Tag: kids

New Father Brogging, #037

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly?  Maybe it’s because I’m months past the period of infancy where babies do not sleep throughout the night and I’ve long forgotten the rigors of sleepless nights and daytime fatigue.  Or maybe my daughter has been particularly amenable as far as babies go.  But if you were to ask me how difficult raising a baby for the first time has been, and I think I would say that it wasn’t nearly as hard as people made it out to be.

Sure, early on there’s the endless amounts of fear and anxiety at the start as new parents, we don’t know what the heck we’re doing.  And then there’s sleep regressions quarterly that make me want to jump out windows.  And then there’s teething, and the introduction of solid foods, and then more teething that make running with razor blades seem like a mercy.

But once routines are established, reinforced and set in, things actually operate fairly smoothly.  The days become somewhat predictable, and once you know when you might actually have time to manage, things become somewhat more manageable.  So either I’ve been cruising on a nice little routine for a while, or I simply was not prepared for the difficulty jump that comes with the start of being able to say “years” in age, instead of just months.

Needless to say, the photo above has been a frequent view of mine throughout the last weeks since my daughter turned one year old.  It was almost perfect at the rate in which she hit 12 months and it just kind of clicked for her to go from awkward army crawling, to not just full-fledged crawling so much as she often uses her little left leg to thrust her further and faster, and covers ground at an impressive pace.

When I saw that there was a class of Huggies diapers called Little Movers, I just had this feeling that my child was destined to become one of those kids.  And at one point, mythical wife and I had a little concern that she might be falling behind in mobility, and prepared for more time of constantly disclaiming adjusted age since she was premature.  But then came army crawling, and like lightning striking she’s not just crawling at a rapid pace now, she’s been experimenting with getting up onto her legs and standing without assistance periodically now.

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Year One of Forever (New Father Brogging, #036)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If it’s not clear by now, I’m a very nostalgic person.  I get kicks out of internet content that puts the spotlight on things in the past, I take enjoyment in reminiscing, and one of my favorite features of theFacebook and one of the only things that I routinely indulge in is the memories feature that shows you the things you may or may not have posted on that day in previous years. 

With that latter thing, I was pleased to see that I could integrate such a function into my brog when I got it back up and running again, and even if I don’t have the time to write, I try to make a few seconds each day to refresh my main page and glance at the kinds of slop that I’ve posted in prior years, most of which is poorly-aged trash, but occasionally there are some things that I’ve churned out that even I look back at positively.

Naturally, March 5th will forever be immortalized as an important date in my history through the end of time, but before we get into the sappy meat of this post that I’ll likely have a hard time remaining dry-eyed while writing, I like to glance back at my own history, to see what trash I’d written in the past that I could make the lame joke about how that was the focal point of historical Marth 5ths of yesterday instead of the obvious.

It’s funny to think about how in prior March 5ths the most important things in my life were getting Garen in an ARAM game of League of Legends, or how I appeared to have been triggered by an SNL skit where they took a cheap shot at Waffle House, or when I found out that of all the Marvel properties in existence, fucking Morbius is the one that is slated to get a film, starring none other than the gross-looking STD-riddled magic troll, Jared Leto.

Obviously, everything changed in the March 5th of 2020, when one of the most important milestones in my entire occurred, and has permanently elevated the date to a point where anything else in the past has become inconsequential and white-noise, and only exists to be ironic, and where in the future I won’t even bother planning on posting anything on the date, and try to manage any non-birthday posts to occur before or after the date alternatively.

Regardless, it’s been approximately one year since the birth of my daughter, my first child, and pretty much the largest event that has occurred in my life.  Sure, getting homes and getting married are massive deals in their own rights, but neither involve the manifestation of another human being coming into the world, so I think I have to give the torch of priority to this specific birthday, the first of forever, as far as the rest of my life is concerned.

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New Father Brogging, #035

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I last did any sort of post about my plights as a first-time father.  Admittedly, things have been fairly smooth since the last time I really wrote one of these new dad brogs, which might have something to do with the lack of writing about my child, but naturally I know that I’m always another growth spurt or some sort of milestone away from the shit hitting the fan and then the routine that I’ve been living for the better part of the last five months begins to change all over again.

However, for those who might take stock in the fact that my general posting has grown less frequent in more recent times, the thing is that I simply haven’t had the time to write as much as I did, even just a month ago.  And this isn’t the usual, danny is bitching about having so little time because of work and baby, but it’s a little bit more now, because for lack of a better term, I’ve gone back to school.

I’ve been taking a night course over the last month and it will be continuing on until April, so that I can explore the possibility of acquiring new skills.  I don’t think I’ve made much secret of the fact that I’m quite unhappy with where I am at in my life professionally right now, and while casually exploring possibilities elsewhere, the results have not been very positive.  I feel stagnant in my current career path and that I have hit somewhat of a ceiling, and I don’t like my current chances at being able to break through it to ascend higher.

