Elliott complained about his slightly runny nose this morning as I dropped him off at daycare.  I took him out of the car and did what any dad does in my situation; used the bottom of my t-shirt  and wiped the snot off.

 

E (looked at me funny): "Daddy, you use your shirt for the nose?"
Me: "Yeah, sorry buddy, that's all I got right now."

E: "That's very dirty!"

Me: "...eh..."

E: "You should use a tissue..."

 

In my very limited sample size, my favorite kid age is generally between 18 months and 2 years old.  They start to understand the things you say to them and they have a small, but creatively-utilized, set of vocabulary to express their thoughts.  You get strange, unexpected gems like, "nose broke" (a nosebleed) and "waffle sauce" (syrup). 

 

I've come to realize though, that the strange stuff continues, its just in slightly more sophisticated connections and associations the kids make and learn...

I *defy* you to stay awake during this!  Eh, wait, that's not what I meant!  Bah, just watch the video. =)

 

  

My boys each reached developmental milestones over the last week or so.

 

G.I. Colby is finally army-crawling...

   

 

And Elliott is finally robot-dancing to Daft Punk now:

   

I walked Elliott into his classroom a little later than usual where breakfast was already in progress. 

 

The class sort of mumbled greetings to Elliott and the following exchange took place between Elliott's teacher, Ms Jennifer, and a cute little classmate of Elliott's named Emily (a Mariners fan, wearing a Mariners T-shirt this morning):

 

Teacher: (pointing to Elliott) Emily, who is that? Is that your friend?

Emily: (*thinking*) It's...Johjima!

 

 

We only gave Elliott small bits of popsicle last night since solid food is still making him puke. 

 

Still, after 12'ish hours of no solid food, he was begging for all kinds of solid foods ("hot dog?", "yogurt?", "yummy?") including a box of cereal Karen put on the kitchen island. 

 

He stayed in the kitchen even after everyone else went into the family room.  Then we heard him jumping up and down next to the island, saying "Reach!" each time he jumped to try and grab the cereal box off the island...

After Karen dropped off Elliott at daycare yesterday, she called a few hours later to see how he was doing.

 

The lady at the daycare said that when he realized K left, he started crying.  While the teacher hugged him and held him, he sobbed, "Mommy working...mommy working..."

 

He was fine a short while later when the kids went outside to play, though he cried again this morning after getting dropped off.

 

In other completely-unrelated news, I get my day in court today.  I took several pictures of the intesection I allegedly ran a stop sign at.  I also burned a DVD with video from the vantage point of the cop, of cars that drove through the intersection early yesterday evening.  The idea is showing how difficult it is to gauge how long or even whether they stop. 

 

It was a lot of work for getting off of a $120 ticket, but as I heard ad nauseam from my mom growing up, it's the principle of the matter...

 

5/13/08 11:37am update: K won't leave me alone about adding her Mother's day message to my blog so all four of you who actually read it can see it. 

 

The essay below was pivotal for me in deciding to have kids.  It's largely gone from teh internets nowadays as iirc it was originally printed in Men's Health or some like publication.  I dug it up and thought it was a good read in case one of my legions of fans happened to be on the fence wrt starting a family...

 

 

Put Up the Hoop Sooner

10 lessons of parenting from one wise guy who's done doing the dad thing

By: Hugh O'Neill

 

Earlier today, we dropped our daughter off at college. Like her brother before her, she went and grew up on us. And as I write, I'm sipping some single malt and feeling downright valedictory, even rueful about the passing of the Dad years. Sure, I've still got a role as their father. But it's just a bit-part now and, worse, doesn't include all the best stewardship stuff - sandwich-making, cleat-buying, locking the door behind them each night when they come home. Clearly, an era has ended.

 

And as usual, whenever a buzzer sounds, the competitor within wants a score. How'd I do? whispers the bottom-line lobe of my brain. Normally, I'm not much for self-criticism. I'm from the school of Reggie Jackson, who, when asked to describe his shortcomings, once confessed that yeah, okay, he probably did care too much. But somehow, my kids' leave-taking has cracked open my shell. Suddenly, I can see some areas of Daddy weakness.

