If you are expecting new articles of this blog, I am sorry...

Yes, I am sorry. I am not an English native speaker, so it is sometimes difficult for me to translate my articles from Chinese into English. If you can read Chinese, please visit the Chinese version of this blog, it updates constantly. As for this site, I will do my best to keep it up.

Are You Really Ready?

For those readers who want to have babies: Before you decide to have a baby, PLEASE CONSIDER FOLLOWING CONDITIONS (some of them might last for years):

* You might not have the right to sleep all night any more, because your baby might cry.

* You can’t go anywhere as you like. If you won’t take baby with you, you have find a babysitter; if you take baby with you, you must know that you won’t be able to eat, talk or play freely. And you never take a baby to watch movie.

* Baby cries loudly, and you are unable to make it stop, making you want to find a hole to hide (or bury it instead).

* Taking baby to somewhere, it vomit all over its clothes (and probably your clothers), or worse, pee or sxxx.

* Forget about travelling lightly; you must take at least one bag of baby stuff with you.

* There is no difference whether you travel by bus, train, plane, or drive a car yourself. You have to buy a special seat for the baby if you drive a car; and you better check if the baby was left in your car when you lock the car.

* You became invisible; everybody who knows you have a baby won’t care about you anymore. They will only ask: “How is your baby?”

* You never go out late to have fun.

Well, what do you think? Are you really ready? Consider it seriously, because you can’t just dump a baby like a dog or a cat. (Though I am againt dumping a dog or a cat when you don’t want it.)

Building Self-confidence on babies

Becoming father for almost seven months, I found an interesting fact: Adults tend to prove themselves usful through the reaction of babies.

It is funny that when adults find babies have good reaction toward them, they tend to think themselves special. Therefore when I took Samuel with me, I usually heard: “He (Samuel) is smiling at me!” These people are not serious inclined to the attitude I mentioned above. But I am sure you do seeing some people referring themselves as “baby-killers”. In their opinion, what all parents did were wrong, only they are right; if a baby wouldn’t stop cring, they would grab the crying baby as fast as they could and hold it as fast as they could because “only they knew how to make a baby stop crying”.

How about me? I think I do have a little inclination. Basically, if Samuel stopped crying while I hold him, I would feel happy; if he kept crying, I felt upset.

Man are afraid of failure, I guess. Therefore even only making a baby stop crying make a man feel successful.

P.S. An advice to those with obvious inclination: Show some respect to the parents. Even you are facing first-time parents, please don’t act like you are knowing-everything-about-babies. You were once a first-timer, after all.

The Beginning (1): The Most Imperfect thing About Marriage

Believe it or not, I dreamed of a family since I was a kid, a home that glows yellow lights, looks warm and cosy. So when I finally prepared to get married, I was overjoyed. BUT there were some things about marriage made me uncomfortable, among them was raising children.

I didn’t like kids, even hated them. Especially most kids nowadays are horrible creatures, knowing nothing about manners. I thought I would never have child before I was fully prepared, because I couldn’t stand to see my child/children was/were loathsome. The question was: how long would it take to be fully prepared?

About “The Beginning”

“The Beginning” series of posts are my thoughts about being parents since the time I prepared to have children. They are numbered, but the events and thoughts in the posts do not necessarily happened in proper order.

The Privilege of Being A Father

Samuel is six months old now. We found a daytime baby sitter for him when he was one month old. Until now, I insist taking him home everyday, never let him stay at baby sitter’s home overnight. I did this for two reasons: One, I hoped that he could see his parents while he woke up in the morning; two, completely selfish reason, I want to see his smile every morning.

I never imagined that my son’s smile can give me such joy. Seeing his smiling and laughing make me feeling happy and satisfied. That feeling is difficult to describe, it is different from seeing lover’s smile. I guess you have to be a father to understand what I mean.

I think of our Father in heaven. Is He also happy while He sees us smiling to Him? If the words “Heavenly Father” have any indication, then I believe that He has the same feeling as we earthly fathers.

Suddenly, I find that being a father is such a privilege! Father would never match mother in terms of intimacy with children. Mothers have babies, give birth, and feed them with milk; fathers couldn’t do these. But when father tries to love his children with all he could, he is using a privilege – he has the opportunity to know how Heavenly Father loves us.

Protection

Just watched “CSI”, episode 3 & 4 of season 4. It touched my heart.

