Tag: kids

Dad Brog (#084): My health isn’t just my health anymore

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the last two weeks, I’ve had a dreadful cough. It started with sneezing, and then my chest filled with gunk, and since then it’s been a tremendous amount of coughing, scratchy throat, and then more coughing.  At certain times and conditions worse than others, but a noticeable amount of coughing going on.

I chalked it up to a seasonal allergy, since I am susceptible to pollen, and this year’s jizzing by Mother Nature has been particularly bad.  Mythical wife has been tired of hearing me coughing, and suggested I go to a doctor, just to get an antibiotic or something to help rush this shit along.  But being of the typical male who generally avoids going to see doctors, I didn’t, chalking it up to being on the mend and that the phlegm just needs to work itself through my system.

Today, #2 was diagnosed with strep throat.  She hasn’t shown any coughing, sneezing or any of the other typical strep symptoms, but she’s been incredibly fussy and was already headed to the doc for her 9-month checkup.  There, it was noticed her throat was a little red and after a quick test, yep it’s strep.

Now the obvious culprit is that her lousy dad might have had strep and didn’t know it was strep because he didn’t have anything other than a nagging cough, and I still don’t know if it’s strep or not.  But the point remains that the very likely source of my daughter’s sickness is the person I see in the mirror and having a coming to Jesus moment that I really should be taking care of myself better if not just for myself, but for the sake of others, namely my own family and kids.

You’d think after two-plus years of being in a pandemic I would have figured that out already, but 40 years of life haven’t really made it sink in until I really jeopardized the wellbeing of one of the most important lives in my world.  Regardless of if I am the reason is irrelevant, just the possibility that it could’ve been me is enough of a wake up call to where I need to get my head out of my ass and just fucking do better.

It’s things like these that are the most obvious but most invaluable lessons to be learned about parenting, as well as life in general if you have other people in your life. It’s just a shame that I have to feel like a fucking failure in order for it to sink in, but I guess in a Fight Club fashion, it isn’t until you hit bottom that you’re free to do anything, like learn something important.

Dad Brog (#083): My child is like the IRS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

#2 has entered the stage in life in which we have introduced solid foods into her diet, and are easing her into the world of food that’s available to the world.  We’re trying to expose her to a wide gamut of flavors and all the food groups, as well as testing for allergies and sensitivities and hoping that she’ll not have all of dad’s dietary weaknesses like her big sister has inherited (lactose, eggs).

As hoped, it is going as well as it did with my first child, and #2 is eating most things without that much difficulty.  She’s clearly not a fan of tart and sour flavors, hopefully this will pass, but anything with a degree of tart to its flavor profile hasn’t gone over as well as some of the other things. 

One critical win that we seemed to have gotten is that she doesn’t seem to be as nearly sensitive to eggs like her sister is, or her dad is.  With bated breath, we’ve given her egg whites to which she’s been able to digest and not result in projectile vomit and diarrhea, but I did notice that she did get a little bit of skin issues where the egg might have touched around her mouth.

But overall though, so far so good.

You’d think though, with as many calories and solid food that she’s consuming, and increasing on a gradual basis, the need for mother’s milk would dwindle, right?  Prior to solid foods, she was consuming nearly 30 ounces of breast milk a day which is roughly around 600 calories.  Now that we’ve introduced solids, we’re not micromanaging her exact caloric intake, but she’s probably getting close to 400 calories a day on solids alone, independent of milk consumption.

Sure, growing babies need to eat to grow, but mythical wife and I thought that her need for milk would take a step back with those calories perhaps being replaced by actual solid food.

NOPE.

#2 is still slamming 30 oz of milk a day, and by god almighty if she doesn’t get her 30 oz of milk by the day’s end, it is absolute hell for us to pay, by virtue of repeatedly waking up and screaming bloody murder until the milk debt of the day is paid.

Like today, she’s eaten a pancake, a slice of turkey, cheddar, grapes, grilled chicken and various fruits.  More than she’s eaten in previous days.  As the day was winding down, the milk count on the day was closer to 15 oz than it was 30, but her temperament hadn’t really been altered, and she was in pretty good spirits throughout her awake time.

At the time I’m writing this, she’s woken up three times, and has not gone back down without another bottle.  Just like that, she’s back up to 27 oz, and she’ll be ripe and ready for her 30 by the time we do our final nightcap bottle.

