How I get everything done with 2 kids 2 and under

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

Ha. Made you look.

I lied. I don’t get everything done. It takes two days for me to fold laundry. I have a package by the front door that’s been sitting there unopened for six days, and counting. I need to review a 5,000-word article my editor sent me, but I keep forgetting because I have no time during the day and by nighttime, all my brain has room for are murder novels and cookies.

Also my toddler is in school most days of the week, so for a good chunk of the day, it’s really just me and a 3-month-old.

But really. If you saw my IG stories of me baking bread and making pizza from scratch, it might seem like I’m a productive mother of two, an Asian Ballerina Farm, except way less attractive and graceful.

I watch YouTube while I work out. It’s good background noise for me. I work out as much as I can when Woori naps in the bassinet, which can range from 10 to 45 minutes, though most days it’s about 25 minutes. Because as a new mother I used to search for YouTube videos on what baby products to buy, YouTube’s algorithm now targets me with all these mommy influencers, and pretty much all of them seem to have at least several videos with similar titles as this blog post: “My productive morning with 5 kids.” “Making a week’s meals from scratch with 4 kids.” “How I get everything done with three kids 3 and under!” “Getting things done as a busy homeschooling mom of 7 kids!” Somehow they are all super fertile and love homeschooling.

There are influencers whose sole content is to parade their gaggle of children while they can apple butter, plant their own organic herbs, and make loads of money marketing electrolyte supplements on YouTube, all the while homeschooling their kids, breastfeeding their newborns, decorating their house with vintage finds, and sharing a chaste kiss with their husband in the kitchen.

I hate them. I love them. And I watch them and their lives, wondering how they can make sourdough blueberry bagels each week (I’ve tried making those bagels— they take soooo much time!) and homeschool their gazillion kids and create content and put on mascara every day and keep their cool while their toddlers grab at their apron strings whining and demanding (which must happen off-camera, because I’ve never heard a single whine from their children).

I know how social media works. I know that much of these content is performance and entertainment. These types of videos generate clicks and follows and income, because for people like me at least, it’s content that seem inspiring, even if it’s inspirational only as far as sparking the intent to be half as productive. In reality, these content, at least for me, is at best mindless entertainment and at worst a cesspool of jealousy and resentment.

That said, I do bake a lot. I bake because Woori won’t nap for long unless I’m holding her. But I can’t just hold her in a comfy chair; I gotta hold her and jiggle and walk around, further aggravating my degenerative disc disease. So rather than just walk around holding her while staring into space, I wear her in a wrap and bake and aggravate my degenerative disc disease.

I’ve baked sourdough whole wheat bread and Japanese milk bread and peanut butter oatmeal cookies and sourdough cornbread and sourdough Irish soda bread and sourdough pizza and coconut granola and sourdough brownies and sourdough blueberry bagels.

Yes, I bake a freaking lot. Partly because we love to eat those things, and David gets sad if there’s no homebaked cookie for his midday dessert. But mostly because I like feeling productive. I like the satisfaction of holding tangible edibles that I’ve made with my own hands, even if my son won’t eat them because he’s a punk who only eats cancer-laden treats that come out of plastic packages.

I am addicted to feeling productive. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I amount to something, like I’m not wasting my life.

But of course, it’s just a feeling. A temporary painkiller pill that prolongs my addiction to feeling productive but ultimately still wondering, in moments of clarity, what I’m really living for, where my time has gone.

I’m a womb Christian and a PK who has had the answer drilled into my brain for decades: I live for the glory of God! I live to know and become more like Christ each day! Because He lives, I can face tomorrow! Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters, wherever you would call me…so on and so on.

But on the micro level, my heart doesn’t reflect that. In those moments when I start thinking about where my life is and where it’s going, I feel stabs of panic: What am I doing? What have I accomplished?

Not too long ago my former editor called about something, and in that conversation, he asked me, “Where do you see your career going in the next few years?”

And I told him, “Oh, my career is a deep, dark hole right now.” I chuckled as I said this, but the truth of that statement struck anxiety in me. Is this the end of my career?

