Oklahoma Adventure Part II, et al

Well, shoot. I procrastinate updating for a few days and now I have a million more things to update about. Hope you're feeling like reading a lot today...

First and foremost, a comparison:

Dane

Me

My Dad

Do you see a resemblance? A couple of things are apparent. First, the Hood genes are strong. Second, I am apparently male-looking. Ha.

To fill you in on what I did while I was in Oklahoma, keep in mind that Dane was sick, so I wasn’t able to do too much. But we had fun nonetheless. The night I arrived, we had a little birthday party for Rika, and I was introduced to the Wii. This would lead to many more hours of fun. The next day, we did some shopping and went down to Norman to see Rika and Brady’s apartment. There I learned that I am not very good at Guitar Hero. Rika and Brady came back to Edmond to hang out and spend the night. The next day was filled with more shopping, and this is when Dane began to seem sick. Poor little guy. He was so miserable. Because Dane was sick, I wasn’t able to go to church and show him off. He had a fever and the runniest nose you’ve ever seen (unless you saw Joel this weekend). I figured it was just a cold he caught on the plane, but we took him to an Ear Nose Throat doctor in my parents’ ward just in case. He helped me feel a little more at ease knowing that it wasn’t an ear infection.

That night, I was visited by a house elf. Dane wouldn’t sleep in the pack and play, so he was sleeping in his car seat next to my bed with one small blanket so he wouldn’t overheat. I also had a humidifier going to help him breathe. When Dane woke up for the first of many times that night, I went to get him out of the car seat and discovered another blanket on him. “How did this blanket fall on him?” I wondered. I comforted him and put him back to go to sleep. A short while later, he woke up again. This time, the humidifier had turned off. I thought, “Maybe it has an automatic shutoff. But it didn’t turn off last night. Weird.” That’s when I noticed several damp hand towels draped around the room. I began to suspect my mom (she’s a big proponent of the draping damp hand towels), but I was sure I would have noticed if she’d come in. She told me later that she came in multiple times; I guess I was too tired to wake up. My mom, the house elf.

On Monday, I was able to see part of Mika’s orchestra concert at OU. I was impressed with how they sounded. Plus, I heard Mika’s little solo as principal cellist. Hooray! At Rika and Brady’s, I attempted more Guitar Hero but again proved my inadequacy. On Tuesday, we celebrated Kenta’s birthday and had a Big Brain Academy Tourney. I made it to the final standoff against Rika, but she prevailed. The prize was a Reese’s Whips candy bar that she didn’t want, so it fell by default to Brady. Ah, the blessings of marriage.

Meanwhile, everyone was getting sick. Rika had already been kind of sick, and she was getting worse. My dad was sick; he probably caught what Dane had. Then Kenta got sick. I’ve always heard that winter was the time to catch colds and the flu, but I always thought people kind of exaggerated because I hadn’t really experienced it. Well, here it was in full glory. I’ll never doubt again.

Wednesday was my last full day. I went on a walk with my dad, and we spent some quality time at home. Some of my siblings had planned on coming back that day, but illness convinced them otherwise. We had Pei Wei’s for dinner, with lettuce wraps. Oh man. The lettuce wraps. They make me so happy.

The next morning was pretty much filled with packing and getting ready to go. I ended up with so much for stuff than I came with. My parents were nice enough to offer to ship some things, but I was embarrassed at how much I had to ship. Once we arrived at the airport, it was pretty heartwrenching to have to deprive my parents of their only grandchild. Luckily, my flight was delayed again, offering them a few more precious moments. Here is a smattering of the fun they had together:

Luckily, they’ll see him again soon when they come out for Kenji’s recital. (I don’t know if that’s still supposed to be a surprise. I’m pretty sure he knows. I’m also pretty sure he doesn’t read my blog.)

Speaking of Kenji, here is a funny story. He’s hanging out in the HFAC, minding his own business, when someone comes up to him and says, “Hi, we just noticed you downstairs and we think you look perfect for a part in my friend’s senior capstone film project.”

“Um. Okay.”

“He’s in high school, and he writes science fiction and likes to draw. Will you come audition?”

“Um. Maybe.” Then, of course, the friends that were with him make him go audition just for laughs. He goes down, and they ask him, “What do you know about the part?”

“Um. He’s in high school, and he writes science fiction and likes to draw.”

“Yes! He also hates his little brother, who loves martial arts.”

“Okay.”

So he reads a few lines of the lamest script he’s ever seen. They have him write out a list of his performing experience, where he puts that he’s performed with Brand X Comedy, he was in his fourth grade production of Oklahoma!, he plays the French Horn (very well), and he can talk like Barry White. All of these things are true. The little, half-Japanese redhead can indeed sounds like Barry White. That makes me laugh.

Anyway, they email him back, telling his he’s perfect for the part. He declines. I told him he’s missing out on his big break, but he doesn’t believe me. I thought that was a great story. And doesn’t this so-called senior capstone sound an awful lot like Napoleon Dynamite? Hm…

Book Tag

I was tagged by Tess. Here are the rules:

Find the book closest to you with at least 123 pages.
Turn to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

I am sitting near our bookshelf, making me equidistant from hundreds of books. I thought this would be a problem until I saw that one had been left on the floor, Mongo: Adventures in trash by Ted Botha.

