Tag: kids

2 Under 2: the first restaurant experience (#043)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mother’s Day was a big day for my family: we collectively went out to eat for the very first time.  It was my child’s first ever visit to a restaurant.

Ordinarily, this does not sound like remotely anything close to a big deal, but considering my first hasn’t left the house for basically any reason but doctor’s visits, sparse store trips, or riding in the car while we pick up takeout for the first 14 months of her existence, mythical wife and I like to think it is something of a deal to us.

Over the last year, I can count on one hand how many times mythical wife and I have gone out to eat; all were special occasions, and all were either eating outdoors and/or after vaccination.  This dining out experience with our child fills out the first hand, but the point is despite safety measures and vaccinations, my household is still very careful and conservative when it comes to dining out because we have brains and know that the world is still not safe at all, especially in America where we have the dumbest anti-vaxxing non-believing Karen and Karl cultures ruining it for everyone actually trying to bring down the numbers.

Anyway, we went to a Mexican restaurant we like, at an odd hour between lunch and dinner to avoid crowds, and sat on the patio.  We brought our own child seat because I still don’t trust all places, regardless of how buttoned up this restaurant typically is, and the familiarity would hopefully ease the transition of the brand-new experience of eating somewhere other than home, with lots of people all around us, and eating outdoors.

Much to our relief and much to my pride, my daughter was absolutely perfect during the whole time there.  Not a single fuss, no crying, whimpering or whining, and she was completely behaved and perfect the entire visit.  She ate a chicken and cheese quesadilla with no complaints, and mythical wife and I could not have been any happier or proud of her behavior on what was her first ever dining out experience.

Honestly, I don’t know how I’d have felt if it didn’t go so well.  I know I’d be quick to get her out of the chair and try to comfort her in the parking lot or something, since we were already on the patio, but thankfully she was so perfectly behaved, that nothing of the sort had to come into play.

2 Under 2: the girls’ first blets (#042)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Until my girls are old enough to make the choice themselves that they want to have their respective blets on their own walls, they will have a forever home on my office wall, alongside my existing collection.  It brings the total blets on the wall up to 20, but the reality is that I hope to someday relinquish these two blets to my daughters one day, and I will be the proudest dad in the world on the day I get to mount these onto the walls of their rooms.

I have to say that up until I received my replicas, I’ve always been kind of lukewarm on the design of the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship blets.  Seeing them on television, I wasn’t ecstatic about the design, but I knew that after I learned I was going to have a second daughter, that I was going to want replicas of them anyway, because two daughters are a natural tag team, and they need to be recognized as the champions they are inevitably going to be.

But upon receiving the replicas, I’m quite blown away by the quality of them.  I don’t know if the actual blets are like it, but the replicas’ straps are more of a cream color than straight up white as I figured they, and all the other women’s blets in the company were, but it’s such a subtle thing that I really like.  The plates are impeccably crafted, and I’m both sold and thrilled that I have a pair of them to bequeath to my girls when #2 officially arrives.

It’s so lame, it’s so expensive and it’s so frivolous, but I don’t care.  Collecting blets is something that I enjoy and I hope that one day my girls recognize such, and would be willing to indulge their old man and want to carry a piece of his hobbies, at least onto their own walls to maybe show that they love me too, even when they’ll inevitably hate their parents for being squares and out of touch.

2 Under 2: making baby gates (#041)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As most parents eventually need to do, mythical wife and I have gradually began baby-proofing the home as our first is completely mobile, fast as an Olympian, and is capable of being out of sight and with a dust bunny in her hand headed toward her mouth in the blink of an eye.  And the impending second child will only make the need to cordon off areas of the house that much more imperative, so we made the decision to section off parts of the home, so that we can (hopefully) be able to have to only monitor half of the home at a time instead of all of it.

The problem is, baby gates are ridiculously expensive, and considering we needed multiple gates, it seemed like something that we weren’t particularly interested in spending the money we’re already stretching thin on.  Furthermore, baby gates all have a particular cheap and plasticky look to them, and just because we’re frazzled parents doesn’t mean we have to turn our home into a giant billboard for like Fisher Price.

Mythical wife found this online tutorial from a lady who made her own baby gates from wood and gate parts, and looking through it, I’m thinking “hey I could do this,” so we made the executive decision to make our own gates.

I’m not going to get too granular with all the details, because there’s basically nothing outside of the steps the mommy in the link that I didn’t do, so if you really are curious you could support her and give her traffic, but I’m just going to kind of write out the things I did in the process, and hope that this turns into something of a substantial post that isn’t too boring.

