Saturday, May 25, 2002.
Last movies seen (on
DVD): This Is Law, Die Bad, and Tell Me Something (all Korean movies of
course).
Still haven't
seen: Star Wars Episode II
Baby Boy is now: 8
days old !!!
UNREAL
In the waiting room at the pediatrician's office.
SUN SU (Baby Boy): " … zzzzzzz."
AMY (looking around oddly): " … "
ME: "What's wrong?"
AMY: "None of this seems real."
ME: "What do you mean?"
AMY: "None of this matters or seems real. I don't care about any of this. Everything outside of me and the baby just seems so … unimportant."
SUN SU (Baby Boy): " … zzzzzz."
__________________________________________________________
NEW DADDY SMELL
I've never been a baby lover. For the most part, I've never really thought any baby looked much different from any other baby, and I've never really thought they were that cute in the first place either. Half the time they looked like balding wrinkled midget men.
Before my nieces, I've never really wanted to even hold a baby. Kind of goes along with my whole "no touching" personal policy, even with friends and family. I don't mind it at all really, I just never initiate it. Whether it's society-imposed gender specific repression, or conscience-imposed personal repression, or an emotional fear that I just might not want to let go, hardly anyone gets past my Bubble of Solitude by any cue from me at least.
All those pent-up affections I save for Amy, or before her, my First Girlfriend, or at least that's what I had thought. I remember once First Girlfriend saying that she always pictured me as a caring but emotionally-distant father-figure someday. The kind that would sit in his chair and read the paper chuckling at his kids from afar or something. It always struck me as odd that even she would say that, so maybe I hold back more than I realize. But then again, we were still finding ourselves at that point. Plus, I didn't have this journal to write all my repressed emotions into.
Since then I've wondered, even feared, if once the baby was here, I would be emotionally distant again. Like I am with most people, especially my mom. Maybe with Amy sometimes, although I do believe one of the many reasons I chose her was because she is often more distant than I am. Kind of takes the pressure off, in a way.
But with my baby boy, Sun Su, things have been different.
I can hold him as much as I want to. As close to me and as long as time will allow. With no fear that it will be too much.
That first night, Amy and our new baby didn't get a chance to bond. Both were too tired. He started to yelp (he wasn't crying yet). So I picked him up and fed him the bottle, overjoyed at every movement under his eyelids and every subtle furrow in his brow (which is just like Amy's I've decided).
That first night, I cradled him close to me. The muscles in my arms and chest that I've machismally (or whatever the adverb for machismo is) and sometimes masochistically been trying to improve since high school finally came to good practical use then. It provided a perfectly warm and snug little place for my baby boy.
I held my little Sun Su-ya close enough to kiss him that night because that's what I did. I can hardly look at him without planting a dozen kisses all over his forehead and cheeks and sleepy eyelids. I rubbed his downy bird hair gently against my cheek. Smelled his perfect new baby smell, as they say.
I wanted little Sun Su to feel that the safest place in the whole world for him was the one-hundred and eighty pounds of muscle and bone (and fat, I guess) that was enveloping him that night. Keeping him warm and feeding him. I wanted him to associate my scent with security and hear my heartbeat as the most calming rhythm in the world.
I suppose I really wanted to be his mother.
Late that first night, our battle-axe veteran nurse came to check in on the baby again. A smile cracked her golem-esque face when she saw me and my baby on the recliner in the dim television light.
"Just call if you need anything … daddy," she whispered as she closed the door.
I suppose being the daddy isn't so bad either.
__________________________________________________________
VENUS ENVY
AMY (in bed next to me): "What are you writing?"
ME (on the laptop in bed): "I'm writing about how I'm jealous of you and the baby, hahha…. You get to be his mommy. You're the most special person in his life."
AMY (touching my arm): "I'll feed his body, but when he gets older, you can feed his mind."
ME: "I know. It's okay."