Before I had Woori, I made a list of things I want to do once I quit working and become a stay-at-home mother. That list is laughable now for its optimism. It included blogging once a week, journaling daily, going to the farmer’s market, going to the museum, doing art, working on a novel.

I haven’t cracked open my journal or sketchbook at all, I’ve still not been to the farmer’s market, nor gone to the museum, nor even started the brainstorming process for a novel. The only thing I did check off the list is baking.

And whenever I think of that list, most of it geared towards productivity and keeping my intellect stimulated and setting pathways to a future career, I feel discouraged.

Jeez, relax, I tell myself. Woori’s only three months old. You’re only three months postpartum! Give yourself a break! But I also know that as Woori gets older and begins crawling, it’s going to be harder for me to do any of those things on my list. Realistically, I won’t be able to get serious about my career until my kids are in school, and even then, that all depends on their extracurricular activities and my own energy. What if my writing gets stale by then? What if I’ve fallen so far off the scene that nobody wants to hire me? What if I sink so deeply into the daily grind of parenting and homemaking that I don’t realize how much time has passed until the kids are out of the house and I’m in retirement age?

Those are the questions that prick at me when I sit and think about my future. Perhaps mothers who are way ahead of me in life stage, who have older kids and have restarted their careers, will think I’m being silly or myopic. But at 37, with two kids 2 and under, and perhaps, hopefully, a third baby one day, the shelf life of my career feels very limited right now.

Maybe that’s why I watch those mommy influencers. Because they literally make parenthood and homemaking their career. They do all the tedious chores that we all do but can call it content. Changing diapers and making one-pot meals are accomplishments, because they literally make money off it. They have numbers they can track to feel accomplished and successful: 10,000 followers, 100,000 followers, 1 million followers. They know they’ve made it when they score partnerships with big brands, receive mountains of free products.

I don’t ever want to be an influencer, but I’m envious of them, envious of the clarity in their work, trackable by the income they bring, measurable by the business they’ve built. Envious…that they can seemingly do it all.

That’s why I was surprised when some people who saw my IG stories of my baked goods and homecooked meals told me they’re amazed at how much I get done. That was never the image I was trying to convey when I post what I thought were just fun random shots on social media. I cut down on posting those things because I didn’t want to create an illusion of myself, or make people feel the way I do watching YouTube mommy influencers.

The reality is, I often feel unproductive and unaccomplished, and have had to significantly cut down on my standards for what I can get done in a day. Just going to Costco is a big deal. Getting the laundry folded and tucked away in closets is worthy of self-applause.

And as much as I daily marvel at what I have— a good husband, beautiful healthy children, a warm house, and the privilege to buy 15-pound sacks of flour— sometimes, I despair at the fact that such small tasks as doing laundry have become my biggest accomplishment of the day. That my standards have dropped so drastically, but even more honestly and embarrassingly, that nobody cares about that except me. I have faded silently like mist into the shadows of full-time motherhood, and nobody is thinking, “Something’s missing. Where are Sophia Lee’s articles! God I need her writing!”

And therein says a lot about the condition of my heart— why on the macro level, I know what truly matters in life; I trust that God is sovereign and all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose; I know that I’m called to be faithful and grateful in this season I’m in. And yet in the minutes of my day, I’m disappointed and insecure, and I wonder, “But is that it? What’s next? Surely this is not enough.”

How do I get everything done with two kids 2 and under? I don’t. I’ve seen so many videos with such titles and I still don’t know how they “do it all.”

And I think that’s the point. These videos are created because there’s a demand for it. Because most parents like me are struggling to get even one thing done, and in this modern day, productivity is an idol, a status, a social class, and when we watch these videos of beautiful, well-dressed women maintaining an organic garden, a tastefully decorated home, and an armful of well-behaved children, they become our aspiration. No longer am I proud of getting the laundry done; the bar has been raised, the standard for adequacy set higher.

I remember studying Nehemiah years ago. In chapter 3 of Nehemiah, there’s a long list of names that people typically just skip over. I do, at least. It’s just name after name after name of people who are mentioned once and never again in the Bible.

