Glorious Poop and Pee

Oh man, what a day!!! I have to thank Daddy in a Strange Land and the fellow gang first of all for visiting us in the hospital after we had the baby. It was nice to see them and their kids. I can't even tell you how amazing it is to have a baby, and to hold your baby in your arms for the first time. In addition, it was insane to see my wife push that baby out of you know where, and I can tell you I did not know you could fall more in love with a person, but I truly have even more amounts of admiration, respect, and love for her.

Anyways, it really hit me hard that I was actually a father when we got home from the hospital. It was a rush, but at the same time totally surreal. We wanted to try our hardest to breasfeed only, but only small amounts of colustrum were coming out. We should have known it suspicious when our baby was hardly putting out any wet diapers. Of course, when we went in to see the pediatrician this morning, our poor little baby had lost significant weight and was jaundice. As a family practitioner, I should have seen all this, but I have been so exhausted and run down, I just figured it was all because our boy is Asian, which is partly true. Anyways, we had to go the hospital to draw labs, and meet with the Lactation consultant. My wife then had a breakdown since she felt like she was trying her hardest to feed the baby, but her nipples were on fire like someone poured tobasco sauce on them, and the baby was now dehydrated and jaundice. Fortunately, we got some great tips from the lactation consultant, and we headed for home to supplment the breasfeeding with formula. Thank goodness that when we started doing this, our kid started to have more wet diapers and stool. I almost broke down and cried out of happiness seeing the stained diapers each time. After using the Lanolin cream and improving the latch, my wife's nipples started to feel less painful, and our baby is chilling with his bilirubin UV lighs at home.

Anyways, it was a lesson in humility and education. I know that while I can read all the textbooks I want, it won't help until I actually go through the experience and understand it from a personal point of view. Our little yellow baby is doing better, and is having glorious poop and pee making his dad proud!!!

*psst...*

Hey, RakuMon... Don't tell anyone I told you, but...

You're now officially Rice Daddies' designated "expectant" dadblogger.

*shhh....*

Okay, yeah, I know I shouldn't steal his thunder, but I'm too happy, so I gotta let y'all know that our own Dr. Lo Siento is a daddy now! OBmommy [hey, he never gave her a nom de blog, so they can change it later] gave birth to a healthy baby boy at 2:11 this morning. Both mom and baby are doing well [as is the big poppa].

Speaking of "big"...

The little dude weighed in at 8 lbs, 4 oz, and was 21 inches long! If you've ever seen a photo of Dr. Lo, you'll understand why I'm expecting, shall we say, an abundant cranium on the child. Heh. We get to meet him tonight!

Welcome to the world, little buddy! And welcome to the club, Doc. Your world ain't never gonna be the same....

Our Obsession with Pandas

I think I can safely say that my wife and I are obsessed with pandas. It was actually an obsession she learned from me years ago. When we started dating, I'd buy her little stuffed pandas and birthday cards with pandas. Pretty much, pandas all around.

Nakko has always loved cute, round, chubby animals anyway (that's why she married me!), so it was natural she'd take a liking to the pandas I brought into her life. For me, I've been a fan since I was an infant. My first stuffed animal was a panda named Radar.

Anyway, two years ago, panda fever gripped the whole country when baby Tai Shan was born at the National Zoo, which is about 45 minutes from us. For months after Tai was born, Nakko and I would spend hours on end watching the Zoo's panda cam. I can’t even begin to count the number of hours of productivity that were lost between the two of us in the summer of ’05. I think it was at that time we decided we could be parents. Watching Mei Xiang -- the panda mama -- cuddling and nursing that tiny, hairless baby, I guess we figured "how hard could it be?"

On a serious note, we thought it was a nice bit of kismet when we learned my wife's due date would be July 9, 2007 -- which would be Tai Shan's second birthday. Learning that cosmic coincidence was a little bittersweet, though, when we realized Tai was set to be returned to China on his second birthday. What to do?! Kiki will never be able to meet her spiritual “brother from another (species’) mother!”

