Tag: milestone

Post #3,000: I’m basically the Ichiro of brogging

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unlike when I surpassed the 2,000th post to my brog, I was very aware of my post count as I crept closer and closer to #3,000. 

As a baseball fan who loves statistics and numbers, I knew a post like this was going to take shape.  3,000 is a big deal to baseball fans, because it’s among the most immortal of milestones, primarily when it comes to strikeouts for pitchers and hits for batters.  And because I’m a baseball fan who likes to write and brog, it’s a big deal to me that I’m closing in on my 3,000th post.

Furthermore, it’s always been a big deal to me to remain consistent, dedicated and committed to my personal brog that nobody reads, because throughout the passage of time, I’ve witnessed countless people try and start blogs, and they’ll do great for a few days, weeks, and maybe a month, but inevitably, they all give up. They throw in the towel, make excuses, and just plain fail.

Professional athletes, interesting people, wrestlers, baseball players, and numerous friends and acquaintances that I know all fall into this category.  There are people who have even been paid and made an occupation of blogging, who even fail and lose their resolve and give up.

And all these people who fail and give up, it’d be easy to say not mad just disappointed to them all, but I know I am in the tremendous minority of minorities of people who can remain dedicated to something as senseless and important to nobody but myself as I am.  Instead of passing too much judgment whenever I see someone start their own blog, I just kind of take a mental stopwatch and try to remember when they started, so I can try to guess when they invariably failed.

Because not everyone can be like me.  I’m like the Ichiro of brogging, which is a little ironic considering there’s a nationalistic dislike for him which is made all the more appropriate considering at the time I’m writing this, the World Baseball Classic has started up again and Korea has already shit the bed and is going to rely on a win against Japan in order to have a chance at survival.

But in spite of my feelings about Ichiro, he’s still arguably the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, with over 3,000 hits in MLB, and almost 2,000 more from his time in NPB.  And despite the fact that this is officially post #3,000 on my WordPress, there were still 483 posts over ten years from my brog when it was way more primitive, and I was posting individual HTML files to my old site.  Those are like my Japanese hits that few but me want to acknowledge, but in the grand spectrum of things, they’re just further justification of my brogging greatness.

So 3,000 posts in the can, and I have zero intention of ever stopping.  Sports and wrestling can come to an end but I’ll always find something to write about.  I have kids, I have a city where I live where I’m always going to be critical of, and I will always have an opinion on everything, and sometimes I will write about them.

It’s taken 13 years for me to make 3,000 posts on WordPress, I wonder if in 2036 I’ll be at or near 6,000?  Either way, as long as I live and breathe, we will eventually find out.

Year three of forever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And just like that, my eldest is three years old.  As many of us parents like to opine and ponder, where has the time gone?

It’s surreal to think that three years ago, #1 showed up five weeks early, and spent nearly the first month of her life in the hospital’s NICU.  Hooked up to machines and tubes until her body was strong enough for her to be allowed to come home, where she spent another seven weeks tethered to a portable heart rate monitor.

Eventually the monitor would go, she kept growing like a weed, we stopped referring to her as “adjusted age” and it’s been a veritable roller coaster throughout the last three years of watching her grow, learn, develop and transform from the frail tiny preemie into the little threenager that’s full of opinions, emotions, energy and bursting with lifeWhy this is important and warranting a thoughtful blathering beyond the obvious every day and every birthday is important, is that three is the age in which I feel like I can recall beginning to have my own memories and really feeling like my own human being.

I have fuzzy memories of playing in the living room of my old house, which was something that was pretty rare in later years of life, because we had a family room in which most activities would take place, but looking back at these memories that might’ve been the family room back then.

I was playing wiffleball with my dad, more specifically I was throwing a ball as hard as my little kid body could muster, but no matter what I threw, my dad would catch it.  I remember thinking how incredible it was, and that he could catch absolutely anything in the world and being amazed an in awe of my own dad.