So instead of simply looking for a change of scenery, I’m taking a different approach of acquiring some new and different skills to which I can hope to parlay into something different, and potentially satiate two desires, being a change of scenery, but also to make a career move into a field that is warmer than what I’m doing is, has more potential for the future, and hopefully make more money than I do now, so that I can be a better provider for my family.

Because when the day is over, that’s really all I want to do, is to provide for my family, and hopefully not hate my life in order to do it.  For years, I’ve tossed the idea around in my head to take some sort of class(es) and try to pick up some new skills and make a professional pivot, but I’ve often just been all talk and no action. 

But in an ironic, I have to thank coronavirus, kind of situation, it’s never been a better time to go in this direction, because the school in which I’m taking my course through, is 100% virtual and I can do this from home, because the pandemic has forced them to go entirely virtual.  Otherwise, I’d have had to have gone into downtown Atlanta twice a week to take my course, and I simply have no desire to actually go into the city anymore, regardless of a pandemic or not.

So, I’m getting to take this course entirely online, from the convenience of my own home.  But that also means that for the duration of this class, my already sparse 2-3 hrs of free time a night, two evenings out of the week, I have to forfeit even that in order to take my course, which means that I have even less time to myself, which has occasionally left me feeling a little overwhelmed and overtaxed at times.

But the good thing about having a kid is that it only takes one look at my child to remind me what I’m doing all this for, and to refocus.  And it’s kind of funny how serious I take this course, because despite the fact that I will have the luxury of tuition reimbursement from my current job, I’m still having to front all the costs until then.  And you don’t realize how hard you want to work in school, when you realize your own money is what’s at stake when you’re taking the course.

In addition to the four hours of rare personal time I lose a week to classes, I’ve spent much more than that, on homework assignments and doing my best to really understand the subject matter and actually try and learn, absorb and apply this newfound knowledge, and hope that I’ll someday soon, be able to parlay it into a different career path than where I’m at now.

New Father Brogging, #034

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I wait until I finish a series before I write about it, but I feel like writing right now, and there’s no guarantee that feeling will last later.  But I’m just about finished with The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix.  Although some of the subject matter about substance abuse is a little uncomfortable watch, not because I can relate so much as it’s just not always pleasant watching people degrade themselves through the things they do to themselves, it’s an excellent series that I’ve enjoyed very much and hope the finish is as strong as the series has been.

It’s a show that’s legitimately made chess seem as cool as I typically think it is from a metaphorical standpoint into actually being cool to watch a series that revolves around it.

Whenever I run on the treadmill, I’m usually watching wrestling highlights or shit on the WWE Network, most notably any of the documentaries that the service continuously puts out much to my delight because if there’s one thing that the WWE does very well, it’s produce documentaries.

Among the documentaries that I enjoy the most, are usually the ones that are about the female talent.  Alexa Bliss, Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, and most recently, an episode of Chronicle about Bianca Belair, which was especially good, because she’s a particularly extraordinary woman in the sense that she’s probably pound-for-pound the best athlete in professional wrestling, but also a hell of an artistic talent that designs and fabricates all of her own ring attire.

What I’m getting at is that especially lately, I’ve been enjoying watching stories, be them fiction or documentaries, about strong women, because as a dad to a daughter, it lets my imagination run wild about what my own little girl can grow up to be when she hopefully becomes a strong, talented and intelligent woman one day.

I’m not saying that I want her to be a chess grandmaster or a professional wrestler, specifically, but what I do want for my kid, and it wouldn’t have mattered if she were a boy or a girl, is for her to find at least one thing; one hobby, one activity, that they can hopefully become passionate about and hold onto through adolescence.  Swimming. Drawing.  Gymnastics.  Piano.  Martial arts.  Anything at all; multiple would be great, but I really just want her to have at least one thing, that she can hold onto, and make into some sort of lifelong habit.

One of the few regrets I have in my life is the fact that of all the things that I was doing as a kid; piano, Tae Kwon Do, basketball, drawing, Japanese language; I never really held onto any one of those things, never persevered through adolescence with any of those potential talents, and I let the talents and skills erode and fade away over time, and I can only wish that I didn’t, and that I could be above average at any one of those things today.

I don’t want my daughter to make the same choice, and obviously I know there’s a fine line of her voluntarily maintaining an activity versus being volun-told to stick with it, with the latter obviously leading to inevitable failure, but all I can do is really hope to encourage and let her make her own choices with her life, and watching stories of strong females in the world today gives me hope that there’s an endless bag full of possibilities for my daughter in the future.

New Father Brogging, #033

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My kid has become observant enough to comprehend sights and interpret sounds and make associations to them, namely to say she recognizes the bottle, is familiar with the sound of the bottle warmer, and subsequently goes nuclear when she thinks it’s time to eat because clearly she must be starving to death and is wasting away at that very juncture in time.

