Open Thread Thursday

It's HOT here in Texas!  We're going through the DRYEST 22 months.  Ever.

But that doesn't stop THIS "Kimchi Mama-in-the-making" from playing a little golf . . . How kragee is that?!  If you want your own Kimchi Mamas stuff (like her nifty hat) go to Cafepress and order you some! (Search under our own talented "halfmama" or follow the link!)

It's Open Thread Thursday . . . What's on YOUR mind?

--The Kimchi Mamas

Comments

[Jo]

What is "kragee"?

[Susan C.]

I absolutely loathe it when my inlaws try to push me into leaving the kids with them. They tell me that they want to be helpful but then keep mentioning it, making me feel guilty by saying that I can trust them. My husband says that they're trying to be nice, which I'd believe if they weren't being so pushy about it. Am I alone in thinking this way?

[Jo]

I only wish we had in laws willing to help, I am so jealous of people who have relatives to fall back on.

On the other hand, it is annoying when people don't take a hint and keep mentioning things they think are helpful. It can feel like nagging, and once you've tried to let them know "no thank you" in a subtle way, you are stuck either tolerating the constant reminders, or being more blunt, which can come across as rude.

Good Luck. Perhaps you can ask hubs to talk to them about it since they are his parents.

Maybe the real issue is that they feel like they are not seeing the children as much as they want, and that is why they keep bringing it up? I don't mean to imply that you are not letting your children visit enough, I am sure you are. Just trying to see if there is some other reason they keep harping on the topic.

[Faith]

Has anyone heard of the Korean artist Yeondoo Jung (정 연 두)? I hadn't until recently but I really like his work.

[Taylor]

Hi, My husband and I are trying to come up with a good middle name for our baby if it's a boy. My husband is korean adopted so our last name is Pederson and we really like the name Jack. We both like using family names for middle names so the one we have picked out for a girl is Marley Adaire. However, none of our family names seem to work out with Jack and with it being such a common name we want something a little more unique for the middle name. I was thinking of using the korean name Wang Su (we did a lot of research on Korean naming tradition and this is what we came up with). My husband isn't sold on the idea of a korean name though. he thinks that it would either make people think he was adopted (my husband has a korean middle name) or make him feel that he somehow would have to live up to a korean name by acting more korean. especially if our other children don't have korean names.

Has anyone here given their half-korean child a korean middle name? why or why not and would you make to same decision again?

Thanks everyone, and sorry if this seems like I'm rambling

[Angie in Texas]

@ jo: "kragee" = crazy

@ taylor: both of my kids (the ones you see above) have "american/western" first names and korean middle names. if my fiance and i have some of our own, i'd do it again.

*BTW, BOTH of them *adore* their middle names!

[Katherine]

I know this has been addressed before but I was hoping to get some more opinions. My Korean is embarrassingly bad but for whatever reason, it's become really important to me that my daughter learn Korean. I found a preschool in my area that is taught only in Korean and I'm planning to transfer my daughter there. She is 2 years old. I'm just worried that she's going to have a hard time adjusting. Her verbal skills have really taken off in the past couple of months and my husband and I only talk English to her. Whatever articles that I can find on language immersion for kids are very positive but I was wondering if anyone else has had any experience with this? Am I naive to think she'll become fluent?

[Mary]

My son has a Korean name but not "official." since my MIL named him (through one of those naming people - she still lives in Korea) after he was born. (they consider the date and time of birth when naming)... we expect to do the same with son #2, who is due any day now..

i think he's going to come soon.. like maybe tomorrow. i'm having irregular contractions today..

[Angie in Texas]

woohoo mary! =)

[Byung]

@taylor: I don't know about 'living up to the name' but he *may* feel different from his siblings if he's the only one with the korean middle name. I hope 'different' in a good sense. Both of my girls have american first name and korean middle name. They have an american last name as well. I wanted to give them a Korean middle name because otherwise they wouldn't have anything in their name to represent Korea.

It's funny but my MIL used to call the girls using the korean middle names while my parents (the Koreans) used to call her using the american first name. :)

[Danielle]

I'm American and my husband is Korean. Our daughter has an english first name and Korean middle name, but we use both as her first name (we live in Korea and it's pretty common that kids have "english" names, too). She's only 2, but I think she understands that certain people use her english name and vice versa. We are due with a boy in a few weeks and plan to do the same. Works for us! :)

[jooliyah]

katherine: my son started a korean preschool 6 months ago. he'd been going to an english speaking preschool and i speak a mix of english and korean to him. i liked his english speaking preschool just fine, but when the circumstances in our family life made us move to a place with lots and lots of koreans for this year, i decided to enroll him in a korean speaking/teaching preschool. he started speaking korean words in his english sentences within the first month. by the third month, he was speaking in korean sentences. at this point, he's fully fluent in both korean and english. i was pleasantly surprised to find that his english kept improving too.

you could say, i guess, that he's so fluent because he gets korean at home with my parents too. but i really think he would be fluent without them too. so, i guess that was a long way of saying that you are not naive. it can happen. and i'm glad i did it. because he was so young and his classmates so accepting, it was definitely not hard for him to learn.

