ed_rex

Er, hi there ... I know, it's been a while, but some of you might remember me, I guess. I'm afraid I almost certainly won't be providing a major update on what's been going on since last I wrote, on account of I suspect that would simply mean another year of not posting anything at all. So, in hopes that this entry will really mean that I'm back, let's get to it ...

Well, our family's 2022 hasn't started out quite as well as we might have hoped. After a low-key new year's dinner at Carl Dow's (my one and only regular out of the house contact since Covid hit Canada), on Sunday I started to feel like I had a cold coming on. Monday I was deep into (what felt exactly like) my first cold since before Covid came to Canada.

Thought I, "I really should get tested," and went to the net to find out how to arrange that. Turns out that, despite having an unvaccinated toddler at home, our brutal and cowardly government doesn't want people to know the actual number of infections - I didn't meet the testing criteria.

To make a long story short, Raven came down with flu-like symptoms on Tuesday, and poor Baobao spent the same day day, eating and puking and sleeping (three hours in my arms through one exhausting stretch). Covid? Omicron variant? I think so - between the three of us we've covered pretty much all the symptoms and Raven has (honest to god) never had so much as a cold or flue in the dozen years we've been together - but I don't suppose we'll ever know for certain, since Doug Ford's incompetent and malignant regime doesn't want people to know how bad things are and won't test people.

Nevertheless, I am cautiously happy to report that my "cold" seems to be easing up, that Baobao hasn't vomited since Tuesday's deluge and that her energy levels are back to normal, though she still has a bit of a cough and isn't eating much, and that Raven's symptoms haven't kept her from working (from home, people; from home!). Oh, and my father reports that he feels perfectly well.

So, presumably I picked it up while out shopping but, again, we'll never know, because our government can't be bothered to test.

Knocking wood this is as bad (for us) as it's going to get, I'm going to watch the new episode of The Expanse, then try to have an early night. Here's a recent photo of my darling toddler.

P.S. On Monday I called Ontario's Telehealth line for advice about what to keep an eye out for vis-a-vis Baobao, but was told (when I finally got through to a receptionist of some sort, that there was a four day wait for a call-back. My hats, all of them, are off to our health-care workers.

Where he's been, what he's been up to, what he's thinking now ...

My how she's changed! An infant no more, Baobao takes a step into the future on January 1, 2021.

Well, I paid for another year of this Dreamwidth account (and LJ will be coming due soon: Will I pay for that again as well?), so I damned well better use it, right?

I know that attempting to fully catch-up would be a horrible fool's errand, so I'll suggest you check out PapaZesser.ca if you want to know (some of) what I've been up to, and to see lots of pictures of a very cute baby's remarkable progress.

Also, my publishing company, though there isn't nearly as much that's new there (there are, of course, two really good books available there, though they've barely been selling. Publishing is hard.) I am also in the process of bringing my original website back to life, but it's a slow hobby.

Anyway.

I just checked and see that my last post talked about an apparent offer for child modelling. I did, in fact, reply to the initial message, only to get a generic message in return. Since then, we've had another nibble, but Mama Raven checked out the company and told me it had a lot of negative reviews, so I ignored it.

So much for monetizing my daughter's (undeniable) cuteness.

Onwards. How about some genuine Rexian random gloats?

• Star Trek: Discovery is a terrible, terrible teevee program; Disco makes Star Trek (let's spend the first five episodes doing what your average heist movie does in the first 15 minutes): Picard look like Shakespeare. I dunno if I'll ever write up a proper critique of the thing, but sooner or later I'll post my notes at the very least. It's not Torchwood: Miracle Day bad, but it's bad.


• One of the (many, many!) good things about The Expanse is that it never makes death look cool. Even when millions of lives are lost, it strives to make sure we understand that those deaths matter, that the dead are individual people, not just numbers, and certainly not a first-person shooter's body count.


• Speaking of The Expanse, as a peripheral member of cancel culture, I find it both disturbing and interesting (and maybe, instructive?) that I am more uncomfortable watching scenes that include include Alex Kamal, as portrayed by Canada's own Cas Anvar, who has been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault by a lot of women (and who, I've now learned, won't be returning for season six), than I am that the show is produced by Amazon and was saved from cancellation by Jeff Bezos himself, a man who has far more blood of far more workers on his hands than women Anvar could ever hope to assault.
  
