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Dear Meghan,

Happy 1 year old! This is your dad’s first birthday post for you. I wanted to get you a card for your birthday but didn’t had the time to go get one. Maybe next year. For now, I will just write a blog post for you to celebrate your 1 year old!

It is amazing how time flies by. I still remember the night you were born, not sure if your mom remembers anything. 😉

I don’t think I ever told this to anyone but I used to be afraid of kids. Mainly because I am scare that they would think I am ugly, weird and just cry or run away if I interact with them too much. That is till I have you. I remember how you would cling onto me so tight in case someone wants to carry you instead. I know this isn’t healthy but a part of me is really happy when you do that. And you would smile when you see me, or laugh when I play with you. Obviously there are times you would drive both me and your mama crazy with your crying, screaming, not wanting to sleep but I still love you.

We just finished watching this show on netflix which is about tidying up your house, and the goal is to keep things that spark joy when you hold it. That’s how I feel when I carry you and you are not screaming. 🙂

I sometimes wish you would grow up fast but also at the same time not too fast. If you grow up fast, we would be able to do more things together but at the same time, you would get to do your own things yourself without me too. I hope that when you do grow up, that you will also remember me and the times when you cling on to me tightly.

Love and happy birthday,

Binghuan

Instead of doing an end of year, why not do a start of new year post?

I guess it is the same, cause both are for review of what happened last year.

Some of the highlights:

1. Meghan of course
2. Lots of home improvements
3. We went to watch an actual movie

2018 is a challenging year for me and my family. Well we did have 1 new addition Meghan. Amanda always asks me if I regret having her, I don’t have regret but its definitely difficult adjusting our lives around her. Thankfully our families have taken time to come over and help us out. I do hope things will get better/easier once she is older so we can better treat her eczema.

We spent a ton on home improvements. We decided against buying another place but instead added another bedroom to the house. We also finally finished up insulation work. Next year, I intend to do the door and carpet and thats basically it. One of the things that I have been thinking more of is how to sustain financially in later parts of our life. Maybe we need to get more property for rental income? Not sure yet.

I did stick to most of my promise of coming home on time mainly cause of the bus and shuttle timing. And we finally went to watch a movie recently! That was a such a long time ago that we did that, glad we did. I do hope Amanda will be more positive in 2019 so that we can enjoy ourselves including Meghan. Hopefully the daycare part will help out by giving us more time and also enriching Meghan’s life!

 

It’s the end of the year again!

2018 is an exceptionally trying year.

1) we have a baby .. duh..

Meghan changed my life (for the worst). I have never been so exhausted, worried, guilty, depressed, resentful … ( insert all negative words you can think of)

I gave her life and lost a HUGE part of me. There’s nothing worth being happy about. I can’t look at our creation and think that she is the best thing that had happened to us. Parenthood is so tough.

I spent days, weeks, months being upset and judgemental to myself and didn’t enjoy the moments. I let my negativity get the better of me and missed her as a little baby. She almost 1 now… people say it gets easier? I doubt. It could be a timebomb waiting to explode.

2) Beacuse of #1, I think our marriage is strained.

Well, we don’t talk about us anymore. Bing works alot and with his free time..he would rather be playing games on his phone. No matter how I tell him off, he just won’t stop.

I guess its a hard habit to kick in this modern world. At least, I have Meghan’s attention all the time.

3) I miss eating everything I like.

Meghan have allergies. We have no known allergies! It was really hard to change my diet and eliminate the allergens.

Nope… all my sacrifice did not help. Guilt and self blame over every tiny rash on her body kills me as it could be linked to something i ate. My heart broke each time she scratches till she bleeds. On some days the itch affects her sleep. I had no choice but to put medication on her – I weeped when she’s slower than her peers “must be the medication!” Its my fault since i choose to feed her the best – breastmilk. I persevered and she is almost 1. While I am looking forward to getting out of “food jail”, I feel selfish .. Her allergies and eczema is going to stay with her.

4) what about another child?

I thought about it. Sometimes i feel that i want another child so that i can prove myself wrong – maybe the next baby will not have allergies. The pessimist in me also say “no allergies but maybe other problems?”

On the other hand, It would be nice for Meghan to grow up with a sibling. At least, they have each other when we are gone.

Another child also means no more sleep and i will be 100X more tired than now.

If only i could tell the future…

____
I think these sums up my horrible 2018. I hope I will be able to find myself next year (Fat hope..i know).

Still…Wish me luck!

It’s our 10 years wedding anniversary! 10 years is a big deal! There’s a special name for 10 years – It is a DECADE can!!! This year we have a new member in our family! Meghan is God’s anniversary gift to us! 

Having a baby truly changes the dynamics of your relationship. Though we know each other for almost 1/2 our lives, we are still learning more about each other. It’s interesting to see how different our parenting styles are.

