Tag: kids

New Father Brogging, #031

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’d become so accustomed to carving out a little bit of time to write every single night throughout the month that I don’t feel right not doing so, even if there’s no more German beers to review, and even if it is Christmas, and even if I’m tired because I’ve been up since the usual 6:30 am, and spent pretty much all day entertaining guests and trying to keep up with families, be it virtual or in-person.

If anything at all, this is precisely what I should have wanted to have happen after writing about beer for 24 straight days, is that it’s kind of conditioned me to want to do some writing, every single day, because when the day is over that’s really what I always aspire to accomplish with my brog, in writing regularly while hopefully not becoming too inane or uninteresting.

So I’ll simply say that as it has been the first Christmas of my daughter, I am in very good spirits that she had a pretty good day, slept well, had good naps, ate very well, and had a tremendous amount of gifts for her.  I am floored by all the love that my family is fortunate to receive and that so many people want to lavish my daughter with gifts and other thoughtful gestures, and I feel very lucky to have so many positive persons in my stratosphere.

It makes me feel unworthy of all the consideration so many of my friends and family have for my family and I, and that I will probably be anxious and insecure with the idea that I can reciprocate such generosities adequately.  I can only hope to be the friend, family or companion to those who think of me back to them, and I would like to be the best person in return to everyone who even has even just good thoughts towards my family and I.

Regardless, in spite of the general mass bemoaning of the kind of year that 2020 has been, it was still extremely important to me that my daughter have a good first Christmas.  Mythical wife is often critical and gives me hell about my general apathy and reluctance to do stuff like putting up trees, decorating the yard, and other festive things around the house, but it wasn’t so difficult to do as much this year, because of our general want to have the best Christmas we could under the circumstances we were given.

And despite the fact that we couldn’t see much of our family and friends this year, and there’s still a laundry list of people that my daughter has yet to meet in person, we still made the best of the hand we were dealt and be it virtual and the few people who do have a pass to come to my home, I think we succeeded in having a pretty good Christmas not just for our child, but just a good one in general.

I hope all future Christmases can be as positive for my wife and daughter as this one has been, if not better.

New Father Brogging, #030

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Take whatever I’ve said was the worst thing about new parenting, and throw it out the window.  Because the 9-month sleep regression has been the worst thing to have ever happened.  Seriously, I’m pretty sure I just had the worst night as a new parent last night, as my daughter woke up at 8:30 pm, 9:40 pm, 12:30 am, and then at 2:20 am, not going back down until around 3:30 am.  Needless to say, my longest stretch of contiguous sleep was three hours, as my alarm went off at 6:30, in preparation for the workday.

Seriously though, this takes the case for the worst experience in new parenthood so far, because it’s not like sleep regressions of prior periods where her awake windows just changed, but she would ultimately still actually go to sleep; no, this particular sleep regression is where she sleeps at her usual times, and sleeps for a little bit, it’s just that she wakes up in the middle of the night, wide awake as a Karen on speed, and will not go back to sleep, and repeatedly stands up against the railing and screams, no matter how many times I reset her on her back and try to soothe her to sleep.

When she was still a newborn, waking up in the middle of the night was expected and mostly on our terms, as we set alarms to go off in order to wake and keep her on her feeding schedule, but right now, we have no idea whether or not a night is going to be zero wake ups, one, two, three or even four times waking up, wailing and needing some intervention.  I can go into her room, calm her down and set her back on her side or back, but often times I’m one foot out the door before she goes ballistic, and I’m left feeling so shot, so beaten and just so frustrated with everything that I have a hard time thinking straight, most of the time in which I’m pretty sure I’m not.

Without question, this has been the worst part of new parenting yet.  I know that title is only as secure as the next worst thing about new parenting to come around, but this one feels especially nasty, and it’s put me in this exhausted state of being where I don’t look forward to the evenings anymore, when I might get an hour or three of some time to myself to do me shit, but lately all that’s been encroached upon by an ornery and crying baby most of the time.

And nothing I do, or mythical wife does, is seeming to work during this regression.  No amount of soothing, keeping company or even picking up and rocking gets her to sleep or stay asleep, and it’s only a matter of time before she’s screaming bloody murder and I’m left feeling like a failure clown of a parent who can’t even keep his kid under control.  I’ve never lost my cool or felt so defeated and frustrated as I’d ever felt during the last nine months, and I know I’m far from the only parent to have ever endured this, but I can say without any hesitation nothing so far has been as demoralizing as the nine-month sleep regression.

Although seldom do I want time to speed up while I’m with my daughter, I sure as heck wouldn’t mind if I could just skip ahead to when this regression period is over, and I can actually get some slightly below-average but at least still six hours of sleep, just once.  I’d take explosive diapers and getting clawed by baby nails repeatedly, over this particular sleep regression, any day of the week, because at least I can still have some predictable down time to decompress and get some actual rest from time to time and not feel like a zombie as a result.

