Month: August 2005

Sneaky Pees

Diaper changes for Bryan haven’t been too terrible. His poops don’t stink all that much and he’s fairly easy to change diapers with. But I was warned as babies move on to solid food, the stink level on their crap will go off the chart. Yeah, like I don’t have enough to look forward to already, jerks!

One thing I think is really funny (though I should be annoyed) is how Bryan ALWAYS picks the worst times to pee during diaper changes. Here are a couple of scenarios:

1. Completely wiped his butt clean, ready to put on the new diaper and off it goes with the power fountain. A few more dimes down the drain on a pee pad.

2. As the new diaper is ready to be fastened, he decides that was the best time to “let go”. That’s a completely brand new diaper plus a peed pad down the drain.

So far I haven’t been surprised with any in-th-face splashes yet. But I have heard crazy stories about them; and I don’t like it. I have learned that Bryan gets particularly quite, as if he’s contemplating the best time to do his deeds, before he pulls those tricks on me. So I have been able to catch a couple of sneak attacks before the old diaper was completely removed.

Got any interesting diaper change stories to share? I have a feeling it’s not too hard to make a sleep-deprived man laugh out loud in front of his laptop. Go ahead. Make me laugh.

UPDATE: No less than 10 minutes after I posted this entry. a routine diaper change again turned into a circus. I got hit again with #1. He’s rapidly perfecting his art.

More Readings

Added two more books to my reading list:

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Both books are by Malcolm Gladwell. I think Brian might have mentioned him before.

Come and Gone

My brother, Mark, came by for a few days to see Bryan (as well as mom). While he was here, I suppose he’s learned a few things about having a baby — mostly that they are noisy, don’t sleep at night and poop a lot. Hah hah… Since Bryan’s birth, there’s been a slew of people visiting (or attempting to visit). But it’s no fun seeing the baby now since Bryan spends most of his time sleeping (or going in and out of his sleep mode with eyes half open).

Mark and Bryan

Mark and Bryan

Hiccups

I didn’t even realize it’s been a couple of days since I last blogged. Time flies when there’s a baby around.

Murdza, now I understand why it took you so long to install that bad ass new PowerBook hard drive around the time when Savannah was born. I can’t imagine adding house renovation projects to the mix….

Bryan has been having hiccups since he was in Grace’s tummy. It’s really funny to feel the tummy tremor in an interval. And now that he’s here, almost every other meal he hiccups for a few minutes (despite gentle pats on his back). Sometimes I give him some water, and that seemed to have helped. But other times it doesn’t.

It’s worthy to note that scientists still don’t know exactly why hiccups happen though there are some interesting theories involving the diaphragm.

I do have a couple of home remedies that usually stop the hiccups immediately.

1. Take a deep breathe and hold it. Wait 30 seconds and exhale. (Usually this takes care of the hiccups.

2. Take a deep breathe and hold it. Drink a big glass of water while holding the breathe. Usually it is followed by a slight burp and the hiccup stops.

Immigrant Overflow?

While some Americans complaint about foreign workers taking jobs they say is rightfully theirs, it is perfectly ok for the medical and health system to be flooded with immigrant nurses and assistants. And I can understand why.

Other than the doctors themselves, virtually every single one of Grace’s nurse has been an immigrant from elsewhere, but more frequently, Philippinos. Considering Philippines used to be a U.S. “territory” (and the fact that English is their official language), perhaps it’s somehow easier for them to be infused into mainstream America.

But strangely, at the labor and delivery department, there were very few immigrant nurses there. I wonder why the discrepancy.

Some nursing institutes advertises a quick nursing or doctor’s assistant degree in less than two years. And with the supposedly severe shortage of nurses in the U.S., it’s said they get their own Green Card process of less than six months (compare that to 3 years for tech workers). And depending on the hours and the nature of the job, they get paid $80k or more a year.

Am I really in the wrong profession? Damn it.

But I still love computers. And I don’t like blood… either seeing, drawing or being drawn… So stuck with being poor and Green Card-less, it is.

Hello from Croatia

I didn’t think I’d actually hear back from Vedran when I sent him my mass “Hello World” email. But alas, he replied…

bok bok [bok bok = “hello” in Croatian] bryan chu. ines and vedran want to wish you a croatian warm welcome to this world. zivjeli mali! you stats are very impressive, little guy. PS do not worry about anything… your parents will take very good care of you… after all, you have an american passport. 🙂

The “American passport” joke never gets old… Thanks, jerk! And he never stops poking fun of me…

chu… even though you only put in 2 minutes of ‘work’ one romantic december night, you still deserve a lot of praise. good ‘work’ buddy. PS there is a secret formula you should know about… if you take your son’s length, divide it by 3.78… you get the father’s ‘length’… not very impressive, sir. 🙁

Even more impressively, he attached a picture of Ines, his long time girlfriend, with her iBook!

