For Dad

K-Pop walked in the door tonight after a whirlwind business trip and was handed the below piece of art by little K-bao.

K-Pop learned that K-bao had drawn and written the above on her own initiative and by herself, with only a little bit of help from Xiao Ah-Yi (Aunt Christina) on the spelling of "Happy Birthday." What a delightful Welcome Home and Happy Birthday gift!

Baby Daddy

K-bao has declared that she has a "Baby #1 Daddy." As we explored this rather momentous development, the following salient points were made:

• He lives "very far"....as we probed, he turns out to be in Shanghai
• He is working "all the time" but she picks him up from work every day (how? by "airplane," of course)
• He has "pink hair," "blue eyes" and "orange sunglasses," and is tall - and by the way is "handsome"
• When he comes home from work he likes to go to the bathroom
• Worst of all, his name is "little Victor"

And that was about all K-Pop could stomach.

Da-da

Kayla's first word is officially "da-da." She says it loudly and likes to repeat it. She stumbled upon it a few weeks ago amidst her la-la's and eh-eh-eh's, and found that she got a lot of praise and affirmation for it.

K-Pop would otherwise be quite proud and happy if K-bao would only cease the practice of directing her special first word not just at K-Pop but also at her toy blocks, the checkout person at Trader Joe's, and Steve the stuffed monkey. "Take not my name in vain," says K-Pop...in vain.

To confuse matters, K-Pop likes to refer to himself in front of K-bao as ba-ba (the Chinese version of "Daddy"); K-Mum, who speaks to the little one in English to give her the bilingual environment, has only recently switched over her reference to Pops from da-da to ba-ba in order to stay consistent. Unfortunately, da-da also happens to mean "spank" in Chinese. Daddy = spank. Not exactly the association K-Pop would like to encourage.

Dads

Over the past few months, we have met up with quite a few new dads-of-daughters. By and large these men are opinionated, articulate, strong characters, guys who know their way about in this world. Now however they have become like so many pieces of pink cotton string tied around their little daughters' infant fingers. Like triceratops with their soft underbellies exposed. In other words, K-Pop is quite relieved to have found some company.