 

Now, don't mistake me. My kids are damn lucky to have me. After all, there were no sirens or flashing lights in their childhood. Nor am I enjoined from crossing state lines. I hereby re-state my official position: they could have done worse in the father sweepstakes. Still, looking back, it's clear that they might have done better, too. If I could turn back time, here are some things I would have done differently, more or less.

 

1. I Would Have Packed the Car More Often

 

Some of my most vivid family memories are from on the road - midnight swimming at Disneyworld, hiking above the treeline as night swallowed Colorado. Sure, in part they stand out just because they were exceptions to the dailyness of our three-bedroom cape in New Jersey, and we saw new places. But for me, the appeal of traveling as a team isn't that it's broadening, but the exact opposite; it's sweetly narrowing. Somehow, when you're lifted out of your normal habitat, dropped into an unfamiliar place where nobody knows who the four of you are, you see your team with fresh eyes. Somehow, after a day at Colonel Wilson's Reptile Village, with all of you cuddled in two beds in the $39.95-a-night anonymity of motel America, watching some corny movie and eating pizza, you feel bound, not merely by DNA or circumstance, but by the memories you've made together. No passports or planning or piles of money required. Just go. Three days hiking in the nearest national park. A weekend trip to watch the Yanks play in Camden Yards. Just go.

 

2. I Would Have Tried To Spin Things Less

 

I'm a sunny guy, and so spent a lot of time reassuring my kids. They'd come home from 4th grade with a problem and I'd explain it away rather than really hearing it, understanding their anxiety. Bad plan. I'd sympathize more, manage reality less. That way they might confide in me more now without fear of being talked out of their feelings.

 

3. I Would Have Raised My Voice Less

 

If you ask me, most fathers of my generation don't shout enough. We try to reason with kids who have no concept of what's reasonable. I once heard a guy trying to coax his son off the roof of a Honda Odyssey, explaining why it wasn't safe to ride up there. "If Daddy had to stop short, you could fall off and get hurt, Brandon, and that would make Mommy and me sad." Yikes! Sometimes, yelling is better than building self-esteem. Consider this from psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim: "We become most upset with our children when we see in them aspects of our own personalities of which we disapprove." Bullseye! I support Dad anger when kids have earned the wrath of a right-thinking man. But my wrath wasn't always the honest and true and helpful kind. Sometimes it was the whirlwind of my self-loathing. That wasn't fair and I'd take that back if I could. My hunch is that free-floating anger makes kids more timid than they otherwise might be.

 

4. I Would Have Put Up the Hoop Sooner

 

It's no snap to find common ground with kids. After all, a man's s filled with exotic sexual fantasies about Olivia in human resources, and a kid is fretting about being sucked down the bathtub drain. A basketball hoop in the driveway is a bridge across the gulf. It's hospitable to games of h-o-r-s-e with your 52-pound third-grader and to real contests with your teenage power forward. The beauty is that the court requires no conversation - which both fathers and kids hate. The shuffles and sounds of driveway basketball - the bonk of the rock on blacktop, the lope and ease of shoot and retrieve — are WD-40, loosening up everything and quieting the minds of both big boys and their kids.

 

5. I Would Have Hung Around More at Bedtime

 

The ten minutes right before the kids go to sleep are often gold. In a way, they've surrendered, and sometimes, as they put on their pajamas and brush their teeth, the anxieties of the day fall away and they'll start to talk in a wandering, undefended way. Often, revelations float to the surface and you'll get glimpses of dreads or enthusiasms or curiosities that the momentum of the day may have obscured. Don't get caught downstairs watching the second quarter of Pistons-Bulls just when they're about to blossom. Hang around their bedroom for 10 minutes or so, and see if you can't catch a flash of something, of little people reaching out to the big ones that they suspect care greatly about them.

