100 day miracle

Korean people celebrate when a baby has surpassed the 100-day threshold, as the first 100 days are the most vulnerable for a newborn: they're susceptible to diseases, they're just adjusting to the new world, and MJ was constantly stressed out about SIDS, or suddent infant death syndrome, and also whenever I would sleep near the baby she would make sure I didn't roll over and trample Baby Girl Yan and prevent her from breathing. But we made it! It's well past 100 days now, but right around that 100 day mark baby's sleeping began to normalize and she behaved very consistently, acting in patterns and allowing us to plan ahead and not always scrambling to figure out what's the next step. Some call this the 100-day miracle, that somehow the baby will turn into an angel and be much more well behaved, cry less after 100 days. So far, it's been pretty true! And also she started social smiling now, knowing when to smile and not just smiling randomly. It's probably one of the things that's keeping our marriage alive/strong, (both alive and strong!) as MJ will pretty much forgive everything that happened as long as baby smiles like an angel. That's probably our best form of therapy right now: let the baby smile. There's currently a Jeopardy champion on a streak right now named Jamie Ding who feels like he might be on his way to a 100-day miracle, or at least the 74-day mark held by Ken Jennings. Jamie looks....very Chinese, but I'm happy for him and proud of him because he's making Chinese men like myself look good, like we're not just nerdy introverts who just know random facts......oh wait, that's exactly what he looks like, but he's doing it with style, his own style, and not coming off too cocky or gathering a lot of haters.The last time Jeopardy had a male Chinese superchamp (defined as having a streak longer than 10 games) Arthur Chu in 2014 was villified for his mannerisms and attitude, so I think Jamie is doing a little better, although his anecdotes might need a little work. He's at 26 games now, so he's reaching the true elites, enough to put the mainstream media on notice and not just famous in Jeopardy circles. I've always wondered what it'd be like to be Jeopardy famous, which is like very famous in the Jeopardy subreddit, but also picking up some steam in news articles and online web sources, social media........enough that his high school class in Detroit (or Grosse Point, a suburb) has daily updates about him, people are writing opinion columns saying "this is why you should be watching Jeopardy right now...." Basically, Jamie is living my dream, which I will never be able to achieve..... a wonderful month-long (now more than a month) magical ride where everybody is talking about you and wanting to know how long your streak can continue (or end abruptly, there are always haters like that). I can't help but think his chest is puffed out a little as he walks in the street, he's fielding calls from everyone he's ever known, maybe even get an agent for publicity and appearing on local news networks (my dream was always to speak at my high school, or go on CNBC to talk to Jim Cramer on one of the programs he appears in, or to throw out the first pitch at a major league baseball stadium). Jamie has the chance to do all of that now, and good for him, he is one of the best players ever and much better than me at Jeopardy. But for every streak and win, I always think of the people whom Jamie beat along the way: Jeopardy does a great job covering the winners and telling their stories, but losers are never heard of again. And Jamie produces exactly 2 losers every time he plays, people who earned their way onto Jeopardy only to come up against one of the best players ever and have their dreams shattered without even putting up much of a fight (Jamie's victories have mostly been runaways, some close calls, but mostly games where he is leading throughout and never relinquishes an insurmountable lead). Those contestants had hopes and dreams too, but they had to give up those dreams all in service of keeping this one streak going. So my point is, (I think), enjoy everything Jamie, you deserved it, but also keep in mind all the people who had to be disappointed for you to win.....dont' take winning for granted, that kind of combination of opportunity and luck and execution only comes once in a lifetime. And for most people in the world, it never comes: that thing we desire the most that we'd be working for for so long, comes and goes by like sand through the hourglass: slips right through the fingers. For every one story of extreme wealth and accolades, there are so many stores of loss and missed opportunities and regret.

Fruit Flies (果蝇, フルーティーなハエ, 과일 파리)