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2 Under 2: The continuation of the new father brogs (#40)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seeing as how I’d been deliberating the fact that after a year, I don’t think I can really be called a “new” dad anymore, seeing as how I’ve gone through the initial minefield of trials and tribulations of sleep depravation, diaper blowouts and all sorts of things that are associated with bringing new life into the world.

And since the WWEShop was gracious enough to finally bring the cost of the women’s tag blets I had 100% intention of purchasing for my two daughters down to my target price point, I pulled the trigger, blets were received, this photo was taken, it seemed like now was as good of time as any to officially change over to a different category title for moving forward.

Most people who might be reading this (all zero of y’all) are probably aware that mythical wife is pregnant and that we’re on the path to bringing #2 into the world this summer, and that it is, another daughter.  I’d often had this feeling that I was destined to have at least one daughter, and I’d be lying if I didn’t have this suspicion that it seemed appropriate for someone like me to end up having a second, becoming a bonafide girl-dad twice over.

Regardless, mythical wife and I are on the timeline of having two children under the age of two, to which just about everyone has opined that we are definitely going to be parenting on hard-mode for the indeterminate future, which seems very obvious, but here we are. 

Despite the fact that it will undoubtedly be excruciatingly difficult at times, and I will probably have like 20 more dad brogs about how much life is hard, I’m sleep deprived, burned out and/or other moments of being stressed out, I still know that at the end of the day, I have loved being a dad to one child and I have all the expectations that I will continue to do so for two, no matter what challenges present themselves to mythical wife and I.

More importantly, since my first daughter will definitively have a natural tag-team-partner-for-life in a sister, it only seemed appropriate that the two of them would have their own blets to commemorate that lifetime partnership.  I imagine there will be plenty of times in which they will team up to the detriment of mythical wife and I, but if they’re working together with success in their mind, there’s only so much ire I could possibly have, and probably smile about the teamwork at a later time.

For now, the girls’ blets will remain in my office along with my collection, because mythical wife absolutely does not want wrestling belts hanging in their respective rooms that she has put a lot of thought into designing.  I acquiesced for the time being, on the condition that if the girls decide on their own that they want them in their rooms in the future, there will be no resistance.

If they are truly my flesh and blood, we all know how this is going to turn out.  But only time will tell on whether or not I’ll experience the next greatest day of my life in the future or not.

New Father Brogging, #039

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

27.5 inches.  That’s how high my daughter fell when she climbed out of her pack and play.

I’ve never felt as big of a failure as a parent than this incident, where barely 60 degrees behind me, my daughter managed to climb out of her pack and play and fall onto the kitchen floor, while I was preparing her dinner, chopping green beans.

Given how increasingly mobile she gets on a daily basis, I didn’t stop to consider that with walking would come climbing, and I’ve witnessed her trying to climb things already, so I don’t know why I didn’t even think that she wouldn’t do it in the pack and play, as she’s attempted everywhere else.

But instead, I was blissfully taking for granted that she would be safe in her pack and play, while I was preparing her dinner, and I naively positioned her to where she was not within my line of sight or even my periphery, so that she couldn’t reach and grab things on the counter or on the nearby shelf, not considering that I wouldn’t see her when she inevitably managed to get up and over the side railing of her enclosure.

The thud still resonates in my brain, and the delayed shock at turning and seeing her laying on her back on the floor, her own shock still just registering the fact that she bumped her head and the pain hadn’t kicked in yet.  I picked her up immediately, hoping this would be something that she would no-sell and impress me with pain tolerance that hopefully mirrored my own, but this was for naught, so much as she was really gearing up to let loose some shrieks of pain from having fallen 27.5 inches, roughly somewhere in the neighborhood of her own height.

Fortunately, save for an unsightly bruise, nothing seems to be that bad.  No signs of concussion, no signs of any breaks or serious injury, just a tender bruise for her, and a monumental amount of frustration, defeat and self-loathing for dad.

Obviously, with raising a child and growing up, scrapes, cuts and bruises are going to happen.  But we’ve gone a year without a tremendous number of those, which made me feel like I was probably doing something right, but all it took was a few minutes of taking my head out of the game, and taking safety for granted for all that equity to come crashing down, and me feeling like a horrible fucking parent for having let it happen.