 

6. I Would Have Bought More Hamsters

 

My hunch is that years hence, long after I'm gone, whenever my daughter thinks of me, the first word that flashes across her mind will be Peaches. Not the fruit, but the loyal brindle-and-white hamster who was the founding mother of our rodent dynasty. For a period of four years from 5th grade through 8th, she and I conspired to raise countless generations of hamsters good and true. And the sense memories of the equipment required to tend said pets — the squeak of a hamster wheel, the piney smell of wood chips — will always summon Dad for daughter, daughter for Dad. Fishing has the click of reels, the texture of a basket creel. Car-care brings wrenches and fumes and hand soaps around which pearls of recollection grow. I'd have shared more stuff with my kids — golf, hunting, baseball, coin-collecting, camping, whatever, doesn't matter — anything that has the gear to shape remembrance.

 

 

7. I Would Have Invested The First Five Minutes More

 

Often, at the end of the day, I was tired. Frazzled by obligations and addled by a too-short attention span, I didn't always engage with my kids in whatever - reading to them, helping with homework, listening to their tales of trauma or triumph. But almost every time I got past the initial inertia — driven by guilt or goading from Mom there were moments of invigoration just around the bend. We stumbled upon silly games and jokes that have evolved into the stalwarts of our family culture. Thoreau celebrated what he dubbed 'the gospel according to this minute.' If I could turn back time, I'd try to think about the past and the future a little less.

 

8. I Would Have Been More Patient With Fantasy

 

Let's say a man had a son who was less interested in sports than he was in elves and wizards and comic books. And let's say that this son who was in every way bright and good and loving just didn't fit his father's preconceived idea of what his son would be like. He was expecting a hearty Huck Finn, an outgoing, athletic boy and he got a somber, shy, sweet one. A fully-grown man ought to have known that there are a million paths to manhood; he should have cherished somber and shy and sweet more. His failure to embrace those elves must have seemed like a reproach.

 

9. I Would Have Touched Them More

 

I touched my kids a lot when they were little. We wrestled and cuddled, slept together whenever anybody got scared. But as they got older, I got less touchy. Sure it made some sense. Fourteen-year-olds rarely enjoy the same monster games they did a few years ago. But in part I fear I touched them less because I felt marginalized by their teenage disinterest in me. Yes, I was giving them their space, but I was also withholding the endorsement of a tap on the shoulder while passing in the kitchen, a kiss on the top of the head while swooping out the door to work. Shame on this grown man for holding out on the kids he loved. Human touch trumps the language of esteem-building. A righteous Dad should keep using his hands.

 

10. I Would Have Been Alone With Each of My Kids More Often

 

I spent a fair amount of time with my children. But the lion's share of it was with both of them. I wonder if being a threesome or foursome didn't keep me from hearing the unique sound of my boy and my girl. God knows we had lots of laughs as a group, but in my next life, I might institutionalize some just-the-two-of-us traditions with each of them. Something tells me that if I had a never-fail everyday-Saturday-morning diner-breakfast with my daughter - my son was asleep, anyway - I might have heard her solo voice a touch more clearly and she might have understood the particularity of my love for her.

 

Bonus Wish: I Would Have Had More Kids

 

Sure, that's easy for me to say, since childbirth is not overly taxing on Dad. And I suppose stopping at replacements for Mom and me made some ecological sense. It's not that I feel I've been cheated - Josh and Rebecca have filled my cup - but I fear I may have shorted my kids on the greatest asset there is, brothers and sisters. I've got an embarrassment of riches - two brothers, four sisters, arrayed in a crescent from Maine to Washington DC — who every day make me feel at home in this world. I have a hunch more is better. The love of your siblings might just make your parents the smaller figures they ought to be.

 

If you judge a father by his results, then I'm as good at it gets. My son and daughter have made my mistakes moot. We'll just leave it at that, lest my editor has to cut out encomiums to my kids. Here's what I think I've learned about fatherhood: All the assertive, egocentric skills that make us successful as young men, as athletes, as wooers of women, as commodities in the marketplace of the world, actually hobble us in the sweet sessions between father and child. If I could do this again, I'd just work harder to be quiet, open to songs in all the keys of life. My kids didn't have a perfect father. My bet is yours won't either. But they won't need one — not as long as they've got you.