[joelsa]

Mary--praying for a quick and painless delivery! =)

katherine: my kids are full korean but don't get much exposure to the language or culture. sometimes it stresses me out and i talk to them in my amazing korean (equivalent to a three year old's verbal abilities). they stare at me like i'm crazy and tell me that they don't understand spanish. so if you have the opportunity to send them to korean school, i think that's great! i know a couple kids who are fluent in both korean and english at age 4.

angie--your kids are adorable. when did they start to play golf? my girls are begging us but we think they're too young at 5 and 4 (and we're just being lazy).

[Angie in Texas]

@ joelsa: thank you for the compliment! =)

they started playing january 2008 - so just over 18 months. we're really lucky to have a great public par 3 course like 8 minutes door-to-gate from the house with a GREAT junior program. THEY LOVE IT. (they love going to the driving range and hitting balls with my fiance and i; they love the 'jr' clinics the course hosts; they love it when i drive really fast in the cart and they love getting their own drinks from the concession stand!)

*however they HATE it right now bc it's 100+ degrees - so they only go in the mornings. =)

[s]

@ Taylor on naming your child - I'm chinese, husband is korean. Our son has a one-syllable Korean middle name (after Father-in-law's shortened Korean name). It's simple, not hard to pronounce (even though both DH and I have very ethnic multi-syllable middle names). I won't do it again for my second child simply because we've already picked out the relative that their middle name will come from, and they all have English middle names. But I love that we were able to do it for our son.
We also had my parents come up with a full Chinese (and translatable into Korean) name for our son which has a symbolic Christian meaning for our son. That made me feel connected in more ways to one of my son's names. :)

[HCG]

my son's birth certificate has a "western" first name, then my maiden name as a middle name and then my husband's last name. my mom went to a namemaker when they were traveling back to visit Seoul soon after he was born and obtained an astrologically accurate korean first name, coordinated with his last name (my husband is of Chinese descent but not 'full')we call him by his first name and his korean name, and will adjust his birth certificate to add it as the first of his two middle names.

I wish oh how I wish there was a korean language preschool nearby. my son understands korean but doesn't really speak it as much in public since going to preschool which makes me sad :/. and he's learning mandarin via Ni Hao Kai-lan but he's confusing the two languages at the moment, calling what I say "chinese".

[denise]

My 1/2 Korean son has a bicultural Korean first name meaning if you pronounce it one way it is very western and has a western meaning and if you pronounce it using Korean phonetics (the "o" sound in his name changes making it a very korean name- part of his name is the generational name for him and his cousins. So it is based on a Chinese meaning and symbols as well.
Jamin (short for Benjamin) (Jae-min), Jason (Jae-son), Jadon (Jae-don) are some examples of what i am talking about.
so his name has a truly double meaning.
Our DD, on the other hand, was adopted from Korea so she already had a "Korean name" so we kept her original first name as her new middle name. We used the first syllable of a famous Korean song to begin her name and added a short bicultural Korean name to the end of the syllable which added together is a nice western name. Our kids do have a korean last name since DH is korean but since i am not we wanted to reflect both cultures. So, technically DD's first name is not a true bicultural name but the thought put into how we came up with her name makes sense to those who hear her name. Most older Koreans like her name after i explain where it comes from since it retains a somewhat Korean identity. We needed names that were easy to say in both languages.

[Katherine]

Jooliyah & Joelsa- thank you for the positive messages. I've probably been overthinking this but I keep wondering if I'm doing the right thing, etc. I think ultimately it will benefit her so hopefully it'll be worth the adjustment.

[Taylor]

Thank you all for your comments on korean names. It's really helpful and I'm really excited about our boy's middle name being korean. I hope your comments will help convince my husband that this is ok.

Thank you!

- Taylor

[happybell]

Hi Taylor, rather late, but still. My siblings and I are biracial, we all have Korean names only. Some people tend to call me by surname because they find it easier, mainly at school-like settings. But most people have no problem saying my name (pronunciation adapted to Spanish though).

I'm the second born (and a girl), so my father offered my mom to use a Western/Spanish name as my middle name, but she refused. She said it wouldn't be right for me to have one if my elder brother didn't. And I agree; if you give your first child a Korean name (middle or not), consider doing it for all your children so they don't feel 'left out'.

On another note, have you seen this? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/world/asia/30satellite.html
It says that in rural Korea there are a lot of 'foreign brides', which means lots of 'hapa' kids are being born!

[Angie in Texas]

@ happybell: i LOVED that article! =)

[Jo]

@happybell: I agree--very interesting