Holy first tantrum, batman!

This morning Mads had her first major meltdown tantrum. Because she's a toddler. And can't communicate. 30 minutes of screaming in my ear, stomping all over my legs, and flailing on the floor. You know, it's a lot easier when I'm coaching a parent through this. Going through it myself while maintaining calmness, stern voice, and not giving in to the whims of her boundary testing is a whole different ordeal.

On the flip side, I was quite proud that the end result was exactly as I anticipated but was surprised how well it turned out. Mads was no longer fussy or whiney the rest of the morning. She was happy and content with herself with not even a hint of fussiness. Guess girlfriend just really needed to blow off some serious steam.

*Child Psychologist Hat On*

I knew that it was inevitable Mads was going to have tantrums, meltdowns, talk backs, whatever. She's a little human being trying to explore boundaries. The key to being supportive parents was not that we needed to nip these in the bud or prevent it from ever happening, but that we teach her how to turn those into productive moments and be there for her emotions.

Have you ever been so mad at something, and someone tells you, "Just stop being angry. Stop it." And it makes you even more angry? Well, kids are exactly the same way, except they don't have the mental capacity or the vocabulary to handle it. So WHOLE BODY SLAMS IT IS!

I've coached tons of parents through these tantrums but today was the first time I went through it myself with Mads. She wanted to be held. She didn't want to be held. She wanted to go outside. She wanted to go inside. She wanted juice. She didn't want juice. OH MY GOD MADS. She got fussier and angrier by the moment and the only thing I could do was sit down on the floor (and make sure all our surroundings were safe and padded) and let her wail, scream, kick, cry, pull, roll, do what she needed to do to express her frustration. All the while, I rubbed her back, reminded her, "Mommy's here." That's it. 30 minutes which seemed like an eternity when a high pitched toddler scream is ringing your ear off. Then suddenly, she calmed down, tucked her head on my shoulder, sat down, and just pointed at the door. I asked if she wanted to go out of her room, she nodded, and we went into the kitchen for some juice. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop or something to happen that would re-trigger her royal fussiness. But nope. That was it. That 30 minutes of explosion was what she needed.

We may never know why our children are mad or sad or angry. But it's important for us to 1. let them feel that way, and 2. be there during and after.

Always let your baby help with groceries

Best way to try and stave off that pesky food pickiness that seems to rear it's ugly head around toddlerhood? Dine with the kid. Show them that you love eating what you want them to eat too.

What's even more important is that while it's a hassle to monitor a toddler getting into things, changing the mere attitude that you approach the situation can make a huge difference. Since Mads could crawl, I've always brought her to the kitchen floor whenever I unload groceries. Instead of feeling like it's a bother to have a little unpredictable grabber getting into the groceries, I observe and talk to Mads about the things she is pulling out of the bags. Surprisingly, she really quickly grasped the concept of not squishing a tomato, not throwing an apple, and not carrying that heavy gallon of milk because it will flatten her toes.

Give it a try, just a chance to let your baby explore your food. See what happens.

I made Mads' first Halloween costume

I made Mads' first Halloween costume from scratch. She's Totoro. She will thank me later on for properly ushering her into the world of Halloween the right way.

After much searching on the internet, it seems as though there's only been one, maybe two attempts at the Totoro costume. Admittedly I didn't do a thorough Japan-specific Google search.

The costume challenged me to think through every single sewing step from end to end because I seem to have an "oh-crap" tendency half way through sewing projects. Many a night I spent outlining patterns while examining Mads' onesies, studying the stitching angles and deciding whether to do hood or cap, footed or open.

Happy to say I'm very satisfied with the results. While not many get the reference here in the US, I feel the internet is much more dialed in.
If I were to do it again, I'd make the eyes closer together. Totoro's eyes are pretty far apart and sit lateral to its nose, but when you wear a hood, Totoro kind of turns into a shark-y looking creature. I HAD to add the leaf. That made the whole costume.

Happy Halloween!

Crying her way out of tickets already

Even Totoro needs to go home. "PUT ME DOWN, HUMAN"

Bringing up Gourmandito

Food is such a bonding experience for everyone. Young, old, no matter where in the world you are, food seems to constantly be the center to which everyone gathers and create memories. Why would we deprive little babies of the same experiences?

Since Mads turned 4 months and was able to hold her head up steadily, she's been eating solids. And by solids, I really mean pulverized liquid concoctions. To ease her into the idea of swallowing something more substantial than the consistency of milk, I started with the Stage 1 baby food jars. The notion of spoon feeding was also super foreign so we started slowly with some rice cereal just to see how she'd do.