“Suddenly the whole tone changed,” he says, “and she became extremely defensive and guarded. She said, ‘I wouldn’t feel comfortable about that. This isn’t your story anymore.’”

Ooooh. What does it mean??

I tag LJ, Kristen, Melissa, Rachelle, and Laci

Also, I guess I’m supposed to plug a good book I’ve read recently. It is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I don’t recommend it to everyone because it is definitely a PG-13, but it was remarkably well written. It better be; it won the Pulitzer Prize. I give it a 9.5 out of 10. Here is the first paragraph

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce’s study, ‘Gender Identity in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites,’ published in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or maybe you’ve seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That’s me on page 578, standing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes.” Interesting, huh?

Last but certainly not least, I present the first blogged video of Dane. Enjoy!

Oklahoma Adventures

First of all, thank you to all who contributed advice for helping Dane sleep better. Although I am still working on making sure we have a good sleep routine and schedule, I suddenly became aware of what is perhaps a significant reason he’d been waking up so many times during the night.

Teeth!

Yes, at 4½ months, he is the proud cultivator of two budding teeth. As a result, he is chomping a lot, and he doesn’t hate the pacifier right now. In fact, he will hold it and take it in and out of his mouth, getting a few satisfying chews in. I’m hoping he figures out that if he sucks consistently, he can keep it there. I’d be so relieved if that happened. Not just for the pacifier but because then he’d take a bottle, and I would have so much more freedom! Here’s hoping.

Anyway, we had many adventures getting to, being in, and returning from Oklahoma. As you know, I had been nervous about flying by myself with Dane. If you ask me how it went, I will think about it and say that it really wasn’t too bad; in fact, it went pretty well. But if I think a little harder, I will realize that almost everything that could possibly go wrong did indeed go wrong.

We got to the airport in plenty of time, and we said our goodbyes to Joel. He was in for a lonely week (extra thanks to Heather & Ryan and Stephen & Meghan for feeding him and giving him company.) I find out that my flight is delayed 30 minutes. No problem. An hour later, the plane actually arrives, and we wait to be told we can board. Dane is pretty upset by now because I haven’t fed him because I wanted him to be hungry enough to nurse as we took off as I’d been advised to do. This obviously took longer than expected. Anyway, we get on the plane, they shut the door, and start to feed Dane. The captain says we won’t be leaving for a few minutes because of a minor repair that needs to be done. Shortly thereafter, he tells us that now there’s something wrong with the engine and we all have to get off the plane. The woman next to me, a kind woman from New Zealand, helps me cut in line to be one of the first to get rerouted because we were all missing our connections by then. Incidentally, the flight leaving from the gate next to us was also cancelled because the inflatable slide suddenly inflated there on the tarmac. I would have thought that was funnier if it wasn’t already such a stressful situation. Anyway, we finally board our other plane, and I’m relieved to find myself sitting next to a 10-year-old girl. She won’t take up as much space and won’t be able to try to sneak a peek at my breastfeeding Dane. Oh wait, she wants to trade seats with her Dad, a very broad-shouldered man. But he was actually very nice, and Dane did alright. He got a little fussy sometimes but was mostly pretty good. After this first flight, I didn't even try to feed him during takeoff and landing because Dane didn't seem fazed by the cabin pressurization. Swish.

Once I get to Denver, I have about 15 minutes until I board the next flight, and we find our gate easily. This time, I sat next to a nice man who joked about how he and Dane are both bald, but the flight ended up being pretty empty, so we all got our own row. This made things way easier. The man seemed disappointed that we changed rows. I wasn’t sure if I should be heartened or creeped out by that. Anyway, this time Dane was very chill and slept most of the way. Whew!

My entire family came to the airport to meet us, which was very fun. My mom and dad (Jiichan and Baachan to Dane) were so excited to see him. My dad wasn’t supposed to lift anything over ten pounds for a few more days after his heart procedure, so I tried my best to keep him from lifting Dane off his lap, but there is no stopping a grandfather holding his first grandchild. We celebrated Rika’s birthday when we got home that night. I will fill you in on more details about the trip in a later post.

Come Saturday, Dane had a fever and was fussier than normal. I’m pretty sure he caught something on the plane. Dang. He’d never been sick before, so it was a new adventure. His fever lasted through Monday, and he had coughing, sneezing, and a majorly runny nose. We awakened one morning, and I found Dane like this (brace yourself):

What a poor baby! It makes me want to cry just looking at this picture. He was such a trooper, though. He was understandably clingy and a little fussier than normal, but otherwise, he was such a good boy. Oh man. I may have to remove that picture.

Fast forward to the trip back to Utah. Again, we get to the airport in plenty of time. Jiichan and Baachan are very sad to see Dane go, and we are sad to leave them.

