Monkey Love

Do ya'll remember those sock monkeys that we grew up with, they hand long gangly arms and legs, and the best part was that the hands had velcro on them so they could connect so you could wear your monkey around your neck like big ol fuzzy bling, 80's style? Well I never had one of those, but I don't think I was missing much. I don't even think I was missing much when I didn't have my own Coco the Chimp.

After Babygirl's little bout with having a cold- waking up in the middle of the night due to fevers, runny nose, etc., we got a nice little bond going on. On the flip side, she's not sick any more, but she's going through a needy stage, and does not like to be consoled by Babymama if I'm around. I think the for the last couple of mornings, I've had to make my breakfast+lunch while holding Babygirl in one arm, just like one of those monkey with the velcro hands.

Sometimes Babygirl is pats me on the head, or strokes my hair with her hands, other times he hands morph into a mean Bahston Lahbstah Clah or a violent monkey and leaves marks on my face or neck. I enjoy being a source of reassurance, sense of safety, and nurturing Babydaddy, but c'mon Daddy also needs to be productive and efficient with his AM routines, as well as not go into the office like a rabid squirrel landed on his face while biking to work.

Irregardless(Babymama's least fav word), I still love this monkey baby of mine, and will continue to take the good with the bad, but really it's not even that bad, so it's really a whole lotta good, mixed with equal amount of love.

In Love with Babygirl

Babygirl, it's been a pleasure to hang out with you the last two evenings without Babymamma. During this time I just had so much love for you, and I also became aware that I need to find the balance in my love. Otherwise I would regress back to freshmen year in college when I thought my then girlfriend was going to be the girl I would get married to and have kids with, that's not the type of love you'll need growing up.

With the absence of Babymamma we've gotten to bond, learn some new things, and just play. We learned a new body part- you now know where your tongue is, and stick it out quite frequently these days. We watched a couple minutes of BBC's Planet Earth, and you thought the polar bear cubs were "bow wow's,"(dogs) and empathized with their hunger, and offered them your "bopple" (bottle).

You've also been thriving in many ways, just eating everything in site, and you seem to be getting bigger, taller, and heavier each day, which is all a good thing (we're almost back up to double digit percentiles for your weight, yeah!). You're into climbing, and sharing your food, pacifier, bottle, with me and your stuffed animal pals. You've also discovered the word and concept of "mine," which is a shocker for both Babymama and I.

You've also had some difficulties at night, waking up due to not being able to find your pacifier, just being uncomfortable, etc. which has led to increased time we spend in the dark. Sometimes I sing, we'll re-read "Gossie," or sometimes we just rock. Most often you ask for "Geoge,"(Curious George) to help soothe you, and if I'm lucky you'll fall asleep with your head on my chest, like earlier this AM. It's all these little moments that makes my heart melt, and allows me to furiously ride my bike home to spend whatever time I have with you before you head off to bed, or I head off to my other office.

Despite getting older, it's good to know that I can still rock you to sleep, and teach you silly things. For now I can give you all this undivided attention and love, and that's ok.

State of Panic

It's been almost 2 years now where I have gone to bed with the possibility of being awakened. The fall of 2007 is when I officially began moonlighting at a local hospital as their on call psych emergency guy from 12am to 8am couple nights a week. After a few months, Babygirl arrived.

Often times I'm confused or just simply pissed when I wake up to the pager going off. There was a time when Babymamma thought an ice cream truck crashed into our place due to the ringtone of my pager. These days, I grab my pager instinctively, and wake up with pager in hand wondering how I woke up without remembering hearing the pager ringing.

After more than a year, the shrill of Babygirl crying still jump starts my slow beating heart to full on panic. Not sure what I'm scared of or panic-ed about, usually Babygirl just needs her pacifier, often times milk, or is just letting out some cries while she's sleeping.

Babygirl is safe, we lock doors and windows, she's healthy, we're past SIDS stage- not sure if Babymamma ever awakens in a panic due to the cries, but I still do.


No worries, Babygirl is really not a Buckeyes Fan.

Where's Your Nose?

As Babygirl continues to grow and hit her developmental milestones, it's just been fun to sit back and watch her pick up new words and new concepts. She's really into figuring things out, and likes to hide things and come back to them seconds later just to know that they are still there.

I think in a few years we'll be strapping Babygirl into harness so she can go rock climbing with us. She just loves to hook that heel and pull her self up on to boxes, shelves, chairs, etc.

Another thing we've enjoyed is getting her familiar with her body parts. Babymamma and I are not progressive enough to read to her Spanish and Korean, but at least we can help her learn some body parts in English. Most days she can point to her where ears, nose, mouth and belly. Although lately, she's getting some things confused or not playing the game at all.

The funniest thing is that when we ask her, "Where's your nose?" She'll take her right pointer finger right up her right nostril, and say, "No, No-se." How she learned how to stick her finger in her nose, and why only her right nostril beats me, but it's a sight to see. What a funny gal. Fatherhood is full of fun times, I can't wait until she's saying the most hilarious things.

Fragility of Life

Becoming a dad has definitely led me to be more in tuned with the fragility of life. Perhaps one extreme form of this realization is signing up for life insurance. Not that I'm headed to Iraq, nor do I have a high casualty job, but I am the head of household that works to provide for the family, so my absence would definitely put Babymamma and Babygirl in a tough place.