New Father Brogging, #038

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I realize it’s been a month since the last time I did any sort of new dad brogging.  A year past now, I guess it’s up for debate on whether or not I’m a new dad anymore, which begs the question on whether or not I should change the titles of these types of posts, which kind of derail my organization of posting, since the tag’s literally called “new dad,” but if I’m not a new dad anymore, then wtf should I do?

I digress though, and until I can come up with a more seamless transition, it’s new dad brogs until then.

So a month ago, my daughter has figured out full-fledged crawling, and was going all over the place, exploring the parts of the house she could now access with her own mobility.

A lot has changed in the span of the last month, most notably the very quick transition from crawling into basically walking.  With each day, she’s gaining confidence on her feet, and has demonstrated the ability to carefully walk distances as great as 10-12 feet on her own with minimal or no stumbling.  She’s clearly showing a preference to get upright and walk from point A to point B, and only resorts to crawling when she wants to get somewhere fast.

But for all intents and purposes, one of those life’s milestones of watching baby’s first steps has occurred, and it was no less exciting than I would have thought it was, seeing the courage and discovery in my child’s face as she realized that she was upright and was able to sustain it while in movement.

That’s the biggest thing that happened over the last month.  Otherwise, it’s been a lot more of the same, with my child eating everything in sight, needing to babyproof and start cordoning off parts of the home since she can move about so efficiently, and of course more teething and sleep woes, since those are the constantly ever-changing factors in raising babies.

Also, since the jig is up about baby #2, I’ve spent a lot of time doing some housework, preparing nursery #2, and saying goodbye to my office as solely an office, but as the de facto guest room.  But when I say preparing, it’s mostly my second-least favorite activity in the world, painting; which has been dropped to second in favor of my new worst favorite activity in the world, which is now, hanging murals/wallpaper.

Thankfully with a second kid, that means it’s the last time I’ll have to do this stuff, and frankly I’ve literally will painted every paintable wall and trim in the house, and if anyone wants any changes in the future, I better be putting the home up for sale, or my wife or my daughters are more than welcome to explore the possibilities of doing it their fucking selves.

But otherwise, raising children is in a fairly good place right now.  I’m trying not to get too complacent with #1’s development, good eating and sleeping and general good habits, because I know things are going to go tits up once #2 arrives, and then we’ll be juggling two kids under two years; but it has been somewhat nice to have a predictable routine, where I know I’ll have a little bit of downtime in the evenings.  And with my extracurricular class wrapped up, and baby projects getting chipped away at, I’ve actually not had any clue to do with my evenings as of late.

There’s a ton of television and movies that I’d like to catch up on, but at the same time, I’ve just not wanted to dive into any rabbit holes, and abstained.  In fact, mythical wife and I have been retiring early over the last few days, and just heading up to the bedroom to wind down earlier, because getting just a little bit more sleep has been way more appealing than any new Marvel property, YouTube binges or any other wastes of time.

Ironic how just a little while ago I was burning out because I had zero free time to do anything, but now that I’m occasionally getting some free time, I have no idea what to do with it, and resulting in doing mostly nothing, unless you count sleeping as doing something.

Life get back to normalcy? LOL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seeing as how my wife shared the news on social media, I figure now is as good as time as any to finally break my own silence on this monumental news.

Originally written on December 1, 2020

We were watching 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way when mythical wife dropped the suspecting revelation on me.  The queasiness she was feeling over the day might not necessarily been from the ramen the night before.  The last time she felt this kind of nausea… and then there was the admission that a particular monthly event had not happened in a minute.

The next thing I know, I’m driving to Walgreens at 11pm on a Monday night, because we both felt the need to know what we already suspected was going to be the case with the circumstances that were already in play.  The last time we had this conversation like this, it was already a foregone conclusion and the test was merely a formality for visual confirmation of the obvious.

A second child was always something that my wife and I were open to.  She being an only child, knew the general loneliness that comes with growing up with no live-in sibling, and me, I grew up with a big sister, and there’s a pattern within my generation of cousins is that everyone has two kids, so it seemed like something that was bound to happen.  Fortunately, becoming a father and parent has been something I’ve taken to pretty well if I say so myself, and the idea of a second child never really seemed intimidating beyond the notion that my time will be stretched even thinner in the coming years and to have to go through teething with another baby gives me anxiety, but the idea itself was never off the table.

One thing I’ve learned about myself throughout the year is that I have a tremendous amount of love to give, and I have no doubt in my mind that I won’t have any shortage for another kid.

We just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly and so soon, as we’re just days away from our first child’s ninth month since birth.

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