But still— their names are in the Bible, read (and glazed over) by millions of believers over centuries and centuries. It is a huge freaking deal. And for what? For helping repair a wall. For scavenging rocks and stamping mud bricks and installing bolts and bars by an entrance called the Dung Gate. For doing menial tasks and manual labor, they got their names inscribed for eternity into God’s Word. Why? They were faithful to the task God called them to do, as lowly and humble as it is.

The world has their standards of accomplishment, and God has His. I suppose this is also what Jesus meant when he said, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” God’s call for me isn’t to be a bestselling author, or a world-traveling journalist, or a supermommy. His standard for me is simply to be faithful to the task He’s laid in front of me today. And for now, it’s being a wife and a mother of two young kids.

I think back to my career as a journalist, and it’s humbling to remember how the amazing jobs I’ve had simply opened up to me, seemingly by chance. I had never heard of World Magazine until I started working for it. It wasn’t the job I had wanted, but it turned out to be the right one for me, and I had some terrific years there. And after I resigned, not having any jobs lined up, the CEO of Christianity Today called me to offer me a dream job, everything I’ve wished and prayed for. I didn’t go looking for those jobs— they came to me.

That’s a great track record of how God provided for me in those 11 years of my brief but fulfilling career. He’s been so faithful to me. So why wouldn’t He continue to be faithful? If He opened those doors for me, He can do so again five or ten years down the road.

And if my career has really ended for good, that’s OK. It means God has other tasks for me in mind, and they might seem lowly and mundane, invisible and unacknowledged to the eyes of others, but God sees.

He saw Shallum son of Hallohesh and his daughters as they repaired the wall by the Tower of the Ovens. He saw Malchijah the goldsmith, and Pedaiah son of Parosh. Which means He also sees Sophia Lee, wife of David, mother of Tov and Woori, as she tries to finish folding laundry while Tov literally climbs over her and Woori wails and wails on her bouncer, and at the end of the day, He celebrates with her that she somehow survived yet another day.

Woori’s first smile

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

There are many precious “first” moments in parenthood. Even though this is my second child, every “firsts” still feels as novel and precious and magical as my firstborn’s. And for me, the most precious “first” is that moment when the baby looks you in the eye for the first time and cracks her first smile.

Woori gave me her first smile when she was about 10 weeks old. It was such a surprising gift for me, because Tov didn’t smile until he turned four months.

But there she was, looking up at me, her round eyes folding like origami into crescent moons, her cheeks rounding, her toothless mouth curving into a soft laughter. I had been busy in my mind, as I always am, but when she smiled, every other thought flew out of my brain to allow space to wonder at this most beautiful, uniquely human expression: the genuine smile.

Babies look so serious most of the time. They yawn so seriously. They stare so seriously. They burp so seriously. And occasionally they look at you with an expression of disgust or confusion, like, where the heck am I? Who the heck are you?

But that’s what makes their first smile so astonishing and amazing. It’s the first sign that they recognize a human face. That they know how to peer into human eyes, your reflection glinting in their pupils, and meet you, soul to soul. Instinctively, guilelessly, they sense someone made in the same image as they, and they greet you with a smile of recognition, of delight. I think it might be the same sort of smile Adam gave Eve when God first brought her to him: What! Hello there! You’re like me! But not me. Who are you? I can’t wait to get to know you.

There is so much beauty and power in the life of a human being. Scripture says all creation— the sun and moon, the shining stars, the hills and seas, the wild animals and small creatures and flying birds— all worship and give praise to the glory of God.

But no creation reveal as much glory of God as the one and only being created in His image: Humankind.

You don’t have to be a parent to know this truth deeply. You don’t need to be a Christian to love humanity and see its goodness— in fact, some non-Christians do it better than professing Christians like me. But for me, because I can get so irritable and cranky and cynical, I need to experience being a parent of a newborn to remind myself of that truth, to witness that first smile, presented like a gift personally and only for me, and gasp. To gaze into this little human being’s eyes, so clear and innocent, and see God’s original creation, God’s own image. To tear up, because it’s just so dang beautiful there is no words to describe it except to weep helplessly at the magnificence of human life.