Anyways, as my 30th year of life approaches, I've noticed the themes that I'm surrounded by at work, at home, on TV, on the radio- it happens to be about the fragility of life. How things can seemingly change in a blink of an eye. It all started when I was watching TV, perhaps it had to do with being up for more than 39 hours straight, but the characters the plot lines, all were eliciting a range of emotions of frailty, and the uncertainty of what happens when a loved one passes away.

Thoughts of what it would be like to raise Babygirl as a single dad, the various things that Babymamma would have to encounter if I was on "life support." What if Babymamma passed away, would I go into a deep depression, and have an unquenchable yearning for my wife which leaves Babygirl in the unfair position of having lost her mom, and an emotionally checked out dad? Surprisingly I am more at peace with the inevitable passing away of my parents, of course it will be sad, but in many ways I think the loss of my wife or child will have a greater impact on me.

I have encountered or been exposed to a multitude of losses this week, sometimes it's a death, sometimes it's been neglect that results in a loss for someone else, sometimes a parent is coping with the loss of their boy who is now a teenager, sometimes it's a mom who's struggling to keep her marriage and family alive, loss is all around.

Of course Love is all around us as well. The problem is that it's more gripping to report/share about loss than it is with love. Perhaps this next decade of life, the new frontier into my 30's should really be about exposing the love that already exists within us and within others.

Being a dad, a husband, and husband has already increased my conceptions of love, but there can never be enough of it, and I can only hope that through the understandings of God's love for mankind will I be able to greater share love with others all around me.


A moment of balance and love

Peek-a-boo!

So many things have been going on with Babygirl these days. She's taking more steps each day, she's into figuring out how things open, gathering things and putting them in various containers, she continues to love slides at the playground, and she's learning new words each day. I've also had some nice extended times/day hanging out with her.

Lately she's been against having her diaper changed, so like most things, we had to make a game out of it. While she's laying on her back, getting ready to be changed, we play peek-a-boo. Something she manged to learn at 11month, and several months later, she's still hamming it up, and loving the game of peek-a-boo. Sometimes she even covers my face so that I can play peek-a-boo with her. As you can imagine, it's full of laughter, smiles, and it's all so cute.


On a side note, it's been difficult trying to stay fit and exercise. Something that has been helpful is squeezing a stress ball at work with one hand, working the forearms. Such a simple exercise and a mild burn in the forearms has led to them getting stronger, which has helped me push past my previous threshold of the number of consecutive push-ups I could do. Perhaps all this time, it wasn't about me being weak but more the stabilizing muscles that allow me to do push ups were weak, any thoughts?

Other than that if I didn't commute by bike, who knows what I would look like or feel like. As we approach almost 2 years of living in our condo, I'm quickly approaching the approx 2000 mile mark of biking. My lifetime mileage of biking is probably closer to 2700 miles. Other than my life with my family, faith in God, prayer, and biking have been one of the most important things to healthy/happy living. Any other dads commuting by bike?

Doubleback

For whatever reason, my schedule allowed me this past Sunday to run errands with Babygirl. I got out of work early, and Babymamma had some assignments to finish, so she sent me on the monthly Trader Joe's run, while also stopping at the New Balance Outlet Store to return some shoes.

You can only imagine that Babydaddy was excited to go out alone with his Babygirl. Babygirl was well behaved in the car, we sang some songs, and ran our errands. Despite the craziness of crashing carts at TJ's, and mad white people sporting Patagonia, Mountain Hardware, North Face, Marmot, and Arc'Teryx all for a shopping trip on a cold Sunday in the city via car(not by bike, snowshoeing, skiing, etc. This is obviously a whole different topic, but c'mon is it really necesary?).

Anyways, after a successful trip and many laps around the store, we left feeling good. No meltdowns, no crying, Babygirl was happy with some pretzels and a bottle of water. On the way home, I glanced back and noticed her sleeping, and also that a shoe was missing! I waved my arm towards the floor hoping that Babygirl had kicked it off while I was still driving, no shoe. When we arrived home, there was no shoe to be found anywhere, but Babygirl was still asleep.

After handing Babygirl to Babymamma, I said, "We lost a shoe, I'm going back to TJ's to find her shoe." She was like "Really?" "Ya shoes are expensive, . . . peace." In the back of my neurotic mind I was thinking, "Great, the one time that I go out with Babygirl I lose a shoe, this will be the last time I'll get to go out unsupervised, or more importantly it shows how I'm really careless, or can't multi-task, etc., etc."

Doubling back to TJ's with some traffic, I got to the parking lot, and lo and behold, found the shoe underneath a Porsche SUV(what kind of outdoorware do you think the owner was sporting?), the shoe must have fallen off when I hastily took Babygirl out of the shopping cart and into the cat. Not sure why I was hurrying, yes it was cold outside, but it's not like the car was warm.

Lesson learned, no more hasty exits from the shopping cart, therefore avoiding to double back, waste gas, waste money, and waste time on a Sunday. Worst of all, by the time I came back, Babygirl was already in bed, doh!

Am I still in the running for Babydaddy of the year?