So… how have I been feeling??

Pretty darn excited? No. I’m RATHER GOSH DARN miserable is more like it. They say 3/10 pregnant women will experience nausea. Lucky me, I am nauseous just about ALL THE DARN TIME.

Pregnancy in a summary:

1.
Pro: My husband is extra accommodating. He has always been even before I was pregnant but now more so than before.

Con: He think it’s all in my head. He thinks because I am not walking around with a big belly means I shouldn’t REALLY be feeling pregnant. So he is a good husband BUT SO GOSH DARN infuriating that he doesn’t understand me. I’m going to drug him tomorrow and see how he likes feeling nausea ALL THE TIME.

2.
Pro: Unlike before, I haven’t had any cravings (usually from foodie pics I see on FB) so we save money on me splurging on random foods.

Con: The sad part is I can hardly stand to eat ANYTHING because my nausea makes me not want to eat.Meal times are SUCH A DRAG. Yesterday I ate half a handful of rice and 3 chicken McNuggets from McDonalds before I started spitting it back in the take-out bag. Um.. this was from the time I was awake at like 8AM until 3PM. My baby is going to be TINY! I’ve eaten out every single meal since I’ve been pregnant because I don’t want to eat anything at home but I barely even eat my take out food. So we’re actually LOSING money.

3.
Pro: I have amazing friends who are willing to cook anything I do want to eat after they read my FB status asking.

Con: Not that I am craving it, but I do want to eat Vietnamese home cooked food because although I don’t REALLY want to eat anything at least this is something I’ve eaten my whole life and so it’s comforting. BUT WE LIVE IN A GOSH DARN KOREAN TOWN!!! Even the Pho places are Korean owned so they only have your basic Pho. WHAT THE PHO right?!? The Seattle Vietnamese hub is about an HOUR away from home. So I definitely am not getting to eat things I want to eat. I miss mommy’s cooking

4.
Pro: Even though we’re pretty unprepared for our baby, I want it to feel as if it were planned. So I’m planning some pretty amazing baby related parties for our family and friends in few months.

Con: It’s like another wedding. We’re going to be poor FOREVERS. Won gets mad at me for saying we’re poor because he works so hard for what we do have. Haha. You know, he probably makes more money than all his peers but for some reason we are the most conservative with our money CUZ WE’RE POOR. Where does our money go?!

5.
Pro: I’ve always had a good amount of boob for my small self but now they’re like no-need-a-push-up-bra big!

Con: They fuckin’ hurt like a mother fucker! Putting on a bra in the morning is my worst enemy! I try to just not wear one and wear a big sweater instead to hide that I’m not wearing a bra. TMI. Hahahaha. And at night it hurts because there is just so much of it and no where to put it. UGHHHHH.

6.
Pro: I want to guess we’re about 2 months along which is pretty exciting because according to the chart the nurse gave me, my baby is the size of a BEAN and is developing eyes.

Con: I pray everyday for HUGE eyes.. even though our eyes aren’t that big.. haha and a tiny nose! And nice full lips, which Won has strangely enough. Oh yea, and a heart of gold so it can go to heaven! It’s kinda crazy if you REALLY sit and think about exactly how fast your baby is developing and HOW MANY THINGS has to come together! It’s really a miracle that it happens at all!

Hm… I don’t know what else.. not much else going on besides the nausea and the tiredness. It’s happening so fast! Yet at the same time, 9 months can’t come sooner!

Oh, and I usually throw up bile in the morning when I try to brush my teeth and then my body convulses afterwards from the throwing up motion. The nurse told me to stop brushing my teeth and just rinse my mouth instead. So I have that going on for me -____-

As promised!!

Lol!! It took EVERYONE forevers to convince Won to let them do this. He was so tortured as you can see but now THIS is is favorite picture! It’s been his profile picture for months! LOL

Some behind the scenes shot. LOL. We were at the Cliff House in SF going down to Sutro Baths. At least on the way down Won could carry me! On the way up, I had changed my dress so that I couldn’t move my knees so I had to SIDE STEP ALL THE WAY THE EFF BACK UP! LOL. But the pictures were worth it!

Us messing around!

All the handsome men!

All the pretty girls!

