Category: Fatherhood

  • I wonder when the change point is…

    During lunch I was looking back on my blog posts. Scarlett of 4 months ago still looks like current Scarlett (only smaller). But Scarlett of 1 year ago looks “nothing” like current Scarlett. I wonder where, exactly, is the inflection point.

  • Voice Acting on Children’s toys

    When I really got into animation a few years ago, I started appreciating a lot of the aspects of animation that people don’t even realize took work. For example, in a live action movie the set designers can go buy chairs and lamps and lights. Everything in an animated work has to be created from…

  • The Princess Who Saved Herself

    Back around May I backed Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak’s kickstarter Code Monkey Save World. The ONLY reason I backed it is because of this stretch goal to have Takeshi Miyazawa draw a children’s book based on Jonathan Coulton’s song, The Princess Who Saved Herself. if you don’t see a “play” button below, click just left of…

  • I Guess It’s My Turn Now

    We were raised with the constant reminder that we needed to care for our parents when they got old. They spent countless hours and money to raise us – it’s the least we could do. We always said, “Yes” or “Of Course”. It’s funny, I always thought I appreciated what my parents had done for…

  • Leaving the Kids at Home While You Go Party

    Unfortunately, my work situation dictates that Scarlett does not have any local grandparents; one set’s in NYC and the other’s in Tampa. Scarlett’s current age  necessitates being taken care of by someone who’s raised children, so Danielle and I don’t get to go out to the types of places you’re not supposed to take kids…

  • Danielle’s Reaction to the Anti-Women Post

    On 8 July I wrote a blog post asking Why is Pop Culture so Anti-Women? Danielle usually comments on my blog posts, but she also doesn’t always have time for that because of Scarlett. So we discussed it at the dinner table. What she told me was that “you get used to it. You just…

  • Why Is Pop Culture so Anti-Woman?

    When you’re part of a dominant class you don’t realize how differently you see the world. Sure, I’m ethnically Hispanic and have suffered humiliation and financial consequences over one overt racist incident. But by and large the world is my oyster. I’m a man and racially I’m white. In fact I’ve had coworkers come to…

  • Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

    Nobody that I personally know was truly raised bilingual. My parents purposely taught me English first. Whatever Spanish I knew before learning it in third grade was picked up from visiting my grandparents. It was mostly limited to asking for food items and very generalized expressions of my state of being. Danielle was taught Vietnamese…

  • Memorial Day 2013

    Memorial Day was pretty awesome this year. All three original Mesa Brothers were reunited for the first time since Christmas. It was my third major holiday celebration since Scarlett was born (in 2012 we only celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas), but it was the first one I hosted. Even with Danielle’s family only 3 hours away…

  • Sleep

    Sleep is one of the most stress-inducing topics for parents. Well, for first time parents. I imagine that, baring some medical conditions, once you’ve figured out how to get one kid to sleep through the night, you can reapply the template over and over. I think one of the reasons sleep tends to be so…

  • Life Isn’t Fair: Housing Edition

    One of the earliest demands for justice children make is that of fairness. What parent hasn’t heard the complaint “That’s not fair!” uttered by their children? Scarlett isn’t there yet (shoot, she’s barely speaking so far), but I imagine one of the hardest things I’ll have to do in her toddlerhood is to explain to…

  • Excuse Me, Are Those Your Kids?

    Ever since Danielle and I started talking about marriage 10 years ago, one of the nightmare scenarios in my head was my kid acting like a brat in public and me getting accused of kidnapping the kid because he or she didn’t look like me. My parents are Cuban and hers are Vietnamese. All kids…

  • It’s Alarming How it’s so Disarming

    I don’t think any father ever sets out to spoil his daughters. After all, not only does that lead to a mal-adjusted human, it makes her more likely to make bad decisions. But when she’s capable of looking this cute (at least to me, but all parents get like +100 cuteness points on their own…

  • Disney Princess Culture Part 2: So this is what they hate about you, Disney

    When I wrote my second fatherhood post, the one about Disney Princesses, I speculated that perhaps the problem most people had with the Disney Princesses was not the movies, but how the company marketed to kids. Since Scarlett is only one, my only exposure to the princesses has been through my own childhood and adulthood…

  • Becoming Fully Human

    My favorite thing about being a first-time father is watching Scarlett’s mind develop and acquire the skills necessary to be human. Anyone who paid a passing attention in biology class knows that humans are born more immature and less capable than almost every other animal.  It has to do with walking upright shrinking the female…