Born to be loved

These days HG often wakes up at night, typically before midnight, comes out of the bedroom and search for us while crying. Often we found him crawling, or even crashed on to the floor and passed out sticking his butt up. Every time this happens our precious night time gets obviously intervened, so we're hoping he'll overcome it soon, but he's so cute at the same time. Last night my wife M was out on the night shift, so HG and I were alone at home (with cats). After putting him into sleep, I was back in my office room but then heard him crying somewhat close, which indicated that he was already out of the bedroom, coming closer. Whenever this happens, it'll take 10 minutes to an hour before he goes back asleep deep enough. This time, I found it'd take long as he kept searching me in the bed for quite some time by rubbing his head to my shoulder while dozing (and yes he sleeps on our bed). So I decided to sleep through the night with him, then wake up early to conti

HG has been well over 2-year old. All of us are enjoying his tantrum-filled, but more and more cheerful days. In terms of health condition, we see he's been getting much better compared to the last year where we had to take him to emergency room frequently, as he hasn't been to ER this year although he still causes respiratory issues frequently, say once in every 2 to 3 week. We're just grateful but having ear tubes planted early this year to drain fluid he was accumulating must have helped a lot. Knowing it's absolutely normal for kids in 2-year old gives us a big relief as it was frightening to see he started melting down for the first few times with repertoire of actions. As always, we rely on our trusted source, babycenter.com for such a wisdom ( Tantrums: Why they happen and how to handle them ). What's still troubling us is that he hits us whenever we reject certain actions of him that we think inappropriate. Even this seems to be within an expected beha

For these 12 months, our son HG's mom is taking a "research off". Same as sabbatical for academic affiliates, some resident physicians apparently spend certain period in the research department without basically any commitment to their clinical/operational duty with some exception. Because this research work usually goes more like 8 - 6, Monday through Friday time frame, some people call it as "off" of their strenuous, almost endless residency. We had been waiting for this year, and indeed so far after 2 months since its beginning, we've been able to spend almost every weekends together as a family, which has rarely the case for the last 3 years during the first 3 years of m's residency. Her research work then is getting intense these days, and I got a new job that requires travels almost every / bi-every week so we've busy after all time-wise. But at least I think we're mentally the most relaxed now. Meanwhile HG turned 2 and is getting more

According to NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures, published in Dec 2016) , there was a little less than 5,000 pedestrian casualties in the year of 2012 nationwide, meaning on average more than 10 cases are happening every single day somewhere on this vast land of the US. While it's an absolutely sad fact to hear, it'd be not surprising if that happened to me. This morning when I was running the way back home from dropping off HG at the daycare as usual, I was crossing 4-lane road (2-lane per each direction) when the pedestrian's signal was green. I noticed, then, a pickup truck was approaching and entering the intersection on the right-turn lane, with a speed faster than those that normally stop before the crossing. I was running but started slowing down and ready to stop since the car didn't seem to slow down. The pickup truck ended up making an abrupt stop passed the stop line, when I expressed my discomfort to the driver. This time I was attentive eno

May is an eventful month for our family. It starts from my sister's birthday, of course there's Mother's Day, then our wedding anniversary that comes 1 day before my wife's parents wedding anniversary, birthday of my wife's uncle who just moved to Cameroon, and my birthday along with wife's father's (same day) at the end. Confucius (孔子), an ancient Chinese philosopher, is said to have taught "at 40 I have no more doubts" . This word apparently got so many people in their 40s doubt if they have no more doubts in their own lives. I'm not an exception in many ways. Overall, however, I've come to believe that I'm so thankful for who I am for sure still 42 years after having been born. The last one year might have been the one filled with the most ups and downs in my life...mostly downs. While taking care of our son having gone through various kind of sickness therein and working for my company in Japan staying up late for customers over