Ines with iBook

Murdza, Got Your Reference Letter

Hey Murdza, got your reference letter regarding my Canadian PR. Thanks a bunch. With this, I have enough to submit the final application for processing. Now only if Malaysia would hurry up with Grace’s police certificate.

Uptime on My PowerBook

I don’t think I was able to keep a Windows machine up, un-rebooted, at work (or home) for more than a couple of weeks. There’s always some updates or patches out that needed the Windows to be restarted. Or the entire system just craps out for no reason anyway…

So this is why I love my Mac… It’s been up for 33 days!

PowerBook uptime

Human Bio-Clock

Bryan is one of those babies one might consider a sleeper. He only wakes up for certain things, specifically food, diaper change and sometimes some affection. I continue to be amazed how precise this little wakes up right on the dot. His daily rituals are almost identical — and that’s a good thing; it’s comforting and reassuring for newborns, infants and babies to have repetitive, consistent and predictable patterns in their daily routine. But instead of us imposing that onto Bryan, he’s actually teaching us on how it’s done…

Since I am on this topic, I’d like to demystify this — that most people “think” parents of newborns get 2-3 hours of sleep between feeding at night. Try cutting that down to hour between waking moments.

Here’s my logic from personal experience:

1. Baby wakes at 12AM for food.
2. Takes about 20 minutes for him to consume 2 oz of milk. Takes the clock to 12:20AM.
3. Takes about 10 minutes to pat his back to make sure he burps to get all that air out of his tummy. 12:30Am now.
4. Takes about 10 minutes to actually get the little one to completely fall asleep (sometimes not necessary; but sometimes longer). It’s now 12:40AM.
5. Baby sleeps for an hour; wakes up for diaper change. 1:40AM.
6. Takes about 5 minutes to get him back to sleep. 1:45AM.
7. Baby wakes up for food 1 1/2 hour later. 3:15AM.
8. Repeat steps 2 through 7.

That’s my routine on a daily basis. Sometimes he’s extra playful and won’t go back to sleep for an hour or two. So on some days I miss out the entire “break” time in between. Running purely on adrenaline for a week straight is a strange feeling. I am thankful that men don’t have to give birth though, or else the entire species of mankind would have been wiped out millions of years ago…

The upside is Grace has been getting plenty of sleep at the hospital (more than I can say for myself). But she does get woken up every four hours or so by the hospital staff to take her vitals. But she gets out of the hospital today. Hopefully she won’t have anymore fevers.

RIP, Kitty

I am so sorry to report that the kitten we rescued had been put to sleep. In case you haven’t been following, I wrote about it here, here and here.

We feel incredibly guilty for having turned him in, thinking he’d receive a good life in a nice home. Apparently he’d been just a little too aggressive for adoption, and it’s the San Jose Animal Shelter’s policy to “rid of” those that aren’t fit for living because of budget problems. I wish they’d do a spay/neuter and release instead though… I don’t believe a government agency of any type should have a say in what/who lives and dies.

I have a hunch this must be what he was feeling…
Sniper cat

Image via [Gizmodo]

Kiss Your Baby, Go to Jail

I can’t help but to think Americans seriously need to use their resources on more important things after reading this article.

Excerpt:

The father and his wife, Teresa, dropped off some photos for processing at a local Eckerd. The role included a shot of Charbel kissing his baby on the tummy. Next thing the parents know, they’re being charged for sexual assault, and their children are wards of the state. It took six months for an investigation to conclude that there was zero abuse in the household, and for custody of their two kids to be restored.

Relax, America…

And to add to this, I’d like to say that corporal punishment shouldn’t be a crime. It has its place in families, especially that of Asian origin. It’s silly to argue that kids who were punished with some spanking will grow up to be abusive and a burden to the society… I mean, crime rate in the United States is among the highest in all of developed countries, isn’t it? Taiwan, Japan and Korea, where corporal punishment has been consistently used as a discipline method, are incredibly safe countries. No “Columbine” there! Maybe gun control (or lack there of) is the problem?

via [BloggingBaby]