Tag: famiry

New Father Brogging, #015

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, I have started my paternity leave.  Regardless of what coronavirus has done to the world, this was close to the original plan to take my leave, because in a pre-COVID19 world, I work all through most of the summer while mythical wife is on maternity leave/summer break, and when she goes back to school, I tag in with paternity leave, and stretch out the not needing daycare for another six weeks.

Ironically, as I’ve said numerous times at this point, coronavirus has unintentionally given me a whole bunch of bonus paternity time, as I’d been able to be working from home throughout the entire summer, and almost entirely since my daughter was born.  For all the bad it’s done throughout the world, I ironically have to be somewhat grateful for its existence in the sense that because of it, I’ve gotten so much extra time to bond with my child before taking off officially.

And right in time too, because it was made no more clear than the last week or so, that my performance was deemed to be inconveniencing by my superiors at work, and I had a rather uncomfortable talking to about how much they think I suck at my job, despite the fact that we’re in the middle of a pandemic, I can’t get child care no matter how much we might all want it, because my baby was born medically fragile and Americans can’t be trusted to socially distance and remain healthy, so a lot of childcare during business hours still falls onto me.

To the point where I’m actually taking this week with my own PTO, and rolling directly into paternity leave, because I’m over the bullshit and the passive aggressive swipes and friendly reminders, and ready to just spend some quality time with my daughter, without feeling any need to be worried about my inbox filling up or some bullshit virtual meetings to have to attend.

So for the next seven weeks, good riddance to work, and hello to daddy time.

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When politics actually hit home

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Often times, no matter how much bitching and complaining we as ‘Muricans do about politics, when the day is over, not a lot really happens.  A penny tax doesn’t mean people are unable to feed themselves, and when the government talks about some convoluted bill or law that passes, most of the time very little noticeable things actually occur.  Maybe it’s naïve and insular for me to make such blanket statements, but at least in my little world, the things that happen as the result of stalling and bickering in Washington seldom really feel like they affect life on the home front.

In a prior post, I made a remark about how at no point in the history of my life, has it ever felt so physically tangible, the feeling of disappointment and letdown happening to the American people of the United States until more recently.  As stated, no matter how much I may disagree or not like something that’s now law, a lot of the time it doesn’t really impact the daily living of my life or my family.

Until now.

My wife is a teacher.  My child is immunocompromised.  I’ll just state those facts, and if you understand why this is a major problem today maybe you’ll continue reading.  If not, well go fuck off.

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100 Days

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today marks 100 days since the birth of my child.  All jokes aside about my Americanization, it’s always been important to me that my kid hold onto facets of the Korean part of her heritage.  Her middle name is Korean, and mythical wife and I have every intention of having her learn some Korean eventually, so she can communicate with the elders on my side of the family among other worldly benefits.  But also to recognize Korean traditions like baek-il (백일), because they are most definitely a part of her as they are all other Koreans out there.

In Korean culture, the first 100 days of life is a celebrated occasion.  Historically in the old world, 100 days meant a lot to Koreans, because it genuinely was a milestone for a baby to survive that long, due to disease, famine, harsh climates and other various factors that worked against their survival.  To this very day, 100-day celebrations are commonplace to Korean culture, in remembrance of tradition and history.

Obviously the advancement of technology and medicine throughout time have diminished the underlying concern over the 100 day survival of modern Korean children.  However in 2020, the year of my child’s birth, America is dealing with chaotic civil unrest and the highest mortality rates of a global pandemic on the planet.  It certainly feels closer to the old world than the modern one, when you look at it that way.

But social commentary aside, today is still a joyous celebration for my family.  My kid has made it 100 days, and given the state of the world right now, that’s more of an accomplishment than it really should be.

New Father Brogging, #009

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today was quite the day, and not in a particularly positive manner.  I had a day in which I was mostly stressed out on account of the fact that I just felt as if I were kind of losing myself because I just didn’t have any time for myself, because I have to spend so much time in the day doing the same things over and over again, all pertaining to the obvious care of an infant child. 

Obviously I know what I signed up for, and that this was to be expected, so it leads to a tremendous amount of guilt over the fact that I felt such feelings in the first place, so then I try to compensate for my selfishness by trying harder, but then getting similar results and triggers that compounds my frustration, creating this unfortunate cycle of feeling exasperated.

Currently, my child is dealing with a lot of reflux issues, which is pretty common for babies similar to mine, so on a day like today, I’d been thrown up on several times.  I do not fault my kid, as she is still a baby and has little control over these such things, but it is disheartening to get thrown up on all the same.  Additionally, she’s in this current state where she’s either actively eating, or is fussy unless she’s being held.  In either state, she requires hands-on attention, and when either mythical wife or I are providing such hands-on attention, we have no capabilities of doing anything else really.

I’ve become somewhat adept at doing some things one-handed to where I can at least kind of dick around on my phone while nursing or trying to coax a baby to relaxation, or I can watch television, and I’m surprised at how fast we’re going through things on Netflix these days.

But what I can’t do are the perpetually mounting tasks, daily chores and routine dog relief while on baby duty, much less anything I want to do for my own gratification, and as I watch the minutes tick away into hours, and then suddenly it’s only a few hours left before the day’s end, and all of this starts all over again, and then I mentally feel defeated, and that I’m losing myself because I just can’t find the time to do anything at all, whether it’s necessary tasks or personal ones.  Either I feel like the chores are going to overwhelm me, or I won’t get to do anything for myself ever again, and both lead to me feeling negative.

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New Father Brogging, #004

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The last time I wrote about my plight of being a new dad, mythical wife and I were staying overnight at the NICU as the last milestone necessary in order for our kid to come home.  That being said, baby is now home where she belongs, and thus begins (really) the rest of our lives, and the start of our lives as a family unit.