I write this the day after Election Day. I woke up to the official confirmation of Trump as our next president, but I went to bed already knowing he won. I thought I had been pretty apathetic about politics and the election, but I suppose I still have a lot of emotions buried inside me, easily triggered from memories of 2016 and 2020, from all the toxic news and social media content, the online and real-life comments I’ve read and heard for the past eight years.

So this morning, with images of Trump lifting his fist in triumph, those emotions frothed out.

“WTF is wrong with our country?” I texted my friends.

And by this I mean WTF is wrong with those people? And that one sentence exposes all the stereotypes, the tropes, the contempt and disgust and rage I have for people who think differently from me. They are flattened to images— images of my neighbors who hung “Get Back America!” flags on their balconies and front yard, neighbors who drove obnoxious, mega-loud pick-up trucks that fluttered humongous USA and Trump 2024 flags as they roared down the streets in a cloud of diesel fumes.

I was frustrated and exasperated and enraged, in part because I had no control at all. We were given two terrible candidates, neither of whom intrigued or excited me. I didn’t vote for either of them. My personal conscience didn’t allow me. And so, in that helplessness and lack of control, I felt nihilistic.

America will reap what she sow, I thought. Let her crash and burn for all she deserves. In that moment, I wanted people to hurt, to be disappointed, to despair, all so I can satisfy some weird, short-lived self-righteousness and masochism. I actually wanted to revel in the destruction of humanity.

And then it was time to feed Woori again, and as I nestled her on my lap, she gazed up at me and gave me a big, happy smile, even letting out a little squeal, so excited was she to meet eyes with me.

I smiled back. I laughed. She smiled even more and cooed back. She doesn’t speak words but we were communicating, on the most basic level, a most basic human expression: Hello! I see you.

Ah yes. I see you, image-bearer of God. I see you. And I see them. Thanks for the reminder. Thanks for opening my eyes again.

How we spend our Saturday with a toddler and a newborn

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

It is a well-known fact among working parents of young kids that weekends are now your work days. Your kids are not in daycare or school. In fact, your children have this innate ability to sense when it’s the weekend, because once Saturday morning rolls in, they somehow instinctively wake up before the sun even peeks out.

One day, when my children are much older and I have to shove them out of bed to wake them up, I might forget what these weekends are like, so I decided to record a typical Saturday for us with a 2-year-old and a newborn.

5 am: I hear Woori stirring. I climb out of bed shivering. My postpartum night sweats have been cooling down, but I still wake up with my hair and clothes kind of damp, and because we sleep with the windows open, it’s freezing.

I change into a dry T-shirt then stumble to the kitchen to grab my pump and warm up a bottle of refrigerated breastmilk. I bottlefeed Woori while I pump, nodding off to the sounds of her sucking.

5:30 am: I finish pumping. I throw the bottle and pump parts into the kitchen sink. Too sleepy to wash them. I swaddle Woori and place her back into her bassinet. Climb back into bed. She’s a little fussy still but I pass out and eventually, so does she.

6:30 am: Tov’s up! David gets up and turns on the TV for Tov. Saturday mornings, we allow Tov some screen time. He’s currently obsessed with a YouTube channel in which some brilliant guy’s making tens of thousands of bucks by creating videos of trucks and police toy cars driving around and getting into glorious accidents.

“Oh no!” Tov yells at the screen every time a truck crashes.

7 am: David heads downstairs to the gym to work out. Tov gets bored of his show so gallops over to my bed and starts making enough ruckus to awaken both Woori and me.

Welp, time to get up.

7:30 am: I make a matcha latte and try to nurse Woori while Tov literally climbs all over me. He grabs my hand and tries to drag me to his room, but I’m still feeding Woori. He begins whining.

Then he suddenly remembers he has a little sister and grins at her. “Aaaaaay!” He says, rubbing his hand all over her face while she’s trying to feed. Poor Woori. She tolerates a lot from her big brother.