As it’s supremely important to be a fixture of my children’s lives, I can only hope that as I continue to play and spend time with my kids every day, that memories of playing and hanging out with dad and mom start taking root and becoming the things that both my kids will reminisce and wax poetic about it in their own lives when they become teens and adults of their own.

Hopefully, #1 will remember dad making her birthday cake for her, because she still can’t eat eggs, and there was absolutely no way I was going to let her birthday pass without a cake.  So I found a recipe for an eggless cake and did my best to make it, and although I don’t think I’ll be getting any Paul Hollywood handshakes for it, she seemed to like it, and that is all that mattered.

But man, three years.  Born in perilous conditions, made worse by a global pandemic, and here she is, healthy, strong and smart as a whip, reading and using the bathroom on her own.  Although she’ll always be a baby to me, she’s a far cry from the baby she was once.

Next thing I know, I’ll blink and she’ll be getting ready for high school, her first job, and if she chooses, moving out and going to college.  Hopefully then, I’ll still be completely smitten with her and her sister, and just as in love with being their dad then as I am now.

Dad Brog (#100): One Hundred Dad Brogs

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because I’m a neurotic baseball nerd who has a hard-on for nice round numbers, I was always keenly aware of the fact that I was creeping closer to a nice round milestone number of 100 dad brogs, most of which are bitchy, ragey, or coming from a place of frustration.  In my head, I’ve written this post several different times now, but as is the norm for the life of a parent of kids as young as mine, there was never the opportunity to write this until a lot of the feelings in which I’m mentally writing, have already long passed.

This isn’t to say that I don’t love my children, quite the contrary, I love my children and my famiry and would do anything in the world for them, but it’s more of the unyielding truth of just how difficult raising kids is, especially in the circumstances I’ve been under, with two born during a pandemic and being on a path that has never really been explored except by those in similar boats currently charting them as we go.

There’s no sugar-coating it: parenting is hard.  Parenting two that are just 16 months apart is even harder.  I’ve completely lost the ability to feel any shred of empathy for anyone who proclaims their lives are difficult and they have no kids, because I frankly can’t imagine anyone’s life being as hard without kids as someone with them.  In fact, I’ve even turned my nose up at those with just one child, because at this point, I think one kid is a walk in the park, and that I could raise a single child with my eyes closed with the experience I’ve accumulated.

At no point during my journey as a dad, have things ever been easy.  When it was just #1, we had several months of having to deal with an apnea monitor, on top of not knowing what we were doing as new parents.  But once we began to feel that we were getting into a groove and that her sleep schedule was affording us time to begin feeling like human beings again, our world was rocked by the discovery that mythical wife was pregnant and #2 was on the way.

And then #2 arrived, and in spite of all the preparation and thinking we got this, based on all the experience we accumulated from our first go-around, #2 was all sorts of different than her sister, in terms of temperament, sleeping habits, and the presence of colic.  And with their being two kids now, the inevitability of double duty came into play, and let me tell you that there have been fewer points in my life that I have felt so helplessly inadequate as a father, parent, human being, than when I’m constantly falling on my face as a single person watching two kids.

Since then, my daughters have been living up to the tag team dynamic that I’ve given them championship blets for, because since the staffing up of my famiry, they’ve been systematically taking turns, tagging in and out, at which one of them is the difficult kid at any given time; naturally not ignoring any opportunities to get some double-team, tandem offense of both of them being difficult at the same time.  #2’s colic was a devastating time where nothing I did felt like it was right.  #1’s increasing curiosity and the development of defiance and the ability to say the word NO bubbled up as #2’s newborn vices began cooling down.  They’d take turn at being picky eaters, and seldom would eat well at the same time.  #1 started getting sick every single month since the start of 2022 due to our shitty nannies or sending her to daycare, and without missing a beat, when she gets sick, #2 gets sick 3-4 days later and it’s even worse on her because she’s younger and has a lesser developed immune system.  Everyone loves to say that it’s just them growing their immune systems, but I’d rather other parents just stop being selfish fucks and sending sick kids to school all the god damn time.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#100): One Hundred Dad Brogs” →

Happy trails, Chase the Face

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I told myself to not write anything before the fact, because that would be time spent on myself and not hanging out with the Face.  I still have no idea how people do this, where they schedule the euthanization of their pets, and then literally manage to operate their lives knowing there is a very real clock ticking down the remainder of their life.

