The 100 Days celebration used to be bigger in Korea, with a ritual aspect to it, but these days it may only be a small family gathering and a photo shoot. We only did the photo shoot and even that was stressful. But I do like acknowledging 100 days and feeling a bit more freedom to go outside with my baby. Traditionally, the mother and baby would not leave the home for 100 days and even today in Korea people still somewhat abide by that rule. If I went out with her before 100 days the first questions the old women in the neighbourhood would ask is, “Has she had her 100 days yet?!”

Rather than having to buy the props for a photo shoot, there are companies that hire packages out. There are a range to choose from, depending if you want it to look very traditional, or have more of a modern look. There are also many different hanboks (the traditional clothes) to choose from. As we show in the video, it is delivered to you and has instructions on how to set it up.

We also give a glimpse into seeing my family again as they were finally able to come to Korea. My brother was able to move to Korea last year (he was living in Japan), but my parents had to wait until Australia opened up again and Korea allowed Australian tourists. It was been wonderful to see some of my family again and to see Yul reconnect with them, as the last time he has seen them he was only two years old.

We are very happy to welcome our baby girl to our family. In this video we show our time in the hospital and Yul meeting his little sister for the first time. I also show you all the food I ate in hospital as honestly, Korean hospital food is very good! Watch the video to find out her Korean and English name.

It’s been a hectic few months of adjusting to a newborn again but slowly starting to get some sort of routine now. I’m aiming to get a few hours a week to work so please expect more videos soon. Hugh has switched up his work schedule and is keen to create more content again. Later in the year I’ll be starting some more comics again about being a bilingual and intercultural family. Stay tuned!

Pregnancy Update

I am now in my third trimester and currently as I’m writing this, I’m now as pregnant as I’ve ever been! Yul had just arrived at this point of my first pregnancy.

In this video I talk about a scare early on, all my awful symptoms, IVF and Seoul hospitals.

Usually these days we try to have both Korean and English subtitles embedded in the video but as this video is quite long it wasn’t possible. But next video will have!

A vlog about finding out if we will have having a boy or a girl. Will Yul be a Hyung or an Oppa?

We are expecting our second baby!

Yesterday we announced that I am pregnant across social media and we’ve been overwhelmed with so many lovely comments and so much support. Thank you everyone!

It’s very exciting, although can’t wait until morning sickness is gone! It’s also why it’s been hard to make any content lately. But I will film a follow up video answering questions. The best place to leave a question over on YouTube. I’ll be talking about IVF, living in Korea and pregnancy in Korea in the next video.

We had planned to try last year, but obviously with the current state of the world we wanted to delay a bit. We had one embryo left so instead of full IVF, we just needed to do the preparation (the meds) and just one embryo transfer. We are very thankful it worked, as we’d have to start IVF all over again if it didn’t.

I’ll share more about it in coming videos. For now we just wanted to announce it and thank everyone for their support. Yul is very excited to be a big brother!

These videos take longer to edit with the subtitles in both English and Korean, but the response to them has been great.

We always make sure Yul is okay with filming, which is why we usually ask him questions so he can see that we are recording. He will tell us when he doesn’t feel like being on camera. He also sees the videos before they are uploaded and enjoys watching them. I hope he can look back one day when he is older and appreciate them.

One of the most important aspects of raising a bilingual child is creating the right environment. We are lucky to be in Seoul and are able to find the right balance. While it’s completely normal for so many people to be bilingual in countries where there are multiple languages, both South Korea and Australia are monolingual countries. There are different languages spoken in them of course, but only one main language.

When raising a bilingual child a key aspect is making sure they see both languages as valuable. It’s common for children to lose a language in English speaking countries because they can’t see the use or value of the other language. In fact, for years people have misunderstood bilingualism and encouraged parents to force only English on their children. We now know that bilingualism is a gift and benefits children in so many ways.

It’s been difficult because of the pandemic and getting Yul enough English exposure. Usually he’d see a lot more of my family, or even just other local English speakers. However, I do think he is doing really well with his English. But am looking forward to hopefully seeing my family again this year…

What surprised us about being parents?

We answer this and many other questions in this video. Rather than just sitting in front of the camera and answering, we played with our son Yul as we answered these questions. Hopefully this gives a realistic glimpse into life with a toddler!

Natural Bilingual Play with a Toddler

In this video we set up cameras and played with our son Yul as we normally would. Hugh is using Korean and I’m using English mostly, but as you can see in a natural environment we still both use words from the other language too.

People are always curious about the bilingual aspect so we wanted to show that. We also wanted to show that toddlers speak a lot of “toddlerspeak” too! Kids don’t usually just start with full sentences. There are lots of sounds and not quite words yet.

Yul gets his Korean from Hugh and the environment like our community and daycare. He hears English from me and other English speakers in Korea, as well as when he sees my family in Australia. So far this has been a good balance and he understands both languages pretty equally.

We will continue to do videos like this as it’s a nice moment to capture as well as a way to be able to see his progression with both languages.

I think as parents we never fully understand how much toddlers know and can say and are constantly surprised.

Usually our son Yul doesn’t draw on walls or cupboards, but with the Covid-19 crisis we’ve been inside a lot more lately. There is only so much that we can do to occupy a toddler with unlimited energy. And he discovered he could draw with crayon on other things.

He thought it was hilarious to blame an imaginary baby, and also hilarious when I pointed out that he is indeed the baby in this household.

Our son is now two!

We didn’t film anything specific for his birthday but Hugh put together this little video of home movies to share.

It seems like yesterday but also such a long time ago that Yul came into our lives. The first month of his life while he was in the NICU was extremely difficult, but now he is a happy and healthy toddler.

I realised we didn’t share much of his first birthday, even though we have footage, because we didn’t have much time to put anything together a year ago. Also, we are not family vloggers so we don’t share a lot of our lives on a day to day basis. We started YouTube a long time before we had Yul and we will continue to make videos without him. When we do have him in videos it’s usually about a specific event or activities, not daily vlogs. We are careful about what we do show online and that he will be able to watch all these videos when he is older.

It’s not secret that he loves dinosaurs though! Most of his presents from us, and from others, were all dinosaur related. He was very happy!