Frankly, I feel like this is a fraction of the words I had swirling in my head between the hours of 2 and 3 am last night of an unhinged and exhausted new parent, and I don’t feel like this is really conveying the frustration and rage I was feeling, not at my daughter, but at the horrors of the situation that is the nine-month sleep regression.  Obviously I know that I’m not the only parent to ever endure this, but damn does it suck, and at least I can provide a more accurate and honest reaction to the concept, versus all the clinically sociological explanations of it found all over the internet that make it sound like a minor inconvenience that just needs to be patient through a little while over.

Seriously, this has been the worst part of new parenting, hands down.  The genocidal thoughts that were going through my head throughout the evening that wouldn’t end aren’t even close to being expounded upon by my exhausted words of frustration captured here in my brog.

New Father Brogging, #029

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It would have been pretty easy for me to do nothing but write about beer all month long and call it a day, but that would’ve been kind of a cop out as far as dutiful brogging is concerned.  Beer is nice, and I’ve been enjoying the fares from Deutschland, but there are still plenty of things on my mind that warrant words, no matter how much I may feel unmotivated to write about them, and when the day is over, it’s more important to me to write out my thoughts than to be lazy, even if it feels kind of forced; this is how seriously I take it to write, sometimes.

Anyway, in this new dad brog, there is one update and there is one observation.  As for the update, things have actually been going fairly smoothly since the last time I wrote about my adventures in fatherhood.  My daughter and I have a fairly consistent routine that’s been making life not too difficult for either of us for the most part, and the days are flying by like leaves in the winter air.  I wake up at 6:30~ish every single day, regardless of if it’s the weekend or not, mythical wife feeds baby, and then I entertain baby until first nap in which I then either really get to work, or if it’s the weekend I nap or sometimes get my jogging out of the way if I’m feeling up for it.  Our nanny takes care of kid for the next four hours on weekdays, or I spend time with her on weekends, and then it’s off to bed by 6:30~ish, to which mythical wife and I try to have some time for ourselves.  Repeat x infinity

However, as we’ve crossed the nine-month mark, naturally nothing stays the same forever, no matter how comfortable it’s been.  And in this particular case, whenever we run into any sort of issue, I can punch it into Google, and the precise query I intended to look up is automatically filled, reminding me that there has been absolutely nothing my kid has done or I have experienced, that millions of parents out there have not already seen.

As indicative in the photo above, that’s my child, standing in her crib.  As her little body and brain have been developing, she’s decided that immediate sleep isn’t something she necessarily needs anymore, and has decided to sit up, and pull herself up to her feet and just kind of hangout in her crib, instead of sleeping.  99% of the time, she’ll spit out her pacifier, piss herself off, and begin crying then wailing, then screaming, which prompts me to have to up and try to reset the whole scenario all over again, before she calms down, I walk out, and then she repeats it 3-4 times, burning us out in the process.

It seems evident that she herself is working things out and is playing a daily game of how many shenanigans she wants to pull in her crib between two naps and bed time, and how much she actually wants to sleep, because since behavior has begun, no two sleep sessions have been alike in how much she fights, how much she wanders around independently and how quick or long it takes before she actually goes out, and for parents like me that like routine it’s been occasionally frustrating.

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #029” →

New Father Brogging, #028

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally, I thought about writing about how teething was the worst thing ever when it came to raising a baby for the first time, but I’m pretty sure my new dad brogs #28, 27 and 26 were probably about the subject of teething, so I figured I’d lay off that topic for a minute.  But it was going to lead up to how parenting for the first time genuinely feels like a bell curve of difficulty, as so many other parents have told mythical wife and I that “it gets easier!” in time, but I’m pretty sure that the people telling us this had long forgotten what the teething experience was like.

Frankly, the first two months or so of parenting weren’t really at all that difficult except for knowing that your sleep habits become more like fragmented shifts, and that your entire life is spent on your tiptoes making sure that your baby is breathing, eating and alive more or less.  But during the daytime, my kid was mostly asleep in the Mamaroo next to me while I worked remotely, and I still have fond memories of simply turning my head and seeing my pride and joy blissfully sleeping while I was trying to maneuver through my work days and pretend like I give a shit.

Once the first sleep regressions hit, the stress ramped up, but settled down fairly soon, once new routine had been established.  As I often say, routine and repetitions are the lynchpins to success, and it very much applies to parenting as well, because once you establish and reinforce, things get easy, that is, until it’s time to scrap everything and start all over again, which I’ve learned is basically the basis of raising a child.

Teething though, that’s stuff of nightmares, made worse by the simple fact that the timeline of it is basically several years, based on the pace in which a child’s teeth begin to come in and grow.  Sure, as they age their pain tolerance begins to develop, but man those first few teeth, and the pain and suffering they put my child through, lord almighty, I’d do just about anything to take that kind of agony away from my kid.  And that’s only four teeth out of the estimate 20 that kids usually have.

But we’re not going to talk about that kind of minutiae of new parenting, as recently was something of a high stress point in my life as a new dad. 