I may have posted this before, but fruit flies absolutely drive me bananas (no pun intended). We're currently going through a fruit fly infestation here at the Yan househould and it is pretty bad; I almost lost it yesterday when several flies were landing on me at the same time while I was holding Baby Mina and trying to work. They're worse than telemarketers! I don't know how they got into our home, why there are so many, why they keep coming in droves, but I'm actually hoping for winter to come back now to freeze out these little buggers. It got so bad I panic ordered traps from Amazon that is just basically a blue light with glue on it to attract the flies and get them stuck on a piece of paper. The other inhumane device, of course, is my dad's favorite: a device looking like a tennis racket that he swings around to "zap" the bugs in the air, as anytime the bugs go through the circle of the racket an electric charge shocks them. Pretty tough for the soul to no I've ended more than 100 lives in one day, but there's really no way to get these fruit flies out otherwise, and they're tearing up all our food! They even somehow make it into our refrigerator, and lots of little dead fruit fly carcasses lie on the bottom of our fruit shelves as testment. They're also hanging out in the door, through the gasket (the part that seals the refrigerator, a fact I learned recently) and just anywhere they can to get to our food. They're faceless, tiny, nerve-tingling beings that are peak cringe, and cringe the way it's supposed to be used, not the "cringe" that Gen Z has overused to the point it means anything they think is uncool or inappropriate. Maybe this is just a sure sign that spring is here and summer is right around the corner. This is going to be another boring summer. MJ and I haven't really had an extended vacation since summer 2024, when we visited Korea and China, which seems like a whole lifetime ago yet also feels like it just happened yesterday, minus a 9-month pregnancy and 4-month life of Baby Mina. Some events in your life just stay with you forever, just because of how unique the experience is and never doing it ever again. I remember on that trip spending just 48 hours in China, part of it in a hotel room finishing up work at 1AM local time because it was business hours in the U.S., then waking up at 8AM there to do a podcast episode with my fantasy baseball friend, just to go out and explore the most populated city in the world right after, and the city of my birth, Shanghai. Ah, those type of days aren't going to happen for awhile, where I'm just by myself living in the world with few responsbilities, world is my oyster. Now my oyster is the 15-pound bowling ball of a baby I hold almost night and day because she's just so attached to me. I yearn for freedom, but also I cherish the moments now with her because probably in what seems like a flash she will be too heavy to hold and no longer want me to hold her. Welcome to parenthood: it may seem tough now, but some day even these will the good old days (that's a Macklemore song feat. Kesha called "Good Old Days.") Except the fruit flies. Anything with fruit flies can never be "the good old days."

Wordplay

Wow it's been a solid 3 months since I posted last! I'm sure many parents have this same feeling, but so much has happened in those 3 months, yet it also feels like nothing has really happened. In those 3 months since January, I've spent probably 95% of it in my home with MJ, Baby Girl Yan, and myself, so not going anywhere physically, but mentally I've traveled so far and to the ends of the earth in my study for one of the best competitions ever. Oh and there was a road trip in there as well we took where Baby Girl Yan spent 2 nights in a new location sleeping in a hotel room, and like her father she took it pretty well, adjusted like a champ....except we got greedy at the end of the trip enjoying the outdoors and she got sick, lost her voice on the way back. Like her father, though, she recovered quickly and is the picture of health. One ofthe greatest luxuries in life is to be able to sleep well, stay health, and eat heartily, and then right after that is for your child, in this case infant child, to do all of the above, and she does. Now if we can just survive the upcoming teething process and get her to sleep all the way through the night instead of waking up once or twice.... that would just be the icing on the cake. Honestly, as a new parent who doesn't have any other experience with newborn babies, I feel extremely lucky to have wound up with Baby Girl Yan, she's made our lives so much easier than it could have been, I still get plenty of sleep at night, we haven't lost our minds, and we haven't lost a fortune on medical/health expenses or anything like that, only on diapers and baby wipes (she is a poop machine!) In my trivia preparation, I've come to understand what my strengths and weaknesses are, they become pretty obvious after you go 0/5 on certain categories on Jeopardy or run certain categories with ease....one of my many weaknesses is wordplay, anything with anagrams, add a letter, spell a letter backwards, palindromes, etc. This wouldn't be that big of a problem except the Jeopardy writers seem to be adding more and more of these every year, hoping to weed out the memorization-based players like me who can memorize a lot of facts and study flashcards but can't think on their feet well especially when words get scrambled. A big part of this weakness for me is never having gotten into crosswords and similar puzzles. I've always heard of the NY Times crossword puzzle as the gold standard of crosswords that all cruciverbalists swear by, but I just never got really into it outside of picking up an airplane magazine while killing time sitting on a flight, never actually finishing one because I'd inevitably get stuck and have to start looking in the back for solutions. I assume the thrill of finishing a crossword without any hints is like that adrenaline rush you get when filling in the final piece of a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, or finally achieving checkmate in a drawn-out battle of chess, or finishing a week-long research paper... that feeling of completion that you finally accomplished it and can say confidentally that you did it. I crave that completion feeling, which is why sometimes I rush and get antsy when something is not finished (like the income taxes that I keep putting off). Recently, though, in the past year I've seen Paolo Pasco start on Jeopardy, win 8 games with seemingly effortless ease, then get to the Tournamnet of Champions and dominate in 3 games. Then today I saw the movie "Wordplay" (Free on Youtube!) that's much-heralded as one of the best documentaries ever, not just of the documentaries made for nerds. It's very similar to the documentary "Spellbound" about the National Spelling Bee, Wordplay follows several competitors on the roard to the 2005 National Crosswords championship, where these super-smart people solve really clever puzzles put together by Will Shortz and other crossword gurus. It's very adjacent to Jeopardy where you have to have knowledge.......but also an ability to put words in the right spot and figure out what the clue is asking for in a short amount of time. I watched Paolo Pasco win the 2025 crossword championship....and I no longer quesitoned how this 25-year-old (I think?) got so good at Jeopardy....he's just super-fast and super-talented at breaking down clues and understanding what the writer meant, it's like he's done these crosswords in his sleep, and since birth. That's the thing about youth, I wish I had done these nerdy pursuits earler in life, when my brain was ready to be molded into a machine for solving puzzles like Jeopardy and crosswords...instead it was busy just doing busy homework and reading books, not a bad use of time but it was never honed for competition. Gotta start young! Baby Girl Yan, we will help you do whatever you wish to do but also steer you in the right direction. - Tiger Dad