  
  Jeff Bezos feasts, just as we all always knew he would.
  
  Whatever it says about me, that I won't buy anything by Orson Scott Card anymore, but that I haven't boycotted Amazon, I'm not sure, but it can't be flattering;


• Being a house-husband is the hardest job I've ever had, without any question at all. I threw my back out (not too badly, but bad enough that I spent New Year's Day on prescription muscle relaxants and codeine, and today taking it very cautiously (but drug-free), and I feel as if I am about to return from 10 days in Cuba;


• Being a dad is the best job I've ever had, without question. She bugs me sometimes, but I was made for this shit;


• I know Nalo Hopkinson personally (not that well, but we've socialized), and I am happy that she has been made an SFWA grand-master, but the truth is, I don't think she written enough to warrant the honour.


• I was one of the (relatively few) lucky ones. The year of Covid-19 was a good one for me. I was laid off in March, and so was blessed with the chance to become my daughter's primary care-giver.


• Yesterday's Doctor Who special was all right. Not great (has there ever been a Doctor Who special that was actually, y'know, good? Please let me know in the comments), but it was entertaining.
  
  I won't miss Ryan or Graham much, to tell you the truth, but I'm glad that Yas is sticking around. It's sad how the execrable years with Moffat at the helm make the new regime seem quite a bit more than mediocre.

And maybe that's as good a place to stop as any.

For now.

I've paid my damned money. Let's see if I can make use of it this year!

My daughter is not punching me in the mouth, she is offering me her "empty" sleeve, so that I can blow in it, and so, "rescue" her "missing" hand from its depths.

If there's one thing that must be characteristic of all child-carers (if not necessarily all parents; some have nannies), it must be exhaustion.

Now, I feel I have to rush to equivocate: Raven and I have been extremely fortunate compared to many so far. Nevermind that our Baobao seems healthy (if not exactly rushing to hit her developmental milestones; for instance, nearly nine months old, she has yet to sit up by herself or start to pull herself to her feet by holding on to the walls of her crib or playpen; if my parents are to be (independently) believed, I was ,walking at nine months, three weeks), but since she was about two months old, she has slept through the night more of than not.

Magister Domum, with Child: When she was sweet, she was very, very sweet ...

Mind you, a baby's night is not necessarily a grown-ups. My baby is currently awake and demanding between 07:03 and 07:18, not matter if (like Wednesday) she went down for good around 22:30 or if, like yesterday, she went down (after a rough bedtime!) around 22:30, then awoke just before midnight for a feed, and then again around 02:30. And she cares "not a whit" for what time poor Young Papa Geoffrey went to bed.

And because of that, I tried to hit the sack around 23:00 last night, and would have managed 00:00, had she not chosen to demand more food around 23:50. Raven took care of that feed, but I was still awake for it and after it.

Anyway, since I stopped working for a paycheck (which usually saw me home after midnight and lucky to be in bed by 04:00) it has been Young Geoffrey on the morning shift. Which means I am very lucky to finish a night with even a full seven hours of sleep. Usually it's more like five or six.

Again, I'm not complaining, just noting the fact: babies are a lot of work!

But no regrets. The moment Raven squeezed her out, I felt a flood of hormones washing through my system that declared, She [the baby, sorry Raven] is the Chosen One, the most important thing in your life from now on!, and those have not washed away.

Not everyone wants to be a parent, and more power to you! But some are built for the job, and I seem to be one of them.

Post-scriptum: Hivemind! The photo above reminds me strongly of a famous painting; does anyone recognize it and, if so, could you point me to a copy of it? If I could accidentally participate in that art reproduction during quarantine meme, I would do it.

Hello to Asta Djun-Rei!

My infant daughter and my adopted son, Carl the Second, play Mao meeting Kissinger. Just because.

How time flies. Jesus god, but time fucking flies, it's unbelievable. And yet, it is true. I am a father, a papa, a daddy, and have been now for six weeks as of Monday at 19:59.

