A funny thing happened a couple posts back, but my mind's been so busy nowadays that I forget about the main parts I want to put in the blog. So here's some backposting.

My wife has said to be in confidence, that sometimes Alex looks White, and sometimes he looks Asian. I asked her to clarify (What are you talking about, dude?) and she put it simply, well, sometimes when he's sitting with my Mom, he looks Asian.

So there we were, Alex sitting with my Mom, and I asked my Mum...

"Does Andrew look like an Asian baby?"

She found this amusing, and asked what he was supposed to look like. My wife said, well, sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't.

So my Mom holds Alex up and asks him, "Are you an Asian Baby?"

Anyway, my Mom says he looked mixed, but since he's my baby, that's all I see. I don't know what he's supposed to look like, I just know he looks like my little guy! We notice that his eyes are light brown, and he hair is light brown, and there's maybe one white hair on the very front of his head. Such a worrier. We're also a little biased. We tend to think our baby is really cute! A few people have said that he was a Gerber baby, which is a nice compliment. They've even suggested that he be in baby contests, which I'm not really that hot for. Okay baby in arm. Will stop here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

While Alex struggles to stay awake and is wailing out his displeasure, I'll try to update a little bit on what's going on with us.

Alex has picked up a few new habits, one of which is actually really funny to watch. This usually happens when he's eating or tired, whereby he'll hold his hand up in front of his face, and then turn his hand back and forth slowly, wiggling a finger or two, and just studying it. Just completely fascinated by his control over his hand. It's the cutest thing to watch, and I doubt I'll ever get it on tape.

He's also grown accostumed to the camera/videocamera, or really petrified of it anyway. He has a tedency to just stop everything he's doing to look at the camera, and wait for it to flash or do something else. And being the cinematographer I am, I tend to get close and personal, often at eye-line, to get a good angle on the little guy. I worry a lot about blinding him with the camera flash so I try to limit my shots to 3, so I don't completely damage his pupils.

My wife and I had a busy day yesterday, just going around town to run errands and attend doctor appointments. She had a pregnancy appointment and Peanut's heartbeat seemed to be just fine. She then had an eye appointment which took over an hour, so Alex was practically climbing up my head. The aquarium in the doctor's office did provide adequate distraction for him, though. Although it must seem like such a tease for him to not be able to eat the fishies.

We went to Boss Tweed, because last year I took her to Boss Tweed before proposing to her. Alas, this year we're a little strapped for cash, so we didn't really get each other anything. I guess that's not a bad thing, considering she was gonna get me a shirt that said, "Property of my wife" or something. I don't mind being that, but announcing it is a little corny. Like wearing a cap that reads, "I'm my mother's son."

So today, I've just been chilling with the baby. Took him out for a walk and he seemed to drag his feet and just lay there, so I put him in a stroller instead. Ha ha. Right now he's tired but he doesn't want to take a nap in his crib. But I'll wait for a couple minutes. See if the fatigue sets in.

Sharing.

I feel like sharing about myself, I dunno, probably because I'm been feeling less like myself and more like a provider of sorts lately. I don't mind it too much, I just want people to know that I have a somewhat rich history behind me, all of which is interesting only to me and perhaps my wife on a otherwise boring Monday morning. But mostly because I'm just bored.

History

I was born September 25, 1976 in Singapore at KK hospital, the second and last son to my parents. By most accounts, I was a quiet boy, so much so that my Grandfather thought I had problems with my hearing or speech because I wasn't very vocal. Unlike a lot of people out there who like to claim that they remember specific events when they were 1, I am glad to inform everyone that I don't remember much of anything till I was much older, thus sparing you years of nostalgic recollections. The main memory of my childhood, unfortunately, has to do with my father in a very unpleasant manner. He was having an affair with a lady whom I called, "Auntie" (which is something we called elders, doesn't have to be relative) and he was using me as the perfect alibi. I had no idea of that concept, and just went along with it. When my mom found out, there were two frightening things that I had to witness. One was which my Mom was so upset that she threatened to jump out the 12th story window where we lived while arguing with my Dad, and another was a failed suicide attempt when she swallowed a lot of sleeping pills. I mean, this shit's sad, sure, but I hope that people realize that stupid and selfish adult behavior will stay in a child's mind forever. Of course, she survived, but her heart would never be mended again. She has given up on love, and doesn't really even care about finding romantic companionship.

I went to an all-boys school called St. Andrew's, and it was a Christian English speaking school. Now schools in Singapore were either English or Chinese speaking, and that decision has a lot to do with what I'm doing now. So, English became the primary learning language for me, and uneasiness with the opposite sex will probably follow me for the rest of my life, what having spent 14 years of my life in a boy's school. (A postscript - The Singapore government actually had to sponsor dating cruises for single people at some point because everyone was too career oriented, and families weren't happening.) I discovered that I was good at composition, making up stories and such. I was a relatively good kid - I got into trouble skipping school a few times, and tripping some random kid once. He was running and it was just one of those stupid "What would happen if I..." things. I got away with it because I had no prior behaviorial problems plus, it was a completely random kid. Didn't know him, and I claimed it was an accident.