Well, fortunately, the National Zoo and the Chinese government are negotiating an agreement to let Tai Shan stay a little longer. He’s guaranteed to stay until at least the fall, which is good news for us because we can bring Kiki to the zoo when she’s a few months old. We only hope she’ll be able to remember the trip.

The Lost Secrets of Traditional Asian Whole Steamed Fish

I love to cook. Asian, Italian, American, it doesn't matter - I love to cook. One of the most delicious and easiest dishes in the world is traditional Asian whole steamed fish with ginger and scallions. Yet, every recipe I've seen on the Internet and in cook books neglect several key points which often lead to a bland, dry dish. Even my mom has forgotten the secrets, I know that because she started asking ME how to cook this dish after sampling my fish.

So I figured it's best to share the secrets and spread the word. Forget that this dish is healthy and good for kids, it's downright delicious, better than the best steak I ever had when done right! My kids love it.

OK, first the basics. It follows what nearly every recipe calls for - a fresh whole fish, scallions & ginger, soy sauce and a steamer. You can definitely add a few more ingredients and I can offer my opinion on that but later. However, the dish will suck unless you remember these key points:

1) The fresh fish - even if it was alive and swimming, that isn't enough. The flavorful sauce you get from steaming fish comes from the blood. Yes, the blood of the fish is key! So remember this, never let them cut off the fins, never buy pre-gutted fish (it's the worse!), the blood will drain out and you will have a tasteless piece of cardboard to eat. I go as far as to gut the fish myself at the last minute to reduce fluid loss. Fresh frozen and thawed whole fish can be just as good as a more expensive living fish.

2) Undercook the fish. That's not quite the same as saying don't overcook it. When you remove the dish from the steamer the fish should still be a bit raw at the spine. The way to check is to use a knife to cut along the spine and see if the flesh parts from bone and if the bones are still translucent (raw). A regular 2lb fish like bass or tilapia requires only like 8-9 minutes of cooking. Just make sure the fish is fresh. (Thinner or thicker fish require different times based on weight - experiment and write down the cooking times, fish is good for you.)

3) That final splash of hot oil on scallions. Ah how I dread having to heat up the oil so hot it's steaming. After the fish is cooked, pile on the chopped or julienned scallions (ack a guy using the word julienne!) on the fish and pour the scalding oil on top. Always be careful, this is why I cook fish and not my wife who wants to avoid getting burned - use mitts. But the hotter the better to release the scallions' flavor into the sauce. And be generous on the oil.

You know why whole fish is better than filets? Because the head, bones and skin add flavor, the blood adds flavor. The best part of the fish is the fatty belly meat (just be careful not to break open the gall bladder when you gut the fish). Steamed fish on top of rice with sauce on top is just awesome.

My personal recipe uses the white parts of the scallion stalks as a rack to to lay the fish on top of (this let's the bottom of the fish cook faster). My sauce is 4 parts light soy, 2 part dark soy, a little sugar, 1 part Shao Xing rice wine and a dash of sesame oil which I pour over the fish to marinate prior to steaming. Ginger is placed on the skin and in the gut of fish, the chopped scallions are for later. I don't like making diagonal cuts on the fish to let it cook faster - blood will leak out of the flesh. Lot's of people add garlic or black beans and other stuff - all good as long as you follow the secrets!

Enjoy, maybe next time I will share my award winning Chili recipe!

I Got Mad Cash. Who Needs Some Money?

Every now and then, I come across a big crapload of money. Whenever that happens, I just take what I need and I give away the rest. Over the years, I've learned that money is like food. It's perishable, so you gotta give away what you can't spend. When you need more, it'll just come to you. Don't ask me how this works. It just does...

Recently, I came across another crapload of cash. After taking what I needed, I started looking around for people who could use the rest of it. Needless to say, I hit a few charities, including the SoulSnax Diversity in Media Challenge cuz these kids need it the most.