Needless to say, the time between making the call to the vet and to the eventual saying of goodbye to my dog, has been real hazy, but fortunately for me, I’m the type of person who can throw themselves into work, just so that I don’t have to think about the anxieties of something like having to put my dog down.

Here’s a fun fact about me, Chase is actually the first dog that I’ve ever own, myself.  Every pet I’ve had in the past was either inherited, temporary or technically belonged to someone else, but not actually mine.  Chase was the first dog that I’ve ever adopted, paid for, and been solely responsible for in my entire life.

I adopted him on May 16, 2012, from the Atlanta Humane Society.  My home had always had dogs in it, and when it stopped having dogs in it, it felt like there was something missing.  I was single with no prospects at this time, so having a dog seemed like a no-brainer as far as unconditional companionship was concerned, and I wanted to adopt a rescue because I just felt that it was a more responsible thing to do, seeing as how the pet population is pretty out of control in general.

I had visited a couple of shelters leading up to eventually going to the Humane Society, and when I met Wind Chaser, I kind of felt pretty quickly that this was the dog that I wanted to adopt.  Say what you will about my general preference in dogs, maybe it’s an Asian thing or maybe it’s just me, but this maltese/shih tsu mix just kind of spoke to me.  So I paid the adoption fee in an Amazon donation, and shortened to Chase, was now my dog.

Continue reading “Happy trails, Chase the Face” →

2 Under 2: The time has finally come (#077)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If there was ever a particular parenting milestone that I wasn’t really looking forward to, I’d guess that I would be joined by millions of parents out in the world who also dread the inevitable time for potty training.  Obviously, the end goal is of the greatest achievement, being the liberation of needing to change diapers, but the vast majority of parents probably don’t have a second baby already in tow that will need to remain in diapers for the better part of the next 15-16 months regardless.

All the same, the time has come in which mythical wife and I have embarked on the beginning stages of potty training #1.  We’re taking the approach of trying to train in stages, with the first stage being cordoning our child off into a segment of the house where we can monitor and observe behavior and seek out patterns, as well as have a safe surface that will get peed on, a whole lot.

Two days in and my daughter has accomplished to get some urine into the bowl of her training potty, as well as drop a few turds into the bowl, but it’s going about as well as I’d imagined it would: more failure than success, tons of paper towels being used, and me wondering just when in my life things will ever begin to feel simple again.  Mythical wife reminded me that we’re parents now, which is to say, that probably never.

This isn’t to say that I’m miserable doing it, but I’d be lying that it isn’t exhausting work in a variety of ways.  It’s physically demanding because I’m constantly in a squat but can’t sit, because I have to be able to spring up at a moment’s notice to usher my kid to the trainer when she inevitably breaks the seal and begins gushing like a hose periodically, and I’m often bent and crouched, and considering I haven’t worked out in nearly two years, I’m physically getting wrecked.

It’s also yet another emotional milestone in which I’m realizing just how fast my first child really is growing, leading me to be all Soun Tendo emotional dad when I stop and think about it.  Honestly, I’ve been changing diapers for so long now that it’s just kind of like second nature to me, and it’s not something that’s ever really bothered me, so I’m kind of in this mindset that I’d rather stick to the simplicity of diapers versus the hard fucking work of potty training, regardless of the inevitable win that the latter really is in comparison.

