I had to throw away a cloth diaper today. It was used only once, but soiled so nastily with the blackest, goopiest mess imaginable, and so it had to go.
Contender for Best Brand Name of All Time
See? The baby really is lucky! I went to buy a case of water at a farmer’s wholesale mart and stumbled onto the grand mother of unfortunate branding – Golden Shower Brand Sugar!
“For the perverted diabetic in you!”
I just appreciate that they seemingly got the trademark (TM) – then again, in most parts of Asia, sometimes a marking is just a marking so – maybe they just claim to have the trademark. It’s time for someone to jump on this opportunity; the Golden Shower name must expand across cultural boundaries and product lines alike!
Good Morning, Morning Glory
The phantom wireless signal never returned after I lost it last night before knocking out, so I’m taking time between washing new cloth diapers at home to post these.
BTW, the baby has expressed extreme distaste for automatic transmissions AND front wheel drive – what a little purist!. Lucky for him I have the Crown..
UPDATE: I just realized that last sentence might be a bit misleading – Nam and the baby are staying in the hospital for at least a few more days. I’m at home doing chores while Nam’s little sis helps watch the baby. Nam seems to be healing nicely since the operation yesterday. She was able to get up and walk a little today after they took out the IV and catheter.
Baby is not nursing yet. I can make him stop crying on command – “Hey Poopy Pants! Stop crying!!” Just kidding, he stops because he loves me. Fear shouldn’t be necessary until he starts playing with electrical outlets and stuff.
This baby is good luck.
Today the baby was born and I got a small tax return from the Japanese government that I was waiting for for two years. What are the odds?
Plus, this amazing phantom wifi access point kind of fades in whenever I really NEED a connection, but is invisible the rest of the time.
Let’s see… born on 6/18 at 18:06 (UPDATE: Today is of course 4/18, not 6/18. Hey, give me a break – there was a lot happening. Maybe not to me directly, but there was a lot happening.). There’s definitely some lucky lotto number action happening there, or something.
We got into a VIP suite of sorts here at the hospital because of Nam’s nurse friends. I’m in a decently sized air-conditioned room with a sofa, fridge, shower room, and TV, and Nam is sleeping with the baby in the adjoining room. Nam’s little sister is keeping watch on the sofa in there. Their room is a lot warmer than in here because the baby needs to be acclimatized to the temperature outside mommy’s womb a little at a time. He likes sucking on his fingers, since Nam has been told to hold off nursing him until the doctor can give her a thorough check up tomorrow. Ah, hell, who am I kidding? He would like to suck on his fingers anyway… Or I would, at least (on mine, not his).
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Baby and mommy (kinda goofy from double morphine spinal block):
Already drinking shots:
Hates wearing socks, just like his dad:
Oh no, we’ve turned into a baby blog.
Here lies the earliest known picture of baby Yoshida, taken in a dimly lit hallway with a cameraphone (He’s being held by a nurse taking him to the nursery.).
Baby Update
The baby and Nam are fine.
He is 2,500 grams of red-faced crying glory. I put my hand on his head and he immediately stopped and went to sleep.
Life is good.
Thanks for all your prayers!
The Baby Cometh
Just a quick notice: Nam’s water has broken.
I am sitting in a VIP post-op room by myself, as I am not allowed in the maternity ward. This hospital has a strange policy of not allowing husbands into the delivery rooms. It’s a policy we came asking about just yesterday in anticipation of the baby’s target date of May 11. It’s this policy that started us planning on checking out hospitals in the big city of Khon Kaen, an hour away.
We were going to go this weekend, when a doctor we saw before is on duty. Hell, we were talking about going today after lunch. Then her water broke. I threw the go-bags in the trunk, helped her in the car, and we were off. On the way to the hospital I told her we had plenty of time to get to Khon Kaen if she wanted to do it there, but that’s not what she wanted so we are here at Mahasarakham Hospital.
My son is positioned buttocks-first, so there really is no choice for a first-time mother, he will have to be delivered by Caesarean (linguistic note: they call it a “Caesar” here). When we got here, Nam was dilated 1cm. That was around 90 minutes ago. It is maddening to not be in the loop here. However, there is an upside for us. Nam has many friends here, bith nurses and doctors. One of them has promised to get me in to see her in about ten minutes (14:30). So I’ m sitting here cooly describing what has happened to this point, but actually feeling quite anxious about my wife and her upcoming procedure, scheduled for 6:00PM. The reason they are waiting so long, apparently, is that they have to wait for lunch to digest.
There, now you know everything that I do. I will update as things happen, but will post this when I go home to pick up some things later this afternoon. It will reside on my desktop as an rtf file until then.
Oh, by the way, I am so glad we decided to eat at home today instead of going out as planned.
UPDATE: I’m picking up a very weak wifi signal around here. I’m going to go look for it.
Related Childrearing Links
From the department of overprotection:
Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone
The Incredible Shrinking World
Scenes from a University Van
From our road trip to Pattaya a couple weeks ago.
If you love frogs, you probably shouldn’t read the latter half of this post, but I’m not hiding it in the extended entry, either. Do or do not, there is no try, as it were.
(as always, click on any photo to open a larger version in a pop-up window)
This post goes out to my brother Adam, who definitely might be man enough to eat skewered frogs after a few beers (although we did it sober here). The one I pulled apart in the tissue shown above was pregnant, so the blurry black and white dots are eggs. Actually, the pregnant frogs were more expensive than the non-preggers (30 Baht/stick vs. 20 Baht/stick).
I’m going to preempt any “the trees are screaming” complaints at this time by pointing out that this is normal fare for hunters and gatherers, which many of the indigents here are.
I will also go on record that these frogs do not taste like chicken. They do not taste too bad, though… That is, they don’t really taste of anything, really – it tastes like you are eating a rich, fatty protein, if that makes any sense. Maybe like a roasted shishamo, but not as delicious. I will admit that it took a bit of courage to eat one. After all, it was the same kind of frog I found in my shoe a while ago (called un-an in Thai).