Probably one of my favorite pictures from the shoot! I LOVE the ruins at Sutro baths! We’re probably gonna blow this up and frame this one!

Won’t even tell you how ridiculous we looked crawling our way out onto this ledge that is like 50 feet from solid ground  into the ocean just for this photo. Ha!

I did a dress change during our photo shoot. It was embarrassing because we had no changing room so my girls just brought some bed sheets and backed me up against a cave wall and I got nakkid out in public like that! Haha! Not bad, not bad eh? I’m peeking out of the cave at Won who couldn’t watch so I could surprise him with my second dress.

Won had never seen my dresses before so this was his surprise!! But he had already guessed my wedding dress was going to be pink. He knows me too well. This was a shot of our “first look.”

When you can dance to no music, you know you’re in love, or crazy.

THIS is how you get freaking pregnant. Keep your damn clothes on, kids!

This is us walking away from our photo shoot.. Our day is only half over. We’re heading to the party venue now!!

Even though xanga is dead.. we’re not. I realized I never finished uploading our wedding photos! I’ll finish that soon. Promise! But before that I have something more important and exciting. HOWEVER, I ASK THAT FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW ME OUTSIDE OF XANGA TO NOT MENTION IT TO ANYONE OUTSIDE OF XANGA NOR ON MY OTHER PUBLIC SOCIAL MEDIA. I only want to share with xanga, not the whole world yet.

……. I’m pregnant.

After I realized I missed my period by 2 weeks, I didn’t think much of it and kept joking about it to scare Won because that’s what I always do. But during Halloween weekend I was feeling very nauseous and tired and I couldn’t eat anything I normally like. After clubbing we went out for dim sum and I fought every urge to throw up my chicken feet. Lol

We went as beat up prisoners. It was the first time Won let me do his makeup. I think he really liked it! Hehe

Anyways.. back to being pregnant.. After I missed what would be 2 month of having my period, we couldn’t deny it anymore and bought a bunch of at home pregnancy tests. At this point, I hadn’t eaten real food in days because I was constantly nauseous. Everything smelled horrible and made my stomach turn. We took 3 tests and they all turned up pregnant. But we didn’t want to tell anyone in case our tests were false positive. Yes. ALL THREE of them could have been a false positives okay?!!?
Side note: When you’re NOT TRYING to get pregnant and you do… the FIRST emotion isn’t excitement, it’s denial. Lol don’t feel bad. It happens.

I finally went to the OB/GYN this morning and was confirmed that indeed, I am pregnant. She guessed I was about 9 weeks along.. um no. I have only seen my husband in the last what.. like 6 or 7 weeks. I’ll go in for an ultrasound on Friday to get an exact age for our little booger. But I’m expected to be due around June 2014. Cool huh?

Won is SUPER excited and wants to tell EVERYONE but I asked him not to just because we’re early on and I know the risk of miscarriage is still very high and I didn’t want people to know in case we did mis carry. At the same time we’re also scared, well he is scared, because financially we just opened my salon and we had plans to go to Hawaii and move out into our own apartment in a nicer part of Washington, closer to my salon. I think we’ll be fine, honestly. I keep telling Won there are much dumber, poorer, and less rounded people than us who have babies and they turn out fine. I don’t know how comforted he is by that. Hahaha.

Now everyone wants to move to Seattle to take care of me: my mom, my cousins from Cali, my cousins from NY. It’s pretty exciting and Won told me to tell them to CALM THE EFF DOWN. LOL. This is going to be the first baby in my whole family from my generation so everyone is pretty excited! It’s also a little embarrassing, we’ve BARELY been married (I haven’t even finished uploading our wedding pictures for goodness sakes)  and on top of that I’ve literally JUST moved up to Washington like a month and a half ago.. and um.. I’m already that far along pregnant. LOL.

So.. what’s going on in everyone else’s life?

We were only 10 minutes late to church! It took a very long time to stuff my dress into the car

Because little babies are sooo cute!  During rehearsal we didn’t think any of the kids would be able walk come the morning of the wedding. But surprise, surprise! All four of them walked so beautiful.. that is until they got to where their parents were sitting, then they started climbing over peoples in the pew to get to their parents. LOL

I was practically skipping down the aisle!! My brother even told me to slow down during rehearsal but I was too happy to care! My all time favorite VIetnamese wedding song was playing on the piano!