So basically, she’s like the IRS when she doesn’t get her 30 oz on the day.  She will go to the ends of the earth to make your life hell and basically hold you and your time hostage until the milk debts are paid off.

Dad Brog (#082): will life ever ease up?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Most of my adult life, I’ve always kind of had a list to guide my general objectives. Get a good stable job. Unload the old house. Find a girl to date. To marry. To have children with. Get a new home. Leave toxic job, find better one.

Obviously, things change, life changes as does the general list. But the things on said list are pretty broad and pretty concrete things when they are checked off, with the thought being with the more things checked off, the more complete and presumably easier things get with life in general.

Well, over the last few years I’ve accomplished a large bit of my broad list.  I unloaded my old house. I found a new one. I got a good stable job that became toxic, and I left it and found a better one. And I met a girl, married her, and had kids.  For the most part, I’ve succeeded in checking off all of the big ticket items on the list, so the rhetorical question is, why is life still so fucking difficult and when will it ever ease up?

Obviously, children are the easiest thing to cite as why things are difficult, which isn’t inaccurate, but lately it feels like shit is happening in a way that feels like a competitive video game that allows a losing party suddenly get lucky, score easier, and catch back up, except in my case it’s like nothing is allowed to go smoothly for too long before shit starts happening that has me back in na position of wanting to rip my hair out and scream sometimes.

Recently, my nanny has basically inexplicably left us, currently indefinitely, since they haven’t reached out since calling out.  I won’t go into specifics, but the result of it is basically fucking me because mythical wife can’t take any time off because teachers get dick for privileges as such, so the burden falls on me, to stay home, skirt my job responsibilities and wrangle two babies all day long.

Mind you, I’m still new at my job, and I’m concerned, if it’s not already manifested, I’m going to have the reputation of being that headcase worker who’s high maintenance on account of their children.  Pre-kids I loathed people who did it at prior places I worked, but I’m basically becoming that person when my paid help flakes on me.  Plus, I don’t exactly have the formal PTO accrued, so I’m instead trying my best to pretend to work while watching the girls, and I’m extremely lucky to have colleagues with children who can empathize and understand and give me more leeway than my old C of a boss did.

This isn’t to say I have no empathy for what the nanny is going through, but there’s a finite ceiling I have for the circumstances that they’re citing.  I’m upset and disappointed for a variety of reasons, but more for ones beyond the, I have to take time from my job and looks like an asshole to my team.  All the same, I’m in a position where I can’t operate in the unknown, and might have to start looking for a plan B, in a highly, highly nanny’s market.

Oh, also it appears that #2 is at yet another sleep regression, according to mythical wife.  Except that she’s sucked at sleep since her arrival, so it’s hard to tell when things are at a regression, or if we’re just back to the usual routine of nightly she won’t sleep routine bullshit.

It’s classic fallacy of thinking things will get better, but we’re back to the point where we spend so much time just trying and praying and hoping she’ll go down that by the time we get anywhere it’s like 9 pm, way later than I want to eat dinner, and I still have a fuckton of daily chores and cleaning that has to get done that I get no fucking help with ever.

List or no list, this is life at its most classic. Nothing is ever allowed to be easy, and just when things look like they might be easing up, shit just happens that ratchets the difficulty back to fuck you mode, and I’m in a position where I can’t really do anything about it but make agitated dad brogs.

Dad Brog (#081): Now we enter true hard mode

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seeing as how my eldest has now crossed over the two-year mark, I can’t really call this series 2 Under 2 anymore.  So for the sake of simplification and finality, because these are what these posts really are, I’m just going to go ahead and just start titling these what they truly are.

So for the past month and change, has been The Best Month Ever, part 2 – a substantial chunk of time in which my mom has been staying with me, to help take care of my children, as well as the opportunity to bond with #2, much as she did with #1 back two years ago.  Her being here is a massive security blanket, as she is someone I trust unconditionally with my kids, and I always know my children are in good hands when I’m not physically present.  Which has been very critical seeing as how I have now returned to the office partially in my new hybrid work format.

Honestly, I think this visit has gone better than the last one, since aside from being the point person on #2, my mom has gotten to witness the growth and development of my first child, and it will never not make me happy to see just how much #1 loves her halmoni, and the rapid development of where it started with “halmi” at the start of the month, but has already corrected to a very well pronounced “halmoni” now.

We didn’t butt heads as often as we did the last time she was here, and probably by virtue of being in a job that isn’t sucking the soul out of me, my mental state was in a far better place now than it was back then, and I didn’t have my own head stuffed up my ass for the first few weeks of her visit this time.

