Born to be loved

 8-yr old HG and 5-yr old AK both learned about this Australian artist Pete Cromer (huntingforgeorge.com) in the art class at school. They brought back the painting they did at school that we can order for the framing, and my wife m noticed the resemblance of the taste to a few mugs that my sister and her Australian husband gave us. AK's drawing always comes with full of color. This time, the style overlapped with the handout that the framing/printing service provider. 5-yr old AK has been showing interests in different things than his 8-yr brother HG so far -- While HG has been keen on understanding how things work (a.k.a logic) and concepts since as early as when he was 3-yr old, AK has not yet delved into those at the age of 5 yet. He seems to have found drawing, writing fun and exciting. Sometimes at home when I can't find him, he's sitting at his small work desk (in my office) and doing some drawing or crafting. At a parent conference with his school teachers, they

Outside of my camera scope there are 50+ people working. Picture above is from the filming scene in the subdivision we live in, on the way to kids school bus stop. You see a car with smoke, I guess this is a car crash scene. A few minutes after this picture, we watched a rehearsal that lasted just about 5 seconds. Our 5-yr old AK couldn't hold saying "Is that it?", then many staff looked back at him frantically first, then after finding the voice was coming out of a small kid all shrugged off and "phew it's just rehearsal". Embarrassed, I had to leave the site immediately. Filming or construction or anything else, I find seeing the actual work site to be fascinating, since I was a kid, and I still do now as a parent. Hope my kids find something unique out of it. Then, this time of the filming comes with lots of backlash among many neighbors. There are many many vehicles and equipment parked on the street near the site, for more than a month. Some homes are

We sold a double jogger stroller that we owned for full 5 years, as our 2nd son AK grew out of its seating height and we plan no more child after our 3rd LM. Releasing it came with a sentiment...I had so much fun and good moment with it while we are going through challenging moment...  We maintained the condition well, no obvious tear-and-wear. Then we noticed in the market the price of the same product soared - our purchase price was $699, then today I see it $849 (amazon.com) , 20% higher. Even used found online are above $500 (google.com)   So we set a competitive price on Facebook market then we concluded a deal in just a few days, with someone who live outside of state drove up to us to pick it up (he was desperate to give it to his wife as a Christmas gift). It was a bit of surprise for getting interest from out-of-state buyer on FB, but I'm glad to meet someone who's really in need. We got the stroller when my wife was in a residency and I had lots of lots of moments

Saturday has always been busy but this day went with 2 major twists. In the morning boys' school held a fundraiser running event. Last year we missed due to family trip  but we came back to it since 2021, this time with our kindergarten boy AK joined 1-miler / 1.6km with mama and 8-yr HG who ran 2 years ago as well, while I ran 5km with a 2-yr old LM in single-stroller. AK is the type of child who seems to feel anxious (or almost fear) in an unfamiliar environment, although once he's used to it he boasts about every single aspect of that situation. Today he was very grumpy before the race according to my wife, but once the run started he didn't stop even once before crossing the goal line in less than 10 minutes! Proud moment #1 of the day. In hindsight of my childhood, first time I ran 1,500+ meters was when I was 4th grade / 10 years old. Today I saw many many kids ran 1-miler or even 5k! Developmentally running such a long distance before body matures might be concernin

 Year 2023 is fast approaching the end. But I just had a chance to review the family health issues back in 2022. Parent's struggle with the children' health problem has been almost at the center of the blog, since t his post in January 2017   where we first wrote about our first child's perpetual respiratory issue. Since then, I've been logging the health issues and events at least date and symptom even briefly in an one-liner if I didn't have time. As I wrote in May 2022   I've been slowing down my career (temporarily) so that kids can get better care even when they're sick. While it takes a little more than trivial effort to keep track of any health events, I feel knowing these is imperative because it's the time and effort I have dedicated for our kids' well-being in exchange. Being meticulous Anecdotally I'm always tempted to say that any one of our kids has always been sick (so I need to take time off from work, otherwise who takes care of t

Lately we noticed 8-yr old HG mood swing may be enhancing. He dislikes much more things than before. He refuses and resists so much. It happens to both my wife and me, but it may be happening much more to me, and often I cannot tolerate and react intensely, which ends up exacerbating things. Here are some things that happened recently: Case-1: He kept asking me to help school's homework while I was multi-tasking on household items so couldn't get to help him. At some point I saw him frustrated as I kept saying "yeah yeah, I'll come to help you once I'm done". Then my wife came back from work, and he asked her to help. She tried to redirect it to me, then he refused saying "daddy doesn't understand this homework". Case-2: I asked him about homework, he started explaining normally, but began to lose momentum, ended up stopped talking. I kept asking to continue then he switched his tone saying he doesn't like me to ask about homework. We kept pi