Snapshots

I just realized that I have blogged on my birthday, and Benny’s birthday.  I suppose it’s only fair to blog on Dezzie’s birthday too.

Even though it’s a Saturday, it isn’t the best of time to celebrate her birthday.  Benny just got sick a couple of days ago (after a long streak of no-sickness of perhaps 3 or 4 months, I can’t remember exactly).  He’s having some bad coughs and runny nose, and have been extra clingy these past few days.  Dez hasn’t been sleeping well.  I haven’t slept well either, but kind of making up the lack of quality with extra quantity (meaning I’ve been sleeping a bit more, which means doing less non-infant activities).

There have been quite a few times when I actually had thoughts I wanted to blog about, but then the thoughts came and went, as there was no opportunity to really sit down in front of a computer and blog.

I’ve been really busy.  I don’t know if I am at my limit…  But man, I really don’t like having so many things going on at once.  I’ve been taking it one day at a time, but there just seems to be no end to this.  We’re still in the very early stages of planning for a vacation for November.  With Benny, of course, which makes things just so much more difficult.

Being a parent is a really humbling experience…  I remember before getting married, people were jokingly saying how it’s gonna be different.  Sure, other than getting yelled at more often for being messy, everything was pretty much the same before and after marriage.  Honestly, no one said much about having kids, other than “Oh enjoy your sleep now because you won’t be getting any after!”  No, turns out having kids completely changed my life.  Like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly, there is no semblance between the before and after.  Almost everything changed.

Lets hope we’ll get some uninterrupted sleep in the near future!  Benny was just napping, now he’s awake…  Guess where I have to go now.

A year ago today, Benjamin was born.  Life was never the same since.

I don’t remember the last time I slept 8 hours without waking up at least once.  Actually, make that 6 hours.  The fatigue is almost perpetual.  I think even though I’ve heard about how new parents don’t get enough sleep, I was still unprepared of what was to come.

I think the toughest part about being a parent, for me, was my inability to truly multitask.  I can only have my attention fully focused on 1 thing.  If my attention was split, my enjoyment of whatever I was doing was lowered.  For example, I can’t be happily enjoying my time cleaning up the desk while tending to Benny, neither can I happily enjoying my time with Benny while watching the oven.

But of course, when I did have moments to pay full attention to Benny, it was awesome.  He’s grown so much, so fast.  Lots of first times for everything.  A baby’s laugh just melts the heart.  It’s like an addictive drug that you just can’t get enough of.

Ever since Benny was born, I’ve suddenly noticed all the dads and moms with their babies everywhere.  It’s like they were invisible to my non-parent eyes before.  That was interesting.

I don’t know if I am a little more patient than when I was a year ago, but this year has certainly been a growing opportunity.

Anyway, I think the worst for me is over.  I think the first couple of months of endlessly worrying about a helpless baby falling or suffocating or snapping his neck was the worst days.  Even though now Benny can be a terror sometimes, I definitely prefer this state more.

We survived!

Just turned 29.  Last year before three-oh!

For most of us there are always 2 times in a year when we reflect on how the past year has been.  There’s new year’s eve when we go, “wow, a whole year has gone by”, and then there’s the birthday when we think the same thing.

I haven’t actually felt like I was 28.  I think I was too busy and tired to feel like anything.  I just sort of remember being 27, and then now here I am.  Never imagined I would be a dad before turning 28.

Work has been quite busy.  Not yet too stressful, but now it seems like there is an endless amount work to do.  Still haven’t needed to do overtime to finish before deadlines, but it’s getting closer to that point.

Went out for golf a total of 3 times so far this year.  Just changed my golf grip (like, the way I hold the clubs) from interlocking to just plain old standard non-overlapping (almost like a baseball grip), and saw major improvements.  I had to change because the way I was holding the clubs was really hurting my fingers (especially when I shank the ball or hit the on the ground).  The interlocking grip was the grip that was taught to me back in high school, and I always felt it was more natural.  But now using a standard grip seems just as natural.  After doing some practices, my hands and fingers no longer hurt, and saw major improvements in my driver.  Like, so major that the first few times I hit the driver with it, I had to stand back and watch my own shot in amazement.  I had never seen such nice shots coming out of my drives.  Of course there are still bad shots, but they are day and night compared to how I was hitting them before.  The distance can still use improvements, but now I can actually use the driver on a course and have a decent chance of it being on the fairway.

There’s always something new happening to Benny every week.  It’s pretty cool to see all the changes.  Still not used to his crying though, even though I’ve heard it for almost a year now.  His birthday party is coming up.