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The Tuesday before Thxgiving, we got our garage-fridge.  K & I held out as long as possible on buying a 2nd refrigerator for a variety of reasons, but once we decided to get one we were like kids on X-mas morning waiting to get it.  We got the Whirlpool Gladiator ™, where the freezer is the big space underneath.  Right now, we're using it for Karen-milk storage.  And, as you can see below, in the short span of a month, my wife's (DD'ish) cup(s) overfloweth...

 

 

 

 

Why is this dog wearing a kerchief?  Apparently, Elliott watches (and imitates) Karen feeding Colby.   Karen puts a bib on Colby when she bottle-feeds him, so Elliott wrapped this kerchief around Baby (the dog's name) before trying to bottle-feed him.  I've also caught Elliott a couple times mashing the breast pumps against his chest...

 

 

 BTW, this is the results of my coin-jar thing a few blog entries ago.  Realized going thru the pix that I never did post it...

The korean/chinese name is still up in the air.  Momma-Kim is championing An-Hyuck.  I'm thinking it might get him a little teased.  I swear if that ends up being his name, I'm calling him Hyuckleberry Jen...

 

The chinese name frontrunner is just as ridiculous sounding in English.  An-Yi.  heh. 

 

 

The folks over at Overlake discharged us thursday night so K's folks came over Friday to lend us 2 pairs of hands.  K's mom is a spry woman for her 60 years of age so she does stuff like taking Elliott to the park and see-sawing with him.  So this day she took him to the park around 4:30 and put him on her lap and rode down the slide.  But, it picked up speed faster than she anticipated and she landed flat on her tuckus.

 

At this time, I was at home when I got a cellphone call from a number I didn't recognize.  I picked it up and a very sad voice, sounded like there was lots of crying, said with a thick korean accent, "oh oliver?  can i talk to karen?"  For reasons unbeknownst to me, I just assumed that some elder or some other random geezer at church died so I handed her the phone not thinking much of it.  Turned out to be K's mom calling on a passer-byer's cellphone letting us know what happened and she needed medical attention!

 

18 hours, 1 emergency room visit, an X-ray and MRI and 3-4 Vicodin's later, turned out my mother-in-law had what is termed a compression fracture of the T12 vertebrae.   No surgery required, but she can't lift anything over 5 lbs for a while.

 

It throws a curveball into our free-childcare system, to be sure.  But between my wife, whose belly was recently sliced open, my father-in-law who gets chemo pumped into him weekly and my brokeback mother-in-law, they kinda/sorta equal one able-bodied babysitter.

I got some life insurance quotes recently for a one million dollar 30-year term life policy.  When you do the online quote, they ask you questions like, "what's your blood pressure, do you smoke, did either of your parents get a cancer diagnosis before 60, etc"

 

I got to thinking about, "how do they decide the right premium dollar amount?"  I think I worked it out here, but I was a pretty lazy math student so comments/corrections are always welcome...

 

The best rate I remember getting quoted was $85/month for 30 years.  That works out to $1020/year for 30 years and lets just say that that investment yields 6% annually (I figure 9% minus 3% adjusted for inflation)

 

So to calculate that amount with interest it's

1020 * 1.06^30

which works out to just over 85k.

 

Let x = Odds Oliver will live and (1-x) = Oliver will not live.

 

(x)(85,000) = amount insurance company gets if Oliver lives.

(1-x)(-1,000,000) = amount insurance company loses if Oliver does not live.

 

To represent the break-even point (all units here in 1000's)

 

0 = (x)(85) + (1-x)(-1000)

 

= 85x -1000 + 1000x

1000/1085 = x

 

x = roughly, .922

 

So in short, in order for the insurance company to reasonably expect to make money by insuring me, I (or a person with my statistics) needs to survive 30 years more than 92.2% of the time. 

 

It's kind of a stupid thing to spend time/effort to figure out since there's basically no practical application and it feels like it amounts to basically a lose-lose situation...  Either I'm $85,000 lighter 30 years later or I'm dead...

 

 

 

Well, the Mrs, Jr & I are back from our visit back with the family in Maryland.  As much as its nice to see family & friends, its at least equally nice to come home to a place you can soil/screw up/prance around naked in as you feel like.

Travel fatigue and food coma has sapped my of my typical witty blogging prowess, but I do have some random tidbits to share.

