Today we have some very exciting news to share—a new addition to The Woks of Life family: Baby Ethan!
Sarah and Justin recently welcomed this bundle of joy into the world, and despite the fact that he’s been cocooned at Sarah and Justin’s (flu season and all), he’s already become the star of all our family FaceTime’s!
Here, Ethan is having his Simba moment on the left! Grandma Judy loves seeing Ethan when he’s awake and alert.
Keeping It Under Wraps
We’re happy to report that Sarah had a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy—very little nausea or loss of appetite—or even weird cravings. We hope that’s a sign that baby Ethan won’t be a picky eater when he gets older!
Sarah and Justin have been super busy preparing for the little guy’s arrival, including putting together his nursery, filling their freezer with food for those sleep-deprived early weeks, blogging recipes to post during her maternity leave, as well as all the things we have going on around the farm!
We wanted to keep the news to ourselves until the baby was born. As you can imagine, one of the most challenging parts of the whole thing was keeping it under wraps—especially as we began to film more videos for our YouTube Channel (yes, we have a YouTube channel—subscribe if you haven’t already!).
Cooking in the kitchen became a little bit like bumper cars, with accidental collisions with Sarah’s belly while she took photos. Plus, when it came to filming videos, we had to hide that growing belly under all manner of aprons, large shirts/sweaters, behind tables and tall countertops, or any other convenient object!
Exhibit A: This photo, taken just a couple weeks before Sarah’s due date. The ginger is doing double duty as the star of the photo and as bump concealment!
In this video we made for our Mid-Autumn Festival Pecan Pie Mooncake Recipe, however, we didn’t do the best job hiding it, because someone responded via email, “Enjoy the baby!” 😅
Check out 7:40 for a full view of the bump! Kaitlin did her best in the editing bay, but by the time Mid-Autumn Festival rolled around, it was tough to crop out the belly!
Ethan was a sizable babe at 8 pounds, so by the final weeks, that bump was too big to ignore!
The Baby Shower
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, we can share more about the baby shower celebration we had in August!
We held the shower at Judy and Bill’s house, AKA The Woks of Life HQ, and we, along with our cousins and aunts and uncles helped pull everything together!
If you’ve checked our post from Sarah and Justin’s wedding, you know that Kaitlin has a penchant for flower arranging, so she pulled out those skills again—this time with some simple grocery store flowers, cut flowers from our garden, and old stuffed animals from her and Sarah’s childhood!
These little fluffy guys have been patiently waiting in the attic for the last 25 years for another little one to come along to claim them—and the time has come!
As for the food, some of it was catered—sandwiches, veggie sushi, desserts, etc. We also mixed in some DIY items, like sliced steak with chimichurri, homemade carnitas for a taco bar, and TWOL dumplings (pork/chive and chicken/zucchini).
Our aunt (Bill’s oldest sister) also made some beautiful fruit platters—including a particularly impressive baby bassinet that she carved out of a watermelon—and baby boy themed sugar cookies!
Now that that baby’s here, we’re enjoying some family time, and Sarah’s taking time to recuperate!
Grandpa Bill and Grandma Judy—or the new popo and gong gong—are enjoying time with the baby too!
Judy has been diligently working on crafting the perfect Chinese name. Turns out it’s a surprisingly nuanced process, where each character stands for a different element. The goal is to have a baby with balanced elements! With Ethan being born in the year of the water rabbit, we’re trying to cover all of our bases!
Kaitlin came down with a bad cold/flu, so she’s in the same boat as you, peering at Ethan through a screen. The closest she’s gotten yet is waving through the window!
But she can’t wait to meet and hold the little guy in person once she’s recovered. And he’ll be meeting extended family come Christmas time!
Post-partum foods
In between baby time, Judy was pulling extra time in the kitchen to prepare nourishing soups in the first couple of weeks after Sarah’s birth, making Sesame Oil Chicken soup and fish soups for Sarah.
Sarah’s usually not one for strongly flavored fish soups, but after going through the birthing experience, she’s been finding all the extra ginger, fish, and Chinese medicinal herbs surprisingly tasty! A sign that it’s what her body needs.
She’ll be writing a post about her Chinese confinement experience, but in the meantime, you can check out our full guide to the Chinese post-partum diet here, and you can also read about the Chinese tradition of post-partum confinement.
If you’re wondering how we’re going to keep posting new content with a baby around, don’t worry! While Sarah is on maternity leave, we still have lots of recipes and articles to share with you.
Over the past several months, we have been blogging overtime to bank recipes for the duration of our family leave—including Chinese New Year showstoppers like Lobster Noodles (Yee Mein), even more recipes for postpartum healing, and everyday recipes like Judy’s Shanghai-style Braised Pork Chops with Scallions. So stay tuned!