A couple gags and weird looks later, luckily Mads embraced the spoon like a champ and soon started chowing down jars of liquid vegetables like a pro. I started getting excited buying her all sorts of baby food varieties with enticing pictures on the front until one day when I fed her mashed peas and she gave me this weird "Really mom? You really want me to eat this?" look and it dawned on me that I never bothered tasting her food. How am I to feed my child something that I didn't even want to taste? So I took one nibble of the mashed pea liquid and made exactly the same face at her. That was the last time peas were in the picture.

Since then, I've taken to making her own baby food which afforded me much greater freedom in ingredient mixing and I actually trusted what she was eating and how it was made. I began experimenting with two vegetable ingredients and slowly worked my way through a repertoire of colorful veggies California had to offer.

Steaming her lunch for the week

At 5 months, our ped gave us the go-ahead for some more various proteins so fish came in the picture. It was baked tilapia (farmed fresh water - lowest mercury content) then baked salmon. Then came all sorts of combinations but I followed my own simple guidelines to making baby food:

• Vegetables take the lead, always. Organic only and washed thoroughly.
• If protein, tender healthy lean bits only.
• Never salt.
• Steam most of the veggies to retain nutrients (boiling loses a lot of the nutrients in the water that you throw out). Stir fry or bake as necessary.
• Don't be afraid to flavor with garlic, nuts, or non-salt or sugar based herbs. I've done shallots, basil, chives, rosemary. (Nuts is a personal call. Talk to your ped)
• Don't mix fruit into the meal. Fruit is for desserts.

I have two equipment pieces I use - the Vitamix and the Immersion Blender. Vitamix is great for very very fine, smooth foods great for the younger times when she cannot handle swallowing textures. Immersion blender is great for when she got older and more able to handle coarser textures. 

Quinoa, asparagus, and beef

We've purposely held back on giving her any fruits as it is commonly known that babies love sweet things (breastmilk is really sweet) and if you start them on fruits for solids, they have a harder time accepting non-sweet foods. So only once Mads became comfortable with various baby food flavors, none of which contained fruit, then we started giving her fruit as a dessert at the end of the meal. I would cut up various types of fruit bits (or halve the blueberries) and put them into a silicon feeder so she can learn to feed herself.

What has been surprising is that Mads now will eat anything we give her. I mean anything. Even if she doesn't really like it, she won't refuse. But she hasn't shown extra interest in very sweet things. If fruits are too sweet sometimes she'll only nibble a bit and be done with it.

As a working mom, making my own baby food has been quite an interesting maneuvering of logistics. I wanted to be the one to grocery shop, prep, cook, and store. I wanted to keep her food fresh and exciting and not make too big of a batch that she'll end up having the same thing over and over forever. But I also only had a small window to operate 'heavy machinery' aka the Vitamix without waking her up so efficient use of my time was key.
It's been a fun and exciting journey and can't wait to keep introducing her to more and more flavors.

From Psychologist to Googler

Mike Jones once said "back then they don't want me, now I'm hot they all on me."

Well, they are not 'all on me' but suffice it to say people I never really spoke to have now suddenly started to contact me from different fields. The biggest question (and the most obvious one) that everyone asks right off the bat :

So how did you get from being in the psychology field to not only being at Google, but doing business development for Android?

Often times those questions came with both disbelief and hope - hope that they themselves could make the transition and disbelief that with my background on paper I'm where I am.

'Til this day, I'm still living an imposter syndrome, a syndrome where I constantly feel inadequate, undeserving, and doubted by my colleagues of whether I can deliver. Perhaps that's also the reason behind the drive for me to always feel like I must work twice, three times harder than everyone, double check everything, make sure I'm delivering, I know what I'm talking about, and that I maintain awesome relationships with those I work with.

However, the reality is my colleagues at Google are beyond amazing. They are intrigued by my background but their judgement of my work is not tainted by it. They understand people at Google come from all different walks of life but as long as you can deliver and you know your stuff and you're what they call it, "Googley" then whatever. Go forth and excel.

What is a shame is that society is not there yet. I can guarantee that I will still not be able to get a job somewhere else doing what I do because ANY recruiter will take one glance at my LinkedIn profile or my resume and go...urm...no thanks. The disparity between my last psychology position and my first position at Google is like the Grand Canyon. "How did she even swing that? She has no XX years of relevant experience, no MBA or shiny expensive degree from a name brand university, nor tenure or stint at another brand name company." Instead of truly digging into a person's capability at their current role, society is still heavily dependent on your paper pedigree as the sole indicator of future success.

