mama series

Here are some photos from Busan, Korea! I brought my DSLR with me, but ended up not taking any photos with it. I love my camera, but it’s so chunky and heavy, and I had so much other baby stuff to carry..so all these photos were taken with my iPhone.

Looking back on the trip, most photos are food photos. I love Korean food, and Andy’s aunt made sure that we ate a lot..

Above photos are “Korean traditional course meal” as Andy’s aunt described it. For 45 straight minutes the restaurant staff brought  endless different dishes and we were super stuffed by the end.

After that meal, we ended up going to a cafe for coffee and desert. While in Busan I kept seeing this thing (left bottom picture). It was what looked like a huge piece of toast with gobs of whipped cream on top. Is that a Korean thing? I’ve never seen that in Japan or the States! We were trying to be good but the next morning, we could not help trying it! It was delicious. I plan on imitating that some morning..it seems super easy, just toast a huge piece of bread, put butter, caramel or chocolate syrup and whipped cream on top of it and eat. The simple pleasures in life!

We took a stroll in the morning near beach.

Here are some shots of hotel we stayed. It was facing the beach, but it was a bit too cold to get in the water.

Next day, we went to a place called Nampodong. It is a shopping area, full of small shops next to each other. It was a bit hard to move around with a stroller. I found some fabric and notions shops. I usually like to buy some fabric whenever I travel to a new place, but I could not find anything uniquely Korean there.. so I ended up buying some invisible zippers! (boring). They were signfiantly cheaper than the ones in Japan though.

Andy ran out of clean underwear during the trip, so he picked some up. Much to his chagrin, Korean male underwear as it turned out, does  not have a pee hole cut out in the front?!  So I asked the sales lady why that’s the case, and she said Korean guys don’t like that the fabric flops open when they sit, so that is why there was no hole. So strange!

The onigiri (rice balls) pictured above was our sad dinner when it poured outside, as mentioned in previous posts we had a war with Kiko and could not go out for dinner. We picked those onigiri up at the 7-11 that was conveniently located downstairs of our hotel.

The last day we went to Lotte department store in downtown Busan. It was very nice, there was a musical water fountain thing going on, and we had some supersized Cold Stone ice cream!

Already looking forward to our next vacation 🙂

Baby in Korean Air bassinet

So today, I wanted to share my experience of traveling with an infant. Andy and I took Kiko to Korea, and honestly, it was a bad idea! I was deciding between leaving her with my mother, taking her or not going to Korea at all, but I decided to go and take Kiko with us because I just felt like I needed a vacation. Being pregnant for the past year limited my travel, and I wanted to go somewhere! Kiko had been a pretty good baby and easy to deal with, so I assumed everything would be fine. I was so wrong.

First of all, the plane ride was challenging – more challenging than I thought! Thank God it was only 1 hour and 40 minutes to Korea from Japan. Right before boarding, Kiko decided to go to bathroom so I had to run to the nearest bathroom to change her. Then I found out that her poop leaked all over her clothes. While changing her diaper and clothes, it got on to my clothes somehow, and I found myself wearing clothes with her poop all over the place. Of course, I was wearing a white pair of shorts that day! 🙁 So after cleaning her and myself, we finally boarded the plane, as we sat Kiko vomited all over the place. Ha.  She has amazing timing!?

During flights, especially international flights, I usually enjoy a drink or two. Of course that did not happen, because Kiko started to cry upon takeoff. Perhaps her ears hurt because of the altitude change. Or  maybe (far more likely)she was just having a temper tantrum. Either way, I was so embarrassed and felt sorry for the other passengers. Prior to having a baby, I was always annoyed by travelers with kids, and I would get mad, thinking “why can these parents manage their own children?!” But now, I’m the annoying parent I once despised…

Also, during the Korea trip, Kiko decided that she would no longer take her bottle. I’m not sure what happened, but I’ve read on babycenter.com that this kind of thing happens around 2-3 months old. At this age babies start becoming selective. It did not matter whether the contents of the bottle were pumped breast milk or formula. As soon as the bottle touched her mouth, she would scream!Why she chose the week of our trip for this I will never know.

I was so mad at her. I feel like having a child has given me all kinds of emotions that I had never experienced. I was mad at her for not taking the bottle, but at the same time, felt terrible and guilty for forcing her the drink from a bottle which she did not want. I was on the verge of giving up, but after some thought, Andy and I decided that Kiko must take the bottle because with my work and Andy’s role in caring for the baby, I cannot be available her for breastfeeding 24/7. So… we started the war – We decided on the last night of the trip that the following day upon her waking up, we would not give Kiko the breast until she drank from the bottle. It took nearly 8 hours until Kiko started drinking from the bottle again, and when I saw her drinking from the bottle, I cried…

I almost went crazy listening to her temper tantrum screams during the day, and I was beyond angry. But during all of my anger, I felt so sad, guilty and embarrassed for having that kind of emotion toward my child. I just wished the war did not have to happen away from home during our trip!

Because of that, I could not really enjoy the trip and was relieved to be back home. It was nice to see the family, who were visiting from the U.S. for the Summer, which was the reason why we went there in the first place. Now I’m reconsidering taking Kiko to the U.S., because how can I manage a 15 hour plane ride with Kiko if I could not manage 2 hour plane ride!? Does anyone have any tips? Also what happens to a baby with jet lag?

I’ll share some pictures of Korea in another post, and I promise it will be a more positive one!

And last but not least, I am so thankful that the baby seems to forget things so easily. She smiles at me as if she’s forgotten that the war ever happened.

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?