Reboot

OK, so it's been a while. I've had a busy year with a son who's driving everybody in the family nuts. He should be VERY thankful that he's cute because there are time when this has been the only thing saving him....

How cute is he? Just follow the link and decide for yourselves. Here's a little clue, though: I really, really, really do not like babies. They're ugly. They're smelly. They're noisy. They're just all-round irritating. Except for Lucas. Lucas is none of those. Well, OK, smelly he is at times. Noisy he is most times when he's awake. He can be irritating at times. But he's not ugly!

This is a new year and with it comes a new resolution. I've been slacking off on the blog—this time for over nine months!—and this is not good. People who matter to me are finding it hard to keep up with my life because we're not online at the same time very often and when we are one or the other of us invariably has to leave soon. So I've decided to try and commit to a blog entry once per week, on a Sunday, barring major dysfunction in my life.

There is something that would help with this, of course, and that is this weird concept called feedback. Part of what has been demotivating me in blogging is getting no feedback unless I practically beg for it on my hands and knees. Please! I know some of you have subscribed by email or by RSS. And those of you reading the web page, just look down at the part below that mentions comments. Give me feedback! If I knew for certain that my posts were being read and appreciated, I'd have far more motivation to keep things up to date.

As an afterthought, it would also be nice to know what kinds of things you find interesting. After seven and a half years in China, what's around me is my life. It's normal to me. I've lost the ability to tell when things are weird or interesting because weird and interesting are so subjective that there's no way for me to know which is which. My 老外 (foreigner) eyes are almost gone. So I'll need some guidance here for what you want to know about.

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That being said, here's a proper update. Today was not an auspicious beginning for my re-found desire to blog. Lucas was a pain all night—constantly waking up and fussing—and by morning he had become intolerable. I was beginning to understand what parents whose babies have colic go through. Constant crying, no respite for any reason. That was my Lucas.

It turns out he was constipated. (You emphatically do not want to know how this was figured out. Just trust me on this.)

After the problem with his constipation was settled, Lucas was his usual, cheerful, giggling, overactive, extroverted self again. You know, the boy that made me realize that having a son wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. (Joan and I both wanted a daughter, you see, but the universe mocked us both and gave the introverted parents an overactive, extroverted boy.) Sure he drives his mother and his grandmother to distraction at times. (Both of them have a tendency to try and control him. This does not work. I just ride things out with him and gently direct him away from whatever he's doing and as a result get along with my sanity mostly intact.) Sure he's noisy. Sure he's disrupted every aspect of everybody's life. But he's so damned cute about it! How could I not love him?

Speaking of Lucas (like that's going to be rare now!), his birthday is five days away. We bought him his presents already and I'll have some pictures of his birthday party. In contravention of Chinese tradition we're not going to have a big do with the family for reasons which are complicated to explain but basically boil down to not wanting to get into the game of escalating gift-giving. The pictures will show a modest celebration and a birthday boy who will have his first exposure to birthday cake.

That's it for this update. Next week, when my vacation is finally in full swing (I still have to calculate and turn in marks tomorrow), I'll update you on my work situation.