During the last 2 weekends HG participated two run events. He may be one of the most active toddlers! Ever since we bought a jogging stroller Thule Urban Glide last year, I've been running 5 days a week on average -- running to the daycare in the morning, drop him off and run back home -- It was on July 4th when I purchased the stroller, as a self-gratification for watching our son by myself alone on weekends and days whenever daycare closes. Also Spring in 2016 I weighed the most in my life...Being stressed out with taking care of a baby who became sick almost every other week but still maintaining a full time work, I couldn't just stop eating. As just beginning my 40s, I had to start something to stay sane. Anyways, since then I've been running, like it or not I have to drop off my son at the daycare, and running there back and forth makes 2 miles, and it makes me feel better going eco-friendly. On average I've gone 70 to 80 miles per month consistently for the l

A couple months ago <a href = "http://born2b-loved.blogspot.com/2017/01/cats-and-asthma.html">we freed our cats again into the living space of our home</a> with a delight. Since then our son HG grew and got more and more curious to interact with the cats. He even says nya-nya (ﾆｬｰﾆｬ, Japanese onomatopoeia for cats meowing (=^・^=)) and calls the name of one of our cats, Nobi. For some reason he resists calling the other girl cat's name and instead calls her Nobi too, but hopefully he's learning and just not about confident to pronounce her name Tuna. So we decided in the same link above that we want to keep our master bedroom where HG sleeps at night free from cats, for the sake of his health particularly for his respiratory issue that he's been suffering. We've been simply keeping the door shut all day. For the first two months, it worked. But now Nobi, our mischievous young fur-ball, found a way to hang to the door knob and open the door, whic

Today my wife was off so we went dropping off HG at the daycare together by jogging along the canal nearby. On the way we found a water blowing out from the ground like a fountain, which clearly seemed not good. We passed by without doing anything at the moment, however, since we were on the other side of the canal, but on the way back after 20 minutes, nothing was changed. So we decided to be good citizens and called some non emergency numbers, with none of which we got to talk to an agent in a few minutes with each number. Feeling still motivated enough, we ended up calling 911 hoping it wouldn't interfere any actual critical cases. The call was handled by an answering machine, for way more than 5 minutes at minimum before we finally got to talk to an agent. More than 5 minutes. According to self-defense-mind-body-spirit.com , the average policy response time is 10 minutes as I later found. Independent Journal Review website has detail and analysis. By "average policy re

As turned 18-month HG has been more stably healthy compared to the last year where he got sick almost every month (or even every other week). This week, however, he started having fever in 39C (102.2+F) range consistently for a few days. He had his eyes swollen as his mom noticed. So she took him to an urgent care nearby after her work and turned out he has flu. He had a shot in the middle of the last Fall but still got it, so this is either a strain that isn't covered by the vaccine or he's little and it affects him more. Either way, powerful one. Now he's going through some of the symptoms listed on babycenter.com , including losing his voice, very runny nose, coughs as usual although lighter for him than the asthma attacks he had. He may also be feeling unusual fatigue since he's still active but not as much and sleeps longer in the morning (wakes up but doesn't even cry for picking him to get out of the bed). Mom worries about the risk of escalating to pneumon

HG has been undergoing treatment and pretty close observation of his reactive air disease/asthma. First symptoms of coughing probably started around 7-8 months. We were seen by his pediatrician and actually given some albuterol to see if it may help him. He disease got acute worse after he contracted rhinovirus summer of 2016, where he had to be hospitalized not once but twice! Since then, frequent visits to the doctor have ultimately resulted in a fairly good regimen of Pulmicort nebulizer twice daily, Singulair once daily, and albuterol nebulizers as needed but liberally. During the course of all this, we were advised by family to remove our 2 cats from the home. This suggestion stems from the fact that the entire family of my side had bad asthma and we were all allergic to cats And by allergic, we mean puffy, red eyes, swelling of the face, frequent sneezing and coughing. Of course, our son's well-being is infinitely more important than our cats. But still, letting them go