In spite of how glad I’ve been to have my mom here over the last five weeks, it still has been somewhat of a roller coaster.  As mentioned, I returned to the office, which has embarked a whole new world of awkwardness of getting back to commuting and being in a place of business again.  I’ve started working out and running again which is a positive thing.  Unfortunately, as posted about not long ago, I had to put my dog down while she was here, which sucked massively in spite of knowing it was always looming.  And in the middle of this month, I took #1 to Disney World for her birthday, while my mom took a break from kid duty to visit a local friend in Georgia for the weekend, which was pretty good for all of us.

However, what wasn’t good was the fact that my daughter picked up a bug while in Florida, and I can remember the little shitfuck who was coughing all over the shuttle, and being concerned that my daughter wasn’t far enough away perhaps, and now I’ve got two sick kids because it’s impossible to separate #1 from #2 because they love each other.  It makes me really reconsider doing anything that puts either of my kids at risk, because Americans still can’t get their shit together, and frankly it’s not worth my kids getting sick for an egregiously expensive excursion in the first place.

Regardless, the point of the post is that the best month ever part 2 is coming to a close this week, and I have to take my mom back to Virginia very soon.  I’m eternally grateful for her help, and treasure the bonds she made with my daughters, but at the same time I’m absolutely scared and petrified at what lies ahead in the immediate future, with daily life without any sort of safety net anymore.

With me going back to the office a couple days each week, these are a couple of days in which it’s going to be just my nanny, in charge of both girls by herself.  This isn’t say I don’t trust my nanny, it’s just that I feel like I’m the only person in my world who really, really, really tries to avoid any and all scenarios in which my kids outnumber the present adults.  I know how hard double duty is, I’m on it way more than I wish I were, but shit happens.  My kids are handfuls, where one of them is now a two-nager who has some very strong opinions and wants to get her hands on anything and everything, and the other one is an infant that sucks at sleeping and requires the DaVinci code in order to get to nap for seven minutes.

Prior to this, I’ve always had the luxury of being able to work from home, so that I was always available if things went tits up, but that’s not going to be the case for several days each week.  Mythical wife and I agreed that we really only need to hang in there until the end of the school year, but that’s still nearly two and a half months to be going without any sort of safety netting.

As if two kids under-ish two weren’t already hard enough, going back to the office and sending my mom home, is truly going to be putting life into hard mode, and it’ll be a daily touch and feel test to see how things are going, but I have concerns that I may need to put some stress on a job that I’m really beginning to like, due to the realities of parenthood borne during pandemic.

Year two of forever (Dad brog #080)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve liked to have written something on the actual day.  But mythical wife and I were at Disney World with #1 celebrating her second birthday, so appropriately understandable, I just wasn’t around to take the time to write and reflect.

And just like that, my first child is two years old.  Naturally, the passage of time has felt like a blip, and I can still remember lots of the finer details of raising my daughter, and the world she grew up in and has been living in, still amazed at just how things have progressed in that span.

Over the last year, between first and second birthdays, a lot has most certainly occurred.  Not long after turning one, my daughter really kicked it into gear and began crawling like a speed demon obsessed, which was a might’ve been considered a little late in the development game, but honestly that part didn’t last long at all, because before we knew it she was suddenly upright, and it was barely a month after turning one, did she take her first steps and frankly, she hasn’t stopped running around since then.

#1 basically eats everything in sight now, and she went from being introduced to solids to not just inhaling everything that’s put in front of her, but now an innate curiosity and determination to utilize utensils and not just eat everything with fistfuls jammed into her mouth.

Obviously, one of the more substantial occurrences to have happened within the last year was that even though she was just one year old, #1 became a big sister already, when #2 was born in July, and my household had to deal with the harrowing realization of being a house with two under two, and the hard mode of life we were about to embark on.

In spite of everything I may have written detailing the difficulty and hell that parenting under these circumstances might have been, one of the joys to have emerged from it all has been witnessing just how much my now elder daughter, loves her little sister.  What started off as hesitation and fussing about the new edition to the home, #1 has taken to big sisterhood quite well, and fewer things bring genuine happiness to my heart than seeing her open up her arms and envelop her little sister in big hugs, whenever the opportunities present themselves.