Honestly, it hasn’t been as tragically difficult as people love to expound that new parenthood really is.  Sure, we’re operating on the NICU’s general schedule of feeding every three hours, so that our premature child can gain weight as efficiently as possible, but I imagine this is something that my body will get used to as time progresses, not to mention the fact that as baby grows and develops, she won’t need to be on this kind of timeline forever either.

So mythical wife and I get up at 2:30 and 5:30 in the morning each night to feed our baby, and slog our way through the motions in the AM hours.  I get up at around 7:45 to make sure that I’m logged into work on time, but then I go ahead and take care of the feedings at 8:30 and 11:30, while I frantically do my best to do work-related things in between.  Yes, I am still working from home, and it is truly an unprecedented brave new world we’re all operating in these days, and I often have anxious thoughts about the future of my own career, as I wonder if the longer all of this goes on, the more expendable my team’s work will become perceived.

Work aside, being a dad is pretty great.  I don’t mind the dirty diapers and the demanding schedule, because I have a beautiful daughter that I enjoy just sitting and watching sometimes, wondering how her features are going to grow in, and despite the fact that she had more of my features at birth, I can see glimpses of lighter brown hair, and there’s no mistaking the large eyes she sprouts whenever they open up, that definitely come from mommy and not from me.

I love changing her outfits and seeing her in the large varieties of adorable baby clothing that we’ve purchased in advance as well as inherited from the generations of cousins ahead of me.  I’ve been peed on and I’ve witnessed various catastrophes of soiled diapers, but they’re no big deal at all.  I refuse to be a stereotypical dad that can’t handle changing diapers or think I’m too macho or manly to do things that people tend to associate as being “mom work.”

In fact, it kind of makes me a little sad whenever people have given me praise over my indifference and enthusiasm for doing things like changing diapers or bathing my kid.  It speaks volumes of the amount of men out there that don’t do the littlest things that instill love and affection for their children, and if there’s one thing that I want to accomplish as a dad, it’s that my kid grows up knowing that I love her more than anything, from the big things to the little ones.

Eventually, we’ll hopefully get to a comfortable rhythm as it comes to living with a child in tow now.  As much as I want to use this additional time at home to catch up on cleaning and making the house as great as possible for our kid, or I want to be a lazy slug and watch television and movies in between feedings, I just don’t feel like I ever have the time.  Three hours sounds like a lot of time, but given how much of it I spend cleaning bottles or pump parts or straightening things out for the next feeding/changing session, then I feel like I don’t have enough contiguous time to do anything productive or enjoyable, so I usually dick around on my phone or watch YouTube videos instead.

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When did Annandale become a giant PF Changs?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, mythical wife and I went up to Virginia to visit my family, as we had some pretty important news to tell them.  Since good Korean food outside of the litany of all-you-can-eat KBBQs are pretty few and far between without having to drive some distance, we decided to meet up with my family at a Korean restaurant in Annandale, which anyone with any knowledge of Northern Virginia is astutely aware is very much, the Korean part of town.

Or so I thought.

Clearly, things have changed a great deal throughout the years, most notably the fact that Korean food is very much en vogue and extremely popular these days.  The restaurant that my family and I went to was slam packed when we got there, and the vast majority of the diners in the restaurant were very much not Korean.

I had fond memories of this place from when I was younger and still living at home; for one, my parents were still together, but I remember how the place was much smaller, very much more rustic, with a décor that was definitely trying to lean old country, with rice papered walls.  Everyone in the restaurant was Korean, and the atmosphere and ambiance was much more relaxed and slow paced, and the soondooboo jjigae was scalding hot, and the absolute most perfect food on the planet to eat on a winter’s night.

When I suggested the restaurant, my mom questioned me if I was sure if this was the place I wanted to go, saying it was always slammed, and that there always a wait.  I didn’t realize we were talking about the same place, but clearly as she still lives in the area, has witnessed the PF Chang-ification of not just this particular restaurant, but presumably the rest of Annandale, as Korean food began to catch the imaginations of all sorts of white people who love to claim to be adventurous eaters, and relished at the thought of being the pioneers amongst their peers to delve into the worlds of all this oriental food.

Needless to say, when we pulled up to the restaurant, I was at first a little surprised at how the place was now substantially larger than it was the last time I was there, and the parking lot was three times larger, and just about every single spot was taken.  It’s actually amazing that the two cars we had were able to find spaces.  But upon going inside, it was another surprise to me to see just how slam packed the place was, and with the vast majority of diners, most definitely not Korean.  This was very much a shocking contrast to my last memories of this place.

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I heard my child’s heartbeat for the first time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And I nearly lost it.  Seriously, I’m totally going to be the overly emotional dad that’s going to bust out in tears every two seconds like Soun Tendo from Ranma 1/2 whenever the smallest milestone or any realization of first-time father comes to pass. 

I thought I got through the first stage of emotions that flooded through upon the realization that mythical wife was pregnant, but hearing the heartbeat for the first time, and the tech’s explanation that it was in fact, the baby’s heartbeat, and tear ducts welled up in an instant, despite the fact that I was able to keep them somewhat in check.

It’s like all the home pregnancy tests in the world confirmed what we already suspected, and it would be the lock of the century to bet on pregnant going to the doctor’s for the official confirmation.  But then hearing the heartbeat for the very first time was still a crashing confirmation of just how real it all is, and that in a matter of months, I’m going to have my very own kid.

I’m going to take a wild guess and imagine that there is going to be a lot more of where this came from over the next few months.

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