you what that joke insinuates, in as plain of a language as I can for you: "Oh, I see that during the Coronavirus lockdown you and your spouse had so much time on your hands and were bored out of your mind that all you did was fuck like teenagers every moment of every day and even got so excited in one of such encounters that you forgot to wear a condom, thus jizzing that baby juice all up inside there to make this new baby of yours!"

If that made you cringe, let me assure you, that's everyone else's reaction too when they heard you say "Looks like someone wasn't social distancing!" Just. Get out. Now. This isn't just pertaining to Corona Baby jokes, but any cheap seat cliché baby commentary in general—it's always surprised me how the presence of a fetus in a woman's uterus somehow signals an invitation to discuss the super intimate details of a couples' sex life when in all other situations it would be super rude and just plain disgusting. Like, Auntie, I don't even like kissing my husband in front of you, let alone have you ask me when I plan to open up shop and let that baby batter have a go at my oven. There's something about babies that make people suddenly feel emboldened to discuss this because it somehow makes it public domain or safer because sex is yucky but babies are cute? It's weird, and it's time we all realize that it's not our business, and it never has been, just like your friend's secret trick where she has to imagine a lion eating red meat to orgasm—didn't need to know it, but now that I do, I can't unknow it.

Besides being gross, it's also super insensitive to suggest that all it takes to make a baby is some free time and bad judgment. First of all, in a lockdown the thing I had the least of is time because we have a toddler and we still have to work very hard to make room for sex in between having to change the sheets or keep a kid alive or just all the other shit we have to do, hi responsibility. Second, have you thought about how it would make someone who struggled with infertility before the arrival of this very baby feel, to be joked about in that way? Oh, did I make you seem like an asshole and you feel bad? Good, that means you have a conscience. And you shouldn't beat yourself up for having not thought of that before, we're all always just trying to be better, but you should definitely know you're a bitch if you keep going about your way after knowing that could be a possibility and that every woman has her own journey with fertility that is again, none of your fucking business.

But with all those aggressive things said, I would still prefer the Corona Baby joke to the dicks who go out of their way to say "Um, omg, ours WASN'T a Corona Baby!" like their baby is somehow better than the so-called quarantine babies. Whether serious or in jest, I'm here to tell you that your statement is indicative of your participation in this awful culture of mothers judging mothers (I would say parents judging parents, but we women are the MVPs at this). No baby is better than another baby, no mother is a better mother because it's not a competition. We're all playing our own games in tandem to one another, and our job is to cheer each other on because if we don't, who will?

And if you can't do that, just kindly fuck off.

The day moms stop judging each other is the day I fucking stop cursing

So until then, fuckkkkkkkkk 🤪🤪🤪

Do I really need to pump breastmilk?

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Ok, so this was a question that seriously no one had a good answer to which I always thought was weird. They push breast pumps on you like nobody’s business, but who needs one and what is the benefit of pumping?

What is a breast pump?

For a lack of a less crude way to put it, do you know how cow farmers pump milk? It’s that same thing, but on you. There are electric varieties as well as manual ones, but the idea is still the same: it’s a device designed to get milk out of your boob and into a bottle.

If motherhood didn’t sound super glamorous already, add this to the list—you get to be a cow. Literally.

Ok, so that’s cool. So who needs to pump?

If you plan to breastfeed and go back to work

This is the primary reason women decide to pump. If you think that you would like to breastfeed your baby past your maternity leave and must go back to work, pumping will allow you to do that for several reasons.

One is obvious, you can’t be there to let the baby suck the milk out, so you need to express the milk into a bottle so your caregiver can feed it to them. Simple.

Another is that regular pumping will allow you to continue to breastfeed even if you’re not with baby all the time. So the way your boob works, is it continues to produce milk as long as milk is being emptied out of your boob. Think of it like a tap right, like you wouldn’t refill it unless it was empty, and the less frequently it’s being emptied it signals to your body that hey, we don’t need that much milk, so stop making it. That’s what the whole “drying up” is referring to. So to ensure that you are emptying your milk factory, you need to pump as much as your baby feeds—so if your baby is eating say every 4 hours, you also want to pump every 4 hours, because you want production to match the consumption. Simple, right?

With that said, I have to preface here that pumping at work is HARD. You may have to demand your workplace to provide a safe pumping area (because look, I don’t want to eat in a bathroom so neither should my baby have to drink milk pumped in one) and to allow you time to pump without distractions. Some women also have a hard time expressing milk when the baby isn’t around, or experience hormone waves when your milk lets down (which is what you call it when the milk faucet is turned on). So definitely give yourself grace and cut yourself slack if it gets super hard.

If you plan to breastfeed and stay home

So one may think, ok, so I get that if I have to have some physical distance between my baby then sure, maybe I do need to pump. Are there any benefits to pumping if I plan to be imprisoned with my baby at home? (only half-kidding here, it does feel like a prison sometimes) There are a few scenarios where pumping could be beneficial, but before I get into that here’s a quick chart of the pros and cons of breastfeeding from your boob and feeding your baby expressed breastmilk.