Again, my plane is delayed, this time by about an hour-and-a-half. I sat next to a very nice third- or fourth-generation Japanese-American man from Orange County. Although the plane was full, we were the lucky ones to have an empty seat between us. Dane pooped. See, because Dane only poops every five days, I was really not worried about him pooping on the plane. But he did. It seemed to be a really small one, and it didn’t really stink, so I figured I’d wait to change him until we landed; the flight was only an hour. The nice man and I chatted a lot, and Dane slept most of the time. Then, right as the captain announced that we were starting our descent, Dane pooped again. Again! This is unprecedented in the life of Dane. This time I knew I didn’t have the luxury of waiting, so I went to the back, and the flight attendant spread a blanket on the ground for me. Of course, the poop leaked onto his clothes. I had a spare outfit, but I hadn’t brought it to the back with me, and we were to the point where everyone was supposed to be back in their seats, so I took the bib off his neck and held it where the poop leaked onto his clothes and hoped that would work until we got to Denver. Once there, I changed his clothes and found out my connecting flight was delayed an hour. ‘sigh.’ But we get on our way, and I sit next to a nice woman who was happy to sit next to the baby. Dane sleep almost the entire time. We land in Salt Lake, I congratulate myself for surviving the trip, and Dane wakes up and throws up all over himself and me. That exhausted my supply of backup outfits. But if he was going to throw up, I guess that was a good time to do it. Then, we met up with a very excited Joel, our family once again reunited on a happy Valentine’s Day.

All in all, I discovered that people are really exceptionally nice when you’re traveling with a baby. People kept offering to hold my backpack or fold and unfold the stroller. Even the captain helped me a couple of times. The experience scored many points for humanity.

This is really long, so I’ll end there for now. Tune in next time for the actual stay in Oklahoma!

Overheard: Volume 1

I have a bit of an eavesdropping problem. I just have a habit of listening to other people's conversations, especially in restaurants. I never use what I hear for ill. Until now.
I have decided to broadcast some of the more ridiculous things I overhear as a result of my perpetual eavesdropping. Here is your first taste:

Joel and I got a buy one get one free coupon to a local burger place. Little did we know that it is apparently a hangout for old people in Sandy. (Side note: there is a Simpson's episode in which Homer is trying to gain weight to become morbidly obese and get on disability. He visits the quack doctor, Nick Riviera, who advised him to replace regular foods with extra caloric foods, like making sandwiches with poptarts. "Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon." This provides a good context for our trip to the burger place. Joel ordered what they call the "Hog Burger." It is a huge half-pound burger with grilled onions, but instead of a hamburger bun, they use two--yea, two--grilled cheese sandwiches, one with bacon inside and one with tomatoes. This is completely true. Joel ordered it for posterity. If we can have one after his arteries are coated by the age of 35. But I digress.)

There were two couples of senior citizens at the table behind us, and I was eavesdropping as they began discussing what they did for each other for Valentine's Day. Keep in mind that they're all 70+; one man had a terrible toupee and one woman had a neck brace. One couple reported that they didn't do anything for Valentine's. The man joked, "I didn't even realize it was Valentine's Day until she started French kissing me." The other woman (not his wife) said, "That would be a turnoff.
"The first time I tried that was with Grant. We stood out by the shed and stuck our tongues out as far as they would go. We got to the back of each other's tongues, and we both just got sick. He said, 'That's supposed to be fun?'"

I laughed the longest silent, stifled laugh I have for a long time.

Oklahoma is OK!

Who thought of that as a state motto? "We take pride in mediocrity." Silly.
This will be my final post before I leave for Oklahoma tomorrow. I might post while I'm there, but no guarantees. First, can I say that I am really freaking out about flying on a plane by myself with Dane? I know people have done it for years, and I know that it's probably not as bad as I'm stressing myself out about it, but I am still worried. I guess by this time tomorrow I'll be done with the first let anyway (yes, I have a layover).
I planned a trip home for multiple reasons:
1) My parents need to see their only grandchild
2) Kenta/Kendall and Mika have yet to meet him
3) We had a free ticket from when I bumped last year
4) Rika and Kenta have their birthdays during the time I'll be there
and then, unexpectedly,
5) My dad had a heart attack.
The onomatopoeia in Japanese for suddenly feeling scared is doki. I think that's a good word for that feeling you get when you hear startling news. No worries, though, he is doing fine. It was a medium strength heart attack, but the scans at this point say there was no damage. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm grateful. He is recuperating at home and needs rest. And then better diet and exercise. It was pretty scary, but things are as good as they could be considering he just had a heart attack.
Whew. That's bad news. Here are some pictures of Dane to lift the spirits.



So, Dane doesn't sleep so hot these days. But I'm utilizing the knowledge of the Baby Whisperer, and things are getting better, albeit slowly. I'm looking forward to the nights when I'll only have to get up once, or even none at all! It's weird to me that this happened way more often when he was two months old and that things aren't nearly as good now. But whatever. Soon he will be a well trained, sleeping boy. But all the same, I'd appreciate any advice you might have.