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One of the hardest things about being a parent

2019/06/20 / Nic / 0 Comments

When your child is sick…

I wanted to do a vlog showing the reality of being a parent and what it’s like when your child is sick. Even when an illness is not very serious, it can still be heartbreaking as a parent to see your child in pain.

It’s also difficult for parents in regards to work. Whether you work outside the home or from home, some work has to be sacrificed so you can take care of your child. Our son Yul couldn’t go to daycare while sick like he usually would, so that meant we had to make a lot of adjustments too. We took him to a meeting we had to go to which was thankfully in our neighbourhood. But then Hugh was the one who had to continue working while I stayed home with Yul. This means a lot of my work gets delayed.

When you are freelancer there is always an element of guilt when you fall behind in work. But of course caring for your child is more important. While I love being my own boss, it’s times like these I envy jobs where someone else could do it while I’m not there.

Yul is feeling a lot better now. I filmed this vlog a few days ago and now his mood is greatly improved. He still has a bit of cough but he can be around other children again and loved being back at daycare and playing at the park after dinner. He was getting very sick of just being home with Mummy!

I know a lot of family vloggers only want to show the exciting or happy things, and I understand that, but I also think it’s important for parents to see reality represented on YouTube as well. That’s why I wanted to vlog when Yul was sick. Even then, I still couldn’t vlog everything or show how much he cried because in the moment I’m comforting and not thinking about filming.

I wanted to make a video that other parents understood and connected with. But also something educational for those have never had this experience and show maybe what their friends with kids are going through.

You can join in the conversation over on YouTube here.

That Play-Doh Smell

2019/06/11 / Nic / 0 Comments

The smell of childhood

Hugh and I had very different childhoods and some things we only realise now that we have Yul. Since Korea has changed a lot, Yul has a lot more access to things that I had in my stereotypical Western childhood, like Play-Doh. Whereas what Hugh had to play with in the ’80s in Korea was very different to what I had in Australia. These days things like Play-Doh are easy to get in Korea.

Growing up, we also made Play-Doh at home ourselves, but my brain instantly recognizes the smell of the store-brought Play-Doh brand. I had fun sniffing Yul’s Play-Doh while Hugh had no interest…

Yul also has Play-Doh toys and accessories I would have loved to have as a child but they were either not available then or would have been too expensive. Yul really enjoys playing with Play-Doh but doesn’t realise how lucky he is! He is also young so his playing mostly involved just layering pieces of Play-Doh on top of each other.

He has yet to discover the slime craze thankfully and hopefully I can hold that off for a while!

Seoul Vlog: Working Mum Life

2019/06/08 / Nic / 0 Comments

Vlogging my day and new project!

As I mention in the video, we had 3 or 4 videos lined up and loosely scripted to film 2 days ago… and then realised it was a public holiday and there was no daycare for Yul. It’s impossible to film those types of videos when Yul is home. We would have filmed yesterday instead but Hugh flew out to Japan for the weekend. So I decided to vlog my day instead for a video. It ended up being a day and a half technically, but the timing worked out because I could show Sara and I recording the first episodes of our new podcast.

Sara (HojuSara on YouTube) and I have been planning to do a podcast for quite a while and finally it’s happening. We’ve been sponsored the equipment and have a producer (Kait who is from my area of Australia!) so it’s going to be coming soon!

The air has been a lot better these past few days in Seoul. We had a good amount of rain, which clears away the pollution. So I took the opportunity to take Yul to the nearby parks at the river. He had a nice time wandering around and looking at bugs. The Han river parks near where we live are a lot less crowded than many others, and have lots of shade from trees, which I’m so grateful for. It’s never easy going anywhere with a toddler and even harder in the summer heat.

Once Hugh is back from Japan we’ll be filming a bunch of stuff. Also I have many comic ideas lined up, just trying to adjust my schedule to fit it all in.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!

I’m also on a radio show on tbs eFM called “Real Mom, Real Talk” which you can listen to if you are in Korea on Saturday mornings, or you can listen as a podcast on various podcast sites.

YouTube 100K Silver Play Button

2019/06/08 / Nic / 0 Comments

We received our 100K Silver Play Button from YouTube… and Yul helped us unbox it….

Big thank you to all our subscribers!