Needless to say in order to adjust to such behaviors, mythical wife and I try to be as discreet as possible when it comes to pulling bottles from the fridge and getting them to the warmer, so she doesn’t notice, and subsequently begin screaming bloody murder.

I feel like we’ve become something along the equivalents of prisoners, where we have to sneak the bottles around like we’re handing off shanks, and we’ve been practicing trying to be slight of hand when it comes to keeping the bottle out of sight, and since there’s little we can do about the sound of the warmer, we typically have to keep her out of ear’s reach once it starts ticking away for 9-10 minutes.

No, I still have no regrets or unhappiness about parenting, but I do find it greatly amusing the correlations between prison inmates and new parents.

New Father Brogging, #032

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
baby’s first promo.

Recently, my daughter has begun doing something that makes me so indescribably happy: she comes to me and demands to be held by daddy. 

Since she’s begun crawling, we’ve given her occasional freedom to roam around supervised, obviously so she doesn’t eat dust bunnies or dog fur, and to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself when she inevitably wants to brace against everything, pull herself up and stand, on wobbly feet.  But when there are two adults in the room, be it mythical wife or our nanny, I can go do things and let them be the eyes for me while I try to catch up, or grab a quick bite to eat if I’m in the middle of my workday.

Lately though, my daughter has begun tracking me down to where I stand, and with determination, she military crawls over to me, and pulls herself on my legs and makes whining sounds until I acquiesce and pick her up.  She clearly is wanting to be acknowledged and held by dad.

I’ve stood in the kitchen while she stood in the room adjacent, and she crawled her way to me which has to be a tremendous amount of effort for one who hasn’t really gotten the hang of proper crawling yet.  I’ll spend some time with her in her room, and usually this is where I can kind of relax, dick around on my phone and let her crawl around and play with toys without much concern, because it’s a fairly safe space, but the toys get old really fast, and she’d rather crawl to me and want to play with me instead.

Earlier today, I went into the sunroom to get a run session in during my lunch break, and closed the door behind me since I sound like stampeding elephants when I run on the treadmill.  I could see out of the corner of my eye while tying my shoes that she was crawling to the door, and fussed when our nanny gathered her up because she obviously can’t come in while I’m running, but it was clear where she was wanting to go.

And my heart melts every single time.

Obviously, there’s not a day that goes by where my child doesn’t make me happy, but this is the first time she’s shown a modicum of choice and action, and it just so happens to be choosing to seek out dad.  I love my kid more than anything in the world.

The year-end post, circa 2020

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This video by Carters encapsulates how I feel extremely succinctly.  I know 2020 has been a historically catastrophic year by any number of measures, and I’m not going to even try and change anyone’s mind who’ve already decided that there’s absolutely nothing at all redeemable about it.  It’s a fair judgment, and there’s tons of justification to where I just have to shrug and agree that such X and other Y really are terrible things, and leave people alone to continue believing that 2020 was the worst year in human existence.

Frankly, if not for the one obvious event in my life this year, I’d probably be right there with them.  But because of said event, there’s absolutely nothing else that could really occur that can make me possibly think that 2020 was anything other than among the greatest years of my life.  Like many, I too know my share of people whom coronavirus has dually affected throughout the year, or had some very unfortunate events or news take place, and my heart genuinely, sincerely goes out to them, and I wish for nothing but the best for them and their loved ones.

But nothing is going to change my perspective on 2020 being a magnificent year, because nothing has been a greater event in my life than the birth of my daughter, right before all the shit really began to hit the fan.  And throughout the remainder of the year, for every piece of horrible, shitty news, note about someone dying, bad day at work, or any other reason for stress and unhappiness, I was always mere steps away from being able to go pick up my daughter and hold her in my arms and will away the negativity.

As ironic as it may seem, and I’ve said it as much, as much as coronavirus and the global pandemic have been devastating to the world throughout the year, it’s inadvertently put me in the most optimal position in the sense that I’ve gotten to work from home since the shit hit the fan, and I’ve gotten to spend a tremendous amount of time more raising my daughter than if the world wasn’t in lockdown and I had to go back to work in the office while my child would be in a daycare, in the hands and responsibility of people I don’t know. 

I don’t fucking want that, even if there were no coronavirus in play.  I’ve been fortunate and I treasure all the time I’ve had and will continue to have being close to my kid, and it’s ironic that I have to thank the selfish stupidity of ‘Muricans for being so stupid and greedy that they can’t or refuse to comply to the behaviors that would’ve eradicated all of this if we just had some collective cooperation.

But outside of my child and coronavirus, 2020 has been somewhat of an eventful year.  Yes, most of it was bad, but not everything was completely putrid.  And as I tend to do every year, I take some notes on a daily basis of the things that happen that are remotely interesting to me, so I guess behind the jump, we’ll take a look back through the year that everyone loves to hate and can’t wait to see end:

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