…soooo the takeaway is, they both suck?

Yes. Pun intended.

There are, some key differences here. There has been studies that showed there’s an immunity feedback loop between your milk and infant—yea, your boob senses the baby’s saliva and produces customized milk to-order. Crazy, right? This comes in handy for things like when baby is about to get sick, or going through a growth spurt, or just simply growing up, because their needs change

While exclusively pumping would not allow for this direct boob-to-baby communication, it still is breastmilk, which has the benefits even in its generic state. So if it’s important to you that you are the baby’s food source without being confined to the feeding itself, pumping could be an option.

But yes, they both suck.

And no, formula is not exempt from this and still sucks because we supplemented with formula for the first couple weeks with Lu and that was super annoying too. Like a pump, you’re washing the bottles all the time, and worst of all, formula only lasts for like 2 hours and it goes bad, which means that if your baby is an asshole and only takes a sip before getting tired and going back to sleep (which happens ALL THE TIME) you have to go through the trouble of boiling water, letting the water cool, then adding formula, then mixing, then checking the temp, then realizing it’s now too cold and warm it up… AGAIN.

On the other hand, you can leave out breastmilk for like 4 hours or even refrigerate for like half a day even after they drank some of iit, which is HUGE that you can reuse the milk for the next feeding.

With that said, why might you still want to pump when you’re home?

If you plan to breastfeed and stay home but: You are overproducing

This is going to be hard to predict, but more likely than not, people who successfully breastfeed tend to overproduce in those first few weeks. Think of your boob as that super enthusiastic classmate at the beginning of the school year who is like SUPER INTO IT and go all out on the group project to the point where it’s like, hard to keep up or listen because they’re screaming the entire time. What ends up happening is there’s way too much milk and maybe your baby is still getting used to breastfeeding so they can’t empty the boob adequately either which then leads to plugged ducts and mastitis which you will want to Google then cry. But don’t let that scare you from breastfeeding.

In comes pumping. So the tricky line here is again, the boob will keep producing milk as long as the breast is emptied. Which means that if you pump too much, you may trigger your boob to make more and thus worsen the overproduction. The key here is to not increase your emptying session, but treat it almost like an assist for the baby, pumping AFTER you’ve already fed baby. What this also does is gets rid of this milk for the next feeding, which at that point will be “old milk” which some babies don’t like because they’re suddenly connoisseurs of milk and very picky about the freshness (who are they, pompous assholes at a sushi restaurant?). Also if you decide to REPLACE a feeding with a pumping session because you just kind of want to reset the boob, again do it when the baby feeds and not as an extra session.

Pumping can actually help in the opposite scenario too…

If you plan to breastfeed and stay home but: You feel like you’re not producing enough

You may feel like you’re not producing enough if baby seems like they’re not satisfied or you’re looking to build a “stash” of milk to freeze. In this case, adding a pumping session to trick your boob into thinking the baby is feeding MORE will incite additional milk production. Nifty, right?

Ok so maybe you don’t really care about your production level, does pumping also have any other benefits?

If you want to feed them breastmilk and stay home but: You don’t want to be the sole food source

This is a big one. And you can do this two ways, where you nurse at the breast and also feed the expressed breastmilk using a bottle, or you exclusively pump and feed exclusively with a bottle. I really couldn’t find any resources to say where one was better than the other, although the latter is definitely more washing. You do, however, allow your partner to be a part of the feeding which is an amazing benefit of formula that you can borrow in your feeding journey.

Well none of this applies to me which means I don’t have to pump?

Maybe. Baby registry sites and breast pump makers will obviously disagree, but it’s definitely not a must. In fact, many insurance policies cover for a free breast pump (although quality is not always guaranteed with the freebies) so you could even just wait to get the free one, try it out, then invest in one if it works into your style. Just for reference I personally bought my own and invested in a good one because I felt like I wanted to build a “freezer stash” to have as a backup for whatever emergency that I couldn’t think of. Well I ended up having to throw away like hundreds of ounces off milk because we never needed it LOL but it ended up being great for me because I was overproducing.

Ok I’m ready for a pump, what are my options?

I personally have never tried the wearables like Willow and Elvie, but they seem like a great choice for moms who are looking to pump in the workplace, or have a little toddler to chase around so need to be able to pump on the go.

The pump I have is the Spectra S1 Plus, which I talk a little about in this post as well but I basically went for the model that could be used without a plug and 1000% recommend that.

Where can I learn more about pumping from like… not Lisa? (no offense)

Everything I learned about breastfeeding I read on KellyMom.com as well as the Legendairy Milk instagram account. They were both amazing resources, KellyMom was super sweet and supportive, Legendairy was informative and hilarious. Make sure to follow/bookmark them both as you’re thinking about breastfeeding and also when you’re in the thick of it at 3am and you’re thinking like, why is this so hard when animals and women have doing it for millennia, like what is wrong with me? Don’t worry, it’s gonna end up fine.

Because remember, if your baby is alive, you are doing everything you need to be doing. Everything else is extra.