Whether you recently subscribed or have been with us from the beginning: thank you! It’s been a long road to this milestone but we wanted to do it with with making genuine content and positivity.

If you haven’t yet subscribed head over to the MKH YouTube channel and subscribe, if you’d like to!

As we’ve mentioned, we will be doing YouTube more professionally now that we’ve reached 100K and are currently working out a regular schedule.

Making Bibimbap with Yul

2019/05/27 / Nic / 0 Comments

Attempting to make bibimbap with my toddler

Hugh wants to start a cooking/mukbang series with Yul where they try to make and eat lots of different types of Korean food. Now I’m sure that every video is going to a messy disaster, but that’s the fun of it!

In this video they attempt to make bibimbap, but really they are just doing the final stages of assembling it as I’d prepared the ingredients beforehand.

Yul was not very interested in doing his own bowl, but preferred “helping” Daddy. Bibimbap is a great food for kids though as there is a variety of vegetables. You just need to switch out the gochujang for sesame oil and soy sauce instead. Gochujang is traditionally used but is too spicy for young kids.

Often people assume a mukbang means eating a lot of food, but mukbangs aren’t always like that. It’s just eating any food and any quantity. We hope it will be interesting for people to see the type of Korean food Yul eats here in Korea. His tastes vary and he is quite picky about vegetables these days, but hopefully will also be a good way to expand his tastes, as well as bonding with Hugh.

What’s new on our channel?

As we have mentioned recently, we are transitioning to doing YouTube in a more professional sense with a regular schedule. The past few weeks have been hectic with Hugh quitting his job and really starting his own business, but once things settle down we will be setting up our schedule.

It’s also the time for us to experiment a bit with our content. We are still small enough to do that, but big enough to get good feedback and find out what works for us.

Join the conversation over on YouTube and make sure you are subscribed to us. Subscribe here and click the bell icon so you get notified about new videos.

Let’s talk about Marriage

2019/05/19 / Nic / 0 Comments

The hardest year of our marriage?

I’ve been wanting to do this video for a few months and finally we had the time to film it. Often online, couples present this really perfect image of their relationship, but of course no relationship is perfect. We wanted to talk realistically about what has been hard in our marriage, in particular what it was like last year.

It’s no surprise that work/life balance, having a baby, and money all impact a marriage a lot. Even being aware of these stressors, it’s difficult going through it. We talk openly about our experience and working through the difficulties of the first year of having a baby.

As we mentioned, Hugh has quit his job and is going free-lance so he is in control of his time and can make family life a priority. We will also be doing a lot more YouTube content, which is great for creativity but also great for spending time together as a family.

I hope us talking openly about this will help people realise that no one has a perfect relationship and that you do have to work on your marriage. Being comfortable enough to talk about issues is important in a relationship. Also, knowing that you can argue and things will be okay.

We also want to be open about the reality of life. We aren’t living some wealthy, high-flying life in Seoul. We have a great life in Seoul, but we don’t want to pretend it’s more awesome than it is. Unfortunately some people do try and project that image on YouTube and Instagram but really their life isn’t as glamorous as it seems.

Let us know what content you’d like to see us make and click the bell icon on YouTube so you get notifications when we upload!

New Video Series

2019/05/15 / Nic / 0 Comments

We’ve been doing YouTube part-time and somewhat of a hobby for years now, but now that we’ve reached 100K it’s time to get serious! Well… serious enough to publish regular weekly content.

One series we have started is looking at news and trends from Korea every week. Hugh will pick a few topics in Korean news and we will discuss them. Often what is happening in Korea news and what gets translated internationally can very a lot, so this should give a bit of a glimpse into what people are talking about in Korea.

I’ll also share something from Australia and try to find the weirdest thing that has happened. Usually something weird going on in Australia!

We are going to be doing a lot of experimenting with other videos too, so we can find out what content we like making, and what videos people want to watch. Unfortunately Hugh’s body transformation viral video negatively affects us because we gained a bunch of subscribers interested in fitness and health content, but that’s not what our main content is about. That looks bad in the YouTube algorithm, even though we have great comments on our video, because YouTube is showing our videos to the wrong people. We are trying to flip the balance so that our videos show to people interested in Korea and intercultural content, rather than just…. dudebros… haha.

My Korean Husband