Then I found Prosper.com. It's like the eBay of "people-to-people lending." From my experience so far, it looks like a great alternative to my 3-year ING Direct CDs (Current APY: a measly 5%). On Prosper, I'm earning an average of 16.5% on a diverse array of person-to-person loans. I've spread out my risk by contributing $50 here and there to a variety of folks at varying interest rates, based upon their individual credit ratings. The typical borrower will pay about a 17% interest rate to consolidate credit card debt of 25% or more. It's a win-win for lenders as well as borrowers.

What does this have to do with giving money away? Well, I was in a good mood one day, so I set out to find me a Rice Daddy on the Prosper site who could use some cash. Preferably a high-risk borrower, cuz those are the folks who need it most. The interest rates they get rarely fall below 25%. Ouch. That's pretty steep.

I eventually found this one Filipino-American guy who was an army veteran looking to borrow $5000. He needed it to cover the hospital bills of his new preemie baby. He had been laid off, but recently found employment at a lower salary. I offered as much as I could, at 1% interest. If he paid me back, great. If not, no biggie. Unfortunately, not enough lenders pitched in before the proposal expired, so the deal didn't go through. I was bummed, and if I could, I'd track him down and throw him a few bucks. Oh well...

Luckily for my philanthropic ego, I discovered a new feature on the site called "Community Payment" which allows you to contribute $25 or more to any folks in danger of defaulting on their loans. I picked a couple of these "deadbeats" and donated some money to cover their late payments. I entered a short inspirational message, and hit SEND. Then I paused to savor that warm fuzzy feeling inside. :)

Then today I was thinking, wouldn't it be great if enough of us RiceDaddies could get together and pitch in the next time one of our brothas needed a helping hand? What do y'all think? Post your thoughts in the comments.

Blocked, cuz of all the #$%^%^$@!, you ^%#^@*^&!

My wife just emailed me from her work. Apparently, her employer's much-threatened internet-use monitoring program has begun, and when she tried to check Rice Daddies this morning, she got this instead:

Access Denied
The requested document, http://www.ricedaddies.blogspot.com/, will not be shown.

Reason: DDR score = 54. This page will not be displayed because it contains prohibited words or it has exceeded its tolerance of questionable words.

Thanks a lot, a$$h*les! Heh.

UPDATE: Okay, so I googled DDR filtering and found this explanation: "DDR stands for Dynamic Document Review. It is a software filter, which "looks" at all sites before they are displayed on your computer. After the site is compared to the known lists, if it is not found it is scanned and given a numerical "score" based on its content. If this score exceeds a certain threshold, the site will automatically be blocked." So I don't know what her work's threshold number is (or what the fuck it's based on), but obviously, it's at least 54. So what does it mean?

It means this: Day-um, you Asian parents are nasty! Cuz apparently, of all of my wife's usual between-patients mix of parent- and food-blogs, besides RD, only these other blogs got blocked by her work's new internet content filter:

MetroDad, score of 56; Halfmama, score of 100; and Mama Nabi, score of 1-fricking-60! HA! So much for that model minority shit....

Any Day Now

I can't believe my wife is at 38 weeks now and the baby could be born any day. She is still growing and her breasts are getting more sore. She says she is feeling like a ripe fruit ready to go. Haha, don't ask me why I wrote that, but she says it a lot to me. The nursery is about done, and we are just waiting for some last minute furniture items. Everytime I get a call from her at work on my cellphone, I answer wondering if it is the call of "I'm in labor, come home quick!!!" In the fashion of fellow blogger Henri, here are possible scenarios:

Me: This is my hand and this is the speculum
Female Patient: Ouch, are you supposed to be in my rectum?
Me: Oh gees, sorry, umm, let me reposition the speculum.
Female Patient: You're doing a pap smear right?
Me: That's right, I got it now.
(My Phone Vibrates)
Me: Oh gees, hold on.
Female Patient: Umm, can you hurry, this is a litle uncomfortable.
Me: Hold on, (I answer the phone), Hello honey
Wife: Honey, hurry, I just broke my bag of water
Me: Woo hoo, I am on my way!
(I hang up phone, which then slips out of my hand into the patient's vagina)
Female Patient: What was that?
Me: Umm, this is a new medical device which checks the cervix.
Patient: Is it supposed to vibrate?
(Patient squeezes thighs together and shoots out the cellphone hitting me in the forehead.(okay, that really can't happen, but let's pretend))
Me: Got to run, wife in labor, laters.