Stork bites (鹳咬)

As a new parent, one of the most common things to do is check baby for any issues: crying is the obvious indicator of something wrong, but it's now our responsiblity to notice anything off about baby's skin color, poop, how she feeds, making noises, maybe choking on something. It's like taking care of a whole new human being who cannot speak or reason at all, you just have to know what's good for them. It must be like taking care of a pet, except less hair (at the beginning) and the pet looks a lot more human and like us. And the possibility of the baby wanting to be attached to us ALL THE TIME, almost 24/7. She is still in a primitive state, wanting to be back in the womb, and any way to simulate that environment soothes her, whether it be being held in my arms, riding in a carseat that simulates the rhythms of the womb, or her favorite position, being held against the chest.....they all soothe her. Being assigned to the POOP SQUAD is a pretty normal for dads, I'm the chief administor/ CEO/ technician/ support staff/ emergency first responder of all things poop, and my nose has been trained to detect poop at any juncture. Luckily, Baby Yan'ss poops have all been healthy looking, there was one stretch of 3 days she wasn't pooping much (less than once every 24 hours) that spooked us, but after that it's been all systems go and back to the normal routine of drinking formula, pooping it out, refilling with formula, pooping it out. The poop has.......begun to smell pretty bad. It has an earthy feel to it like ti came from the soil, something from the nutrients that were put in both breastmilk (naturally by MJ eating different foods) and artificially by the infant formula makers......and it's not something I would want to smell 24/7 hours a day, which is why I try to change out of the old diaper and close it up as soon as possible to insert into the odor-cancelling steel lockbin of a the diaper disposal box. Still, in those few seconds when opening up the diaper and enjoying the nice surprise (it really is like Christmas morning opening up presents) of whether it's a little poop, big poop, muddy poop, old solidifed poop, really smelly poop that seeps through the diaper, they're all possible scenarios before opening up the diaper. Sometimes there's no poop! Yay! But a whole lot of pee weighing down the poop that weighs the whole contraption down anyway. Definitely being on the poop squad is one of those adjustments that hits you viscerally as a new parent, both the frequency of exposing yourself to the toxicity of poop and the immense amount of poop you have to deal with on a daily basis. And that's just the healthy poop, if all things go well. One thing I have noticed while looking around for problems (like a hammer looking for a nail) is the back of Baby Yan's head having stork bites, or little red marks that look like small blotches, why is why they're called stork bites because it looks like a stork bit in a little bit. Apparently they're normal and aren't indicative of any issues, rather more like birth marks caused by dilated blood vessels. When I first saw them I was a little alarmed, but I guess it's a common feeling I will get in the next few years seeing new things on baby that I have no knowledge about. Baby doesn't react to them, they don't seem to be causing any pain, so it's no more cause for alarm. One potentially alarming thing is how weak I am compared to baby's will and iron hand strength, trying to bat my hand away during feeding time or when I try to move her hand to get the bottle into her mouth. She's STRONG, which the nurses indicated on Day 2 or 3 when they measured the oxygenization in her limbs and assessed it as 100% percentile (even though she was born 6+ pounds, definitely not 100 percentile. She seems to have strong determination to get what she wants, which may be a good personality factor to have in the future but a detriment right now when she wants to be fed BADLY.....like she acts like the end of the world is happening and the crying is VIOLENT (she picked up my genes of having a loud voice, I guess) but then the instant she gets food, everything is peaceful again like a sudden thunderstorm passing through. Maybe a difficult combo in the future of being a Sagittarius baby (curious, independent, full of curiosity, and discovering new things) and this whole "needs to get what she wants" personality. oop, it's probably time for the Daddy poop squad team of one to get back on duty again!