Not a day goes by where I don’t just stop and watch my child at varying points throughout the days, just to see what she’ll do next.  Not a day goes by where it doesn’t seem like there’s some sort of growth or development with her, most of the time pertaining to absorption of the things she’s hearing and her ability to repeat and recollect, which also means that I have to really watch out for using profanity around her, because much like this meme, there’s no doubt that she’ll remember the bad words forever.

But every night while I wind her down for bedtime, I tell her that I love her so much, and it melts my heart every single time, when she repeats the words “love you so much.”  I know for now it’s mostly just repeating the words that I’m saying, but I’m hoping that one of these days eventually, she’ll be saying it as a declarative statement of her own volition and with understanding the meaning of the words.

As much as I love her though, all the same, has arrived the time of toddler defiance; a lot more no’s, a lot more fussiness at being told what to do, and a whole lot more determination to do things herself and her way, and not necessarily how others want her to do things.  I’m guessing this is probably the onset of the suppose terrible twos, but really it’s still just the never ending adventure of raising a child that I’m clearly experiencing first hand for the first time.  Hopefully she doesn’t make my life too hell as mythical wife and I embark on this next chapter of our parenting lives, but I’m confident that our love for our kids won’t waver, no matter how much trolling and exasperation they’re going to inevitably test us with throughout our lives.

Either way, I thought I’d have more to write about this than this, but I am still a tired dad with too much on his plate, and not enough time to accomplish everything he wants to do.  Regardless of the circumstances, a happy belated-in-writing birthday to my first child, whom I love so much, and will always love so much.  I look forward to watching her grow and develop, from the good to the bad, and there will never be a day where I am not thankful to be her dad.

2 Under 2: Good news and bad news (#079)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Starting with the bad news: #2 has officially cut teeth, and thus begins the agonizing teething stage of growing up.  For those who might remember, teething was basically the worst thing in the world as far as I was concerned while raising #1, as it seemed to go on forever, and when it’s happening, there’s pretty much nothing we can do as parents to alleviate the pain they feel with their tiny little teef are boring through their gum lines.

Colic was pretty agonizing with #2, but that’s mercifully kind of subsided, leading to way fewer nuclear meltdowns, but seeing as how emotionally volatile she is, I dread the day when a teething spell reduces her to her shrill, shrieking cries of agony.  I’m sure there will be more complain-y dad brogs in the future if and once those start to occur and it begins really cramping my style to become posts.

But overall, it’s so much bad news as much as it’s something that we knew was going to come into play eventually anyway.  The real point of this post is more focused on the good news, which is that #2 has gotten cast for some advertising baby modeling, for a very national, very reputable, very known children’s brand.  Meaning, someone is going to be paying real money to take pictures of my daughter, with the intent of use for seasonal marketing materials in the near future.

#1 was cast for a fitting in her first year, but she apparently had a thermonuclear meltdown during the fitting, and was very uncooperative for the camera, so it was no wonder she wasn’t brought back for the actual shoot.  But #2 was a bit more chill, and we planned the day better to best optimize her routine behavior, and to no surprise, we received word that she was requested to come back for the actual shoot.

It’s a degree of validation that my kids are aesthetically pleasing enough to those outside of mythical wife and I myself as well as our respective families, because of course I think my girls are beautiful and the cutest babies ever.  But it’s more meaningful to hear such from neutral parties, especially ones that are willing to pay money in order to have them model for campaigns.

Not to sound arrogant or anything, but I had a feeling that we stood a very good chance.  Even more so after seeing what the competition was on the call sheet that came complete with photographs of all the other babies in contention.  #2, aside from being a little cherub face, also has the beneficial distinction of being biracial, and having worked in marketing for big corporations, I know well the attractive appeal of biracial models who are visibly ambiguous, and cover more than one checkbox.

#2 looks Asian, but at the same time doesn’t have a lot of the more stereotypical features of full-blooded Asian people.  Plus she doesn’t alienate racist white people, but at the same time still garners approval from minority demographics who can’t hate on a kid that doesn’t appear to be fully white.

As long as her behavior was kosher, I knew that #2 was going to make it through, and fortunately for us, she was behaving perfect, so it wasn’t really a surprise to me to hear that she had made it through.

So yeah, model baby.  Technically means both my girls were good enough to be baby models, but #2 got through to the actual camera.  So it’s now out of our hands at this point, and hoping that in a few months, we’ll start to see her cropping up in stores or their respective catalogues or social media channels, and it will be amazingly satisfying.

