A 28-year old Daddy-To-Be

James just had his 28th birthday recently. I made his favorite carrot cake. I couldn't find enough candles at home so that I lit three --- the green one for the Daddy-to-be, the pink one for the Mom-to-be, and the white one for our dear Chubby. I am wondering what wish(es) James made when he blew the candles. For his birthday we didn't do much special. We went to Todai for a seafood buffet and ate too much that it was so hard to drag my fat body around after the dinner. Then we went to watch the movie 3:10 to Yuma.

The second morning James got up before 8am to participate in the Banana chase 5k/10k. The event benefits UCSF Children's Hospital. Damn the buffet dinner at Todai the night before, James was only able to beat one banana (see the picture proof, "banana" was on yellow outfit).

When will you come out, Chubby?

Only 10 more days before my due date, there is still no any pre-labor symptom. When will you come out, my dear Chubby, Mom has been impatient now.

I have been off work for more than 2 weeks. Just start to get used to the life full of sleeping, laying in bed, doing nothing. Is it so boring? James said I was workaholic the first week when I started to take off. I felt so lost and still regularly checked my work email. Everyday, I was eagerly waiting for James to come home to accompany me. James asked me why I couldn't develop some of my own interest, such as sewing. Yes, sewing, I have promised James to start some sewing project, but till today, the sewing machine was still in the original package. Now I have a better excuse. I caught a bad cold. I have to stay in bed to try to recover before the big day.

James and I have been "practicing" some baby care-taking techniques, such as swaddling and carrying. Here is one silly picture James was using one of my baby shower's gifts to "practice" carrying Chubby one day. Sorry, Chubby, since you haven't come out yet, we have to use our "Scooby-Doo".

Talking about the baby shower, I had a big surprise from my coworkers. The last day of my work, my boss scheduled a meeting at 11:30am to discuss internal/external QC/QA process for our data analysis. Within a few minutes, while I was still drawing some examples in the blackboard, my boss got a phone call from the regulatory department and informed us that FDA was on the phone to ask us some questions about one study I was in charge of. We rushed downstairs and my boss would like to take a detour to a big conference room. As soon as I stepped in, I saw quite a lot of people sitting around and was wondering why we needed so many people to talk to FDA. Then everyone said "Surprise". We got quite a lot of gifts and wishes for our Chubby. I had a hard time to load everything into my small car. Here are some pictures from my baby shower (I was too fat, so no picture of mine would be shared before the child birth). I hope James could be there. But my coworkers are nice enough to save some cakes for him.

That's for now. I will post more on James's birthday and his banana chase run.

Addiction

Exam is over! I feel like I've been studying forever, for this and that. Is it possible to be addicted to studying? I don't know. But I do know it's possible to be addicted to cookies. Just ask the cookie monster.

Cookie Monster Confessional


Some of it really rings true with the material they taught us about the psychology of addiction. But mostly, it just makes me laugh.

Baby update: Still a bun in the oven. Yu promises to write soon.

-James

We're Back

Well, this blog is back in any case. Neither of us went anywhere this Summer. But it was a productive one for me. I had a great time at Chinese Hospital; saw a lot of interesting surgeries, was able to assist and even tie knots. But I saw a lot of difficult and tragic patients, too. On the medicine side, there was a patient with growing dementia and a lone son unable to continue caring for him because he was going off to medical school. Grappling with that family dynamic is so challenging; sometimes a doctor is more than a medical decision maker, he is also a community resource.

My Curriculum Ambassador project for UCSF is now completed, and can be seen at these websites:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~james/
http://www.cfkeep.org/users/jamesho/

Preparations for Landus are pretty much complete. Just waiting for the star of the show! Who will he look like more...? Today is Yu's last day of work, so she should be able to post a lot more on this blog. *nudge* I have to say, I'm getting pretty excited about the baby. I don't know how it will feel, but I imagine it will be pretty special.

School has come back with a fury -- first test is 9/12. That's only after 11 days of instruction. I've already read an entire textbook on Immunology (it was short, only 230 pages), and nearly the entire syllabus section. On top of studying for Boards, learning Chinese, and finishing up a poster and abstract submission as a Curriculum Ambassador. I've also had fun taking my first sexual history; evidently I'm a good interviewer.

Off to exercise now.