Other scenario:
Me: Okay, this will be a quick prostate/rectal exam.
Male patient: Oh man, I hate this part of the exam.
Me: Trust me, its not the most favorite part of my job. Okay, here we go.
(My right finger in patient's rectum, cellphone goes off. I try grabbing phone with left hand)
Me: Hello honey.
Male patient: Hey, your finger is still in my butthole.
Me: Hold on one second and take some deep breaths or something.
Wife: Honey, come home quick, I broke my bag of water.
Me: Oh gees, I'll be right there.
(I try to close phone and it drops and I stupidly try to pick it up smashing my face into patient's hairy butt cheek)
Male patient: Hey, what are you doing?
Me: Um, I am trying to listen for your heartbeat in your buttcheek. Its a new physical exam test. Your prostate feels fine and good buttcheek heartbeat, but shave the hair. Gotta run.
(Patient farts and blows my finger out!!!)

Anyways, of course, these are worse case scenarios. Let's hope my wife goes into labor late at night while I am at home, but I guess you just never know. Either way, we are totally excited and just hope for a quick and least painful labor. Its the beauty of the epidural!!!

Going to be a New Daddy

Coincidentally, I'm also the newest Rice Daddy.

Before I get started, I must thank daddy in a strange land for letting me play in your sandbox. Also, shout out to Instant Yang for turning me on to the site in the first place and planting the idea in my head that I could lay out all my joys and insecurities about being a prospective parent on this site.

As for myself, I'm a 29-year old Chinese American originally from VA and now reppin' outside B-more, MD. My wife of five years (this April!), Nakko, is originally from Japan, and we're expecting our first child in July. The other member of the family is a 12-year old border collie/lab mix named Spaz (who, by the way, was kind enough to let me link to his blog on the contributors' list. Thanks, Spaz!).

So far, we've had a very interesting first six months of the pregnancy. First off, Nakko was in Japan visiting her family when she found out. The day she was supposed to fly home, my wife called to say that she had delayed her flight because she had gotten sick and was too nauseous to sit on a plane for 19 hours. When she first told me I wasn't that concerned since I figured it was just something she ate and she'd just feel better in a few days. I also thought the idea of getting back on a plane probably contributed to her illness -- my wife loathes flying and would much rather travel using Doraemon's dokodemo door.

I called my parents to let them know about Nakko's delay, and my mom joked "maybe she's pregnant." In a truly GMTA moment, Nakko's mother in Japan had the same idea and brought home a pregnancy test. The rest, as they say, is history. A history I'll be telling you all about in upcoming posts.

The last thing I'll leave you with is this quote from a good friend of mine. The sentiment simultaneously moves me and scares me silly. We decided early on that we wanted to know the gender of our child (we don't really like surprises), and were excited to learn my wife was carrying our daughter inside her belly. My friend, Shafeeq -- who has three daughters of his own, so naturally, I asked him for advice -- said this to me:

"You will be the first man your daughter will fall in love with, so take the responsibility seriously."

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

I hope the folks here won't mind if a share a proud papa moment. As I wrote before, Number One Monster is a Little League baseball player. Unfortunately he didn't get drafted up into the higher division as we hoped so we were a bit disappointed. But on the otherhand maybe it let's him play a much bigger role in his lower division team.

His new team was hurting for pitchers and catchers and previously my son didn't want to pitch or catch but decided to give both a go again to help the team. I was proud that it was a good change in attitude, previously he stuck to hitting and didn't want to try something new.

So we had our first scrimmage game this weekend. Bottom of the 4th, my son comes up with the bases loaded. WHAM line drive to the fence - a grand slam inside-the-park homerun! His first home run too. Team is really excited and it was fun to see but I'm keeping a level head here. He was already a good hitter and inside-the-park homeruns are fairly common in Little League. But my wife and I let him know we were proud of him.