In episode 3, two bad guys broke in a house, imprisoned the parents and raped the daughter. When the father went to the police station, he talked with Grimson about his thought. He said:

“She's 16. I only had two jobs left -- teach her to think for herself, keep her safe. I got one right.”

“And when Suzanna was a little girl, Linda made me put those, um, the child-proof locks on all the kitchen cabinets. I complained. You know what she said to me? She said, uh, ‘The least we can do is make her safe in her own house.’" Saying this, tears shinning in he eyes.

I could understand what he was saying. We live in an old house where lots of hardware problems exists. Before I fixed those problems, I usually thought: “Is this the best I can give my family?” Earlier this year, a thief broke in my house, although he didn’t cause big loss, but I felt really angry and frustrated. I was not angry about the thieving, but was angry and frustrated about my being unable to protect my family. I am not sure whether all fathers are like this, but I do understand that father in CSI.

The behavior of the father in episode 4 was beyond believe; he left his son in a car in hot weather and caused his son dead. Initially it seemed that he simply forgot his son was in the car (this is not impossible, sometimes I forgot my son sitting at the backseat while I driving, but I always did double check while I left car.) but surly there were more to it. I just want to say, if I do left Samuel in my car and caused he dead, I would never forgive myself.

One of My Favorite Pictures

He is cute, isn't he?

About this place…(Exclusive!!!)

In fact, the contents here are the same as those in MSN Space, but there is no limitation forced upon user by Microsoft here…

For instance, you have to use IE so that you can edit normally, or all you see is a mess. But I had given up IE and turned to Firefox (this is also M$’s fault, IE was very insecure. I don’t understand what such an insecure piece of garbage is good for, not to mention why M$ had to merge it with its OS. You should have done better, M$.) and when I used Firefox, it was too inconvient to doing editing. So I get another blog here, maybe one day I will move all contents here. (When Space begins to charge, that “one day” comes.)

Of course, Space has it’s charming feature, it’s picture is one such feature. Maybe after I know this place better…

This post has nothing to do with the theme of this blog. So ignore it if you like.

Bless My Son

Nancy Gordon & Martin J. Nystrom
1993 Integrity's Hosanna! Music

May he have the faith of Abraham
May he have the boldness of Paul
May he have a heart like David
Always seeking God
Always seeking God

Father God
Bless my son
May he grow to be
A man of God

May he have the wisdom of Solomon
May he have the patience of Job
May he be a leader like Joshua
Always full of hope
Always full of hope

Father God
Bless my son
May he grow to be
A man of God

May he have the courage of Daniel
May he have the love of John
May he kow Your voice like Samuel
Always obey God
Always obey God

Father God
Bless my son
May he grow to be
A man of God

A Birthday Wish

Ha, I am another year older. AGAIN.

Generally speaking, I didn’t celebrate my birthday. But this year was different, because this was the first birthday since my son was born. It was not special at first, but I did one special thing, so I think I should write it down in case I forgot it. (I should keep this for my son to see.)

But in fact this “thing” didn’t happen at my birthday, but last year. That day, many people gathered together to celebrate someone’s birthday. While hearing people asking the “star of the day” making birthday wishes, one thing came to my mind.

“My birthday wish for next year is my son getting married as soon as possible.”

Samuel was only a little older than one month at that time. So people hearing this said to me: “Don’t you think you are thinking too far down the road?”

That's why my wife asked me at my birthday: “What’s your birthday wish – besides Samuel’s getting married ASAP, that is.”

I believe that there are few, if any, fathers would make such a birthday wish while their sons were so young. I might be the first one in history, so I write this down as a memory.

About This Blog

Those words below should be enough to describe this blog...

All complicates itself, with children. It is frightening. The day of the birth of the first is the most terrifying of your life. No one tells you those things. Your life, as you know it, is gone. Never would it return. But they learn to walk, and they learn to speak, and you want to be by them. And you discover that these are the most marvelous people of your life. (Lost in Translation)

Having children is a big event in a man's life, and every one face it with different attitude. This blog is my journal of being a father for the first time; if you have any comment, please share with us.

There is a Chinese version of this blog, if you read Chinese (traditional), please visit http://samueldaddy.blogspot.com/.

If you want to see my son's picture, please visit my MSN Spaces. It is in Chinese, but the contents are the same, except that it has album features.