I try to listen to a devotional podcast called The Daily Liturgy (my favorite) while nursing, but with Tov yelling and running all over the place and grabbing at me, I am so distracted that I have to rewind over and over. I also fall asleep while breastfeeding despite all the noises Tov’s making. As soon as the podcast is over, I forget everything except “His steadfast love endures forever.” Or something like that. Amen.

8:30 am: I try to eat breakfast. It almost always includes three soft-boiled eggs. The problem is Tov loves cracking and peeling eggs. As I’m peeling the eggs, he scampers over and asks for an egg to peel, too.

I give him an egg. He screams and cries. He wants a different egg. Fine. I give him another egg. He seems content with that one. He peels it but doesn’t eat it. It rolls on the floor, coating itself with dirt and crumbs.

Usually Tov doesn’t eat breakfast, so we stopped offering it to him unless he asks for something. But today he seems hungry, because he ate most of my eggs.

9 am: I try to give Woori some tummy time. She screams. I try to give her some face time, attempting to get her to smile. She shoots me an expression of pure disgust. Babies are delightful.

9:30 am: David trots up sweaty from his workout. It’s my turn to work out now. This is Mr favorite part about weekends now— I can leave Woori with David and get a full workout, instead of cutting it short because Woori decided to take a 15-minute nap, which is almost every day.

10 am: Welp, never mind. Woori is screaming her head off and David can’t get her to settle down because his man boobs are useless, so I cut my workout short and rush up to nurse her again. I’m kind of resentful that my husband got a 90-minute workout while I got barely 30 minutes.

11:30 am: Shower. Woori is perky and content now so she lies without fussing on her changing pad on the floor while I rinse off and do my morning skincare routine.

12:30 pm: I don’t know where the time has gone. We are dashing about preparing snacks, changing diapers and pull-ups, getting ready to leave.

We have a special treat for Tov today. We are going to Irvine Park Railroad! It’s a kids amusement park that offers train rides and paddle boats. I saw it on Instagram and we knew Tov would love it.

Problem is, Tov doesn’t know that we have a whole wonderful afternoon planned for him. We have to physically wrestle him to get him ready.

While David puts Woori into her car seat, I’m trying to cajole Tov to go down the stairs with me while I struggle with two heavy bags filled with essentials for baby and toddler. He wants me to carry him. I hoist him up on my other shoulder and say a little prayer for protection for my bad back. I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before I hurt my back again.

1 pm: We somehow managed to all pile into the car. Both kids are strapped into their car seats. Tov has snacks. Woori is throwing a fit. She’s tired and hates the car seat.

We start driving east towards Irvine while Woori shrieks and yowls her displeasure. And then Tov starts screaming as well because he spotted David drinking a can of Waterloo sparkling peach drink and he wants it too.

The GPS says it’ll take us 2 hours to reach Irvine Park Railroad. Thankfully, Woori eventually tires herself out and pass out. Tov passes out too. So do I.

2:30 pm: We are getting close to the railroad park, only to discover that every entrance into the park has a half-mile-long line of vehicles waiting to get in. GPS says it’ll take us 40 minutes just to move 0.8 miles. WTF.

Turns out, it’s pumpkin patch season. We chose the worst possible time to come here. We jettison our plan and scramble for Plan B. We decide to turn around and go to Heritage Park in Irvine instead.

3 pm: I find a public library in which I can nurse Woori, while David takes Tov for a romp around the park. Pretty much every single person I see in that park is Asian. If I see a white person, 10/10 they are married to an Asian.

David and Tov find a water play fountain by the lake. Tov gets soaked. He is the only one splashing. The other kids are apparently not allowed to get wet. They eye Tov from their safe dry spot with envy.

We change Tov into dry clothes and look at the clock. 4 pm and more than an hour away from home. What the heck is there to do in Irvine?

4:30 pm: We head to Spectrum Center, a massive outdoor shopping center. Maybe we can get some coffee and a nice dinner? So exciting. Things we could have done at home without the waste of time and gas money.

