Spawn/Life Update

Rachel's doing great; she's been on room oxygen for a few days and is now eating on her own. She's putting on weight and getting feisty; she wants outta that incubator. Too bad kid, you've got a few more weeks in there. Kim's doing well; she had her stitches out yesterday and is now back at home with Emily. She can drive and do everything except pick the kid up, so she will be taking showers with mommy for a few weeks instead of her normal baths.

As for me, I start the academy in two days. Large, angry men will be yelling at me for the next six months. Right now I'm feeling eagerness spiked with dread, if that makes any sense. I've sacrificed so much to get here, and now it's time to find out if I can live up to this.

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Christmas Eve

So it's Christmas Eve, and Emily has been put to bed with tales of Santa Claus and all of that corny stuff. She actually isn't too keen on a dude sneaking into the house, but she felt much better about the situation when it was explained that there will be presents involved.

She's pretty excited.

This is my "first" Christmas experience as a parent; up until now my daughter has simply been too young to appreciate the holiday. I find myself looking forward to Christmas morning more now than I ever did as a child. I always appreciated the parental Christmas experience in an intellectual way, but now it's my turn. I can't wait to witness her joy and hear her silver laughter; sometimes it feels like I live my life for that sound. She gives me so such.

I'm pretty excited.

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Neither Snow, Nor Sleet, Nor Slight Embellishment..

One cool thing about being stared at all the time is that sometimes you feel a little more free to do embarrassing stuff in public. Since everyone is always watching, after a few weeks you kind of develop a shell. So when the time comes, you might as well.. carry a huge toddler playset on your head for 2 kilometers along a major road.
No cabs were stopping and I wasn't sure I'd be able to get this thing into the back of one anyway, so after a few minutes I just said hell with it and started humping the beast down the sidewalk. Rest assured that by the time my daughter is old enough to appreciate the tale, it will have become a brutal 20km trek featuring blinding snow, elbow-magi ajummas, and a broken leg. Maybe some feral dogs.

So anyway, if any parents reading this have been looking for a good place to pick up some toys here in Seoul, lemme know; the shop where I found this has a good selection of European and US toys, and with the Won where it is the prices are decent.

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The Most Awesome Bed in History

Look at this:

It's called an Uroko House, and I think it's the most awesome piece of furniture I have ever seen. A warm, soft cocoon of books. With a few modifications, I think it would be perfect for Emily.

The wife thinks I'm nuts, she says that the kid would never go to sleep, that she'd spend all night reading.. but she does that already. Of course she can't read yet, but she loves looking through her books and pretending. On any given morning we'll enter her room to find about two dozen books strewn across the floor and her bed. Honestly, is it possible to read too much? Little secret: I will be sorely disappointed if I don't catch her reading under her blanket with a flashlight in a few years.

I first found this a few months ago, and I'll bet she thinks I've forgotten about it. I may not have my workshop anymore, but custom furniture is pretty cheap in Korea.. *shifty eyes*

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RE: The Spawn

So a few days ago I was inspired by this dude on Youtube who posted videos of himself doing generic life-in-Seoul-stuff like shopping in Emart and riding the subway. The idea was to give his family and friends back home an idea of what his day to day life is like over here.

So in that vein, here's an action-packed piece of the daily routine for Emily and I; the morning schoolbus dropoff. Warning: The following video clip contains saccharine-sweet levels of toddler shenanigans and extensive use of an embarrassing Daddy voice only used with my daughter; viewer discretion is advised.

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Emily's Experience

So what's it like bringing a toddler to Korea? It's not that bad, honestly. We definitely had some concerns coming here, but Korea is really awesome for rugrats. Koreans love 'em, and Emily usually enjoys the attention.

The schools are excellent, at least the preschools. Back in Vegas, Emily was beginning to act out a bit at her preschool; they had a good program, but it was play-based and she was getting bored. We had started looking for an academic program for her, but unfortunately, in the States, there really isn't much in this vein for kids under 3. In education-obsessed Korea, however, that is not a problem.

When we first got here we had planned to put her up in the Army's on-post childcare center, but their program was simple daycare again, so we ruled it out. We then started to explore some of the local options. Language-wise it's not so bad as you'd think: most Koreans are so keen to get their kids speaking English early on that many pre-schools are taught entirely in that language. After checking out several options, we picked a place called Appletree in Seocho-gu. Emily loves it; she's eager to get on the bus in the morning, and when she gets home she is full of stories about what she learned that day. They bus her, feed her, and her teacher calls us every day to give us updates on her progress. My wife specializes in child development, and she thinks it's one of the best programs she has ever seen. My daughter isn't even three yet and she already has half of the alphabet.

All of this costs about $550/month, which is just ridiculously cheap compared to similar programs stateside. Plus she's getting exposed to another culture, and will probably be teaching us Korean if we spend more than a few years here. We both want our daughter to grow up as a world citizen, and I can't imagine a better way to start.

As for grade school, well, I wouldn't want to put Emily into the Korean system; they are bit overzealous in that department. Fortunately we've got access to the US public schools at Yongsan Garrison for that, and the program here is much better than the public schools back in the US.

There is one downside, however.. some days the kid comes home with some serious kimchi-breath.

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