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Hello! I just got back to Japan from a short trip to Korea. All this week’s posts were pre-scheduled, so I’m sorry I have not replied to your comments yet, but I will soon! By the way, Andy and I took our baby with us on the trip. We thought, perhaps, we could pull off traveling with an infant since the flight between Japan Korea is only an hour and a half. NOT A GOOD IDEA. I will never ever take an infant on vacation again! I swear. More update on that next week…

But here is my husband, writing his Daddy’s Diary for this week 🙂

Hello ladies,

Chie asked me to fill in with another installment of the Daddy Diaries series. All continues well. Sophia is an amazing little girl and her mother is raising her wonderfully. Chie will never admit this but she is doing a great job. All that being said I have come across a few difficulties which I thought I would share with you.

First: I do not know if this is universally true with babies or not but here in Japan babies are considered community property. At any time, at any place, without so much as a warning people on the street will descend upon Sophia and begin to talk to poke, pinch, grab and cuddle this child as though she were there personal play toy. As an American male I can honestly say that there is little that causes me greater concern, distress and anger than people touching Sophia. I am usually pretty relaxed and open but with my daughter hands and eyes off please. My thinking in general with regards to babies is this: Cute, cool, nice now moving on. I see a kid give a quick smile and move on with my day. Here that is just not the case. I feel badly as I think about this but it has become my habit now to snap at and threaten physical violence toward any person I think may even be considering coming near Sophia. Not sure what to about this and if the problem would be the same if I were still living in America but man has this become a big time daddy difficulty.

Second: Sophia seems to be developing my personality flaw of pig headed stubbornness. This child is amazing for 3 months old. She has the patience to fight with me and already she is a match for me. I worked with “problem” children when living in Phily. I worked with the worst of the worst and usually successful in breaking down some of the learned problem behaviors. I was generally able to do this through quiet resolved patience a.k.a stubbornness. Generally speaking no child can outlast me, tantrum, screaming, crying, yelling are no matches for Andy but my daughter is already able to test my limits. I fear in the future what this personality trait could become if not harnessed correctly.

Third: Bottle feeding is terribly frustrating. Chie and I decided to both breast and bottle feed our little princess. This was so that we could have greater mobility and that both of us could share the heavy lifting. LIttle did I know how much baby would like the breast and how disappointed she would be with the bottle. This connects some what with my second difficulty of stubbornness.  My daughter loves to eat, hence the name fatness. And, it is the case that if she is hungry she will take the formula and bottle when offered.  However…. if she is in a “mood” this child will fight to the death to not take the bottle.  Chie is a very active mother and this means that I spend a good amount of time alone with the baby with no breast available. If the child is hungry but unwilling to take the bottle this puts me in a very frustrating predicament.  Even more than this bottle problem is the another bottle associated problem which is mobility. Sophia eats 20+ minutes at a feeding. I see Chie when breastfeeding having the ability to do multiple things at once because the baby latches on to a breast on one side leaving the one side immobilized but the other free to use. The bottle on the other hand sucks up both hands, both arms and requires me to devote that entire time to waiting for the queen to finish her meal time.

All in all these daddy difficulties aren’t too bad. My life as a daddy has been pretty charmed so far. Sophia is happy and healthy and is being well trained by her mother.  If I could work on the three things listed above I would be utterly complaintless. Any suggestions?