St. Andrew's was a fairly strict school, uniforms, short haircuts, watches had to be plain, shoes had to be white, behavior had to be inpeccable. I wasn't particularly good at sports, didn't like bugs, wasn't social nor popular, wasn't academically inclined, and didn't get picked on because the few times I did, I stood up for myself. The way the grades worked was pretty discriminating. It was Primary 1, 2, and so on until Primary 6, and then you went on to Secondary 1 to 4. Now, Primary classes had A, B, and C. If you were in Primary 2A, you were smart. Primary 2B, not so much. When you took the Primary 6 finals, dubbed something frightening that I don't remember (I do remember my mom being disappointed but me being relieved that I didn't flunk out), you were placed into Normal and Express streams. I was in the Normal stream, which doesn't sound terrible until you are informed that there are only 2 Normal classes for each grade, and about 9 Express ones. Normal was a nice word for "Remedial". Plus the fact that we had to do five years more and Express classes did just four, well, our class pretty much behaved the way they pigeonholed us to behave. We were a rowdy bunch, but I was still the quiet one. I got a little more popular after people noticed that I was kinda a funny guy, but it was always through someone else's mouth. The kid sitting next to me was a loudmouth, and his name was Kuang BingRong. Basically the way it worked would be I told him the joke, he'd laugh and tell everyone else the joke. Always the ghostwriter.

Then my mom won the lottery. It was an immigration lottery that permitted a certain number of people to migrate to the United States with their families, and we got in. We had no intention of going, really, since we already had a flat that was paid for, and my mom had a decent gig tutoring kids and helping run a elementary school. But my Mum was so concerned about our suffering education that she wanted a better chance for us, even though in retrospect we would've done just fine in Singapore. So she left her families and brought us over here to the States. She chose Seattle because one of the maids of the students she tutored had married to an American guy, and they lived in Renton, WA. My brother came for a month, but had to return to Singapore to serve in the National Service, because he was older and was nearing the draft age. He would live by himself for 2 and a half years.

FYI, don't ever displace a 14 year old teenager into a different country and drop them into a co-ed high school - it messes them up. I would go into my angry teenage years now, but that should fulfill my desire to share for a while. Don't worry, Alex will probably not see this part of the blog. I'm guessing 50 percent of the stuff will not be seen. Hmm, for a baby blog, I sure don't talk much about the baby... sorry!

Mondays and Tuesdays are the toughest days for me, and perhaps I'm just being particular for no reason, but these two days are just exhausting and depressing for me. Basically, I would work the entire day, and then come home and see my wife for about 5 minutes, and then she would go to work till 11pm. Aside from missing her tremendously, I also have to watch Alex - which isn't bad at all, except that it's the end of the day for him as well, and he's tired, a little fussy, and I'm tired, wanting to just relax and do nothing. Actually, it's the complete opposite. When I come home from work, I usually want to do something semi productive, or at least intellectually stimulating. The television isn't a good outlet for me honestly - It aggravates me half the time to have to put up with it. Alex was pretty good tonight, but it sure was difficult trying to even talk on the phone with my brother. He'd grab the cord and try to ingest it, and then get increasingly animated because it won't stay in his mouth...

So, that's his stage now. Grabbing anything he can get his tiny fingers on and trying to put it in his mouth. His other thing, which he started his morning, is sucking on his tongue. At least that's what we think he's trying to do.

He would pucker his lips and make a sucking sound, and the looks of it is pretty adorable. Like he just hit up a lemon or something.

Well, he's asleep now. I have the rest of the night to myself to relax! Whoopee!

Lots have happened in the past week since the latest video post, but since any attempt to recount all the moments would result in my head exploding, I'll just mention the mentionables.

It's been a stressful week for us, mostly because of money issues. With the lack of child support and the hospital and insurance costs creeping up on us, we had a mini crisis this last week and had it not been for my Mom, we would not have groceries this week either. Even the words "WIC" and "Food Bank" were flirted with -- Alex is always provided for, but we were actually close to toughing it out this week. Hopefully, this'll blow over and money management will be a little more organized. As it is, there will be the sound of bouncing checks.

But on the brighter side of things, I got a lot accomplished over the weekend. We went to see my mom and brother and sister-in-law for a one day trip, and I even got to go to a Mac store. It was all quite nice, and I didn't even feel the urge to desire any newer models. But man, the iPod is worth lusting over. Just the access to all those songs, even though you just have one set of ears.

Apparently while we were at the mall and my Mom and my sister-in-law was home watching Alex, he cried and cried a bunch. Seems like stranger anxiety has set in, but I reassured my Mom because when we came home and Alex fell asleep, he giggled in his sleep and smiled in his dreams. The last time he did that was when my Mom stayed here. That boy sure loves his grandma.

Today was a day of accomplishments as well. Waking up at eight and JL was buried in The Sims, which is kinda nice because it was a birthday present well spent, but at the same time kinda not nice because she'd totally drop any dialouge at all. You'd ask her something and she would just not answer you, or start to answer but just stop. I fixed the sound on the Windows XPee downstairs, but could not share the broadband connection with my brother's DSL router because that stupid machine downstairs doesn't have an ethernet port. Boo. My iMac's about 2 years younger than that monkey of a machine and it has an Ethernet, Firewire, USB... No Floppy Drive, but have done okay without one anyway. Anyway, enough computer stuff.

My wife was in a quirky mood tonight -- she made me laugh when Franklin, our gray fatty kitty was scratching on the floor. My wife stomped her foot to get him to stop, then got out of the chair and swung at the cat with her sleeves. She had retracted her arms from her shirt, so the sleeves were just flapping around. Stuff like that just makes me happy.

Oh, did taxes. Hate taxes, especially with a business. It would be ironic (but not funny) if this auditor was audited. Thinking strongly about shutting down the videography business, while ironically, am authoring a DVD for a friend at work who may donate to my cause for my troubles. She has an old VHS from the 80s - iffy quality, but I cleaned it up a little. Boy, the VHS sleeve is made from thick cardboard, and the cassette itself is heavy. Weird to see products get cheaper and less durable.

Well, enough rambling for now. Work tomorrow...

Bleah.