Here I am!!

I love chandeliers! <3

Won got baptized the night before! So today he got to do a reading! That’s me snickering in the back.

Time for our bling!

Seal the deal with a kiss <3 <3 <3

Love this pic! Funny a few nights before the wedding I was crashing at a girlfriend’s place and for fun I painted her nails. Good thing we did that because look how BEAUTIFUL it turned out in this picture! One of my favorites

Won getting the first hug in his adult life from his father. Hahahaha. Won’s always jealous his dad hugs me and not him. So today he got his wish!

Church is done! We are married! Time to go party!! <3 <3 <3

I would post the whole wedding but I can’t figure out how to post a lot of photos at once So I’l do a little bit at a time. First up, our getting ready photos (by Junshien International)!

Christina helping my bridesmaids get ready! Christina was awesome and I am officially forever indebted to her! She helped with hair & makeup, with baking our wedding cupcakes, with editing our photos, with being a great friend. If you read this, I hope you know I would do the same for your wedding day

Some detail shots. What kinda sucks is.. I get people ready for a living. That means I set up the morning schedule for when the photographer/videographers get there. I time it so that everyone is super relaxed and pretty much done by the time the crew arrives so that there is plenty of time for staged shots and details. But for my own wedding it was EFFIN’ MAD in that hotel room. No cute robes, no cute champagne toasts, no cute anything. It was NOT cute. It was the most stressful part of my day, which makes me sad because every wedding I do, I make sure that this does not happen but I couldn’t help myself

My beautiful bridesmaid secretly fixing my dress. I say secretly because she kept running around asking everyone for certain things and when I asked what was wrong she would say, “nothing. nothing.” My bridesmaids were so sweet! Wanted to keep everything bad away from me so I wouldn’t stress

Sexy Won getting ready!

For the wedding we got him his first custom made suit & shirt. Now he’s a snob and won’t wear regular fitting clothes anymore -___-

Backing it up!

Stopping to smell the roses! Fun fact: there were no roses in my bouquet because I don’t like roses and asked for them to not be included.

I inherited that dimple from my dad! For the longest time I was jealous he had one but I didn’t. Ta-da! It showed up on me now!

Won’s card read, “Dear Booger.” And then I cried!

And THAT was the start of our morning! Stay tuned for more

…. and I just realized there are no photos of Won’s handsome face. Har har.

Sometimes on crime shows, agents arrest the bad guy only to realize these people only claimed to be the bad guy while they were covering up for their husband/wife. I always wondered if I had that type of marriage.

The other day Won and I went grocery shopping and I needed ONE thai chili pepper but they were sold in a pack of about 50 for about $2. I only needed ONE though so Won pinched a package and stole ONE pepper for me (It was my idea). I was nervous the whole time and thanked him for risking his freedom for me! Won laughed saying it’s ONE pepper. It was the perfect time to bring up this subject.

I decided to start small.
“Would you still love me if I was a criminal?
“I just committed a crime for you didn’t I?”

Hm… good point

“Well, what if I was like, a murderer? Not a serial but someone pissed me off so much I killed them. Can I call you?”
“……-____-….”
“Well, can I !? Will you help me dispose of the body?”
“Who else would do it?”

Hm… so far so good.

” But what if they traced it down to me! Will you take the blame for me?!”
“Of course.”
“Really?!? You’ll be going to jail for me.”
“Of course, you think you’ll last even one hour in jail?”
“But won’t you be mad at me?”
“Yea”
“But you’ll still go for me?”
“Yea.”

Hm… this is going better than expected.

“Does that mean I have to treat you good while you’re in there?”
“Of course, conjugal visits.”
“But you don’t want me to be happy out here?”
“What the hell? I went to jail for you! You have to be with me forever!”
“Fine, can I least have your insurance?”
“You don’t get insurance for going to jail.”

……

“Do you think I would go for you?”
“I think we both know the answer to that.”
“Do you expect me to cover for you at least?”
“Yea, but I know you won’t.”
“Yea, I’d probably turn you in peacefully.”
“What the hell?”
“Fine, let’s just agree… if you do anything… DON’T TELL ME about it.”
“Agree.”
“….. But I saw you steal the pepper….”
“But it was for you!”
“Fine.”