We had been told to expect her to arrive on August 29th, but the impatient girl had other ideas, popping into the world on the 19th, instead. Possibly the video below explains why; it was shot on the 15th by her mother and certainly suggests a child more than ready to explore the outside world.

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Raven's pregnancy was an easy one. Basically no morning sickness — if I remember correctly, she told me she threw up twice during the first trimester — or other painful or inconvenient symptoms. The worst, for me, was that her already-keen sense of smell went haywire during the second and third months and, for her, that her feet swelled up quite a bit during the final month or so. I found myself giving her a lot of foot rubs but the tragedy is, she doesn't enjoy foot rubs; so she endured them as a medical necessity.

Anyway, her actual labour carried on the tradition. She started feeling the first hints of contractions on Sunday night, reporting them to me after I returned from my evening soccer game. We made sure we had our her overnight packed up and ready to go, just in case, then called it a night.

And in the morning, she told me she wanted to go to the hospital. But not before we shared a typical Cantonese style breakfast.

We arrived at Ottawa's Civic around 13:00 hours and were triaged pretty quick. Raven was deemed too far along to be sent home, not far enough to be admitted. Why not walk around for a while, come back in a couple of hours, or if your water breaks?

An hour and a half later, her water did break, Raven was declared 3 centimetres dilated and we were soon settling in for ... however long it would take.

That was at 15:00 hours. At 18:59, the baby surprised everyone but Raven — shortly before, a nurse was advising her to Breathe! but Raven said, "No! It feels like the baby is coming out!" And she was right.

So. Yeah. No epidural, no tylenol, the only pain-killer she took — then or after — was too dig her fingers into my belly's flesh and that on the back of my neck.

I have never been so happy to take such abuse (well, okay: I kinda liked it. It was a lot like a massage for me.)

I'm not going to even try to recount the subsequent six weeks! Suffice it to say that that first was an entirely new category of exhaustion. No amount of partying, studying or anything else prepared me for the reality of those first few days trying to care for that utterly helpless, tiny, person becoming.

Since then, we have mostly managed pretty well, I think. Raven has had one really bad week (which meant I had one, too; I found myself force to write her a long letter, doing my best to offer understanding and support and love, while also saying in effect, You can't treat me this way!. She didn't respond with words, but it seemed to have an effect. At least, she seems happier.

Breastfeeding hasn't gone well, so Raven has resorted to a pump, which is typically providing about 70% of our daughter's food. The other 30%, obviously, is formula. I can live with that, and so can the child. Which is what matters most.

And nature's hormonal powers sure did their job on me! I fell in love with that tiny creature while she was still a slimy, bloody mess in her mother's arms. Then doubly-so when, at last, it was my turn to hold her.

I've now been changing diapers like a champ, singing to her like a fool (see the video, below) and — Raven's misfortune being my good luck — I get to feed her a lot, too.

DW's (and — wow! — especially LJ's) photo systems being the primitive beasts they are, even in the best of circumstances, you won't be seeing an enourmous amount of picspam here. For those who are interested, I now have an Instagram for shallow spontenaity. If you've got one two, let's follow each other!

I've also started a baby/parent-centric blog called The Adventures of Daddy Zesser, which I've been updating (sigh) a lot more regularly than I have been here (to put it mildly. When I get the chance, I'll see if I can figure out how to syndicate to these venerable platforms.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I am, once again, exhausted. But still very happy.

Say good night, baby ...

Post-scriptum: If you wondered about the title way back at the top, "Asta Djun-Rei" is our baby's first name. The first part comes from Finland, while the second part is a transliteration of her Chinese name. We did a lot of thinking and talking about it and decided we wanted her to have the choice of embracing her white heritage or her Chinese (or both, preferably). She also has three middle names and her last belongs to my paternal grandfather — Drozdowicz. Raven insisted that my child carries my name. But she hates my actual last name (Dow, which you might notice comes from the middle of Drozdowicz; my dad got sick of having to spell out his birthname) and so my grandfather's legacy lives on after all.

And no, I won't be remotely surprised if Asta changes it back some ways down the line.