On most days, I can’t wait for Meghan to grow up faster so that we can have our own lives back. Some days, I look back at her old photos and reminisce how tiny and adorable she was ( why did it take me so Long!)..

I am just happy that in our journey as Husband and Wife, we get to experience this phrase of our lives together. Even happier that we enjoyed the past 9 years of marriage life, before we have a kid. Well, if there isn’t a new member in our family, I believe we will still be happy!

In my mind, I thought we will be celebrating our 10 years anniversary in Cancun or somewhere similar…renewing our vows at a beach setting, just the 2 of us. Of course, with a baby, it isn’t like that!! Maybe we can make that happen on our 20 years anniversary!

Another year has passed us, time flies. And that’s why I hate celebrating birthdays, cause it reminds me of how old I am. But come next year, I will have a new meaning to birthdays. More on that later, let’s review 2017 first.

2017 was the first time I change a job in USA, it is quite a leap but also a small leap in the end. I wanted to leave MSFT for awhile, it wasn’t challenging and I wanted to try out some other companies just to see what difference there is. I am glad to have joined AMZN in the end. It was a small leap cause I still had a few good colleagues of mine that helped made the transition for me easier. It was still a leap mainly because it is very different. First it is in Seattle, thankfully I have public transport and shuttle from work as well. It is still time spend on traveling though. The other big change in AMZN is how different the focus is, I am not sure if it is my role or the company? Probably the company, there is a greater focus on customers, and I think employee so of suffer. Or should I say family of the employee suffer. I made have to work holiday, be on-call for weird dates/timing. I don’t quite get how someone who has a family is able to be on-call without having any friction at home. I learnt new technology, writing skills, interview, just learn a lot more of what should help me in my professional life, so for that I am grateful.

2017 was the first time we spend big on our home. We decided our home is not going to be big enough, so decided to splurge on a small addition. Like real small 🙂 The idea was if we want bigger, we might have to spend more just because of how picky we are, so it would be like a new or almost brand new home in a good location that is bigger than our current home. Excited to see it finish and hopefully in time for…

2018 is the first time we will be adding a new member to our small family! Ringo will always be my first, but this new member will be my favorite. We didn’t plan for it, so maybe its a fated. We already know what to name her and I am excited to bring her into our life. I know its going to be tough (we have already booked a house cleaner to help out) but I can’t wait to write her birthday cards, teach her how to play with Ringo, and hopefully one day see her grow up to be a capable beautiful woman just like my wife.

If there is one thing I wish it could be better, well a few things:

• Ringo to be better behaved, I think we lacked the conviction in training him properly. That’s our fault…
• Spend more time with wifey, I can’t help but want to do work all the time. Sorry Amanda…

What to wish for next year? Next year with the addition done, new baby on the way, its going to be super busy. I hope for a healthy baby and smooth birthing for Amanda. I also wish Ringo will be more obedient and his eye will recover. I do not wish for anything for myself, just my family’s well being and health.

Happy new year to all and wish you all good health and wealth too!

There’s something exciting about a new year. It’s like you have a brand new notebook and you are using a new pen to write on its very first page. Yup… I plan to have a nice notebook for 2017. I hope you do too.

2016 had been really great! I thought it was going to be a bad year… Coz 2015 was sooooo wonderful… In the end, 2016 was not bad too. I feel so blessed.

Some highlights of 2016:

June

We went on a short road trip to Long Beach, WA and Portland, OR with Ringo. It was really fun.. Ringo loves it! It was his first road trip with us..Overall,he is such a good boy… It’s so silly but sometimes I really hope that he is a real boy.. I think he hopes so too !

September 

Ringo was neutered. I blogged about it… It was horrible. I am Glad it’s all over and it’s just like nothing happened.

November

We went for our first doggy birthday party!! It was really fun! Corgis (& I am sure other breeds too) get so much love from their humans… Wah…we are not the only crazy ones!!

December

We participated in our first Corgi Christmas cards exchange!!! We received about 100 cards!!! Corgination is really strong!!!! Of course, all the corgis are so loved ?

—-

I don’t really want to have any expectations for 2017… I think it will make me upset if things don’t get accomplished. I am just at a very comfortable and happy point of my life now that I am so afraid of changes.

Yet again, I feel that I need to do something more to have a better ‘career’ path. I am not a career -minded person but knowing about how some marriages around me are falling apart, makes me realise that I do need to have a better job. Bing and I may be fine now… But who knows.. Right? Well, there’s nothing wrong with my job now… I do Want to work for a bigger company when I still can? I hope that I will have the opportunity to… You know.. 

My biggest wish is still for our families ( + Ringo and Bambi) and friends to stay healthy. Still hoping that Ringo can be a STAR dog one day 🙂

Have a great 2017!! ❤️???