And here is a sneak peek of our official wedding day pictures. Bonnie and Clyde, yes we are.

“Yes baby, I’ll go to jail for you.” Sweet nothings <3

Won is deeply sleeping while I lay next to him browsing my phone. I was using his arm as a pillow but I moved to rest my head on his shoulder. As I shift his arm instinctively curl around neck with extreme speed and force, like he was putting me in a headlock, IN HIS SLEEP. Alarmed, I reach up and pinch his arm, hard, to wake him. Still sleeping, he lets go. I tell him loudly, “You choked me!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry baby” he keeps muttering. He turns towards me, hugs me, and falls back asleep.

Even though it’s over with, I can still feel where his arm had pressed against my neck. I can’t decide if I should wake him up and make a big deal out of it or not. I decide to not because he has to wake up early tomorrow for work.

The next day I asked him about it and he has no idea what I am talking about!!!

I have been dragging my feet terribly with the whole xanga doomsday thing. At first I was just going to let my blog die out with xanga and just not blog anymore. Won was starting to research new blog sites for me and in the meantime, xanga delayed their deadline twice, giving me 2 extra chances to save my blog. After archiving and reading over my old entries and comments from such kind friends I’ve made on here, I’ve convinced Won to pay for me so I can continue blogging on here. Even if my xanga friends have moved on for themselves, I hope you are still visiting me here  

A few changes: 

Won will be making guest blogs (heavily heavily heavily edited by meeeee hahaha) on here too. 

In the past, whenever people would leave comments to empathize or praise or share their own experience with me, I always read them but that was it. I never responded to anyone! I don’t know why.. I guess because sometimes there really wasn’t a reason to other than to say, “thanks!” And I just wanted people to say whatever they wanted freely. But I think there is value to responding and starting a conversation. So from now on, when I have something to say back to someone, I will definitely be more interactive <3 

Before Won and I got married, whenever Korean girls found out my fiance was Korean they’d ALL ask me, “have you met his mother?” I didn’t think much of it because his mom is very nice to me. I should have been more wary -___-

We had a fabulous wedding but afterwards we found out his parents were very upset because they felt they were disrespected at the wedding. I guess in Korean culture, at a wedding the VIP guests are the groom’s parents. And I’ve never been to a Korean wedding but apparently all the guests are supposed to come up to the groom’s parents at some point to greet them and make them feel very special. Which obviously did not happen at my 99% Vietnamese wedding.

To give some background: we had 200 guests. Of the 200, less than 30 were Won’s guests. And of his 30 friends, I’d say 25 of them were Vietnamese and the rest were basically white. His family only consist of his parents and sister, no one else. My family took up 50 of the 200 seats. In Won’s family, everything revolves around his parents. When they come home from work, everyone greets them. They’re the first to eat and last to eat. They decide what and where we’re going as a family. Don’t get me wrong, they are loving parents who will sacrifice anything for their children but overall there is still an old sense of tradition in which the elders are the most important. In MY family, it’s the complete opposite. Children eat first and they eat the best part of the meal. The younger you are, the better dibs on shit you get. The adults cook and clean while us kids us lounge around. We make all the decisions and the parents just follow. The dynamics are very very different.

So when it boiled down to a wedding day, I think his parents were expecting us/guests to really take care of them because they were the special guests. Whereas with my family, everyone did everything around how I felt. My mom stayed out of my way to reduce my stress and everyone basically slaved themselves away while I barked out orders (as nice as I could). Even though my family are near and dear and most important to me, because it was my wedding day they played host and had the most tiring day while my guests had a good time. That is just how it’s ALWAYS been in my family, because you are family you work the most. Won’s family philosophy is because you are family, you relax the most. 