Pacifiers (安抚奶嘴, おしゃぶり, 고무 젖꼭지

I guess I need to relisten to that song by Rema and his buddy Selena Gomez that was a hit in 2023 (maybe even an earworm).... I've been fretting about Baby Girl Yan's sleeping patterns, where she doesn't sleep for more than 10-20 minutes during the day. It's a common theme of parents to compare their children to other children, but sleep is so important for the baby and parents to take a nap, so I'd like baby to sleep for 2-2.5 hour increments, if possible. Maybe I'm stressing out a little to much, though, because a.) she's only 3 weeks old and b.) There are plenty of things where Baby Yan is a DREAM baby. She doesn't get fussy unless she's hungry, she is smart enough to latch herself onto her mom's breast, she has no problem pooping, she checks all of the boxes physically. The sleeping is one of the only issues that I'm worried about. Which is why we introduced pacifiers! I didn't know much about pacifiers except seeing it on TV, especially baby Maggie Simpson using it in the Simpson. I don't remember ever having one, and I don't remember my sister using one neither......I didn't even know what they're for! Apparently the function is right there in the name, it pacifies the baby. The first time Baby Yan tried it she spit it out, but today while getting a little fussy she tried it.......and it worked! I think she's still trying to figure out why there's no milk coming out of the nipple yet and still eagerly trying hard at it in case something did come out of it, but it does seem to work the way it's supposed to: calm the baby down so she isn't shaking and fretting for food or some other anxiety. It does actually make her "calm down." Really hoping this is part of the solution to the issue I've had the first three weeks of parenting: always having to hold the baby (we call her the Velcro Baby because she's stuck to us all the time) and comfort her because she doesn't stay still in the bassinet, mostly because she's not calm; always struggling and stretching and doing the Number 1 thing that babies are supposed to do: Go to sleep. Only when she starts going to sleep for extended periods at night will we be able to get back to somewhat of a routine schedule (although we won't ever be able to go back to our pre-baby routine ever of just being free and having beaucoup time for ourselves) Maybe I need an adult pacifier, or I'm making up for never having a pacifier as a baby by having bad habits as a child: still biting my nails occasionally to calm myself down, shaking my legs (MJ's mom has physically touched my leg for me to stop doing this), tapping my fingers, etc. I'm a pretty high-strung persno I've found, and I like to take care of problems as they occur and deal with them as soon as possbile so I can move on to something else, getting anxious when something is a persistent issue, which is why childbirth has made me even more tense; every time baby cries my blood pressure goes up, although apparently not to an excessively high level to prevent me from donating blood. It's possible baby is sensing my impatience and anxiety in the way I'm holding her and it's transferring on to her? I hope not, although my genes have gone to her already and my blood type as well; we might have the same temperament. I already see a lot of myself in her. I need to listen to that Rema song again.