Sad to say… almost 3 months of 2015 had passed and I have not started on most of my resolutions 🙁

1) go to work on time and leave work on time everyday

2) go to the gym or zumba at least 2 times a week

3) blog at least once a week

This is the first time I am blogging after January… Tragic.. I haven’t step foot into the gym… oh… don’t ask me if i managed to get off work on time…

BUT I am happy to announce that…I had finally passed my exam and I am a Registered Paraplanner!  At least resolution No. 4 is done!

It had been a busy start of the year..spent time studying and accomplished some personal goals… I am feeling happy.. I wish I could blog more here but some things are not meant to be public… so.. I will be password protecting some entries from now on…

Till the next entry..

** NO.. I am NOT pregnant**

This year was tough, I don’t know why but I feel this year was the toughest so far in the USA besides maybe the first year. Maybe it is due to me aging, maybe it is due to not having anything that is life changing happening to me…

Let’s recap all the biggest events again..

1) I ticked off something in my bucket list of giving a talk. Granted it is a small talk, I always wanted to do it, not so much that I think I am great at it. In fact, I think there are lots which I can improve with. It is more because I like to challenge myself. I hate that people will say you cannot do this or that, and I showed that I did it. Obviously I have lots of supporters in the form of my wife and my wonderful team. Challenge accepted and completed.

2) Was selected as the only person from my team to attend an Adobe conference for marketing analytics and I got to go to watch an NBA match in a suite! If only the teams were better, but hey its all free. With that trip, I also manage to visit Utah which is a really interesting city with its Mormon background. Would definitely re-visit it again with Amanda to for the rock and mountain.

3) Was fortunate enough to be re-assigned to a really hot project and deliver it on time. The Halo Channel is by far my toughest assignment so far. With less than 2 months, we had to almost re-write an entire app for Xbox one and Windows. I love UI work but obviously it is not my strongest skill set. Still very happy to learn new frameworks like AngularJS and be able to take a small leadership role to guide 2 vendors is awesome. I think I did overwork but it was all made up for with a 2 weeks break that I got for free…

4) Road trip with 2 close friends to Alaska! I don’t think Amanda and I have done anything as extensive as our Alaska trip with Jo and Dave. It is really hard to find friends especially friends who are of similar age and circumstances. I think we spend so much time in 2014 with them that facebook might think we are 1 big family with their year in review. Alaska was lots of fun, I hope everyone else enjoyed it too.

5) First all-inclusive resort in Cancun. So I got the miles from Southwest and decided to go all out and fly to Mexico. We didn’t want to splurge too much so chose a resort which I think we sort of regretted. There wasn’t a lot of good food choices within the resort. The food and drink is good but I think we both felt that we could have gotten better one. I actually enjoyed us visiting Moon Palace the most, if I have a choice, I think I might have chose that resort instead. Lot more food choices, activities to do. The view and water isn’t as nice though, so I guess its a coin flip. The other issue I have with all-inclusive resort is I miss my wife’s food… 🙂

Did I miss anything, feels bland to me. I am wishing 2015 will be a big year for us, I wish things will change drastically in every facet. I think I am tired, or old. I am tired of getting old. I am thinking of travelling to somewhere far, like Machu Picchu or London. But we have to go back for a wedding, so I guess that is the trip. Amanda and I have like this 5 years plan which I am hoping we will just finish next year too. So that will be great if we do execute that plan.

Hope everyone else have a good year and an even better one next year.

Finally got all my minions!

Actually, Jo, the minion hunter, went McDonald hopping and got most of them for me! haha Thank you!!

ohh.. just in case u haven’t met our new bulldog. SHE is MIMI.. say ‘HI MIMI!!’ .. she came with Mr Hyde 🙂

2012 has been a fruitful one for Amanda and I.

Quick recap of the year
– Went for our long overdue Euro trip
– Went to magical Disney World
– Getting recognized at work
– Broke Amanda’s bond with MOE!

However, as I review my resolutions for 2012, I know I miss something.. 🙁
Keeping fit.

I think this will continue to be an issue for me as I have been putting too much emphasis on work such that I have no balance in life.
So with a new year, come new resolutions!

I will cook more often at home for us! I just discovered this wonderful app on Windows 8 (Everyday Food) that has simple 15-30 mins recipes which even a novice sous chef like me can accomplish! I am already the crepes expert at home! 🙂

I will learn to keep my work-life balance in check. No more late night work unless its really necessary. One’s got to know how to enjoy the finer things in life, after all you only live once.

There are several things to look forward to in 2013 actually…
1) Mayday LA 2013 concert
2) Getting a new car
3) Moving to a new apartment
4) Trying to sell my HDB flat again
5) Looking for a puppy

I don’t think we would be doing too much travelling next year but who knows?
Here’s hoping that 2013 is as good if not better than 2012!

Wishing all a happy new year!
Binghuan