And for full disclosure, it wasn't that I wasn't qualified for one of those brand name schools. I didn't attend for the pure simple reason that I just could not afford it and I was an international student, which severely limited my financing options. I just couldn't do that to my parents. So think about that next time you judge someone based on their alma mater. Or recruit solely based on institutional affiliation.

You want to know how I got to where I am? Here's what I did:

1. I networked. I reached out proactively.
2. I was truthful, realistic, and humble to myself and to whomever would give me a chance.
3. I worked my ass off. I volunteered to do anything and everything outside of the prescribed scope of my job when help was needed and made sure I delivered. Big, small, doesn't matter.
4. I listened and asked questions. Tons of questions. I'm married to an Engineer so the basics I've learned from him but I always wanted to know end-to-end what the product was trying to achieve and stashed up knowledge. Nothing was "none of my business".
5. I made genuine friendships. It takes a humble attitude to approach everyone with a "You're definitely smarter and more knowledgeable than me" attitude but I genuinely cared and loved it. I have made some amazing friendships with some of the most influential and intelligent people on this earth because of it. I treated everyone's time as more valuable than mine when working together. And people remember.

One may think that this is quite an extreme approach but I wanted to start all over. I had no technical or business background, and definitely no shiny degree from an Ivy to back me up. I had me and my brain and confidence that I am up to the challenge.

I can't speak to any other company willing to take the risk that my hiring manager at Google did. Sometimes I still look at my LinkedIn profile wondering if I should just remove everything because I don't want people to negatively judge me because of my random hodgepodge of a resume. But then I think, hey I'm here at one of the best companies in the world, doing deals affecting the epicenter of the global mobile market. So deal with it.

I'm sad that the job world has prescribed this preconceived expectation of a person's abilities based on words on a piece of paper. I'm forever grateful for the individuals that took a chance on me and thought progressively of how to measure a person's future success. This is how one succeeds in life. This is how I got to where I am.

The deal with pumping

Today I learned that the outlet in the airplane's bathroom is not powerful enough to power a pump. This was my first cross-country trip post-baby and without the said baby in tow, advanced planning for pumping was a tall order.

Only mothers that have pumped truly appreciate and understand just how stressful pumping can be. When mothers complain about accessibility to pumping, understand a few things that no one really talks about but should be very important to know:

• The female body is a constant demand-and-supply rule. The longer the breasts go without being drained, the less milk it starts to produce because it starts to think that the baby doesn't need it as much anymore.
• Building a stash is a challenge. We need to build a stash for those in-case moments.
• That time of the month returns quickly once the length of time between breast milk draining increases because the body starts thinking the baby doesn't need you as much, therefore you are ready for another child.
• Period also impacts supply in a cyclical manner. From ovulation to the end of the period, the supply dips drastically. I'm talking 1-2 ounces every 4-5 hours. 
• Engorgement (from not draining) can not only impact supply in the long run but it can cause infection called Mastitis in the breast ducts, which can cause abscesses which may require antibiotics and an ER visit to handle the infections. 

With all this knowledge weighing down on a pumping mother, I totally understand now why mothers make such a big deal about having a place to pump - either at work or at airports. 

Today I also learned that some airports have fabulously understanding TSA agents and other airports have agents that don't give a crap about your needs. Newark is one of the worst mommy-friendly airports. Make sure if you're traveling with a cooler ice pack that that thing is ROCK SOLID ICE FROZEN. Or they will confiscate it without giving any f*ks. The bathrooms are filthy and have no outlets anywhere. SFO is one of the most mommy-friendly airports. They completely understand and the airport has mommy-friendly bathrooms that are cleaner.

I really wished I'd gotten a battery-powered pump while I'm blogging in the air on the way home. 

2 months back at work

It's been 2 months since I've been back. To be honest the transition was probably one of the smoothest but the biggest factor was because we have a nanny we absolutely love and adore. Which is a very hard thing to come to when you're a brand new mama.

Coordinating a rapidly changing baby's needs with a steady work schedule takes a lot of work and most of the time I'm mapping out the most efficient way around chores, work and getting home in time to play with Mads before sending her off to dream land. The classic mailman dilemma.

But she's 6 months now and Time is seriously flying by at warp speed.

Forever buddies - Cera and Mads