Getting Canadian Citizenship in China

When we first started the process of getting Casey his Canadian citizenship here in China, I had intended to write a post about the experience. The long delay between the application and us actually picking the thing up left the post in permanent “draft” mode until I received the following comment from Cam in Xi’an …

Casey’s 1st Birthday

I did all my jawing about being a dad for 365 mostly-wonderful days last post, but would be failing in my fatherly rights of overly saturating this blog with talk of my son. We ended up dividing Casey’s first birthday celebrations into two. For his actual birthday we hit the local park and took him …

Father of the Year

Shortly after noon tomorrow I will have been a father for one year. Yep, Casey’s already one year old! I can hardly believe that we’ve hit his first birthday already. Oddly, at the same time, it feels like a century ago I was in that hospital room marveling at his wrinkly hands and unpracticed cries. …

Bedtimes and Toy Boxes

The little guy is growing so fast. He’s got two teeth now and has started to show signs of wanting to walk. He doesn’t have the balance yet to attempt it himself but he loves trekking around the apartment with us supporting him. Oddly though, he’s shown no interest in crawling. Our good friends’ little …

Chinese New Year’s Eve 2011: Hello Rabbit

Last night was my sixth time welcoming in a new lunar year here in China. I always approach Chinese New Year’s Eve with a healthy dose of cynical expatations, and I’m always blown away, pun intended, with how it never fails to impress me. True, the day(s) leading up to CNYE have every ratta-tat-tat sound …

Casey & The Wheelie Walker

When Casey first arrived our friends Kevin and Sammi gave us a walker. At the time I couldn’t begin to imagine Casey ever being big enough to use it. For the last month or two we’ve been using it as a way to keep him stationary while we do dishes, prep dinner or just to …

Party of One

A life of extremes folks, that’s me. One minute I’m whinging about the non-stop craziness of being a new parent and the next I’m sitting quietly on a Wednesday night trying to remember the last time I ate vegetables (are mushrooms a vegetable?). Yep, I’m home alone. Button and I have been keeping each other …

All Casey, all the time

Wow, so being a parent is pretty full-on eh? I am pretty sure it was mentioned on the box in small print, but all that flashy “Miracle of Life” sloganese blinded me and I didn’t catch it. Don’t get me wrong, I frigin’ adore being a dad, and I didn’t fully understand what love was …

Casey’s First Week – A Retrospective

We’ve been home from the hospital since Monday afternoon, and are slowly finding our day-to-day groove. It’s challenging, but not as difficult as I built it up to be in the months/weeks leading up to Casey’s birth. I’m happy to report that despite a bit of jaundice that we’ve been told should clear up in …

May the Fourth Be With You

Those closest to me during the ride up to this fatherhood thing know how much I was hoping that I’d forever be able to say “May the 4th Be With You” to my kid on his birthday. Well, the geek-fates have smiled on me and yesterday at 12:50pm my son was born. The emotional amazingness …