Well, the inning ends and now it's time for my son to pitch in his very first game ever. I'm more nervous here because kids always have trouble throwing strikes. Last season he saw his teammate use curveballs to fool the batters and so on his own he made up an offspeed pitch. Now most kids in minors Little League have only one pitch because the important thing is to just throw strikes. That pitch is a fastball (which for many isn't very fast at all. Fortunately, my son has decent velocity on his.) In practice, he threw his loopy offspeed for more strikes than his fastball so I was thinking this could work out well.

And it sure worked out because kids his age are badly fooled by mixing up fastballs with offspeed pitches. They can't figure out which pitch is coming in. One poor kid thought a fastball was coming, lunged out three feet in front of the plate and already finished his swing before my son's slow offspeed pitch bounced slowly past him. We coaches couldn't help laughing. Result - 3 strikeouts! (And he plunked one poor kid with a wild fastball.) What was really cute was my son took the initiative and worked out the signs with his catcher. My wife even caught that, she saw him nodding to the catcher on every pitch and noticed the catcher giving signs. Priceless!

So now he is really pumped up and we're all looking forward to a fun season. Thanks for indulging me all! :D

Book Review Contest Winners' Round-Up

So a whole bunch of last month's book review contest winners have obliged my request for reviews of the books they received from Kane/Miller Book Publishers. Below I'm posting links to reviews posted on winners' own blogs, and below that I'm putting up reviews sent directly to us. I hope that these reviews inspire you to check out their globe-spanning catalog of American, English-language editions of children's books originally published in other countries and add them to your children's collection.

Superha's review of Kali and the Rat Snake by Zai Whitaker (India)

Rachel's review of Who's Hiding? by Saturo Onishi (Japan)

Eliaday's review of The Zoo by Suzy Lee (South Korea)

Kim's review of The Story of Cherry the Pig by Utako Yamada (Japan)

Honglien123's review of The Mats by Francisco Arcellana (Philippines)

Kerri Aldrich's review of New Clothes for New Year's Day by Hyun-Joo Bae (South Korea)

Naomi on Naomi Kojima's Singing Shimiji Clams (Japan):
I was afraid this book might be too long to hold my three year old's attention, but it cracked her up. It's the story of a witch who buys some clams for her miso soup but has misgivings about cooking them and ends up having them sing for their supper, so to speak. She has a cranky cat who eventually learns to love the clams, too, and they take them back to the sea where everyone is happier. As someone who has a problem with choosing lobsters at restaurants, the theme was very familiar. We heartily enjoyed the story. Thanks, Rice Daddies and Kane Miller!

Christina on Yoon-duck Kwan's My Cat Copies Me (South Korea):
Hey, thanks to Kane/Miller Books for making us all winners. I received the book "My Cat Copies Me" by Yoon-duck Kwan, also the illustrator. It is a story about a little girl (though it could have been about a little boy since it was written in such an open, generic manner) and her kitty cat. It is a sweet story about the connection and bond between the child and her pet, they are friends and do everything together, they play, explore, hang out, and support each other. The illustrations are beautiful with a delicate, soft look to it. They are colorful and bright but not garishly so. I look forward to sharing this with my daughter when she is old enough to handle soft pages in a book.

Mommy de Gallo on Ho-Baek Lee's While We Were Out (South Korea):
We received our copy of "While We Were Out" by Ho Baek Lee. It came at a very nice time in our lives, as my daughter is starting to develop relationships with our own two pets. This simple story is about a pet (?) rabbit that explores the house while it's owners are out. Funny enough, all of the things the rabbit does in the home are things that my daughter also enjoys. The simple story, and lovely illustrations are just right to capture the imagination. This story has opened up my child's mind as to what exactly our cat and dog are up to when we leave the house? I know that they just lie around and sleep, but she is using her imagination to create stories about the games they are playing, and blaming them when her toys are misplaced. Thank you Rice Dadies for a great book!