Between finding meaningful moments with our 200 guests and our team of about 30 vendors and making sure WE looked good, I didn’t pay much attention to his parents. We didn’t go out of our way too much to introduce them to anyone or make sure they felt important. On top of that, his family are the opposite of mine, very anti-social and prefer to be in a  quiet space whereas my family is loud and love to hug and drink and yell at each other while dancing. I kind of took it as, they preferred to not be bothered with all my young cousins and guests. So imagine my surprise when instead they said they felt disrespected that people weren’t talking or shmoozing with them. Then when I brought it up to my family, people either didn’t really know what they were talking about nor did they think it was a big deal because in my family, people aren’t as formal nor easily offended over social hierarchies. 

Won compares it to my family being religious freaks (won unwillingly got baptised-_____-). True. We all have our obsessions and what not. But it ended up causing some tensions which leaked into tension between Won and I. And before we knew it, we fought EVERY SINGLE DAY over the dumbest shit, where as before, we NEVER fought. It didn’t help that Won went back to Seattle after the wedding and I’ve just been staying in California for the last month, both of us for work. And it’s such a sensitive subject too so we fought about everything BUT what we needed to be fighting about, our families. Finally, we both just went at it and we just felt better and finally we’re back as one team. I’m still sad that the two families are not in sync because that isn’t the in-law relationship I want. I don’t want to have to be two different person and have two separate parties for the rest of my life to please both sides. I’d rather everyone just get along and we can have one big party all the time. 

I go home next week. As excited as I am to see Won again, I am nervous because his mom wants to give me “a talk” about the roles and expectations of a Korean daughter-in-law. Won doesn’t think it’s a big deal because it’s just a talk and I should just say yes and then do whatever I want. I am less than thrilled because… I’m not Korean nor do I have some secret wish to become Korean, and on top of that I come from a completely different upbringing so my philosophy on what a daughter-in-law is very different. I can’t throw away 25 years of who I am and suddenly agree with another family’s philosophy. Won thinks I’m making it into a bigger deal than it is because I keep asking him what exactly we’re talking about and he doesn’t know either.  I wished it wasn’t made into such a big deal in the first place and that one day she just talked to me, not that I have to sit down and prepare for a “talk.” So for the past month, this has been looming over my head, I’m glad to be coming back so we can just get it over with. -___-

One of my brides (she’s Korean) told me… no matter how great and better someone’s family is over yours, you’ll never like them as much because it’s not YOUR family. You can come from a family of thugs and murderers and even if you marry into a family of angels and charity donors, you will still prefer your family because that is who you are. I laughed at the time but it’s true. 

Personally, I am just going to have an attitude that no matter what either side expect or don’t like about me, I will continue to just be happy me. I will do what people want to make everyone else happy but not if it makes myself unhappy. It’s funny because when I think about this, I think about the relationship I want with my future daughter in laws and that is what I am going to try to emulate with my own family and his family. Surprisingly, I do not want a super close relationship with my future daughter in laws, I want them to make my son happy and are some what in touch with us but I imagine spending my old age with my old husband, alone, not with our adult kids. 

With the looming 24 hour until xanga’s expiration date, I had to archive both mine and Won’s Xanga. It made me spend the last 5 hours reading over my old entries. I happened to read through 2 really dark years.  To be honest, I don’t even remember those events nor can I remember feeling what felt at the time, I am just reading it now as if I were reading a stranger’s blog and I feel so sad for past me. Because current me is so happy. I have bad days but I have such a positive outlook and energy on life now that I can’t relate to old me anymore. 

I can’t help but compare old me to now me. And I am so happy to have a husband, who for the past five years has made me feel extremely secure. Never once did I have to wonder if I was loved. Even from day one, there was no doubt that this guy here  would travel to the end of the earth for me and back. I never questioned his loyalties or intentions. There was never a hypothetical scenario in which he would leave me in any circumstances and he made that clear. I was and will always be his top priority.

For a second I thought, maybe it’s me. Maybe now I am an older stronger person who doesn’t take crap. But back then I was young and naive and guys treated me bad because I allowed them to. But if you really knew my husband, you’d know the way he treats me has absolutely nothing with my expectations and what I allow him to get away with or not. He treats me like a princess and a wife because that is how he wants to treat me. I used to ask if he goes above and beyond because that is who he is as a person. Or if he goes above and beyond because it is who I am as a person and he loves me. He assures me it’s the latter. I hope everyone finds someone who loves them like this. And someone they love like this.