A few months ago, we introduced my daughter to eggs.  It was not a particularly good introduction, as we were met with projectile vomiting, runny diarrhea, and all sorts of skin breakouts.  Embarrassingly, it took more than a day for us to realize the outlier in her diet that suddenly caused all of this, but once we identified that it could potentially be eggs, we immediately took them off the table.

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New Father Brogging, #027

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was at a Target the other day, and while we’re checking out, I hear this little girl at the in-store Starbucks, ordering a caramel macchiato.  Now I think Starbucks’ caramel macchiatos are definitely tasty, but the thing is that this girl was like, ten years old.  And a Starbucks caramel macchiato probably has ten times the sugar and caffeine that a grown-ass adult ever needs in one sitting much less for a ten-year old twig of a girl.

Basically what I saw was a future Karen in the making, with a child already having developed a penchant for froufrou Starbucks coffee drinks, and for her own sake, it was good that the espresso machine was down, but I’m surprised that she or her completely disinterested looking dad didn’t demand to speak with a manager, and she walked away saying she was good instead.

One of my dreams now is to one day sit with my daughter in a coffee shop and have some coffee together.  However, seeing as how I would prefer for her to not start drinking coffee until she is like 17, that’s going to be a ways from now, but I’m willing to wait it out as long as I don’t risk stunting the growth of my daughter and/or make her a slave to caffeine as much as her dear old dad is.

New Father Brogging, #026

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I were playing some games online with our friends because we’re still very much immersed in pandemic ‘Murica and this is how things are done these days in order to be safe, and as we’re in between games, the topic of conversation goes towards what television shows everyone is watching.  Talking about The Mandalorian and Utopia among other shows, and how some of us might like them, or if they’re not any good at all, etc.

But mythical wife and I haven’t really seen or finished any of them, because we don’t have time.  Story of parenthood now.

We then start talking about video games; mythical wife and I just started playing Man of Medan, and gotten maybe three hours into the game, before we realized it was midnight which might as well have been 3 am for new parents like us, but reality sunk in that we weren’t sure when the next time we’d have a chance to play more of the game, because we just don’t have time, the perpetual story of parenthood now.

Even playing Jackbox games with friends for an evening means not having the opportunity to do another thing that we may or may not have wanted to do with what limited free time we have available to us, because as the story of being new parents go, you just don’t have much of it, because the primary meat of our time is spent raising our infant child and putting her needs first and foremost above everything else.

I do not have a single iota of regret for having a child and I love my daughter more than anything else in history, but as the objective of these new dad brogs go, is to express the realities and genuine thoughts that I have going through my own personal journey as a first-time father, and the reality is that I just don’t have a lot of time, like ever, for myself anymore, and that part is something that’s always going to be a tough pill to swallow, especially in conjunction to our lives pre-children, where we’d sometimes have nothing but time to sit around and literally do nothing at times.

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The best month ever, fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In spite of the mental troubles I went through earlier in the month, I came to the realization that October truly was, one of the best months ever, as far as my life is concerned.  I have my child, I have my wife, and I have my mother under the same roof throughout the entire month, and I’ve been getting free childcare from my mom while I’ve transitioned back into the rhythm of working virtually. 

Additionally, my fridge has literally never been so full so often, as my mom is basically a machine when it comes to insisting that I be eating more Korean food, and I’m more than happy to oblige as much as my appetite can accommodate.  It’s actually been kind of humorous the pattern of her complaining about the lack of fridge space when it’s she who’s constantly buying more food to re-cram in there. 

But the last weeks have been an enjoyable pattern of me getting to work with piece of mind that my daughter was with her grandma and in the best of hands that aren’t her parents.  The two of them bonded pretty immediately, and it makes my heart swell every time I see them together, both of them smiling and enjoying each other’s company.  My mom bringing a lot of old world parenting to the forefront, with my child responding just fine, as long as she was being cared for and given attention.

The thing is, I had a harrowing thought in my mind throughout the month that I’m not entirely sure if I’ll ever have the opportunity to spend this much time with my mom again in my life.  She’s in good health, and takes pretty good care of her lifestyle, but she is in her 70s now, and we live in a country where basically a plague that preys upon the elderly is still running rampant.  I feel like my child kind of revitalized my mom a little bit to where she was capable of babysitting for her throughout the working weeks, but it was clearly taxing by the end of each day, and I can’t assume that this will be able to be the case again in the future if I were ever to have a second, but I also don’t want to imply that grandma’s biggest value is solely in babysitting, because she’s still a mom to me.

Needless to say, the realization that these are the days that should be treasured the most is what helped me pull my head out of my ass, because there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever have time like this ever again in my life.  It’s been a truly incredible month for the most part, and I’m happy that I was able to capitalize and memorialize a lot of the times with my actual camera, because it was really important to me that my daughter have lots of photo evidence of her time spent with halmoni on dad’s side.  Because she’s been hitting home runs every single day while she’s been here, and as our month winds down to a close, I wanted to write something about it so that I too can look back fondly at this time of my life and remember that in a year where everyone is bemoaning as the worst in history, I had one of the best months ever.