Death by Lightning

First post of 2026! This promises to be the best year ever in the life of Robert Yan.....if 2025 was a preparation year for the birth of Baby Girl Yan and greater things to come, then 2026 is going to be the fulfillment of those preparations, a teaser preview of fatherhood late in 2025 will lead to a full year of newborn life with baby! So many firsts, so many milestones, so many diapers, so many sleepless nights, so much crying, so much happiness... all mushed into one. Baby Girl Yan has had suprisingly few unexpected surprises and worrisome concerns in her short life, making the lives of MJ and I so much easier (for now) as we just need to feed her, change her diaper, and put her to sleep, and a few other things like trim her fingernails so she doesn't scratch herself, sign her up for health insurance, get her birth certificate, social security card.... but all expected challenges and it hasn't been like climbing Mount Everest or anything. I did worry a bit, and still do now, about getting a will and life insurance for MJ and I.......what would happen in the unlikely event of our untimely demise. What would go to Mina, hopefully nothing going to greedy estate lawyers and estate handlers in the VERY unlikely chance that I pass away. (And really, philosophically, if I do end up dying, will I really care about things that happen in this world anymore, including my daughter? Some say yes of course the baby will still be here and will have to bear the consequences, and for a low low x amount of dollars, you can have piece of mind that she'll be left with something! For attitudes on life insurance and wills I present a direct quote by former President of the United States James Garfield and played by Michael Shannon in the recent mini-series on Netflix, "Death by Lightning," assassination, like death from lightning, is hard to guard against and not worth worrying about. I generally agree with our 20th president's philosophy, but then again he was a known figure, maybe the most known figure in the U.S. at the time, making his life simply much more risky than a normal person's life (unfortunately true today, prominent political figures are much more likely to die unexpectedly than silly old me sitting at home). Then again, the fact that Garfield DID actually die by assassination, a sort of death by lightning, might cut against my thought of not worrying about death and insurance, maybe like Garfield I SHOULD worry about it "just in case?" It's a tough thing to think about, of course, death. I've always thought I would never die and have survived 38.5 years without even coming close to death. (Or have I?) Maybe any number of planes I have ridden in was on the verge of total collapse and I just happened to avoid it during that flight. Maybe someone was plotting to kill me at some point over a perceived slight in dodgeball. Maybe I ate really unhealthily one night or had so much to drink (I can think of a couple nights in Mexico) that something in my body could have collapsed if just a little more. But of course the most likely cause of death of any of those, maybe I could have ended up in a fatal car accident any of the thousands of times I've driven a car, I just didn't know the other driver was drinking while driving or just barely passed by me without swerving into me. It's definitely possible that I've just barely escaped death. Out of the grand universe of people, most people end up surviving their 30's and their 40's no problem without unexpectedly dying (cancer and chronic diseases would be things that you could foresee your own death and create a will when needed). So maybe it's okay NOT to have a will? Is the idea of a will and life insurance (I think definitely so in the latter case, because I can have other income to replace life insurnace) to scare nromal people and get people to pay into a system and capitalize off of insecurities, fear, and worries? (So many things I read before becoming a parent now seem manageable and not that big of a deal....Reddit can definitely amplify one's concerns). I guess if I'm wrong and I do die, I'll never find out. And if I do survive till my late years of life I'll think it was a pyramid scheme all along, so I'll never have the idea that it makes sense to do it. Death by lightning (btw, something I get scared about when I'm out running and there's lightning in the distance, I even fruitlessly run in zig zag patterns to somehow "avoid" the lightning, unscientifically).

The Matilda Effect

The Matilda Effect is defined as a pattern in history where women's contributions have been ignored or attributed to male counterparts, basically giving women no credit for their accomplishments. If you look through the history of the world that certainly appears to be the case, where all famous human beings before the year 1600 or so were men......you got the rarest of rare exceptions with Cleopatra (she had to be romantically involved in one of the juiciest love triangles ever with Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony), Sappho the Lesbos poet, and maybe like Boudicea rebelling against the Romans or like Joan of Arc. Other than that, it's all men. Men got all the opportunities to shine, being educated, fighting in wars, being emperor or king, etc. So I get why it's frustrating that when women finally were given opportunities to contribute, some of them didn't get the credit they deserved like Rosalind Franklin for the double helix. I am glad our baby girls is born in an era when the importance of women is recognized and appreciated. It's also a great reason to focus on famous women for trivia clues! The men will come naturally, but it's important for me who idolized only male sports stars, male actors, male historical figures, etc., to learn a lot more about women, because I kind of suffered from the Matilda Effect as well learning everything I needed to know, generally dismissing women throughout history unless they were famous entertainer like singers, actresses, etc. I don't think I could have named any female scientists before trivia, outside of maybe Marie Curie. Now I cherish reading about famous female astronomers like Ellen Ochoa, for example, the first Hispanic American woman in space, or Diana Nyad, who makes it on Jeopardy all the time, or Lise Meitner, who I'm embarassed to say I didn't know the existence of until last year for her discovery of nuclear fission. All these ladies now come up disproportionately on trivia shows because men just have a bigger pool to choose from, but the ladies can stand out now their star shine even brighter. Being an Asian tiger dad, I've of course already thought about what our Baby Girl should do as a profession, assuming any jobs will exist in 18 years when she becomes of age...science is the hope of course, but I can't expect her to do that if I couldn't crack it due to lack of interest/ lack of ability. I took the easy way out and opting not to grind into fields I wasn't good at; Baby Yan might have that same inclination, especially with the lack of attention span her generation will have. (I barely even have the attention span to finish feeding her from the bottle because I want to move on to other activities!) Based on Baby Yan's extreme activity with her limbs (both arms and legs are pretty strong) I'm hoping to get her active in sports, maybe one of the few things that will survive the robot revolution since humans will want to see other humans perform still, not just robot athletes beating humans. Almost everything needs to get started young, but especially ice skating, snowboarding (like Chloe Kim!), gymnastics, everything that requires muscle memory from a young, young age. Neither MJ and I were very athletic, but maybe we can develop the muscle memory needed for golf swings? Take 100 golf swings per day starting age 3? Whatever Baby Yan decides to do, I hope she's able to withstand the Matilda Effect and stand out on her own!