Spectrum Center is packed as well. Lots of young couples and families. But Tov is the only child insisting on dunking half his body into every fountain in that center. And there are a lot of fountains. They’re beckoning to Tov from every corner. How can he resist? How can he not run screaming “Wawa!!!” to every fountain and dip his forearm into the pool?

When he’s not chasing fountains, he’s insisting on pushing Woori’s stroller, getting upset when we try to steer him away from people, bushes, and poles. When we finally snatch the stroller away from him, he flings himself onto the floor, prostrating like a professional mourner and wails. Fat globes of tears roll down his cheeks.

After 40 minutes of this, we’ve finally had it. Forget dinner! We are returning home!

5:15 pm: But first, coffee. We stop by the Citibank Cafe since David gets a discount with his credit card. He gets a coffee, I get a matcha latte. Tov points at a sugar-crusted almond croissant. He orders, “This!”

I order him a zero-sugar protein strawberry yogurt instead. He polishes it off.

My stomach growls. I realize I haven’t had time for lunch and Tov had eaten most of my breakfast.

We sit down for 5 minutes at the cafe but Tov, high on yogurt, hops and skips and yoddles and climbs all around as though the cafe is his personal play gym. I see a young Asian couple give him the stink eye and then glare at us.

I was you just five years ago, I want to tell that couple. Just you wait.

I grab Tov by the hand and we leave.

It takes us another 20 minutes to make it to the parking lot because Tov kept grabbing for Woori’s stroller and then running off with it as though drunk and drugged.

We speed home in roads that are surprisingly low traffic (prime dinner time), playing obnoxious Cocomelon songs to keep Tov quiet, and make it home by 7.

7 pm: I am ravenous by that point, but Woori is also starving so I run up with her to feed her again, but I also really need to pee, so I set her down on our bed and then rush to the bathroom.

As I leave the bathroom, I hear a BOOM!

Woori had fallen off the bed and when I run over, she’s on the floor with her head bang on the hardwood floor, screaming. I must have put her too close to the edge, and as she was jostling about, she must have slid off the bed covers.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” I yell, scooping her up to check on her.

David sprints over to see what’s going on. “What? What happened?”

Woori is startled but otherwise seems OK. Babies have pretty sturdy heads. My heart, however, takes a good 10 minutes to finally slow down as I rock her and nurse her. Meanwhile, Tov climbs up and down my legs while I feed Woori.

Stomach growls again. I really need to eat something.

7:45 pm: We have leftover eggplant pasta for dinner. I wolf mine down over the kitchen counter while holding Woori with one arm.

We clean up while Tov makes more messes. It’s a never ending cycle.

8:30 pm: Bedtime for the kids. Our favorite time of the day! Cue hallelujah songs.

We bathe them both. David puts Tov down, while I put Woori down. Tov passes out the moment his head touches the mattress, but Woori wakes and cries a few times and needs me to rock her back to sleep.

9:15 pm: Me time. Me time. ME ME ME ME TIME!

Also the time when I consume the bulk of my calories. When I don’t have to shovel food into my mouth because the baby is crying. When I can sit and enjoy each bite while reading a novel. When no grubby little hands are grabbing for me, demanding attention. When my brain is not aching from overstimulation. When my ears are at rest because it’s all…quiet. Aaaah.

And because this time is so precious, I drag it for as long as possible. Which is why…

1:30 am: Go to bed. I am so exhausted the marrow of my bones are aching.

But this is the real reason why I’m sleep-deprived. I can’t blame the newborn. She’s a wonderful sleeper once she settles into the night. Every day, given the choice between recharging from more sleep or recharging from more quiet time, I choose the latter every single day. Hands down.

And just like that, a Saturday is gone.

What did I used to do on Saturdays before I had kids? Sleep in? Movie nights? Concerts? Dinner out with friends? All that seems like a distant dream a long long time ago from a land far far away.

And yet. Maybe one day I’ll read this post and remember it with fondness.

Nah. Who am I kidding. Definitely not.