Hm, I really have to blog more often.  I realized that the main obstacle to my blogging is actually the formatting for that picture per blog post.  Without it I would be able to do it faster, and have shorter posts…

Benny is now over 9 months old.  Time flies.  Going from a baby who can hardly open both eyes for long periods at a time, to a baby who commando-crawls his way around the rooms.  Lots of things have changed, but some unfortunately have not.  (Still not sleeping through the night!!  Not even close!)

Thanks to the digital cameras and large hard drives, we have many thousands of photos and a few hundred short video clips.  I wonder what it will be like 20 years later when people go through his photo albums…  It would be so different from the old days.  I think I have like, a total of 1 album.  There are probably more photos scattered in different places, but I probably have less than 1000 photos of my entire childhood.

Getting old is pretty cool for a baby, but not so cool for the dad.  The body just doesn’t feel as great due to a variety of things.  Ever since I had my teeth fillings replaced (from silver to white) at the end of April, I could not eat off my right side because it hurts when I bite anything moderately hard.  I’ve gone back to get some adjustments, but they simply did not help much.  So it takes twice as long to eat the same amount of food, and I have to do it very carefully.  Food just doesn’t taste as good when you have to watch every bite.  I still have to go back for more adjustments, and possibly replacing the fillings in that 1 or 2 molars.

So in addition to not being able to eat much, my right hip still doesn’t feel right after the sun run.  It wasn’t caused by the sun run, since it was my fault I injured it 2 weeks before the sun run.  I haven’t run for about 2 weeks now hoping that it would heal.  It has gotten better, then regressed, then better, then regressed again.  So I don’t really know what’s up with that.

Dez and I are doing this experiment of eating organic/homemade as much as we could for the entire month of May.  That also means our food has less grease than before.  So the combination of these 3 factors have made me lose a lot of weight.  I now weigh 10 pounds less than before Benny was born.  And for those who know me, I already didn’t have much to lose to begin with.  And, once again, I exercise in order to gain weight, not to lose weight.  If I don’t do lots of cardio like running, I can’t gain much weight.  I know this apparently shocks everyone I know who wants to lose weight, but that’s the way it is.

So, my body ain’t feeling so great, and neither is the car.  My Toyota Corolla is now 11 years old.  Not too long ago the brakes start to make high pitch squeaking sounds when I brake.  Then some dashboard lights burned out.  Then I was driving on Knight bridge (not even fast, about 50 km/h) when something flew from the opposing traffic, through the inner lane, and hit my windshield on the outer lane and chipped the windshield where it sort of impairs the driver’s vision.  I can still drive and see OK, but the chip really is quite big.  Like a big water drop that never goes away.  And then the seat belt warning light was behaving weird (always flashing ON even when I already put on the seat belt), which was actually more annoying than the chip on the windshield.  I managed to make it so that it’s always OFF, so at least I don’t have a flashing light on my dashboard.

Anyway, I think most of these health / mechanical issues are fixable.  But they’ll take some time.  In the meantime, I just gotta get used to it…

After the last post, I realized that I did not have much longer to train for the sun run, and if I did not take my lunch time to run, I would not have time to train.  So for nearly 2 months, I pushed myself to run 3 times during the weekdays, and 1 more time on weekends.  In many of those times my mind was willing, but my body was not.  I really had to push myself.  Despite rainy on most days, the hours around lunch time was surprising “unrainy”.  I found that many times it would rain in the early morning, then stop, and then continue to rain in the late afternoon.  Because of this, I was able to run 3 or 4 times a week.  I did notice my pace getting better.  And for those times I went to the gym to run on the treadmill, I noticed that I was able to run faster than I did last year also.

On May 9th, I was as prepared as I could be.  There were some factors benefiting my run, but there were also some hindering factors.  The weather was awesome – warm and sunny.  I did not have any stomach cramps during the run, which happens about 15% of the time.  I did not have to dodge too many slow runners / walkers because I am placed in the yellow – slightly faster – group compared to years past.  I wasn’t too tired as I slept around 13 hours two nights prior.  However, I was sort of sick (sore throat and runny nose), and only got around 6 hours of sleep the night before.  My right hip also wasn’t feeling the greatest as I pulled a muscle or something during a training run.  So all in all, it was an OK run.  It could’ve been worse, and it could’ve been better.

Anyway, my goal was to beat 50 minutes.  It wasn’t easy, but I did it.  It was a decent improvement over last year’s time.  I don’t have a goal for next year yet.

Because our company got amalgamated into the mothership, we doubled our corporate team from the typical 20+ people to 39 total for this year (basically Richmond office + Burnaby office).  This also meant that for our high tech division, we were placed #13 out of 65!  Not bad.  Our previous record was #28.