 

Karen & I finally met face-to-face with Calliope Paige (An-Ji) Mosman.  If she had an Indian-name, it would be Smiles-with Marshmellow-Cheeks.  Holy cow that little baby is one happy, sociable camper!  Of course, even a wolverine with a splinter in his toe would seem like Mary Poppins next to Angry-Meatball-Elliott.

 

We also had a chance to visit on X-mas eve with Gramma & Grampy Mosman!  Some of the nicest people you've ever met and Gramma Mosman makes a peach crisp you'd give your up first-born for.  However, given that our visit with the Mosman's ended with an EJ-howling fit, I very much doubt Grampy Mosman would ever make that trade.

 

Mrs Sakai, mine & my sister's childhood piano teacher also dropped by the house to see our babies and she looks exactly the same as when I was a little kid.  I was a horrid piano student through no fault of hers.  Every time I see her now, I feel bad for having behaved like such a well...a little turd!

 

 

One of the things they don't tell you in the prenatal classes, but is invariably true, is that a minor perk of being a parent is playing costume-o-rama with your child and having digital photo proof thereof for future blackmailing and embarassment purposes. 

 

For the uninitiated, this may sound humiliating or cruel, even. To those people, I'd ask that you take my word that night after night of 2-3 hour blocks of sleep, no sense of day & night, lack of adult interaction save your spouse & clothes permanently bleached in breastmilk warp your mind such that strange things become funny & justified.

 

To wit, here are the spoils of this evening's festivities...

 

p.s. "Why the dog?", you may ask.  Alas, poor mochi was just in the line of fire...

 

 

New pictures of the boy here.  K & I have come up with a lot of different strange nicknames for EJ.  None horribly creative, but we've been operating a bit sleep-deprived as of late.  I've added some pictures to illustrate the history behind some of them.

 

The Rat: shortened "rugrat", karen & i's quickie reference for him.

Sourpuss: self-explanatory.

Mister Cheese: All EJ eats is milk and he can't brush or gargle.  Also, I'd guesstimate about a quarter of everything he does eat is either spat back up or dribbled onto himself.  Let milk sit long enough, eventually it turns to cheese...

One-eyed pirate: He doesn't do it so much these days, but for a while, he'd only ever open one eye and peer at us w/ that one.  I did get a picture of a time he did it recently...

Angel from Heaven: We don't actually call him this.  It was more of a passing reference from grampa & gramma Kim.

 

Don't have a ton more to write; i'm pretty tired at the moment but i'll come back w/ some more later. :)

 

 

  We've found a semi-happy medium to our breastfeeding conundrum by Karen pumping and bottle-feeding the rugrat.  I guess it just took a day or two to take, but holy cow (no pun intended) Karen's just a milk-machine!

 

  Koreans are notoriously frank and pragmatic in the way they talk and when we were having problems producing milk in the hospital, Karen's aunt 100% seriously observed that perhaps things would've started up quicker if I had started siphoning her more frequently during umm....romantic interludes...    I nearly suffocated myself laughing when Karen translated for me...

I'm rapidly turning into one of those torture-the-unfortunate-listener-with-insipid-parenting-non-stories types, so just a quick comment;

breast pumps, remind me of 2 things;

1. Count Rugen's Life-sucking machine in The Princess Bride

2. The Whack-a-mole carnival game.

 

Lets see if we can induce some more with some sickening Anne Geddes-esque pictures!

 

Only a couple more pictures, I promise.  Karen is like, way more lucid today after most of the drugs have mostly worn off.  Breastfeeding has become our current biggest hurdle.  Its odd; you'd think that would be one of the most like, natural, instinctive things; but Elliott's got no clue, and though Karen's a bosomy gal, she hasn't been overflowing with motherly-goodness.  So, faithful readers, cross your nipples for us, hopefully we'll get there!

 

 

After a hardfought 13 hours, turned out things weren't going to work the old-fashioned way, and we had to go C-section.  In the end, EJ weighs in at 7 lbs, 4oz.  He kinda reminds me of the Monopoly guy that wears the tophat...  Mother & baby are doing just fine and here are some pictures of the proceedings...