But most importantly, #2 is getting PAID.  I’m not saying it’s nothing over a grand, but still a nice chunk of change to get money less the agency fee, for doing something that most parents like me probably would’ve done for free just for the satisfaction of seeing their kids in modeling.  So much like the gif says, we goin’ to Sizzler!

Time to combat the dad bod

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the challenges that have emerged during the journey of raising a second child is that I’ve basically had to give up running.  I haven’t run since October, and it’s been way longer than that since I’d last had a formal workout in a gym.  Raising kids has a tendency to make stuff like exercise expendable in a day’s agenda, and it was bad enough I had to forfeit gyms due to pandemic, but throwing a second kid into the mix has taken running off the table for me as well over the last few months.

Needless to say, I’ve watched my weight do some rollercoaster-ing since the original lockdown occurred, and now it’s not headed in the right direction.  At first, my weight started to drop because I wasn’t eating well, often not eating enough, and with the gym off the table, muscle mass began deteriorating, so the weight from muscle mass presumably started coming off.  Eventually, running became my only real exercise, and doing cardio with no weight training meant that I could really only lose more weight, and I actually got my weight down to almost my peak high school weight, in the 170’s area, and I actually felt like I was looking pretty decent, in spite of the loss of all my gains.

Eventually #2 showed up and life went into hard(er) mode with two kids in tow.  With my job also ruining my life at this point and the challenges of raising two kids simultaneously, the running eventually ceased, and mythical wife and I more or less went into survival mode as far as our eating habits went.  We never had the time and/or energy to cook not-trash food for ourselves, and with the little time we did have, we have been eating a whole lot of garbage over the last few months.  My weight has been creeping up in this time, and it’s been especially noticeable when I’d be doing virtual job interviews and putting on dress shirts, and feeling the bulge and tightening in all the wrong places.

I normally don’t like to put too much stock into weight numbers, since when I worked weights I always spouted the whole muscle weighs more than fat thing, but with no weights in play, I knew that each and every pound that I’d gain was solely based on my own poor choices.  At the time of starting this post, I’d crept up to 192.4 lbs., and with the reality that I haven’t exercised in months, that means I’m 192.4 lbs. of fat fucking American embodiment of failure.

Anyway, my intention is to stop the bleeding, and to try and get back on the horse.  Due to the fact that #2 has been sleeping at night fairly well as of late, I had the confidence to get back on the treadmill and go for a run, the first one I’ve done since October 7th, 2021 (thanks Garmin fitness tracker).

It was the worst run I’ve had in probably 16 years, since I’m basically starting from scratch.  I was running at a pace that I had to keep slowing down .1 at a time because I was blowing out and getting gassed, and it took me nearly 40 minutes to traverse three miles.  Now I say traverse, because I definitely didn’t run the whole time, like I used to do my old workouts of non-stop running.  My pace was probably around 12 minutes a mile, a far cry from my old 9:50 pace, and I feel like I have a long way to go before I can competently get back to those kinds of splits.

But it was also the best run I’ve had in a very long time, because I actually got to do it.  And one thing I’ve always stated is that at no point ever, does running ever feel like a waste of time, and that’s absolutely one thing that I love, because I abhor feeling like I’m wasting time.

If all goes well, I’ll get back to a general routine of running every other day, which is good because running is also when I can try to catch up with watching things, since I can watch things on my iPad.

Furthermore, at the new gig, I’ve done some recon and my access to the fitness center has been activated, so I now officially have a place where I can hit some weights again, which I’m super excited to get started with.  I’m not really looking forward to the fact that I’ll be starting from scratch there, which means the inevitable soreness from doing, everything, is going to be pretty prevalent, but once it dissipates, I’m hoping to try and build back some of the muscle that I’ve clearly lost over the last two years.

It’s not the best stocked fitness center there is, but it doesn’t cost anything and has some free weights, so I can at least not feel entirely like a geriatric living on machines.  I intend to make the best of it, and declare war on the flab that I’ve amassed over the last few months, because how far I’ve fallen off the wagon is not okay, and there’s little I want more than to change that.

Changing the eating habits is probably going to be a bigger hurdle to clear, but at least if I have some exercise back into the rotation, that should help suppress some of the physical decay I’ve been allowing to happen to me.  I’d prefer to have the dad bod that actually looks like I work out occasionally versus the dad bod of the guy that’s let go of everything and will have to start buying bigger clothing because of it.