__________________________________________________________
ABNORMAL AMY
Things haven't been much easier for Amy lately. She's cried four times already since baby's been here. Over nothing, sometimes. I've been staying with her in our bedroom mostly for moral support. Since she's breastfeeding, there's not really anything she wants me to help with.
It's not waking up every three hours to feed the baby that bothers her. Or the soreness and fatigue due to the breastfeeding. Or any of the physical stuff. Amy just wonders if she's doing the best job for the baby. I reassure her that she is. That baby is well-fed and quite happy. That she's crying because of hormonal shifts, and sleeplessness and disrupted circadian rhythms, and fatigue, and being post-partum, et cetera.
But none of that seems to work as well as me just holding her, and wiping her tears, and telling her how lucky our baby is to have her.
Amy says she hopes to get back to "normal" someday. She doesn't like all this crying stuff.
__________________________________________________________
THE PROFESSIONAL
The first time my mom saw my baby boy in the hospital, she smilingly said,
"He's such a cutey pie! So what are you going to name your cute little baby?"
"I'm not telling you because I don't want to hear your opinion on it," I said icily.
"It doesn't matter what his name is, because I love him no matter what," my mom chuckled.
Hmm, very good answer. Plus one point for my mom. (I've un-banned my mom from my house again. She's actually very loving toward our baby.)
I've gotten a lot of positive support regarding Sun Su's name, and I appreciate it all. Some of my brothers and sisters (online and offline) have helped to clarify the definition as well. Apparently "champion" is a bit off. "Sun Su" means something more like "contender," or "professional" who's good at something like a sport (like a pro golfer … I will never play golf, by the way). Amy's mom teases Sun Su saying he is a "professional breastfeeder" because he's been pretty insatiable lately. (Amy's mom also wanted us to change his name! Minus TWO points for Amy's mom!!)
But I am starting to wonder about the name I have given him. Not the Korean name, everyone pronounces "Sun Su" correctly. But my last name, "Liles." In one day at the pediatrician's office, three people mispronounced his (and my) "American" last name. Happens to me all the time, but I guess I had gotten used to it.
It's not LILLIES, or LIES, or LILESS, or LILLS (all actual mispronunciations) … it's Liles. Rhymes with miles, or stiles, or tiles, or aisles, or files, or piles, or wiles, or viles, or beguiles, or exiles.
"Oh, just how it looks," even 4th or 5th generation Americans will inevitably say after mercilessly slaughtering it.
Tea and crumpets! The name itself even originated from Her Royal Majesty's Kingdom of England itself for bloody sake.
You'd think some of these people didn't know how to speak English or something.
__________________________________________________________
BABY FEATSThis section will be where I will be keeping track of my Sun Su's amazing little accomplishments.
1. After a week of practice, Sun Su has been latching onto Amy's lactation-enhanced double-D breasts quite well. That's my boy!!
2. He grabs for Amy's breasts (that's my boy!!) and moves his arms in the air constantly and even swings at things (like my face or sometimes his own face). Seriously, I think he's inventing his own martial art ("Ah Gee Doe" which would mean "Way of Baby").
3. Amy jokes with her relatives that she actually named our baby, "Takwan," which means "little yellow pickle." (Not a real baby feat, but still funny to us.)
4. He pissed himself in the face yesterday when Amy opened up his diaper. It's okay son, it's not easy being a guy sometimes.
5. Sometimes he sleeps with one hand/arm up in the air, like I do, according to Amy (which initially freaked her out, but she's used to it). It's all about the Baby Korean Tiger Claw of Power.
__________________________________________________________
SWEET BABY KISSES
Despite Sun Su-ya's foreboding Fists of Fury, he has a very big heart. But very tiny lips. Thus, he can only give out a limited number of kisses.
Today he is giving kisses to:
Cyn, James Valvis, Key, and Sara (damn! she's reorganizing unfortunately, but her forum is still there),
because deep-down, they all have sweet baby hearts just like him.
He'll be giving out more later, but now he must rest.