But my first little girl is growing up, and it’s potty training today, and then teaching her to drive a stick shift tomorrow, with trying to teach financial responsibility all the time in between.  However, until then, there’s going to be a whole lot of toddler excrement in the coming days. FML

100 Days, the sequel

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today is a special day in the life of my family.  #2 has made it to day 100 of her existence, and this is an actual occasion in Korean culture, known as baek-il (백일).

Historically, this became a thing back in the olden days when Korea was so ravaged by poverty, famine, disease and Japanese people, the life expectancy of children was so low, that even making it to 100 days was considered monumental.  Sure, the passage of time has changed some things quite drastically, but the occasion has stuck, and baek-ils are acknowledged by Koreans all over to this very day.

Ironically, not much has changed since #1’s own baek-il from last year.  Considering the fact that coronavirus is still very much around and killing people on a daily basis, and that America has basically become a third-world country with an economy that’s surpassed by at this point, multiple countries, there’s a loose comparison to be made about disease and poverty.

That being said, it is, more noteworthy that #2 has survived the first 100 days of her life, than it really should be, but that’s the state of the world we live in.

I know I’ve been using my brog over the last few months at something of a sounding board of how much I’m struggling with two kids, but what I really hope is that in future years whenever I look back through the On This Day plug-in, I’ll re-read a lot of the things I’ve written under fatigue and exasperation, and either shake my head, laugh, or just cringe at the mental frying I went through raising two under two. 

No matter what I say, how frustrated I come off as, and things that I may insinuate under duress, I love my kids and I love my wife, and I will continue to do so no matter what.  Collectively and individually, they are the best things to happen to my life, and even if I lose my shit from time to time, I always come back and always remember that they are my everything.

100 days down, onto the rest of our lives, with only the best things being wished for.

The day(s) that everything changed forever, part 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Started on July 14, 2021

I figured I should start this post on the day before, because mythical wife’s hospital check-in time is at like 7:15 am, and even if we have to wait three hours again like we did last time, it stands to believe that the day that everything changed forever, part 2, will have culminated before lunchtime, and I won’t really have that much to have glossed over for an emotional post.

So unlike the first time, we are not going to be taken by surprise by a premature birth, quite the opposite, we’ve been ticking down the days with bated breath to a predetermined birthday that we’ve been watching coming for several weeks now.  Despite all the preparation and bracing, it’s still mind-blowing to wrap my brain around the thought that in less than twelve hours, mythical wife and I will be welcoming a new human being into the world.

I guess it doesn’t matter if you’re given a few hours to prepare for it, or 38 entire weeks, after experiencing both ends of the spectrum, I’m led to believe that it doesn’t matter at all, the feeling of overwhelming there is at the thought of bringing a new person into existence.

As detailed in my prior post, most of the day was spent mentally waxing poetic about how every single thing I did with my first daughter throughout the day was the last time I’d be doing it as a father of one, and the varying feelings of guilt at the thought that my attention will have to be divided between two instead of just her.  The other part of the day was spent preparing myself to be taking two weeks off of work, so that I can transition my new child into the world, and for mythical wife and I to try and figure out how to adapt to a life of two children and probably go through a wide gamut of emotions in the process.

I’m quite paranoid that the send later function in Outlook is going to bone me, and I’m going to look like an asshole caught red-handed sending scheduled emails for my spontaneous trip to the hospital, so that I can chalk it up as personal/sick days instead of burning up days out of my more-finite vacation bucket.  But they’ve already been queued and I have to have faith that they’ll send on time and nobody will be the wiser.

As it is a Wednesday, it means that mythical wife and I pick up Chick Fil-A and watch Handmaid’s Tale, but since the season is over, we’ve been watching Loki, and we both feel very fortunate that tonight was the season finale, since the reality is that who knows when we’ll actually get to watch television on a schedule anymore in the future now that we’re soon to have two children.

Continue reading “The day(s) that everything changed forever, part 2” →